Monthly Archives: January 2018
What’s Gus Playing? Episode 15
The toddler of tanks talks tellingly about trench tactics ~
Lloyd Sabin, 22 January 2018
It took me a ridiculous amount of time to finally fire it up, but this past week I got in some time with Battlefield 1’s single player component, called War Stories. Each story is set at a different front of the First World War. There is a tutorial in which the player takes the role of a black soldier of the 369th Harlem Hellfighters, attempting to hold off a brutal German onslaught. It throws the player directly in to the storm and forces learning by doing. It can be chaotic and insane, but that’s the point. This tutorial is hardcore but effective.
It can be chaotic and insane, but that’s the point.
Out of the six different War Stories (including the tutorial), the player can choose any of the next five in any order he chooses. The next one I chose was set during the Battle of Cambrai in 1917, and as you can probably guess, it puts the player in the boots of a British tanker, assigned to the Black Bess, a kitted-out Mark V tank.
This particular War Story, entitled “Through Mud & Blood,” is broken in to four different chapters which see the player engaged in tank on tank combat against German armored cars, captured French tanks, anti-tank troops, and also engaging in dismounted, commando-style combat against a variety of German troop types. There are literally dozens of weapons to choose from when not piloting Black Bess, the environments are totally destructible, and the combat can be frenetic. Static trench warfare, this is not.
That said, at times it felt like the game was a re-skinned version of other Battlefield games. The First World War vibe is definitely there, but the high-paced combat sometimes felt a little too modern. I still enjoyed it very much…so much so that I’m even dabbling with the idea of playing MP. But so far my hate for people in general has kept me from diving in to an MP game with other players who I don’t know. Months ago, someone in the forums claimed that Battlefield 1 felt like a steampunk Battlefield game, and to a certain extent I found that to be true.
Dragon’ Up The Past – Week 11, Crowned on a Tabletop & a Tarot of Many Things
4X gaming on the tabletop? Yes, please! ~
Brant & Jim, 19 January 2018
Brant’s written about King of the Tabletop before, and he and Jim check out the rest of the issue, too.
We’ve got plenty more where this one came from – there’s 190 issues still to go!
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Gaming Nostalgia – Circus Minimus!
#TBT at GrogHeads!
Ben Hur on the tabletop, back when Dean Essig was doing more than just OCS
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What’s Gus Playing? Episode 14
GrogHeads’ own half-height harbinger of horror turns horny ~
Lloyd Sabin, 15 January 2018
It’s cold as balls outside (read: extremely cold) and my driveway is a glacier. Which leads me to think of Vikings and Viking-themed games. In this installment of What’s Gus Playing, I’ll cover some of my time with three Norse-irific titles: Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Vikings: Wolves of Midgard, and Expeditions: Viking.
Expeditions: Viking is just as well produced as Vikings: Wolves of Midgard (probably moreso) but takes its Scandinavian history more to heart, and a bit more seriously.
Full disclosure: I got about half way in to Hellblade and covered it in more detail in the last installment of What’s Gus Playing. It eventually drained me and I had to move on to something else a little lighter to save my sanity, and that was Vikings: Wolves of Midgard. It’s a Diablo-clone, but a well done one set among the myths of the Norse world. Your avatar is customizable to a point, the enemies are varied and numerous and the game runs well, with attractive, bloody graphics and cartoonish violence.
At first the difficulty almost seemed too easy and I was going to bump it up to ‘hard’ until I hit the first boss. I tried to defeat this boss seemingly 100 times and even after LOWERING the difficulty to ‘easy’ I still could not do it, at which point I just shouted ‘f this!’ and moved on to Expeditions: Viking.
Expeditions: Viking is just as well produced as Vikings: Wolves of Midgard (probably moreso) but takes its Scandinavian history more to heart, and a bit more seriously. Like its predecessor, Expeditions: Conquistador, it is a story-based, historically accurate hybrid of tactical wargame and RPG.
Dragon’ Up The Past – Week 10, Math Overdose and Questionable Advertising
Say what? Wargaming in Dragon?! ~
Brant & Jim, 12 January 2018
There were some entertainingly wacky ideas in the early days of role-playing, back when no math formula or chart was considered beyond the pale.
We’ve got plenty more where this one came from – there’s 191 issues still to go!
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