A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

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. Hello again and welcome to another edition of A Certain Point of View. It's Saturday, October 19, 2019, and it's a cloudy afternoon here in my little corner of the Sunshine State. Well, I had hoped to have a new review of either  Strategic Command WWII: World at War, a World War II-themed turn-based strategy game that was released by Slitherine Ltd. last winter, or Douglas Brinkley's book  American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race.  However, while I have played World at War in dribs and drabs, I still don't feel confident that I can write a review that will do the game justice. I've played a few rounds as Germany (letting the game's artificial intelligence play Italy and Japan for me) in the scenario titled 1939 World at War ; in one instance, I managed to play well into the summer of 1941 and the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. Yet, even...

The Strategy Map in Strategic Command: WWII: World at War. © 2018 Fury Software/Slitherine Ltd. Okay, so I've been trying out Strategic Command WWII: World at War, a relatively new (it was released by Britain's Slitherine Games last December) computer game based on the Second World War. I haven't devoted a lot of time to playing this strategic-level wargame because I do have to write every day, but so far I've played it enough to give you at least a few first impressions. As you can see from the screenshot above, this is not a first-person shooter game a la Call of Duty or Medal of Honor ; it's a global-warfare level game where land combat is fought by corps- or army-sized units, with maybe a few independent armored, mechanized, and supporting arms units tossed in for good measure. Only in naval warfare do we see one-on-one duels between individual warships and subs, albeit in a stylized "board game" kinda way. The game has different unit di...

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...