As I browsed through the nearly 300+ entries for this year's IGF awards I noticed that there were very, very few historical strategy games. Granted, it's not like there has ever been a huge number entered, but I suppose the massive overall count just made their scarcity even more obvious.

Many of the folks entering in the IGF tend to be on the younger side, honing their coding skills with their entries. As such you just don't see a lot of 18 year olds that just learned BlitzBasic...

S.R. Krol

Since trading wood for sheep isn't my idea of a fun game I enjoy games that feature conflict. Something that we gamers never think about though is how important it is to have a worthy foe to make a conflict stimulating. Perhaps it's because the vast majority of our foes are the classic opponents: battle hardened troops of the Third Reich, flesh hungry zombies, or grotesque orcs.

On Halloween night I gathered with my friends for an annual tradition of horror gaming/movie watching....

S.R. Krol

I’m a huge fan of anything in the genre known as Weird War (so named after the old DC comic series combining supernatural/sci-fi/fantasy with military adventure) so I’ve been anxiously awaiting Raven’s follow up to their Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The sequel, simply titled Wolfenstein, has been out for about a week but I’ve only gotten to start into it last night. While not too far along I will say that so far it’s flat out brilliant and by far the best shooter Raven has produced....

S.R. Krol

Way back when Games Workshop actually produced board games. At the time they were sort of the Fantasy Flight of the ‘80s, with games that were generally entertaining with high production values. Over time the board games began to be replaced by miniature gaming, although there was a certain point in which both coexisted. It was during this period that GW gave the world Space Hulk.

Space Hulk is a very basic game wrapped around an awesome theme that everyone can get on board with:...

S.R. Krol

One of my all time favorite computer game series was the Five Star series from SSI, beer and pretzels wargaming at its finest. To this day I still play Pacific General (with all the homebrewed goodies that folks have done since its release). So when I heard today that Ubisoft was doing a new Panzer General game I got excited.

And then I read about it.

Look, it may be a perfectly fine game. I can't say because of course I haven't played it. And the idea of coming...

S.R. Krol