A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Title screenshot of Flashpoint Campaign: Red Storm - Player's Edition. © 2014 Slitherine Ltd/Matrix Games and On Target Simulations On November 21, 2014, the UK-based computer game publisher Matrix Games released Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm - Player's Edition, a revamped version of the original turn-based strategy game set in an alternate history of the 1980s in which the Cold War turned hot and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact clashes with the U.S.-led NATO forces in West Germany. Created by On Target Simulations for the merged Slitherine Ltd/Matrix Games studio and inspired by several fictional works about a hypothetical Third World War fought in the mid- to late 1980s, including Sir John Hackett's The Third World War: August 1985 and Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising, Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm - Player's Edition puts you in command of either the Allied or Soviet armies in several campaigns and more than 20 stand-alone scenarios, including many player-...

Hello and welcome to another edition of Old Gamers Never Die, the section of A Certain Point of View in which I talk about one of my long-time hobbies - computer games. In this installment, I'll review Order of Battle: World War II, a turn-based strategy game developed four years ago by Britain's The Artistocrats and Slitherine Ltd.,  and published by Matrix Games. Order of Battle: World War II is touted by its developer as the spiritual heir to Panzer General, a 1994 operational-level PC game published by the now-closed Strategic Simulations Inc. of Mountain View, California. Like Panzer General and its sequels, Order of Battle allows players to command either Allied or Axis units in either single battles or campaigns that take place in all the major theaters of the Second World War. Order of Battle consists of a basic free-to-play game called Boot Camp, which is a single campaign in which the player takes command of American land, sea, and air units during a series of t...

Screenshot of Strategic Command WWII: World at War main menu screen. © Fury Software/Matrix Games/Slitherine Ltd.  On December 6, 2018, British PC game publisher Matrix Games released Strategic Command WWII: World at War, a turn-based grand strategy wargame that depicts the Second World War on every major front from Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1939 to the end of the conflict in the summer of 1945. Developed by Toronto-based Fury Software for Matrix, Strategic Command WWII: World at War (or WAW) is part of the rebooted Strategic Command series that includes Strategic Command WWII: War in Europe, Strategic Command Classic: Global Conflict, and this year's Strategic Command: World War I.  Fury created this long-running series in the late 1990s, publishing its original game, Strategic Command: European Theater in 2002 through Battlefront. WAW is the fifth game in the series and it was designed by Hubert Cater and Bill Runacre, Fury Software's president/lea...

Main Menu screen from Strategic Command: WWII: World at War. © 2018 Fury Software/Slitherine Ltd.  Well, Dear Reader, it's Saturday, October 12, 2019; it's Columbus Day in Spain (which celebrates the occasion as "Dia de la Raza") and Latin America, while here it is a warm and humid early autumn Saturday. In my little corner of Florida, the current temperature is 82℉ under partly sunny skies; with the humidity levels at 66%, the feels-like temperature outside is 85℉. I was going to watch my new Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Blu-ray today, but the gaming bug bit me sometime before noon. I don't play video games on my PC often; I love writing more than I care for gaming, but as the old saw goes, "All work and no play makes Jack...er, Alex...a dull boy."  And after looking at my small selection of PC games, I decided to try my luck at Strategic Command: WWII: World at War.  The war begins! Actual gameplay screenshot from my first session of Strategic...