What’s Gus Playing? Order of Battle – Red Steel!
Looking out my window I see the woods and the hill behind my house covered in about 2.5 feet of snow. There’s barely any color out there besides gray and white and it’s about 25 degrees. The warmth and love in my home can’t overcome the chill.
By: Lloyd Sabin,
Grogheads Sunday Morning Musings!
Red Dead Redemption 2 is incredibly well-regarded for its immersive rendition of the American West in 1899. Rockstar Games created an open world that logically reacts to the player’s deeds and misdeeds. If you commit heinous crimes in a little town, you can always pay off your bounty – but even so, the local sheriff’s office maintains a description of your character’s appearance. If you come back with the same clothes and facial hair, the locals are prone to remember you as that jerk who shot their cousin a few weeks back. On the other hand, if you cover your face when you commit crimes and strategically swap outfits when nobody’s watching, not only can you get away with plain-sight robberies, but you can follow them up by casually chatting with the lawmen investigating your crimes. The depth of the bounty system is arcane and not particularly well explained in tooltips or tutorials, but once you understand it, it’s equally delightful and frustrating to try and manipulate.
This strength of the game is exactly why many players hate Chapter V – the “Guarma” section where the main characters are stranded on a tropical island embattled by civil war.
By: James Maxwell
What’s Gus Playing? Wolfenstein – Youngblood!
Due to customer demand – namely one dude in the forums who shall remain nameless who asked ‘Hey what happened to the What’s Gus Playing thing you used to do? – I am back to tell you all about What I Am Playing. Right now I am actually playing through three games – Panzer Corps 2, Order of Battle – Red Steel, and Wolfenstein: Youngblood. Since I don’t know how much time I have until my power goes out again from the fourth foot of snow we are receiving as I type this – I’ll be quick.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood, developer Arkane and publisher Bethesda, have all taken a ton of flak (pun intended) in online forums since the game’s release. Why? Most likely because it’s two playable protagonists, Jess and Sophia Blazkowicz, daughters of Wolfenstein hero BJ, are young women. Many of the NPCs are women as well, and their computer nerd assistant who maps out Paris for them, finds them side missions and generally helps them along is also a woman. The majority of the enemies they fight are men, and also Nazis. I didn’t have a problem with this set up, other than the girls’ banter back and forth occasionally got a little irritating, the same way the banter between my own daughters gets irritating. And I found a whole lot more to like in Wolfenstein: Youngblood to offset any annoying chatter.
By: Lloyd Sabin,
Grogheads AAR – Combat Mission Black Sea!
When in 2009 Battlefront began to develop Black Sea, the next title in the Combat Mission series involving a modern fictional Russian invasion of the Ukraine, they couldn’t possibly have imagined that in less than five short years, Russian combat units would be storming across the border into Ukrainian territory making the scenario much less of a hypothetical. Despite exerting every effort to avoid the portrayal of an ongoing, undecided conflict, it is nearly impossible to avoid comparisons to the violent confrontation that is still raging across the Donbass.
Combat Mission Black Sea (“CMBS”) is described by Battlefront as a “military grade simulation” depicting a fictional armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine which results in open combat in the summer of 2017. “As Russian forces move into Ukrainian territory the Ukrainians do their best to defend their country against a numerically and technologically superior adversary. Events surrounding the invasion cause NATO to send its advanced rapid deployment forces to check the Russian advance. A brutal scenario, for sure, but one which allows you to get a glimpse of what full spectrum contemporary near-peer tactical warfare is all about.”
Although CMBS has been available directly from Battlefront since November 2014, it has recently been released on Steam in partnership with Slitherine Ltd., significantly broadening its audience and reinvigorating interest in the source material. So, grab your AK and join Grogheads on the frontline of this brutal modern confrontation as Russian and Ukrainian mechanized troops clash over a small government complex. Ura!!!
By: Craig Handler
Grogheads Preview – Field of Glory II: Medieval!
Field of Glory and it’s expansions have a permanent place on my hard drive. From the ancient world of Rome, Persia and Greece through to Rome’s fall, through the Dark Ages and the subsequent struggles in Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, Field of Glory 2 carried on its tradition of making history fans of all stripes squeal at delight at the appearance of their favorite troop types, armies and nations in one-off historical battles, linked campaigns and tons of of user made content. I will need another lifetime to get through each user made battle and campaign that I have downloaded over time.
So, it is with a proper level of giddy delight that I have been afforded a sneak peek of the next game in the series: Field of Glory II: Medieval (FogII: M), due out February 4 for the masses from Byzantine Games and Slitherine Ltd., and set (initially) between 1040AD and 1270AD…you just know those expansions will be coming fast and furious.
