Wargamer Weekly: The Longest Edition By Joe Robinson

Despite covering some individual items during the week, there’s still been plenty of other news to round-up for this week’s regular update. Next week we’ve got a review or two, and a couple of gameplay features planned.

Meanwhile, in the world of wargaming…

Interview with Rule the Waves 2 Designer Fredrik Wallin

We’ve partnered up once again with the guys over at Single Malt Strategy. They recently interview RTW 2’s lead designer, and we’ve been allowed to share the episode with you below. Our own review of the game will be dropping on Monday, so keep an eye out for that!

Matrix Games & Slitherine

It’s been another high-profile week for our Lord and Saviour(s). First and foremost, we were treated to around 30 minutes of live gameplay footage from Close Combat: The Bloody First. This ‘reboot’ of sorts for the series has been in the works for, like, ever, but we should finally be seeing a release sometime this year. Here’s the video:

At the start of that clip, and mentioned my us in our update yesterday, Matrix also announced a new entry in the Strategic Command series, this time going back to the First World War. This new WW1 grand strategy war game will use all of the engine improvements developed for the more recent WW2 games. It’s nice to finally have a new game set in this era, although I can’t help but feel it would have been better timing to release it last year. Oh well.

Last but certainly not least, Matrix Games have formed a partnership with Yobowargames. This is a one-man band studio who focuses on more light-weight hex-and-counter style games. Matrix are now publishing his debut titles, Battle for Korsun & Battle at Prochorovka.

Yobo is also supposed to be working on a port of Valor & Victory, but we’re not sure how this new deal applies to that particular project.

Hearts of Iron 4 Turns Three

Hearts of Iron 4 is now three years old! Hurrah! Have some… DLC? The grand-strategy WW2 war game has had a troubled journey, and while they’re not out of the woods yet the game is in a far better place than it was even last year. Where they go from here, we’ll have to wait and see.

A little bit bummed because when Stellaris was celebrating its third birthday, they had a play-for-free weekend. But I guess if you really like Tanks or Radio Stations, the new celebratory add-ons will be right up your street?

Of more interest though is the development diary they published on Wednesday where Podcat reflects on the development time. I’ve always had concerns that Hearts of Iron 4 specifically was a game trying to serve two masters, and it seems judging by some of the diary notes that it still hasn’t changed. There’s roughly an even split between those playing historical options, and those playing ahistorical, with a third smaller group of hardcore MP players.

I’ve always said that if you wanted a more on-rails WW2 experience, there are better games for you, even Hearts of Iron 3. I don’t think HoI4 can ever really be the historical replay many want to be, but there’s a real question still as what the effect is of still trying to cater to the historical chain of events. Food for thought, for sure.

On a final note, you can now purchase Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord, Combat Mission II: Barbarossa to Berlin and Combat Mission 3: Afrika Korps over on GOG.com now, completely DRM free. Which is… yay? Not sure what to make of that one.

That’s all we’ve got time for this week. Enjoy your weekends and happy gaming!