07/11/14

GrogHeads Reviews Piercing Fortress Europa

A Flash Review by Boggit

Developed by Adanac Command Studios and Published by Matrix/Slitherine

Click images to enlarge

When I saw this operational level game I was very motivated to look at it, as it claimed to emphasise logistics as a key element. I like this dimension, since in reality operations are usually dictated by the ability to supply. Many operational games deal with this only at a very simple level to avoid bogging the game down, so it is interesting to see whether Piercing Fortress Europa gets the balance right between reality and playability. I looked at the game under release version v1.2. The update improves things over the initial release, and adds sound which the release version lacked. In terms of scale each hex represents roughly 12 km across, each turn four days in the summer, up to six days in the winter, and three days for the Sicily Campaign. Units are divisions, brigades, or commando units.

The game menu gives a choice of 6 campaigns, handicap settings, game type (for example single player for either side, hot-seat, or play by electronic mail (PBEM)), and screen resolution. The game screen is windowed, and doesn’t support a full screen mode, which is a bit odd for a game released these days but is not a big deal. I have Guns of August from the same developer, which has been out for a while now, and that game displays similarly, so I’m not expecting any further screen mode changes from the developer.

The PBEM option is pretty basic, and it is a pity it doesn’t take advantage of Matrix/Slitherine’s multiplayer lobby, which is user friendly and a good source for finding opponents. Instead it’s a question of entering a password, saving the game, and sending it by email as an attachment, or by a memory stick. To be honest I wasn’t very impressed, especially since most recent Matrix/Slitherine releases use the excellent Matrix/Slitherine multiplayer lobby. I’m hoping this feature will change in a future update.

Pre-landing planning in Sicily. I have a free choice as to where to land, but pre-invasion recon has been a disaster!

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05/4/14

A Review of Narco Guerra

**The Grumpy Grog says “Try Narco Guerra for a blast of good casual fun”.**

Developed Auroch Digital Ltd and Published by GameTheNews.net

A Flash Review by Boggit

Choices, choices. Story mode is more involved including variable street prices for drugs. Skirmish mode doesn’t include that aspect.

I got Narco Guerra from Gamersgate for the equivalent of $1. It’s an operational level game about the drugs war in Mexico. The game is very easy to learn, and there is a help screen with it that gives you all the information you need.

Confused? Don’t be with this handy help screen. The learning curve is really easy.

Single player, you represent the police, fighting up two different cartels (and up to 3 more can emerge during the game). There is a local multiplayer option – read hot seat play – where the first human player plays the police, and up to 5 additional human/computer players can choose a cartel to play.

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10/8/13

Tuesday Screenshot – Command Ops: Battles for Greece

Today is not a good day to be defending the Portas and Olympus Passes against the Germans. My unit, the 21st New Zealand Infantry Battalion, has been tasked with defending two tunnels. These tunnels leads directly to the Tempe Gorge. If the Jerries make it there they will succeed in cutting off the Allied withdrawal! We cannot allow that to happen. Intelligence reported that our sector would be quiet, thus leaving us with no dedicated anti-armor units. As usually, military intelligence proved it was not, and we now face a company of Panzer IIs and IIIs without much hope of stopping them.

As the Jerries push forward it became clear we needed to blow at least one of the tunnels. Chances are the other will need to be blown, too. There are still several hours before dark. This is going to be a tough fight.

09/28/13

The GrogHeads Interview: Jim Snyder & Rob Crandall of Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm

Grogheads interviews the twin geniuses (geniui?) behind the new Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm.

GH: Since the release of Flashpoint Germany it’s been eight years. For wargamers who have been dying to get their hands on the sequel, what took so long?

Rob Crandall: There is researching the game, designing the game, coding the game, testing the game and then documenting the game. Then you decide the original concept wasn’t that great after all and you repeat the process. Keep repeating until you run out of patience and/or money. Such is the carefree life of a game developer! The costs are all upfront and the payoffs are speculative and far away so it is a real test of commitment to see it through to the very end. Worse, although many parts of the work are fun, many are no fun at all and this can really bite. It is easy to zip through the fun parts but it takes discipline to do the rest when you know it will take months and months to do so. Mercifully, I had some outstanding help and the parts that were not so fun for me were picked up by partners who could do them.

I don’t have any direct evidence but I have often thought that for every ten wargames that get talked about only one gets started. For every ten that get started maybe only one gets finished. It is just that hard.

FPRS has almost 200 design documents supporting it, I have 3,500 emails sitting in Outlook regarding it since April 2007 and there are 10,500 forum posts in the Matrix private development forums. At least 100 testers must have helped me out over the years by now. Managing all that takes time too!

GH: Flashpoint Germany used tiles for movement. Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm uses hexes. Why the change?

Rob Crandall: I completely rewrote the square tile system so that each tile was broken down into a 4 x 4 grid of cells. Each cell had its own graphic and was rated for all the different terrain factors. The 16 averaged together represented the tile as a whole. It was awesome and very inventive, if I say so myself, but it was still squares and was too different from everything else. Converting the underlying code to hexes took something like a weekend and I have never regretted it. The result was I had to throw away my internal map editor and go to the existing system where we paint a map in a paint program and then scan it for values based on color IDs. That is a little more cumbersome but I loved the look and also loved that it became a chore I could delegate to people with greater graphic talents than I.

Jim Snyder: The graphics fell to me and I’m not really that good compared to a real graphics artist, but what I did does work. Plus folks will be able to mod their own stuff too.

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