Monte Carlo

@ Alanschu.... Good point, and completely counter-intuitive to German staff college doctrine. The Germans were quite radical in their tactical doctrine. Officers were seldom micro-managed, even at platoon level - they were given an objective and then trusted to carry it out their way (there's a fancy German word for this which escapes me right now). Other European armies, OTOH, espoused more proscriptive doctrine. Example, from an early 20th Century staff college: German orders: Take that Bridge. British orders: Take that bridge. Move 'A' Company to the plateau and give covering fire to 'B' Company who will flank left whilst 'C' Company assault the bridge. The point? Hitler, who had served as a working class NCO in the infantry was inherently suspicious of his officer corps. He consistently went against the grain of what his officers were trained to do. I give you, as an example, the magnificent defence of Normandy by the German army in 1944 - led by Rommel, who was the embodiment of the old-school fluidity of German military thinking. By 1945 Hitler was making decisions about the deployment of tank companies on the Eastern Front. That's just about a colonel's job. @ Oner - Weimar wasn't perfect but it was a democracy and was making all the right noises. Please read some history. Cheers MC

Hmmm. Hitler was brilliant in manipulating a nation's angst and economic failure into a self-destructive orgy of racist hatred. Corporatism, extensive public works, militarisation and the dismantling of a nascent democracy* isn't brilliant. His policies leading up to the war were nothing but a prelude to war. Hitler viewed war as desirable, essential even. Here's this man in his uniform with skulls on planning a thousand year empire based on racial supremacy and genocide.... it isn't brilliant in any way that I recognise. Yes, and also in the DNA of every other decision the Nazis made. You can't separate one from the other, it's the 'fruit of the poisoned tree' argument. Hitler was amazingly successful at rendering one of the most cultured and complex European countries into rubble within fifteen years. Maybe the education system ain't what it used to be, but some of you guys need to get your heads around the fact that there's nothing brilliant, remarkable or successful about anything associated with the racist, mechanised slaughter of millions. Cheers MC * By 1933 German democracy was still very young, in fact 'Germany' had never really known democracy until the 1920's.

Bubble Shooter's art direction is perfectly executed, some big-budget efforts of late would do well to be half as good.

Wargamers, staff colleges and historians have been playing Operation Sealion for donkey's years, hell I watched some bearded real-ale drinkers doing it on tabletop in the 80's at some gaming convention. Generally, it goes like this: 1. If the weather holds; 2. And the Luftwaffe are up to the job; 3. and a beachhead is established... Then it's game over for the British. The german paras invariably get slaughtered and the panzer divisions motoring up the A3 get chewed up with no heavy engineering assets to clear the way. Never saw the Nazis win a theoretical model of Sealion.

It's tough seeing, yet again, Bubble Shooter left out in the cold. There's a conspiracy against free flash games, and it's ugly.

The 'Axis' was a coalition built on shifting sands - the Japanese and Germans had different geopolitical priorities and Mussolini was, literally, a joke (I can't bring myself to say 'Italy' because Italy wasn't behind the Fascists in the same way Germans were). So, really, we are talking about Nazi Germany, and in 1939 they could have 'won.' After the invasion of Poland, Hitler's war aims were surprisingly realistic - create a greater Reich encompassing continental Europe (playing on the legacy of the 'Betrayal of 1918' theme that helped him win power) and, in the East, stopping at Poland. The non-aggression pact with the Soviets might have held long enough for Germany to buy time for the push against the Communists, or commonsense might have prevailed and the two autocracies come to an accommodation. I'm not an expert in this field, but was the dream of Lebensraum, so central to Nazi ideology, more of an aspiration in 1939/40? Anyway, back to 1939 / 1940. Hitler wanted an accommodation with the British. He was an admirer of Empire and thought that Britain's traditional indifference to the affairs of mainland Europe would enable him to broker a deal. And if it wasn't for Winston Churchill (who loathed Nazism and decided on a principled, almost Quixotic opposition to Germany) there might well have been one. Remember, the Americans had an epic lack of interest in European affairs during this period, were sniffy about the British Empire and saw the Pacific as their natural sphere of influence and expansion. So, in 1939, imagine a Chamberlain government with a policy of appeasement and an indifferent America listening to Joe Kennedy. The Nazis are free to roam the Balkans, Greece and North Africa, with Hitler eyeing up the oil routes across Persia... if he wins those then the Russians will never fuel their war machine. Elsewhere he offers Stalin concessions as he conquers the 'untermensch' and the Soviets, like a sleeping dragon, only belch the occasional sulphurous protestation but marvel at the strength and technology of the growing Wermacht and SS. By 1944, with no invasion of Normandy and no Eastern Front, the Nazis have utilized their heavy water plants and research technology to develop the world's first atomic weapons. In 1946 they launch V6 atomic rockets and nuke Moscow, Leningrad (etc). The Wermacht invades Russia from their southern flank in the Crimea and from Poland. A covert treaty with the Americans sees SS special forces infiltrate across the Bering Straight. So, the Axis lost it because Hitler was completely nuts and invaded Russia. Although, for me, the game was up as soon as Britain declared war, not because of the British army but because of cause and effect - Churchill's sole foreign policy objective was to embroil the USA into the conflict and Pearl Harbour or no Pearl Harbour he'd have done it. This is one of the hoariest counter-factuals amongst historians - my two favourites are Len Deighton's novel SS-GB and Robert Harris' thriller Fatherland (made into a good TV movie with Rutger Hauer). Cheers MC

