A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Image Credit: Pixabay   Autumn's greyish light Bathing dimly-lit writing area Mind blown by haikus. To read my cycle of haikus with a specific theme, visit my WordPress blog, A Certain Point of View, Too. Here are the first four: Image Credit: Pixabay School, 1972: Haiku #1 School, 1972: Haiku #2 School, 1972: Haiku #3 School, 1972: Haiku #4 Image Credit: Pixabay If you want to know the real-life inspiration for the haikus: I refer you to: Tempus Fugit: Remembering Cheryl T. – 50 Years Later, Part the First Tempus Fugit: Remembering Cheryl T. – 50 Years Later, Part the Second Tempus Fugit: Remembering Cheryl T- 50 Years Later, Part the Third Image Credit: Pixabay

© 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 availabl...

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...

West German Leopard 2As in action during Reaction , one of several Operations in MicroProse's new real-time tactics wargame Regiments . ⓒ 2022 MicroProse & Bird's Eye Games  On August 16, MicroProse released a new real-time tactics game titled Regiments. Developed by a small European game design studio called Bird's Eye Games, Regiments depicts ground warfare in central Europe in an alternate version of 1989 in which Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms in the Soviet Union failed, the Berlin Wall never fell, and a failed anti-Communist rebellion is the catalyst for armed conflict between the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact and the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Taking its cue from several wargames that involve deployment points, victory points, and the defense or capture of Objective Zones (think Wargame: AirLand Battle or Steel Division ), Regiments puts you in command of a battalion, regiment, or brigade-sized unit on either side of the Iron Curtain and tests yo...

The wreckage of a Soviet tank platoon burns on a West German battlefield after an airstrike carried out by two A-10A Thunderbolt II ground-attack jets. © 2022 Bird's Eye Games/MicroProse  On Tuesday, August 16, the revived software publishing company MicroProse released Regiments , a new real-time tactics wargame set in a version of 1989 when perestroika, glasnost,  and the collapse of the Soviet Union never happened, and the Warsaw Pact invades West Germany. Developed by indie game studio Bird's Eye Games, Regiments is a look at combined-arms warfare at the brigade/regimental level that allows players to command units from either the Russian-led Warsaw Pact (WP) forces or the Western alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in a searing, life-or-death struggle to determine which side will win this Cold War-Turns-Hot after internal pressures within East Germany push Communist hardliners in Moscow to use force to preserve the Communist regime in East Berlin - and settl...

A Chinese destroyer is hit by a torpedo in this "low-light" periscope view in Cold Waters . (All of the illustrations are actual screengrabs from sessions of Cold Waters, and all game design elements are © 2017 Killerfish Games As you know, one of my favorite computer games of recent vintage is Killerfish Games’ Cold Waters (2017), a submarine warfare simulator that was inspired by MicroProse Software’s classic “subsim” Red Storm Rising (1988). I bought Cold Waters nearly two years ago during Steam’s Fourth of July Sale for 2020. I had added the game to my “wish list” on Steam (just as I have MicroProse’s Regiments and Second Front on my wish list now) in 2017 because I thought paying $49.99 or more when the game was new and buggy was a bit too much for my taste. Eventually, though, Steam offered it at a price that I could afford, and by 2020 all the “bugs” and kinks in the game had been fixed. For the better part of my time playing Cold Waters, I avoided playing the Campaig...

HIJMS Shokaku burns in Silent Service II's An Embarrassment of Riches scenario. © 1990, 2015 MicroProse/Retroism (Tommo)  Hi, there, Dear Reader. As you know, my favorite video games or computer simulations deal with some aspects of military conflict. Whether it’s a flight simulator along the lines of F-15 Strike Eagle II or a land warfare sim like M1 Tank Platoon or a grand-strategy game along the lines of Strategic Command WWII: World at War, if it is action-packed, historically interesting, yet not so complex that you must earn a degree in Military Science to play it, the wargame genre is my favorite. Within that category, there is a sub -category of wargame that I am fascinated by, and that’s the submarine simulation game. "Logbook" of USS Cavalla, © 1990, 2015 MicroProse/Retroism (Tommo) Since 1987, I have owned quite a few submarine-centric games. The first one I owned was Silent Service , which was published in 1985 by the original MicroProse Software. Desig...