Lock’n’Load re-released the original Forgotten Heroes expansion along with the new reprint, and Vance Strickland takes a look at what’s in the box. Bring the Aussies to the fight as you expand the battles of the Vietnam War on your tabletop with ANZAC Attack.
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The Tuesday Screenshot travels back through time to Venice, and a small hamlet in the lagoon.
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Covert Action is a game of international espionage originally released by Microprose Software in 1990. Covert Action is a classic MS-DOS computer game written by Sid Meier and his programming team. You take the role of Max (or Maxine) Remington, a CIA trouble shooter attempting to unravel complex international criminal conspiracies from a multitude of hostile government and terrorist organizations.
My first copy of Covert Action was purchased in 1990. I loved it and it became one of my favorite all time games. I mourned when Microsoft stopped supporting DOS and donated my original copy of Covert Action to charity prior to moving to a new home. I rejoiced when DOSBOX was invented which enabled people to play MS-DOS games on a modern computer systems. This review is not based on fond memories, but on more than twenty hours of play of the www.gog.com version of Covert Action.
Each mission starts in a similar fashion. A CIA leader at HQ warns trouble is brewing. Briefings are often vague with a handful of clues and perhaps an indication of one of the organizations involved in the plot. Plots include blackmailing important officials, assassinations, stealing important bits of technology, or similar cold-war era operations. Multiple enemy groups are involved in every plot. The mastermind works through minions who perform the nasty deeds. Max then has lots and lots of choices with little to go on. Max often starts unravelling the plot by placing wiretaps on organizations or individuals who may be involved. This may yield coded messages which must be decrypted.
Craig Handler has a chat with the Muzzy Lane crew about their upcoming release in the Making History series, The Great War.
We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Chris Parsons, the Product Manager at Muzzy Lane Software, to talk about their upcoming grand strategy game, Making History: The Great War. As Muzzy Lane’s first departure from the battlefields of the Second Word War, this new title in the Making History series spans from 1910 through 1922, and will focus on the horrific trench warfare of World War I. Making History: The Great War promises to permit players to experiment with revolutionary new armaments, technologies and strategies in an effort to rewrite history by leading one of the great powers during one of the most turbulent and pivotal times in modern world history.
With Making History: The Great War, Muzzy Lane hopes to appeal to serious historians and hardcore gamers, alike, by combining historical authenticity with a design system geared towards fostering education through strategic gaming.
GH: Thanks for agreeing to sit down with us to talk about Making History: The Great War. As you can see from our forums, there is a lot of excitement in the air over this upcoming early access release. Our readers, who consist of old fans of the Making History series, as well as new comers, are interested in learning about Muzzy Lane, the Making History series and importantly, Making History: The Great War.
Muzzy Lane games seem to be more focused toward education and the classroom, rather than the traditional commercial gaming market. What are the backgrounds of the individuals behind Muzzy Lane and is there professional experience as educators, teachers, professors, etc.? If so, does any of this professional experience focus on either of the World Wars?
ML: At its core, Muzzy Lane is a technology company that focuses on game-based learning. In addition to education, we also make games for business training and for healthcare, and of course, for strategy gamers! Our underlying technology allows us to customize the learning for specific subjects and curriculums, and share the actions taken in the game with everyone involved. This same engine drives our Making History games as well. The founders include educators and engineers, and from the start we’ve always worked with subject matter experts. For example, we worked closely with economic historian Niall Ferguson on Making History II, and the name of that game: “The War of the World” is taken from his book of the same name.
We take a look at Hunted Amongst Castles: New Biome in Sir, You Are Being Hunted.
Sir, You Are Being Hunted (SYABH) received a new update this past Friday that added a fifth and final biome to the first-person survival game: Castle. This new biome rounds out the current biome settings of rural, fens, industrial, and mountains players will encounter while they try to collect artifact pieces to escape the islands of an unnamed archipelago.
The update also adds a soundtrack and some changes that affect the scarecrow’s and landowner’s pathing, as well as fixing the audio for the squire to reflect its movement. Currently the game is still in Alpha and seems to be progressing nicely as it reaches a finished state. Big Robot has stated that this update is the last in terms of delivering single-player content that was promised during the initial fund-raiser. A patch is expected sometime in the future to and an end sequence to the game as well as put some final touches on the existing biome elements.
So if you’ve gotten this far and are scratching your head due to what I’ve said, please give a read of the interview done by us here at Grogheads with James Carey, the designer of the game itself. If you’re slightly impatient and want the gist of what it entails, here it is: you are being hunted by old-timey robots and you must find several artifacts to escape the procedurally-generated island. SYABH relies on stealth, trickery, and resourcefulness, being gung-ho can be detrimental to living.
So what does this new biome look like in person? Here’s some wonderful in-game shots to not only show it off, but some of the action you can expect trying to stay alive while being hunted by British-looking robots.
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Just as I start out on my quest to check out the new Castle biome, I realize that SYABH does not kid around. Within moments of walking, I spot a balloon with a spotlight that is scouting out my possible location. I hastily beat it out of the area to avoid being spotted and have hunters come after me.
Not that it mattered; I found a pair of hunters guarding an artifact, which lends itself to being found by either spotting the smoke from the heat of the explosion that flung them (which begs the question, where am I keeping these scalding-hot pieces on my person?). I take mental note of the location and move towards the dock to where I can finally go to the new biome.