I'm mucking about with NWN2 mods at the moment. I've been playing NWN2 a lot recently... if you invest a lot of time tuning the camera and AI it's very good (I wish I didn't have to spend a lot of time doing that but ho-hum). The strategy top-down view appeals a lot. Anyway, here's three I found that I like - Vordan's Hero Creator Roll up a character, give him a gazillion gold pieces and equip him with all the best loot from all the games, then fight in an arena or export him for use in another game. Yes, it's just a character generator mod, but it's well designed, stable, easy-to-use and fun. For what it sets out to do it gets 9/10 for me. You can download the latest version which includes all the SoZ classes and races too. The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun An adaptation of a 1982 Gary Gygax module (which I played PnP in about 1985 IIRC), you know that you're getting a classic hack'n'slash dungeon crawl. This one is for level 10-20 characters (my favourite power level) and it's a bit rough around the edges. But, it has well-designed combat and some interesting areas / level design and a load of ready to go cohorts (the 15th level Wizard raised my eyebrows a bit, but there are some tough battles). The lack of supporting documentation meant that I wasn't to know that evil NPCs can't get cohorts (I rolled up a comedy Grey Orc Rog 4 / Ftr 8 dual-wielding monkey-gripped falchions, had to change his alignment). The only Hak this requires is a random looting script. The Grimm Brigade A strange, witty little mod with lots of custom items. You make a character, join the brothers Grimm and fight little combat scenarios very loosely based on fiary tales. An enjoyable distraction. ---- If I find any more hidden gems on NWN2 vault I'll post 'em up.

Personally, I don't expect anything for free once I've bought a game, except patches. Even then, I'm realistic about how long a game should be actively supported and on that level Bioware are pretty good by industry standards. I think some people think that developers are charities, give them a break as if dealing with piracy wasn't bad enough (And I love the implied blackmail one occasionally hears - 'give us more DLC - or we will get stuff elsewhere...'). Even the new LFD controversy left me cold - personally I think the publisher is being greedy so I'll just avoid their games. That doesn't mean, however, that the whole thing should be free (as many have suggested). Compared to many other forms of entertainment and media, gaming is good value for money. My only reservation is the delivery model - I don't like Steam (etc) and lots of content isn't available in stores (for example, I'd really like Mysteries of Westgate... but from where?).

I've downloaded Dark Waters - it's pretty good but the prologue is bland - which is a shame because when you dip into it the setting is interesting. The first level contains, however, one of this puzzles moving mirrors around that invariably leaves me reaching for the off switch. Am going to try POR next - played the NWN1 version and that was fun.

I presume they mean Mass Effect (Personal Computer) as opposed to MEXBox or MEPS3 (etc).

Hmmm. Bug-free? Bio's post-release support is pretty good, so I'll expect the first beta patch by the end of the third week in November, maybe we should run a book on it? Cheers MC

When I first saw And Now For Something Completely Different I was about 12. I thought it was utterly hilarious. Now I'm older and the avant garde has morphed into vintage, some bits make me laugh and others don't (unarmed combat training with tropical fruit and the camp squaddies doing drill always gets me though). Sometimes absurdist comedy tries too hard (Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer spring to mind), but I did like Big Train (funniest sketch - imaginary Ming the Merciless style space tyrant trying to juggle with intergalactic management dilemmas while doing hoovering, shopping, mowing lawn in small suburban semi). Now I must admit I enjoy character-based comedy and standup more (Frasier is one of my all-time favourites). Cheers MC

Given that the console version was originally slated for an indefinite post-release date and the emphasis was on the PC, that delay will hardly cause the sky to fall in. Of all my doubts about this title, success in shifting units on all platforms ain't one of them.

Is that Syndicate Wars on the PC? I only played the PS1 version, and the graphics were much better than that!

^ My favourite Clint Eastwood western is High Plains Drifter, but Josie Wales is very good too. My favourite 'Western' (which it technically isn't I suppose, does Virginia count?) is Ang Lee's Ride With The Devil closely followed by True Grit and The Wild Bunch.

^ Very strange...

I too lost interest in the C&C franchise when Generals was released, luckily I've got all the old ones in one big collection for the PC.

^ Er, and the Australians, Indians, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans, not to mention numerous Caribbean nations too. We just invented it. Sorry.

I'm sure the guy can speak for himself, but I took it as a comment on your insistence that racism appeared, magically, at a specific moment in history driven by Capitalism. And that humankind's long and painful history of nastiness to each other based on race, that almost certainly predates modern capitalism, is conveniently ignored in your rather specious analysis.

Funny thing, really, I was reading The UK Times 'Top 10 Historically Innacurate Movies of all time' and Mister Gibson directed three of them (Braveheart, Apocalypto and The Patriot). For the record, Apocalypto is about a Mayan (not being pedantic, it is utterly different from being an American Indian) who by some bizarre distortion of historical accuracy ends up being involved in an Aztec sacrifical ceremony and escapes. Having escaped by his own volition, he sees a Spanish galleon off shore (which I read as an Out-of-The-Frying-Pan moment, personally), harbinger of disease and slavery. There's no way that any cogent viewer can say that he's 'saved' by the Spanish. Anyway, as a suspense driven and violent chase movie it's actually quite good, but this is the wrong thread for that.

Cricket? WTF? Next they'll make a video game called "Watching Paint Dry Pro 2009." Or something.

^ It is well-known that I too loathe romances in computer games, even more than you. Oh, much more. CRPG romances want to make me lead a latter-day Inquisiton, and expunge them with sword and fire. The only thing that surprises me is that some of the hard-core fans haven't demanded proper turn-based romances.

Ha ha ha, he actually called me a fascist. Presumably for disagreeing with him. Then again, I've been called worse things by more substantial people. :: Shrugs ::

Hey, I actually beat Bubble Shooter for the first time ever this week. Gotta love Bubble Shooter.

^ Grom I think he meant SoZ, which is crafting for dummies