Fade in to Youtube video of Far Cry 2. A custom Far Cry 2 map with red fuel barrels strategically placed in underbrush under a tree line. The End by The Doors and jeep engines are the only sounds. After a minute the player launches a grenade, a giant fireball fills the screen, engulfing the trees in flames.
This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes, again
Dissolve to:
December. Shit. Far Cry 3’s not coming out ’till December. Every time I buy an open world FPS game I think it’ll actually be good. When I was playing Far Cry 2 after finishing the original it was worse. I’d keep expecting it to get better and there’d be nothing. When I was playing, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I’ve been here for three months now, waiting for the next new release, getting fatter. Every minute I spend in front of this monitor I get stupider. And every minute the AI squats in the bush he gets cheaper and lamer.
Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a sandbox FPS set in the tropics, and for my sins they gave me one. It was no accident I got to be the caretaker of the villain at the end of White Gold’s memory, any more than being back in fictional third world country was an accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story is really a confession, then so is mine.
After the jump, I stop talking like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now Continue reading →
I’m not quite sure exactly what it is about wargames that befuddles people. Something about NATO symbology* which translates armored units into rectangles with ovals in them. Or hexagons. I know some people don’t like hexagons. Although Neuroshima Hex has those as well, and it does all right.
I think the biggest obstacle to playing wargames is all the weird things you have to be aware of to play a game properly, without any way to judge how important they may be. Wargames sometimes make you use tools that you often didn’t even know you had. One of those is unit breakdown.
After the jump, is your Panzerkampfwagen under warranty? Continue reading →
Bruce, playing the cowardly Soviets, is trying to slink his way into the liberated cities of Zhitomir and Korsun. So far, his vast advantage in brainwashed farmers and sheet metal vehicles has done little to help him take these two objectives. Tim, playing the noble Axis, with a strong tradition of discipline and excellence, is putting the finishing touches on a dramatic counterattack that is sure to be praised for decades.
Yes, there are advantages to being the one who writes the intro.
After the jump, Bruce gets me back. Continue reading →
This game diary exists to make a joke about the name Red Turn. This multiplayer report exists to make a pun on Tom vs. Bruce.
Of course, there’s more to it than that. I enjoy reading everything Bruce Geryk writes about wargames. I’ve wanted him to write something about Unity of Command since it was released. I knew that if I challenged him to a game, he’d be unable to resist.
We’re playing the Korsun Pocket scenario. It’s a dynamic battle of encirclement and counterattack. Bruce, playing the Soviets, will use his superior numbers to cut off as much of my army as he can. As the Axis, I’ll use my veteran armored units to punish overzealous attacks. The scenario states that the Soviets need more than 150 points to achieve victory. But victory points start ticking down quickly, and the Axis can cut into that margin by taking their own objectives.
Click any of the images for an expanded view of the battlefield. Check the first image for the names of the objectives.
After the jump, maneuvering begins Continue reading →
I know that the hunter’s camp I’m looking for is around here somewhere. Twain, budding assassin that he is, has a Brotherhood contract and the fellow he’s supposed to kill is at that camp. As ever with directions, it sounded easier to get here in theory than in execution, and I swear I’ve been all over this riverbank looking. Honestly, I’m almost wondering if I’ve got Twain at the wrong bend in the river entirely. It didn’t use to be this difficult to find quest objectives, after all…
…and I love it.
After the jump, greater than the sum of the parts Continue reading →
Look, I know Mercer Frey is the head of the Thieves Guild, but he has got to be kidding with this one. He wants me to investigate this dude in the city of Solitude. No big deal, right? Well, except for the fact I’m in Riften (where the Thieves Guild is located) and Solitude is all the way across the entire map. This is not some jaunty day trip to the corner store–this is a serious journey, one that should take me across three or four separate climates in Skyrim. This is some serious Lewis & Clark exploration, and it will require some actual planning and attention to detail.
After the jump, join the thieves guild, see the world Continue reading →
The Drunken Huntsman in the city of Whiterun is one Twain’s favorite haunts in all of Skyrim. My character is a sneaky guy who kills lots of stuff with arrows, and the Huntsman is a great place to both replenish ammunition and also check for bow upgrades. Twain’s been shopping here since he was a mere level 2 rube visiting the big city to take the Ataxia cure at the temple.
That first visit, Elrindir the proprietor showed the young and impressionable Twain a mix of goods of fairly low quality. If I made no changes to the way Skyrim works, when I’d send him back in to the store at level 10, level 15, and level 20 he’d see incrementally more powerful things on offer to buy. While it’s certainly nice to be able to buy better and better gear as you advance in the game, it also illustrates a problem inherent with vanilla Skyrim.
After the jump, making crafting worthwhile Continue reading →
You might be able to tell by looking at the picture above that Twain — my character in Skyrim — is having something of a crisis of confidence right now. That’s him on the barstool, drowning his sorrows at the Vilemyr Inn, and I can’t blame him for his despair. While Steam tells me I’ve spent nearly 18 hours in Skyrim since I started keeping this diary, I can’t help but notice that Twain’s still wearing the same grungy furs he’s had since early on in the game. What’s worse, I could pull up a menu showing that despite all that in-game time the poor guy is still only level 11. If we were able to ask him, Twain would probably take a swig of Honingbrew Mead and express that he felt like he’d been through all this before.
