Tag: PC Games

07/20/14

GrogHeads Reviews Valiant Hearts: The Great War

A review by Lloyd Sabin, 20 July 2014

Published by Ubisoft Montpellier

As always, click images to enlarge

Emotions and War

I don’t typically wear my emotions on my sleeve. In the last 20 years I think I have shed tears three times in front of my own wife. But there are certain events and historical phenomenon that bring out the sensitive, skinny-jean-and-mesh-truck-cap wearing emo in me…and World War I is at that top of the list.

Why, specifically? I don’t know. Maybe I view World War I through too romantic a lens and I believe so much of what has been written about it: “lions led by donkeys,” the “death of innocence” and “good bye to all that.” Those terms and the emotions, places, and situations they describe really resonate with me in a way that no other historical era does.

Zeppelins are portrayed in Valiant Hearts and you'll have to learn how to take them down!
Zeppelins are portrayed in Valiant Hearts and you’ll have to learn how to take them down!

It’s strange because I had direct contact with World War II through my grandparents: its horrors and its triumphs – so much so that World War II became almost commonplace to me. Where and when I grew up, everyone had a father, or more likely a grandfather, who fought in it. World War I is murkier; I have never knowingly met anyone who was there, so I have constructed what it was like for combatants on all sides in my own head. And this has produced a war where vengeance and justice have been replaced with melancholy and the longing for “the way things were before.” By World War II the world collectively knew that there was no going back; during World War I this loss was still very new and very fresh. This hazy, general feeling of loss and grief is captured masterfully by Valiant Hearts: The Great War (VH:TGW).

Paris at night, before the Battle of the Marne.
Paris at night, before the Battle of the Marne.

Continue reading →

07/17/14

A Distant Worlds AAR – Part 1

By Brandon “Kushan” Johnson, July 17, 2014

Welcome all. I’ve been playing Distant Worlds (DW) since it was first released in 2010. Since then, it’s become my favorite 4x game of any genre. No other game, except the Paradox games, come close to the breadth of options and replayability of DW, in my humble opinion of course.

 Click images to enlarge

DW Part 01 - 01

 

I’m going to be changing up my normal DW playstyle this time around. I normally fully control everything, and I’ve restarted a dozen different times trying to find a level of automation I can deal with. I’ve created a custom theme (mod) for this playthrough. I started with Haree78’s DW Extended Mod and merged in several other mods I thought would add a bit more variety.

Continue reading →

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 menu screen is functional
The menu screen is functional

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

Continue reading →

07/9/14

GrogHeads Interviews Uwe Eickert of Academy Games

Grogheads’ Corinne Mahaffey sat down to talk with Academy Games’ Uwe Eickert at Origins.  In person, Uwe radiates a cheerful enthusiastic intensity; game design is clearly one of his passions!

Grogheads:  What new games do you have coming up?

Academy Games:  The Conflict of Heroes Solo Expansion, and Conflict of Heroes – Guadalcanal are shipping soon.  We will have a Kickstarter for Conflict of Heroes: D-Day Airborne Battles this fall!

Academy Games
Academy Games

In addition, in 2015 we expect to publish the first game in our Civil War/Napoleonics series: Gettysburg – Day 1 Bloody Crossroads. This will be the first game in a 2 or 3 volume set based on this battle. The map boards and counters are big and incredibly beautiful! (Check our website for pictures [http://academygames.com/games/fight-for-the-colours/bloody-crossroads-gettysburg-day-1])  This is a new system that implements some of our newest and most advanced design mechanisms; there will be no dice, no numbers on the counters, and no charts to look up.  You will be able to see the detailed state of each Regiment by quickly looking at its Brigade Command board. This will tell you its fatigue, morale, and current capabilities.  The game can be played with 1 to 8 players and the decision cycle for each player is constant, with little to no down time.

We have been doing a great deal of research on the US Civil War, concentrating on the soldier’s fatigue and mental aspects of combat. We have factored these aspects into the game mechanism, so that brigades act more like they did in battle, often flowing forward and back towards the enemy.  We’ve been working on this for 4 years and hope to publish it in 2015.

 

Grogheads:  Could you compare how you build computer games versus board games?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of each medium?

Academy Games:  We always start with the board game because we find we have more subtlety when we design the board game.  If we have no computing power, then we build a better, more intuitive, more streamlined game to begin with, which we can then move to the computer.

When we create board game mechanics, the results are transparent; we know why we came to the in-game result that we did, and we learn the strategy of the game.

Computer war game AIs are often designed with a biased advantage.  They are often given limited, hard coded orders.  However, human thought patterns are not limited in this way.  The Artificial Intelligence (AI) that we have developed for Conflict of Heroes utilizes a unique Emergent Behavior and Agent Based Logic that evaluates Battlefield Situational Conditions. The AI then implements the best Tactical Response based on its available unit assets and resources. If the forces and logistics are available, the order is executed by the best available AI unit.  If not, the secondary procedure order is implemented.

We think people will be surprised by the intuitiveness of our board game AI.  Our AI does not “smooth” results or have arbitrary advantages.  No matter which side you take, the AI will kick most players’ butts 60% of the time. This system has gone through several development cycles and we have had help from some of the most cutting edge computer programmers, active duty Army officers, and game designers.

Continue reading →