What's new?

Seeing the financial crisis kick in, I am sadly working less than I'd like to, and seeing that I spend most of my now quite vast spare time with my girlfriend, I also game less than I'd like too.

Still, there are some news gaming wise that are worth writing about.

Firstly, as I am a longtime fan of turn based tactical games with RPG elements. In fact, I am hooked to that genre since Jagged Alliance. Now I got my hands on a new one of it's clones: 7.62 High Caliber. It's not really new, especially since it's been out in Russia for ages, but I like it notheless. It's a great sequel to Brigade E5, improving on every aspect of it. As a short description, it's not really turn based, but pause driven. Everything happens in real time, each action takes time, but after each action, the game pauses itself you you can plan, thus making it basically feel like a turn based game. The concept is hard to explain, but it makes traditional turn based games feel very restricted and unrealistic.

It still has some severe bugs though, some of which require a complete reinstall of the game to play on. So sadly, I can only recommend it to fans of the genre.

Secondly, PC Gamer UK spoiled Tripwires announcement of their Game 3 (game 1 being Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45, Game 2 being Killing Floor) by prematurely publishing a preview on it. Not really a surprise, but its a follow up to their first game, now named Red Orchestra: Heroes Of Stalingrad. It will again be realistic, allthough TW plan to make it more easily accessible for people who are less willing to sufferthrough an enormous learning curve to get enjoyment out of a game. It will feature SP campaigns for both Russians and Germans (a genre novelty, being german was limited to strategy games until now), a coop mode and some more refinements. It seems that especially the damage to players will be a novelty, with more detail than other FPS-Games, plus there will be bandaging. I do hope though that they don't mess it up like the bandaging system in Americas Army.