1721

I really enjoyed enjoyed the original commander game even though I didn’t play it for long. I won’t know if WW1 is my thing though. Glad to see that these war games are finally starting to support all resolutions. I thought I’d load up Commander a few months ago with the big update that they did only to shelve it when I booted it up and realizes that it wasn’t wide screen. $40 is a bit it too rich for my blood though, especially with my habit of buying them and then not even finishing a single scenario. Matrix has burned me too many times on that.

1722

Is anyone here familiar with War in the Pacific?

I was thinking about suggesting the devs a new game mode inspired to a popular AAR, but I’m not sure if it could be worthwhile.

Basically my idea is to add a new mode that works like a small scale War in the Pacific. But instead of being limited like a Scenario, you have the full theater. The difference from the standard mode is simply that you select manually all the stuff that you want to control, while everything else will be AI-driven.

Think for example of playing within the FULL campaign, but only controlling one boat, or an handful of units. The scenario still develops around you, but simply handled by the AI.

Programming wise it shouldn’t require much work, since it’s just about having the AI playing both sides and simply ignore commands given to the units under the player control.

I wonder if this could be an useful feature, so that it could for example make the game much easier to learn with the limited perspective. Or be playable more quickly without turns taking days of planning, still without giving up on the full theater.

I wonder if the game could work in a interesting way even from the limited perspective.

1723

I picked up Commander: The Great War as well. Only had a few minutes with it last night, enough to poke around in the campaign scenario to get a feel for it. I like what I see; it’s clear, clean, relatively transparent, easy to grasp, and looks good. I have to read the manual and figure out some stuff, mostly what to produce or research, that sort of thing, but the game feels pretty strong.

I’m hoping this will be the WWI game I’ve been wanting for a while.

1724

Not a game but this is a cerebral enough thread that we can talk about books.
William Shirer’s (the guy who wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich)Berlin Diary is on sale for $1.99 for 24 hours only.
Only caveat is that it’s done by Rosetta Stone and I’ve heard complaints about their OCR versions of the books that they published. I took a look at the reviews for this one and didn’t see anything mentioned about that so I guess it’s safe.

1725

Do you know how this one differs from The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich?

1726

I think this one is just based upon his diary while in Berlin in the period when the Nazis came to power. I’m guessing it might be a bit more subjective but I can’t say for sure.

1727

If anyone is interested in a game of Commander: The Great War, let me know. No particular preference for side or scenario. I’m a 1/2 turns a day kind of guy (in the evenings, Pacific time).

1728

Thanks!

1729

Yes, it’s a real thing! You can’t play it yet, of course, but they have screenshots and there’s many ships in them. And not just ships:

The MMO war series—World of Tanks, World of Warplanes and World of Warships—will soon unite to create the ultimate gaming universe gathering millions of players into a single community of war gamers. Common economics will allow the transfer of resources between all three games. A single global map will gather tankmen, pilots and mariners under a common tussle for world domination.
Tanks, Warplanes, and Warships! What will they add next?

1730

Strategic War in Europe (plus a couple of other games, including Hegemony) is in a cheap pack on gamersgate right now:

http://www.gamersgate.co.uk/indiefort-bundle

1731

Battle of the Bulge by Shenandoah Studios is out:

It is extremely polished, finely balanced, and very, very interesting. If you have an iPad, this is a game you must buy. If you don’t have an iPad but love wargames, this might be the game that makes you buy an iPad.

It has some superficial similarities to Unity of Command and/or Panzer General, but the scale is much smaller and there is a ‘race against the clock’ element that makes it differ substantially from either of those. Each turn, an unpredictable amount of time comes off the game clock; you are extremely unlikely to be able to move all of your forces in a given day, and this means that every. Move. Counts.

Go buy it. Go buy it now.

1732

Jesus that is a beautiful looking game. I mean just look at the in game manual:

1733

I just got the latest issue of C3i magazine (the GMT Games house organ) and was saddened to see an obituary for S. Craig Taylor. Apparently Mr. Taylor died this past summer unexpectedly. He designed several of my favorite games, including Wooden Ships & Iron Men, Flat Top/C.V., and Wings. I actually had a chance to play Wings with him in a demo game at Origins '83 in Detroit. He was a jovial guy and didn’t mind a kid asking him a lot of questions about his game. I loved the planes on sticks he brought for the demo game. Anyway, the news made me quite sad.

1734

Damn. That’s another luminary from my war gaming youth gone.

1735

i will, once it’s out for an OS that i actually own. making a wargame apple only? wacky.

1736

Agreed. It’s excellent! If this is a harbinger of things to come on the iPad I am a happy man.

1737

Just got a press release saying that Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear is on sale and has a demo. Link below.

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/424/details/Conflict.of.Heroes:.Awakening.the.Bear!

1738

Roger this. CV was one of my favorite games as a kid.

1739

That PC adaptation of CoH: Awakening the Bear is one of my favorite tactical combat games from the past few years. It’s been a great time for grander strategy wargaming with the likes of Unity of Command, Battle of the Bulge, etc. but really good squad / platoon level stuff is still really hard to come by. CoH is a pretty straightforward boardgame adaptation, but it works nicely IMO.

1740

Good on Matrix for releasing a demo of this. It has me intrigued enough to download the demo and play the first tutorial. I don’t know if I’ll buy it at only 25% off but this is as close as I’ve been to buying a Matrix game in a long time.