HomeFeatures
The Flare Path: Fletchers and ForkliftsThoughts on 1272010, 1227530, 1341170 and 873840
Thoughts on 1272010, 1227530, 1341170 and 873840
Thinking about making a U-boat game? Unless you’ve some quirkynewangleor have a mind to model WWI U-boats my advice would bedon’t. The genre is asrammedas a freshly sealed sardine can at the moment. First-time devs Iron Wolf have the right idea. Instead of following their well-reviewedco-op board game about Kriegsmarine convoy molesterswith a PC take on the same subject, the Polish outfit is aiming to spellbind simmers with a game played from a convoy chaperone’s perspective.
Set in the second half of 1942, a time when the Battle of the Atlantic wasdelicately poised,Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunterwill put us on the rain-lashed bridge of USS Janson, a fictionalFletcher-class destroyer. Janson, together with three AI-controlled-but-taskable companions, has been given the job of ensuring an “important convoy” reaches Blighty with minimal losses.
HR dilemmas are also on the cards it seems…
Research considerations undoubtedly played a part in Iron Wolf’s choice of a Fletcher-class lead. Four of the type (Kidd, The Sullivans, Cassin Young and Charrette) now serve as museum ships. The screenshots suggest at least one field trip has already taken place. Those interiors look great, I think you’ll agree – important because it sounds like we won’t see a great deal of Janson’s rust-streaked exterior…
If Destroyer does prove a hit (something we won’t know until Q3 2021) then one day, courtesy of a sequel, we may well finding ourselves depth-chargingI-400sand downing kamikazes. Pluta and Salwarowski are already toying with the idea of a Pacific follow-up with surface-to-air combat.
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
ThePartisans 1941 “pre-beta” democould learn a thing or two about freedom and spectacle from the Desperados III demo. Having sneaked, stabbed, and shot my way through the former’s gloomy Russian hamlet/railway halt, I’m persuaded Alter Games have what it takes to produce a mechanically competent Commandos-like. What I’ve yet to see evidence of are levels colourful and libertarian enough to absorb the way Pyro’s and Mimimi’s maps absorb.
Minor aspects of the corridor-like demo venues that caused my crest to fall:
^ This motorcycle combination provides cover but can’t be half-inched.
^ This temptingly positioned Sd. Kfz. 231 is strictly out-of-bounds.
^ The hatchet on the right can’t be used for felling fascists.
^ This well doesn’t double as a crypt.
But don’t let me put you off. The free two-chapter taster might not inspire cartographic confidence but it does a pretty good job of teaching you how to move and slay stealthily, search and conceal corpses, use firearms and co-ordinate actions (Partisans features a mode very similar to D3’s Showdown). It also reveals things like character skill trees and long-term injuries that I wasn’t expecting, and alludes here and there to the base-building, man-managing, mission-picking metagame that could prove to be Partisans' secret weapon.
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
Are Ukrainian strategy smiths Starni Games goadingRussian censorsor doing their best to mend fences? Your guess is as good as mine. A few weeks afterStrategic Mind: Blitzkriegwasbannedin the world’s roomiest country because of a campaign cutscene showing Adolf Hitler and Goering lording it in Red Square, Starni have announcedStrategic Mind: Spectre of Communism(Q4 2020), a follow-up focused on the Soviet drive to Berlin.
- £13.50 until June 30
- This joke is the property of Sidekick Simon
The majority of the six hours I’ve lavished on T&LS thus far have been spent conscientiously earning the cash necessary to purchase new vehicle types (I’m now the proudish owner of a minivan, a panel van and the Scania pictured below). Ignore yesterday’s heat-induced harbour dip…
mountaineering session…
and bout of hooliganism…
I’ve been happiest at the wheel of one of the game’s forklifts.
Most jobs start with the loading of multiple pallets. Although the pronged porters that lurk in every warehouse and factory yard lack the tiltable masts and strafable tines of their prototypes, they handle plausibly.
After reversing trailers into invariably awkward delivery spaces, depositing polythened pillars of undefined commodities carefully onto van, truck, and trailer beds is the game’s trickiest task and therefore one of its most gratifying. The way vehicle beds sink when loads are placed, providing the visual cue to start reversing, pleases me more than it ought to.
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
