Scourge of War - Gettysburg

Being a bit jaded (or maybe it is just age), I don't often get excited about a new upcoming title these days, but I am looking forward to Scourge of War - Gettysburg, which is being developed by Norbsoftdev, an offshoot of the team that created the Take Command series, that I mentioned recently.

The battle of Gettysburg has long fascinated me (I remember playing Sid Meier's Gettysburg! years ago), and the Take Command battle system works better than just about any other that I've seen. If Norbsoftdev can pull this off then I for one will be very happy. Certainly, the game is looking good, as the latest screenshots, two of which appear below, show.

Fritz 12

Damn. Chessbase has announced the latest version of Fritz. Now I have the usual problem of deciding whether I must have those new features...

Forget the drugs, that was a strike!

Just as you're never too old to play computer games, it seems you're never too busy either. I love this video of a police drugs raid in Polk County, Florida, found via Geekologie:

Indie beginning...

I've been spending some time looking at indie games, and thoroughly enjoyable it has been too, so I thought I would start a series of posts on the subject.

The originality of some of these titles is reminiscent of the early days of computer gaming when, unlike now, you never knew what was coming out next and every game was a whole new experience (although not always a good one, I grant you). Take, for example, Osmos. Simple in concept, beautiful in execution, this game is quite unlike any other that I have played in nearly 30 years of computer gaming. You play a 'mote', a simple cell-like organism floating around the screen, your task to grow by assimilating other, smaller, motes. The catch is that to do this you have to move around the screen, and in doing so you eject matter which reduces your size, with the result that by the time you catch your target mote you may be smaller than it, in which case it is you that is assimilated. With its atmospheric soundtrack, playing Osmos is a dream-like experience that is so far removed from the usual hectic computer games fare as to almost be a completely different type of entertainment. Highly recommended.

Take Command - at this price, you can't go wrong

Apologies for another forced gaming hiatus, this time due to a move. The good news though is that I came across a cracking little game I bought back in 2005, in amongst all the rubbish I had to shift. The History Channel: Civil War: The Battle of Bull Run: Take Command: 1861, to give it its full title, was a cheap 3D battle simulator created by MadMinute Games. The graphics aren't (and never were) exactly state of the art, but this really was a case of substance over style, providing a decent challenge and a lesson in battle simulation that The Creative Assembly could still learn from for their high production-value Total War series. I'm not sure if the game is still available, but its (very similar) successor Take Command: Second Manassas is, and for only about £6/$10 - a bargain, if ever there was one.

Swastika in HOI 3

I'm sorry, but a WW2 game where Germany doesn't have the swastika flag just doesn't seem right to me. Call me sad (or call me a Nazi, if you want to), but I just had to change the German flag, and here is the result.

If you want to change the flag yourself, just right-click and save the image below. You will then need to convert it to a .TGA file (sorry, couldn't upload it here as a .TGA), which you can do, for example, in Photoshop. Then just copy it into the gfx/flags folder in HOI 3, remembering to backup the previous GER.tga file. Load up HOI 3 and Germany should now have the swastika flag. Much more appropriate...