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Showing posts from January, 2023

Old Gamers Never Die: I Played Through a 'Regiments' Skirmish as a Red Force Commander - and I Feel Weird About It!

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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...

Old Gamers Never Die: In 'Regiments, ' the Faction You Choose Determines How Well (or How Badly) You'll Fare in Battle

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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 ge...

Old Gamers Never Die: Playing the Mobile Defense Skirmish in MicroProse/Bird's Eye Games' 'Regiments: Second Wave'

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( 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...