Burke's Joystick

Well, this is unexpected: me playing a Civil War game in late October!  I usually don't get the ACW itch until the first warm days of April (I am very much a man of "feasts and seasons").  So, for me to boot up Norbsoft's masterful real time strategy game  Scourge of War  this late in the year is rather unusual.  Then again, there is a big midterm election coming up in just days.  Despite the fact that World War II  continues to monopolize the military history spotlight - as with NASCAR, mostly because men get a kick out of burning vehicles - I have always believed that the American Civil War has had the most lasting impact on modern America of all wars we have experienced as a nation.  For example, it can be a startling realization that contemporary America's two dominant political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, are the same two dominant parties from the Civil War period: And while that epic war settled the issue of s...

Well, Memorial Day is almost here, but you wouldn't know it around these parts seeing how unseasonably cool it is!  So much for global warmi...er, "climate change". With that in mind, I guess it isn't out of the equation that I am going to be spending less time grilling and more time gaming.  But what type of gaming is suitable for a national holiday? Memorial Day is all about remembering the valorous fallen who have given " the last full measure of devotion " while defending this nation throughout its glorious history.  Well, that is what most of us understand Memorial Day to be about, but apparently not President Obama who seems to think Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was a documentary....

I've always said that for me gaming isn't about the games, it is about the community that springs up around the games.  That is, as someone who has experienced the pre-internet gaming era, what most excites me about modern gaming is how I am no longer an island in isolation.  With just a few clicks of a mouse, I can be part of a massive international gaming community.   And I don't just mean multiplayer either, but about the whole panoply of the gaming experience: videos, fan fic, screenshots and memes.  It's all so much fun, and serves to fuel my appetite for gaming all the more! One thing that has always impressed me in the world of gaming are those talented individuals who can take a rather ordinary screenshot and turn it into a work of art .  Well, I recently - accidentally - plunged into this interesting realm.

"Are these things real?...Did I see those brave and noble countrymen of mine laid low in death and weltering in their blood?  Did I see our country laid waste and in ruins?  Did I see soldiers marching, the earth trembling and jarring beneath their measured tread?  Did I see the ruins of smouldering cities and deserted homes?...Surely they are but the vagaries of mine own imagination."   - CSA Pvt. Sam Watkins, 1st Tenn. Infantry For shame, game devs!  For shame!  Do you not know that America is currently in the mid-point of the American Civil War Sesquicentennial celebration (i.e., 150th Anniversary)?  Where are all the new ACW games?!? It really grieves my heart to see how "America's Iliad " has been overlooked by gamers over the last decade.  I mean, we have so many World War II games being published on a regular basis that one can hardly throw a stone without striking a fascist stahlhelm .  Yet America's greatest strugg...