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Nice details are the historical documents and objects you can find;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…
A few days ago I complained about a Guardian article using a bad photo from a film in an article about Joan Clarke, a Bletchley Park code breaker, but... something much worse might have happened...
I don't think this photo they used is of Joan...
@TeaKayB pointed this out to me and I was stunned, surely not, that would be extraordinary sloppy.
So I looked into it, of course.
For starters the image they used is flipped, here's the full picture as it should look:
Time to look at another photo album in my collection, a tiny one this time with one picture on each page, showing us the adventures of some Dutch girl scouts in the early 1930s.
This Friday the game 'Manor Lord' is coming out, it's a medieval city builder that I've made a modest contribution to as a historical consultant and beta tester for.
I've been very excited about it for a long time and I'm not the only one, it's creating quite a buzz and has ended up on a lot of wishlists.
What I love about it most is that it tries to depict the middle ages in an accurate way, behind the scenes historians, experts & history addicts have been debating the tiniest details.
I think the result is one of the most historically accurate medieval games I've ever played.
#Manorlords
So let's have a sneak peek at it shall we?
First, here's an official video:
Before you start you set up your profile and design your own family crest, look familiar?
This bit alone is SUCH fun, you can fiddle and play with this editor for ages till you get exactly what you want and then you'll see it on the banners in the game!
SUCH FUN!
Sigh.
An account with half a million followers just tweeted that long debunked 'life in the 1500s' nonsense, 2.2 million people have seen it.
So here we go again...