AeroflyFS review
Anyone who thinks I’m going to use this review as an excuse to make a string of lame puns about aeroflyFS’s Swiss setting is cuckoo. Clock those screenshots! Excruciating wordplay would be a disgraceful distraction from the real story: that a team of little-known German developers have fashioned the world’s most beautiful flight simulator.
Crusader Kings 2 review
Who should I beat up? Who should I butter up? What should I research? What should I build? For the last quarter-century historical strategy games have been encouraging us to ask the same questions. They’re great questions –the foundations of many fine games – but after a week or two in the company of Paradox’s latest past prober, they do seem a trifle trite.
Unity of Command review
This game doesn’t come with conventional AI. Buy it, and the Croatian devs mail you two giant, powder-filled jiffy-bags, one labelled ‘Ferdinand Fuchs’, the other ‘Boris Bastardov’. Open these, add five gallons of vodka to the Boris bag and five gallons of schnapps to the Ferdinand, then stand back as two super-sly Ost Front generals materialise in front of you.
X-Plane review
The eight DVDs’ worth of scenery files have been installed, the joystick has been configured, and the cat has been fed. The moment has come.
Excitedly, I type the name of my local aerodrome into X-Plane 10’s search box and press ‘GO TO THIS AIRPORT’. A minute or two passes, then one of the dullest splash screens I’ve ever seen dissolves to reveal…
Hmm.
Total War: Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai preview
Through shallows of waving grass they come, hundreds of them, spears gripped, armour glittering, flags aflutter in the scented spring breeze. So many gaudy uniforms and ludicrous hats! So much splendour and misguided confidence.
The gaily coloured attackers are converging on my anvil – four formations of nervous Kiheitai riflemen. My hammers – twelve units of Sharpshooters and White Bear infantry – are waiting in nearby woodland for the perfect moment to strike.
Gratuitous Tank Battles preview
When I arrived at the Wiltshire HQ of Positech Games I was met at the door by receptionist Cliff Harris. The studio’s PR manager, Cliff Harris, then made me a mug of tea before introducing me to the head of development, Cliff Harris, who took me down the hall to meet the lead designer, Cliff Harris.
Positech Games isn’t a typical developer, so it’s hardly surprising that the upcoming Gratuitous Tank Battles isn’t a typical tower defence game.
Tucked away in a small backroom in his 18th Century home, 21st Century Cliff is building a game that’s as much about galloping through the Valley of Death as ensuring the Valley of Death is good-and-deathy. As well as being asked to line wiggly assault corridors with all manner of turrets, towers and infantry bunkers, we’ll have a chance to sample the slaughter from the other side, sending our own armies of inexplicably eager mechs, tanks, and grunts down AI-controlled avenues of doom.
Crusader Kings 2 preview
Loading Map Sprites… Loading Sounds… Loading Databases… Loading The Complete Works Of Shakespeare. That last message doesn’t actually appear on Crusader Kings II’s loading screen, but having just spent a day backstabbing dukes and undermining monarchs, I wouldn’t arch an eyebrow if it did.
It’s almost impossible to partake of this medieval RTS (Royal Tribulations Simulator) without finding yourself enmeshed in the kind of court plots and factional feuds that make The Bard’s history plays such rattling good yarns. You might start out all sweetness and light, but before long you’re bedding your brother’s wife, Macbething your best friend, and doing a Richard the Third on your incarcerated nephews [Eww! – Cockney Ed].
Train Simulator 2012 review
Right now I’m not sure whether to feel violated or grateful. During the night RS.com, with Steam’s assistance, broke into my home and meddled with one of my favourite train sims. RailWorks 2 is gone and in its place is something prettier, slightly less nimble, but otherwise very similar. Something called Train Simulator 2012.
Take On Helicopters review
Being one of PC Gamer’s wargame and simulation chaps, I get to use words like ‘realism’, ‘Spitfire’ and ‘Panzer’ an awful lot. Sometimes I glance up at my bowing Noun Shelf and see the thick layer of dust clinging to terms like ‘plot’, ‘character’ and ‘romance’ and feel a bit (hang on, it’s up here somewhere) melancholy.
Take On Helicopters has blown away thatmelancholy. Combining flight sim, adventure and a little dash of business, it’s the most refreshing flying game I’ve played in years. I may, courtesy of an FSX or Search & Rescue 4 sortie, have delivered SWAT teams, skycraned cargo, and medevaced accident casualties before, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never combined aviation with flirtation or interrogation, or spent inter-mission intermissions in a 3D hangar overseeing helo upgrades, repaints and repairs.
Shogun 2: Rise of the Samurai review
Should a Total War: Shogun 2 supplement centred on the Genpei War of 1180-1185 feature a comprehensive selection of period units? Before you answer with an eager ‘Hai!’ bear in mind that the Minamoto clan won the pivotal Battle of Kurikara with the aid of stampeding oxen.
There are no war cows in Rise of the Samurai, in fact this expansion is free of gimmicky bullocks/bollocks of all kinds. What you get for your very reasonable six quid is a cartload of new content that leaves Shogun 2 feeling sushi-fresh.
Panzer Corps review
Alex Shargin’s goal for Panzer Corps was “to preserve the game mechanics and characteristic look-and-feel of the classic Panzer General, and improve all the other areas of the game.” So most of the design work for this game was in fact completed over 17 years ago by computer wargaming pioneers Strategic Simulations Inc. It was they who crafted Panzer General (PCG 15, 85%), the absurdly elegant, dangerously distracting WWII TBS that Panzer Corps apes so skillfully.
Tropico 4 review
I’m guessing Haemimont’s last Latin American despot simulator didn’t go down too well in Havana or Buenos Aires. In Tropico 3 if you chose Che Guevara as your avatar you got an inspiring workhorse with alcohol and anger issues. Picking Juan Peron meant donning the dinner jacket of a flatulent moron.
This time out Che’s only vice is his paranoia, and super-smart Juan leaves the gaseous emissions to his chemical works. Welcome to the subtly tweaked world of Tropico 4.
Sengoku preview: heirs and graces
My proudest gaming achievement of August 2nd, 2011? Up until an hour ago I’d have said it was turning a barren Caribbean island into one of the world’s biggest llama wool exporters (See the next British issue of PCG for my Tropico 4 review). Now I’d have to say it was inseminating my niece in Sengoku.
Don’t worry. The act wasn’t nearly as sordid as it sounds. The niece in question was eighteen at the time, and my wife. My pride largely stemmed from the fact that I was heirless and getting-on-a-bit (63) and I’d been unsuccessfully trying to get her sister (another one of my wives/nieces) knocked-up for the previous ten years.
Okay, perhaps the act was as sordid as it sounds.
Pride of Nations review
European settlers are taking your land, and armed resistance has proved ineffective. What do you do? If you’re the Xhosa people of southern Africa, you put your trust in a millennial prophesy, slaughter all your cattle, and wait for divine assistance. If you’re a native faction in AGEOD’s breathtaking colonial behemoth Pride of Nations, you pray the player will get tired of the lengthy turn processing times and quit the game.
Risk: Factions review
Would chess be a better game if bishops were replaced with randomly moving Inquisitors? Would Cluedo be improved by the addition of a demon-spewing Hellmouth? After spending a few days with Risk: Factions, I’m tempted to say ‘Yes’.
Although RF does include the classic game, its meat is a twisted re-interpretation in which moggies, zombs, robots, men and yetis battle for continental control. The new factions actually add little beyond some pleasing combat animations – what refreshes is the introduction of a range of new maps dotted with enticing buff structures.
