Game review!
Recently I was given a copy of the game 'War Mongrels' to check out, thanks developers!
The game is a strategy WW2 game that takes place on the Eastern Front but you get to play deserters, resistance members, secret agents, etc.
If you're old, like me, it will remind you of the classic 'Commandos' which I loved and more recently 'Partisans'.
You get this top view of cities, prisons, etc. and you then have to use the different abilities of the agents you get to control to solve problems.
Spoilers ahead;
The thing that makes this game different from Commandos and most other WW2 games is the subject.
You start with two German deserters at the east front and you get to witness the most gruesome parts of the war that many games shy away from.
There is even a mission where you have to infiltrate a concentration camp, which is truly horrific, you have to photograph the atrocities, like the very real hero Witold Pilecki actually did.
The storyline in this game is very mature. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pi…
The missions are complicated, but that's of course a good thing and it is really satisfying to manage finishing them, especially if it involves blowing up a building full of Nazis.
I especially liked being the female agent who had a gun with a silencer.
More subtle.
And as the war takes place in the east the enemy switches from Nazis to Soviets but not everyone in the team agrees with this, making things complicated.
There is no real happy end, just like in the real world.
Nice details are the historical documents and objects you can find;
I have to mention the animation, I loved the art.
Not just the maps, but the actual cut scenes that were really dark but also appealing and well made.
More of the art;
Bunch of annoying drunk Nazis coming out of a restaurant, vomiting all over the place.
Oops, I put a bomb in their car.
The details were also pretty good, a lot of research has been put into getting everything right.
The only thing that I noticed were cigarettes having filters, although those did exist, they weren't really smoked much, especially not by soldiers at the front.
I also wondered if they could get away with completely ignoring the blackout rules like this in France just after D-Day.
Even if they were high ranking Nazis having a party at a château.
Also, imagine finding these paintings on a wall in a ruined house somewhere... ;)
So, I enjoyed it, some of the missions made me feel uncomfortable but I think that can be a good thing when it comes to this subject.
I recommend this game to everyone who loves these types of games like Commandos, etc.
Although the theme is much darker.
BUT to be fair, the game has a few annoying glitches.
The team is small and works very hard on fixing that and I'm sure they soon will, but you do risk getting stuck and save games not working now and then in it's current state. store.steampowered.com/app/1101790/Wa…
They've done it again.
The internet is flooded with history themed Ai nonsense and people are loving it.
The History revived page has 600k followers and they're all about posting ai generated history themed rubbish.
Some of it is fun & interesting, but most of it is... well...
Lesson one every child learns: to go potty, you have to partially undress.
Romans didn't know that.
Also the sponge on a stick story is possibly nonsense.
The ghosts of Pompeii roll in their graves.
Check out the nice street lanterns and oh no, the volcano is exploding, let's all run towards the clouds of ash...
The other painting of Jean-Paul Marat's murder is more famous but this one is interesting.
It was painted by Johann Jakob Hauer (1751–1829).
Let's look at a couple of details.
Here's Neil DeGrasse Tyson talking about history with Joe Rogan.
Mr. Tyson claims that tallest thing humans built after the pyramids is the Eiffel tower... but is it?
Let's watch & check:
Let's pretend this show did what it should and had someone correcting things being said.
Even a quick google could have stopped millions of people hearing & believing this claim.
Anyway:
Tallest pyramid:
Khufu at Giza c.2570 BC: (originally) 146.7m
Eiffel tower 1889AD: 312m.
So we're supposed to believe that it took homo sapiens over 4000 years to be able to built something taller than the pyramids.
For this to be true, no building built between 2570 BC and 1889AD could have been taller than 146.7m.
Isometric sketch of a sauna stove made by master builder Heinrich Schickhardt in connection with the construction of a sauna in Stuttgart in 1616. Above the arches (A) there is space for the stone packing, on which water can be poured from the bathroom onto the stones through the openings (B). However, this stove is without the characteristic half-walls along the side walls, which are found in southern German saunas and in Næstved. After Tuchen 2003, p. 311 academia.edu/9791712/Badstu…
Yes I'm doing some random research and this is now a thread of what I find.
Nordic bathhouse, 1555.
Oven in middle, vat with water next to it, pipe bring the water to a basin, chap rinsing twigs for a thrashing, chap drinking from horn while enjoying cupping therapy.
Schachtafelen der Gesuntheyt, 1533, you know when nobody bathed...
Lovely image of a bathhouse.
Just so you know, if you see this guy in a video, the odds are high that you're about to be told something iffy.
Dr. Roy Casagranda is all over social media but his research abilities leave a little to be desired.
In short: street sewers were mostly for rain & other liquids, generally not serious icky waste.
They generally didn't throw their human waste out of the windows.
They made sure to keep their wells and water sources as free from pollution as they could.
Cholera wasn't a huge problem in Europe till the 19th century.
They drank lots of water, drank beer because it's more nutritious, tastier & more fun.
The alcohol level was very very low, so they weren't drunk all the time.
Medieval people washed, bathed, used soap, did laundry and tried to smell nice because they were terrified of bad smells.
They wore linen under their woollen clothing so they weren't always itching, also some wool was quite fine and smooth. fakehistoryhunter.net/2019/09/10/med…
Let's review another youtube video by The Infographics Show, yes that lot again... they have 14 million subscribers.
This one is called:
How Did Bubonic Plague (Black Death) Actually End?
It was seen by almost 5 million people...
Can you see the first error already?
Yes, of course.
The plague doctor with the bird beak mask wasn't around during the Black Death.
Also, the title is already misleading.
The Black Death was a specific outbreak of the bubonic (and pneumonic) plague, so Black Death & Bubonic Plague don't mean the same.
Mixing them up is like saying war in general is the same as the second world war.