Tag: PC Games

12/6/14

GrogHeads Reviews Wasteland 2

A post-apocalyptic American Southwest beckons…

Avery Abernethy, 6 December 2014

Load screen

 

Wasteland 2 is a party based RPG set in a post-apocalyptic American Southwest. The game is developed by Inxile Software headed by noted designer Brian Fargo. Mr. Fargo was lead designer on the original Wasteland released way back in 1988 and also lead designer on Fallout RPG series. This is one of the first RPGs to be largely funded through a Kickstarter campaign. I purchased this game from www.gog.com and played it for around two weeks completing approximately 90% of the game.

Although experience with the original Wasteland game is not needed to either enjoy or understand Wasteland 2, many of the game conventions and world design flow from the original. Your small, 4 person party belongs to the Desert Rangers. The Desert Rangers are attempting to bring civilization back to the Southwest after decades of post-nuclear war chaos. The player can either build their starting four party members or choose from predesigned characters bundled with the game.

Starting Party

 

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11/27/14

A Tank Battle 1944 AAR

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Michael Eckenfels, 27 November 2014

 

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A NOTE ON THIS AAR:

I used the game Tank Battle: 1944, from Hunted Cow Studios, to write up this piece. It’s a rather intense game of simple, quick, and fluid combat, on a tactical level. Unit scale is not given, but it feels as if infantry are in their own units. The game does seem to indicate, however, that tanks are individual units, which I don’t see them as. Each unit has a maximum strength of 10 (think Panzer General), and once that’s reduced to zero, they’re eliminated. There is no ‘carrying over’ of units from one mission to the next, so there’s no experience, promotions, medals, or anything like that. One must defeat the scenario to continue to the next one.

With that said, let’s get on with it!

 

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11/26/14

GrogHeads Interviews OTS on FlashPoint Campaigns

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The guys from On Target Simulations swing by GrogHeads and chat with us about the latest developments in the FlashPoint Campaigns series.

Brant Guillory, 26 November 2014

What’s the biggest difference that players are going to see with the new FlashPoint Campaigns release?

Without a doubt it will be all the brand new maps.  We had a forum member named William who was doing a brilliant job creating new map art and so we just sort of recruited him and added him to the OTS team.  We went back and forth a few times on colours and elevation treatments and then he created new renderings of all the maps.  This seems to be the first thing people are noticing and the consensus is that they are a distinct step up.  Cap’n Darwin (creator of the original map art glyphs) and Mad Russian (who then assembled them into the maps we distributed) manned up admirably and got behind the change.  I still hear a bit of a quiver in the Captain’s voice when we Skype about it though…

Other changes include a number of tweaks and improvements to the combat model.  Artillery fire is more effective now and that is pretty noticeable.   The What’s New document runs to 12 pages with the various changes we made.

Best of all, we have a whole new campaign (Wolves) to play thanks to Mad Russian plus a new standalone “Eyes, Ears and Teeth” scenario which we believe will be a new classic.  It’s small, fun and intense like A Time to Dance.

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11/22/14

GrogHeads Reviews the CMBN Vehicle Pack

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Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy Vehicle Pack, Developed and Published by Battlefront Inc.

A screenshot review by Boggit, 21 November 2014

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to field some of the rarely seen specialist Allied vehicles, or scratch built German armoured groups that fought in Normandy? Well now you can. Drawing heavily upon Hobart’s “Funnies” of 79th Armoured Division and the “Ersatz” units created by Major Alfred Becker – a rather unique engineer – for 21st Panzer Division – Battlefront have introduced a vehicle pack that brings new vehicles and weapons into the mix for their Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy game.

A Churchill AVRE supported by infantry advances in spite of nearby mortar fire. It also carries a breach team for when a 290mm round is just overkill. Reloading the Petard mortar on the AVRE is slow, but historically correct.
A Churchill AVRE supported by infantry advances in spite of nearby mortar fire. It also carries a breach team for when a 290mm round is just overkill. Reloading the Petard mortar on the AVRE is slow, but historically correct.

The vehicle pack requires the installation of the version 3.0 game engine, which is separately available from Battlefront. V3.0 brings Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy up to the same level of development as Combat Mission: Red Thunder, which provides a lot of improvements. You can check out some of these described in my Red Thunder review here . Continue reading →