The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[Barrister]

Flin Flon

dumb name for a town 

Named after Flintabbety Flonatin, the main character in a dime store novel from 1905.

Here's a statue of him (designed by cartoonist Al Capp):

[garbon]

Flin Flon

dumb name for a town 

Named after Flintabbety Flonatin, the main character in a dime store novel from 1905.

Here's a statue of him (designed by cartoonist Al Capp):

I'm not sure how that at all modifies what Cal said.

[FunkMonk]

Trailer for Regiments, a WW3 game published by MicroProse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui7MNFk0eSM&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=MicroProse

Looks like Wargame: European Escalation, which leaves me unimpressed. Didn't care about those games, or Steel Division, because it's way too fast paced for my tastes.

The Wargame series was fun in 8-player games where I'd zerg rush my opponents with a hundred T-55s and then call it a day.

[Barrister]

I'm not sure how that at all modifies what Cal said.

I was providing context.

[Razgovory]

I liked the wargame series but yeah, it was twitchy.

[Tamas]

Apparently, the games available with the basic tier EA subscription will soon be available with the Xbox Game Pass as well, at no extra cost. The Game Pass is quickly becoming a VERY bargain method of playing games.

[Solmyr]

Longish article about Paradox's shitty treatment of their QA department: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/09/08/paradox-interactives-qa-staff-allege-poor-treatment-low-pay-and-mismanaged-layoffs/

[garbon]

Longish article about Paradox's shitty treatment of their QA department: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/09/08/paradox-interactives-qa-staff-allege-poor-treatment-low-pay-and-mismanaged-layoffs/

This that someone posted in the comments was interesting to consider: https://twitter.com/Fuzzlette/status/1292141640405196803

[Syt]

While I think the way the QA team was treated and the whole situation was handled at P'dox is crappy, I feel this is a situation that happens in a lot of companies that grow very fast in a very short time - often the structures don't evolve to cope with the change and the "old guard" think they can just carry on in their carefree, informal ways.

[Grey Fox]

Doing QA is not glamorous & lots of industry treats us like shit. While the gaming industry does it often it also gets called on it regularly.

[Tamas]

Apparently, the games available with the basic tier EA subscription will soon be available with the Xbox Game Pass as well, at no extra cost. The Game Pass is quickly becoming a VERY bargain method of playing games.

Ok actually not THAT much as they are doubling the price to 8 pounds next month.

[celedhring]

I was really considering it but that price puts it firmly on the "not worth it given the time I have to play" category.

[Grey Fox]

 

Apparently, the games available with the basic tier EA subscription will soon be available with the Xbox Game Pass as well, at no extra cost. The Game Pass is quickly becoming a VERY bargain method of playing games.

Ok actually not THAT much as they are doubling the price to 8 pounds next month.

I have GP Ultimate here, so actual no extra cost.

The newly extended all-access system is also pretty cool. 25$us/month for 24 months for both a console & GPU is a great deal.

[Syt]

From the Wargamer review of Starni Games' "Strategic Mind: Blitzkrieg":

https://www.wargamer.com/reviews/strategic-mind-blitzkrieg/

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary has two definitions of the compound word 'tone-deaf'. The first is related to an inability to tell differences in musical pitch. The second definition, which is more relevant here today, is as follows: "having or showing an obtuse insensitivity or lack of perception particularly in matters of public sentiment, opinion, or taste."

[...]

Blitzkrieg begins with you controlling your forces as General Franz Halder, an important general in the forces of Nazi Germany, in the Spanish Civil War aiding the Francoists in defeating the Republican Spanish. This would be fine but the cutscenes immediately seek to establish dear old Franz as a good and honorable general, something that is told to us many times throughout the game. He is portrayed as loyal to the Reich but also to his values, and eventually he moves away from aligning with the Nazi government. I don't want to give too much of the story away in case you plan on playing this, but suffice to say it diverges from history and paints Halder in a very favorable light.

There are two major issues with the story: the first being that the cutscenes and voice acting is just, well, terrible. I can't find a nice way to say this; it's just plain bad. You have maybe one halfway decent German accented voice actor in the game who tries to put emotion into the role, but most characters are voiced by incredibly neutral sounding, vaguely American actors. No one really sounds into their roles, and I can't blame them, because the dialogue and the story failed to engage me at any level. As an aside, the unit barks are similarly terrible, but more on that in a minute.

The second, and much larger issue, is that the story directly seeks to support Halder's myth of the 'Clean Wehrmacht'. After the war, in an attempt to rehabilitate the images of high-ranking members of the German military, Halder masterminded a memorandum which claimed that the Wehrmacht was (and this is an extreme summary) an apolitical force that just followed the orders of the government, and was not responsible for any major war crimes. This is a huge lie, but one that the game not only propagates, but goes even farther with, making Halder into some kind of moral German war hero.

It is frankly absurd that the game pushes this narrative in this current political climate, saying that the man who led the Wehrmacht while they committed a huge number of war crimes was a good person. Joe, in his review on Strategic Mind: The Pacific, mentioned that the voice acting that Starni Games got was awfully racist for the Japanese characters, and I fear that trend continues with this game. The voice acting isn't racist in SM:B, but I could say that it is rather generous to fascism, through lines such as "The trains are running on time" and "We will save the world from chaos" coming from your Wehrmacht units as they seek to expand the German Reich.

CONCLUSION
I could continue to talk about how uncomfortable this game makes me for some time. As someone who watches the news and sees political upheaval in almost every Western democracy, it is troubling to see a game continue to feed reactionary rhetoric. The absolutely terrible story aside, I found the gameplay middling at best, and frustrating at worst. If you want to play a strategic level game set in World War 2, I recommend looking elsewhere.

In the wake of this article's publication Starni Games has made a comment contesting the characterisation of their game within the review. If you would like to read their response you can do so on their Steam community page here.: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1200330/announcements/detail/2901963148048277119

The comments under this thread are amusing, with the usual "keep politics out of my wargames!" and "Wargamer allows 'woke' SJW individuals to do their reviews"

The topic of wargames if of course fraught with politics. While a prevalent view among wargamers seems to be to largely ignore the politics and idelogies around their chosen subjects and focus on the purely military aspects, I find that the older I get the less comfortable I feel playing certain scenarios or sides in wargames. E.g. in Graviteam Tactics there's several scenarios about units of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. One scenario takes place two days after troops of the unit massacred over 800 men, women, and children in the Kharkov area which severely soured me on playing as those units.

War brings out the best and the worst in people, and i don't believe that there are "clean wars." And of course the topic of war makes for a compelling subject for strategy games on tactical, operational, and strategic levels. Yet most games try to blank out those darker aspects (one of the few exceptions was Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa where as member of the German general staff you're faced with many idelogical/moral questions).

Sorry for rambling there, but I don't really have a clear stance on how much politics should or shouldn't be in wargames, or if people should feel bad for playing as Germans (or Italians, or Soviets, or Japanese, or ...) in WW2 games or Confederates in ACW games.

[The Brain]

I thought Halder led the Heer, not the Wehrmacht?

German WW2 generals' sense of morals is hilarious. I remember reading Guderian's memoirs and he was enormously upset when a general was fired (not imprisoned or killed) unfairly, but totally OK with waging a major war of annihilation against innocents.