World War II

One of the games I play, Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45, was updated on May 31st. With that update, all owners of the game received 2 guest passes for Red Orchestra, available over Steam. Seeing as the friends of mine who game either already have the game or aren’t interested in it, I have 2 guest passes to give to whoever wants them. So, if you’re interested in test-driving the game before purchase, drop a comment on this post. You’ll need to supply a legit email address in the comment form - otherwise I’ll have no way to send the pass to you. Once you have the pass and have activated it, you’ll be able to play the game for 10 days. After that point, you’ll need to pony up $20 if you want to continue playing.

There’s one other important note about this: the game is large. The Steam cache file for Red Orchestra comes in right at 1400MB. Due to the game being distributed over Steam, you’ll need a broadband connection to get any value out of the guest pass. If you’re on dialup, the pass will have expired by the time you’ve downloaded the game.

By the way, if you hadn’t guessed, the game is set during World War 2 on the Eastern Front. It aims to be a “realistic” first person shooter, in that there are no crosshairs - to aim, you have to use ironsights (i.e., the gun sights on the gun itself). The barrels on the MG42s will overheat and make the weapon useless until you’ve changed barrels. Shots have to be lead - if you’re shooting at a fellow 300 feet away, it won’t do you any good to point the gun directly at him. By the time the bullet reaches where he was, he’ll already be gone. Bullet drop is also factored in - bullets will not continue on for infinity on the plane they were initially fired on.

So, if that sounds interesting to you, let me know and I’ll toss you a guest pass. One other thing (and this is important): the guest passes must be sent within 1 month of them being issued. After that, they expire. If you want one, don’t dilly dally.

Update: As I no longer have any guest passes and don’t foresee Tripwire Interactive releasing any more anytime soon, I’m closing the comments on this post. For some reason, spam bots are hammering it, and every day, at least 1 or 2 get through, which I have to moderate. If more passes become available I’ll write a new post.

I just saw this on MetaFilter while digging through my feeds (which, by the way, I’m dreadfully behind on): How I Spent The War, by Günter Grass, on the New Yorker website.

I’ve not read it all yet, but I’m sure it’ll be an interesting read.

By the way, if you don’t want to click through thirteen pages on the New Yorker website, here’s the “to print” version, with all of the text on one page, without all of the extra crap around it.

Earlier tooday, while taking a break from writing about “Dulce Et Decorum Est” for my English class, I fired up Company of Heroes. (It’s a World War II real time strategy game; more here). While going through one of the missions, I was a bit amused by one of the upgrades that was available for the Sherman tank: the Crab Mine Flail upgrade. The upgrade added a rotor thing to the front of the tank, with a bunch of chains attached to it. The rotor spun, slinging the chains around, which set off mines in front of the tank.

When I saw it, I assumed that it was just a fictional addition that the developers had added. It seemed like a silly “addition” to make to a World War II game, since there were so many real vehicles that the developers could have chosen from. Except, it wasn’t a fictional addition.

After finishing the mission I was on, I googled “mine flail.” The mine flail attachment really did exist (Wikipedia article, with lots of good info both on war versions and modern uses), and it really did look like something out of a horror movie:

Doesn’t that just look like something you’d expect to see in a Hellraiser movie?

I was unable to find a video of a Sherman Crab tank in action, but I did find this video of an Aardvark. It’s obviously not a tank, but the flail system is similar to the one used on the Sherman tanks.