Burke's Joystick

Chapter 2: The Soviet Right Hook As we detailed in the previous chapter ( "Red July" ), STAVKA had conceived of the assault on the Fulda Gap not as their central effort but as a grand diversion to draw NATO forces away from other sectors of the West German front.  As expected, NATO, long expecting Fulda to be central to a Warsaw Pact onslaught, took the bait and committed the bulk of its ground forces to holding off the fierce Soviet offensive. STAVKA waited three full days to ensure that NATO forces were fully engaged before committing their strategic reserve to opening a new front to the north of Fulda.  Known as "Operation Gold Pluto," this daring Soviet plan would put NATO in a perilous position. Final unit dispositions of Operation Gold Pluto with operational overlay (courtesy 8th Guards Army Archives , Volgograd, 1985) Historical Redux If this sounds a bit familiar, it should: Operation Gold Pluto was based on the plan used by Germany during ...

[Wow, it has been a long, long time since I blogged!  Truth is, I finally hit the tipping point when it comes to gaming.  As I've detailed here , I've just become sick of the shenanigans that currently enfold gaming - both the hobby and the industry.  If it isn't disreputable game developers and publishers shoveling high priced garbage our way, it is an equally disreputable gaming press that is conspiring to help devs and pubs shovel garbage our way, but with their added touch of college-level Marxism and militant feminism.  I'm sorry, but things have become too toxic and juvenile for me to put up with that for long.  So, I've taken a big step back from gaming and have instead begun focusing on other hobbies, some new, some old.   Now, that doesn't mean I will never touch a game again.  No, I always have an eye out for a glimmer of hope.  Gaming has been in tough straits before but has managed to recover.  I suspect history will r...

"Classic cyberpunk characters were marginalized, alienated loners who lived on the edge of society in generally dystopic futures where daily life was impacted by rapid technological change, an ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information, and invasive modification of the human body." – Lawrence Person It has often been observed that Christ did not associate with the rich and powerful, but rather with the downtrodden, the rejected, the disreputable.  This is no small thing to consider, especially in a world where the glitterati continue to dominate popular culture.  Oh sure, the have-nots are often feted, sometimes even by the glittering class itself, but only ever so briefly.   Very quickly they are ushered off the stage, usually when the celebri tire of the spectacle, and are promptly forgotten until the next round of self-hating guilt bubbles to the surface of the rich and powerful's collective psyche.  Alas, such is the way of the world. Be t...

If you are expecting a comprehensive overview of Neon Genesis Evangelion , I am sorry to say that you are not going to find that in this post.  Truth is, I have only watched the first five episodes of this piece of anime, and then only because Adult Swim was showing  Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death and Rebirth a few days ago.  From what I could tell, this was a movie cobbled together from various episodes of the series.  Sadly, I had no idea what the heck was going on, but I was intrigued by the many religious themes that kept popping up during the movie, such as the logo for NERV, mankind's defense from the "angel" onslaught: Anime with religious sensibilities and mechs?  Sign me up!  So I decided to start at the beginning of the series.   Like I said above, I've only made it past the first five episodes, so I cannot reach any conclusions yet.  However, while the jury might still be out on this series, I can say that episode 4 has...

By Al "Alface Killah" Brady Yes, I am enjoying my time away from PC gaming!  It feels good to get involved with a fresh game genre again.  And I couldn't have picked a better time: board games and miniatures seem to be going through an veritable explosion of creativity , something that is, coincidentally, being fueled through Kickstarter and other crowd-sourced methods that are also popular with the PC gaming crowd (but I think with better results). To be honest, I have begun to believe that not all of the problems that are plaguing PC gaming is due entirely to shoddy business practices.  Rather, I think video games have hit a brick wall of realistic possibility.  That is, while the technology to make a super-realistic, super-immersive games might now exist, the programming skills to take advantage of that possibility don't exist.  Or, perhaps more accurately, those skills do exist, but the task of programming such monstrously complex games requires more ...

[Get ready for some bad fiction.  It's been some time since I wrote a bit of fanfic based on a game, but Distant Worlds, like Crusader Kings 2, is just great for such emergent storytelling.  This story is based on one such incident....] "Come on, it's safe,"  whispered Junior Research Assistant Ile Freun.   "It's just around this corner," he added.  He determinedly pulled the dame behind him, his hand like a cuff around her wrist. Why don't people just listen to me?  I am smarter than them, after all. He indulged himself with one of his all too common sighs of exasperation that was usually triggered by the stupidity of others. Freun peeked around the corner.  With no one in sight, he quickly trotted up to the door marked Research Lab 143b .  He swiped his free hand in front of the security lock, his sub-dermally implanted Ident-o-Chip acted as a key, and the lock released with a click, followed by a hiss as it retracted into the wall. ...