After the jump, mod-induced deja vu syndrome Continue reading →
I’m guessing that I smell like a wet dog. Worse than a wet dog, perhaps. It’s pouring in Riverwood, and the locals have had the good sense to get under shelter out of this rainstorm. Me, I’m out in it, dressed from head to toe in animal furs and probably smelling like the crotch of a quarterhorse. I can’t stay in from the weather today — if I don’t hunt, I don’t eat. If I don’t eat, my ability to stab things in the dark takes a big hit. It’s awfully hard to sneak up on people when my stomach is rumbling.
After the jump, a week in Riverwood Continue reading →
By now we’re at the fourth installment in this new War in the East series, and you’re probably wondering if I’m ever going to attack another hex, or if I’m going to just keep going to my closet and pulling out different games about Stalingrad. I assure you that both of those things are definitely going to happen. But I also promise that before this post is done, I will have attacked many hexes and shown you several actual in-game screenshots. But before that happens, I have to tell you a story. It’s kind of long, but at the end you’ll know a little more about what I’m trying to tell you. If you don’t like it, I promise to give you your money back.
After the jump, follow me down the board wargaming rabbit hole Continue reading →
By January of this past year, playing Skyrim had become a chore to me. I kept telling myself that when Bethesda released their mod tools–The Creation Kit–that things would somehow get better, that the shortcomings I’d begun to struggle with in the game might be fixed by the modding community that had done such excellent work with Oblivion and the Fallouts. It is entirely possible that I was totally right about that…but I never found out. Just ten days after the Creation Kit arrived in early February, I abandoned Skyrim. I’d hit the wall and was burnt out, but not so much that I didn’t vow to return at some future point in time.
Perhaps it was the cold snap that brought unseasonably cold nights to the East Coast this fall. Perhaps it was just absence making my gaming heart grow fonder. Whatever the reason, recently I started to feel that pull back to Tamriel’s far north province. November marked the anniversary of Skyrim’s release, and after a year of patches, DLC, and fan-made creations, I wondered what the state of the game was. I knew that if done right a fully-modded version of Bethesda’s game could be a brand new experience; a Director’s Cut of sorts. If I chose wisely and installed carefully maybe I could finally get out of Skyrim the experience I’d always wanted to have.
After the jump: Spoiled for choice. Continue reading →
When I first learned about Red Turn, I was surprised to hear the scenarios were designed by a member of the community: Pieter de Jong, better known to most wargamers as ComradeP. And as a new wargamer, I’m still intrigued by the history behind the games. Like art appreciation, it feeds back into my appreciation of the game. So I decided to go right to the source and ask Pieter a few questions.
After the jump, add some perspective to Red Turn. Continue reading →
Red Turn feels like a late-war Eastern Front game. The distances and the size of the armies in each scenario are mind-boggling. The scenario pictured above, To The Dniester, has 816 steps between the two sides. I had to manage multiple fronts in many of the scenarios. Often the battles began with Soviet units stacked 4 or 5 deep against thin German lines. Playing the campaign feels like the multiyear ordeal that it describes. I spent as much time on Red Turn — if not more — than I did on Stalingrad Campaign. Officially, 2×2 Games calls this DLC. That merely embarrasses every other game developer that releases DLC. They’d probably release three challenge maps, a few new costumes, and charge 1600 Ruble Points for it. Well, it does sound pretty great when I put it like that.
During the hefty campaign in Red Turn, I picked up on two themes. One was the tipping point I noticed partway through the campaign. After that, the Soviet advance felt inevitable. Or was it? The other theme was how the Axis still had some punch left. Nimble veteran armored divisions impeded my plans at every turn. It took a lot of work to eject tough units from key positions.
After the jump, play along for a history lesson. Continue reading →
Developer 2×2 Games deserves an award for the most literal name for an expansion pack ever conceived. Unity of Command: Red Turn is a 17-scenario campaign for the Soviet Union in World War II. It’s the sequel to Unity of Command: Stalingrad Campaign, which I called an excellent introduction for new wargamers (because I am one).
Something bothers me right away about Red Turn. At the end of Stalingrad Campaign, the Soviets go on a long campaign to drive the Germans back from Stalingrad. Now the Soviets get to take another huge turn again. The Axis only get two measly scenarios this time around. That hardly seems fair. I suppose Germany must get two turns in a row later in the war. I’m not sure.
No matter. The most important thing about a new wargame is what the new unit icons look like. Red Turn adds a few attractive new models to show the progress of the war. Let’s take a look.
After the jump, feast your eyes on these novelty-sized upper torsos. Continue reading →
Before we can get to the fight for Stalingrad or whatnot, there is the small question of Sevastopol. This naval base on the Crimean peninsula, famous as the site of the focus of the Crimean War in 1855, was the home of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet in 1941 and stood as a fortress through a 250-day siege until it finally fell to the Germans in 1942. In War in the East’s Operation Blue scenario, the Soviets get 50 points for every turn they control the city. That’s a lot of points, so I need to make an all-out assault on the first turn to limit the damage to my final victory.
After the jump, Germany made an all-out assault of their own. Continue reading →
