A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

The "main title" page from Second Front . © 2023 Hexdraw and MicroProse  Hi, there, Dear Reader. Well, this is just a quick update about my progress with Second Front, a new turn-based tactical level game set during the Second World War created by Hexdraw and published on January 31 by MicroProse. Dislodging this German squad proved impossible the first time I played the Advance tutorial. © 2023 Hexdraw and MicroProse I’ve only played Second Front for - according to my statistics on Steam – 6.4 hours since I bought it last week when it dropped. Most of that time has been spent on exploring the various tutorials for Infantry units and Armored units; I tried one “real” battle to see if I could get by without “basic training,” but I found out – the hard way – that I’m not ready to lead anyone into combat. I had a tough time with the first Infantry tutorial, but I eventually figured out how to advance properly without getting my squad killed on the first turn. I also learned

© 2023 Hexdraw and MicroProse  As someone who cut his gaming teeth in the late 1980s and early '90s, I used to own and play many (at least eight-10 titles) games from the original iteration of MicroProse Software, which was originally a Maryland-based company that created and published computer and video games, most (but not all) of them being military-themed simulations and strategy games.  Founded by Lt. Col. William "Wild Bill" Stealey (USAF, Ret.) and legendary game designer Sid Meier, MicroProse was, for a while, anyway, one of the leading gaming software creators/publishers in the world. Its best-known titles include Sid Meier's Civilization, Silent Service and Silent Service II, Red Storm Rising, Crusade in Europe, and the F-15 Strike Eagle trilogy.  Then, after co-founder Meier left the company and the company underwent a series of ownership changes, the original Hunt Valley, MD version of MicroProse closed shop in the early 2000s, and its various intellectual

Sometimes it's interesting to play a wargame from the "enemy" side's perspective. Graphics and game design elements from Regiments are ©2022 Bird's Eye Games and MicroProse  One of the hardest things for me to do as a gamer is to take on the role of an “adversary power” in computer games. Whether the game is single-player (my preferred mode) or multiplayer, and no matter if the setting is historic – such as in Game Labs’ Ultimate General Civil War , MicroProse’s Crusade in Europe, or Killerfish Games’ War on the Sea – or fictional – as in MicroProse’s Regiments or LucasArts’ Star Wars: Rebellion – I tend to avoid playing as the faction generally accepted to be the “bad guys.” In many of the games I own, including the single-player Regiments and Killerfish Games submarine simulation Cold Waters, I can – if I so desire – take on the role of an “enemy” power’s commander. In Cold Waters, for instance, the game allows you to command submarines from the U.S., Sovie

Although I commanded a U.S. brigade in the Skirmish from which I snapped this screenshot, Regiments now features British regiments that were based in West Germany in 1989. Here, a British light tank, supported by infantry (lower left) fires at an advancing Warsaw Pact platoon (top center). All graphic and game design elements in this and other screenshots are © 2022 Bird's Eye Games and MicroProse.)   As you know, I’ve been playing Regiments (2022, Bird’s Eye Games/MicroProse) since its release last August; it’s the first title I buy on Steam from the revived MicroProse, and I had been waiting for it since it was announced a few years ago. The revamped main menu page in Regiments.  So far, I’ve played through all the tutorials, the three Skirmish modes ( Attack, Meeting Engagement, and Mobile Defense ), and I even started the grand campaign ( Operations ). I got stuck on the West German Operation and I am not sure if I want to restart the campaign or just wait till I get better a

( Warsaw Pact troops run into heavy fire from NATO defenders in the Runway scenario.© 2022 Bird's Eye Games & MicroProse  On December 25, 2022, East European game studio Bird's Eye Games rolled out the first DLC expansion to Regiments, the Cold War-gone-hot real-time strategy (RTS) game it created for MicroProse, four months after the core game's long-awaited release in August.  The DLC, which will be the only free expansion offered by its developers, added British units and equipment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in this reimagined version of a 1989 in which perestroika and glasnost failed and the Warsaw Pact, led by the Soviet Union, invades West Germany as part of an effort to prevent the collapse of Communism and restore the Pact to its pre-Gorbachev "glory."  In addition, the developers looked at the existing mix of forces and tweaked them somewhat to reflect the real equipment and organization of units fielded by both East and W

© 2022 Bird's Eye Games & MicroProse    Two Lessons I Have Learned from Playing ‘Regiments’   Oh, look! A current blog post from me! As you know, I purchased my first game from the “new” (Australian-based) version of MicroProse since the 1990s over a month ago. The game in question is called Regiments, and it was developed by a small European studio called Bird’s Eye Games. Regiments is, like Eugen Systems’ Steel Division and Wargame series, a real-time tactics game that depicts 20 th Century warfare – especially land combat – in fast-paced, adrenaline-laced battles ( Steel Division is set in World War II, while Wargames is Cold War-turns-hot and superpower conflict-oriented) on the ground and in the air. It's so good to see this classic logo on brand-new games.  I play all those games, and even though Regiments is its own thing, some of its features do resemble those in Wargame, especially when it comes to Objective Zones and how units are made available if you ha

Regiments has detailed after-action reports that include, among other details, the level of victory you achieve and the stats that show why you earn victories, draws, or defeats. © 2022 Bird's Eye Games and MicroProse   Although I am on a brief hiatus from playing Regiments, the new real-time tactical game developed by Bird's Eye Games and published on August 16 by MicroProse, I can now report that I have gotten the hang of the game's basic concepts and won the Skirmish scenario Grasleben a few times before I decided to take a short rest break from the game.  If you read either of my A Certain Point of View blogs (one here, the other on WordPress), you doubtlessly know that Regiments is a visually stunning, fast-paced wargame depicting a fictional version of 1989 in which the Cold War goes hot and the two great alliances in the Europe of the time — NATO and the Warsaw Pact — trade blows in a deadly battle for West Germany as the Soviet Union strives to maintain its iron gri