Wargame: Red Dragon Free On Epic

Monday, I had a burning hatred for humanity as I covered this month’s Prime Gaming guff. Yakuza 7‘s price is quite low at the moment, Sony did a State of Play with very little, and Dreams is even cheaper than Yakuza. Wednesday, we looked at some proper grass instead of Joanne’s astroturf, Alexx wrote about hunting bears (and wildlife too), and Mortal Shell has now crept onto the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Thursday, Sony’s newest patent was found, and it is literally bananas. Taylor went on about the newest Viking survival crafting game selling lots of copies, and Zoë spoke about The Sinking City being DMCA-ed by its own developer.

Onto the Epic Games Store this week and War Games (calm it, William!). Sadly, we’re not talking about several men (or women) beating several bells of liquid feces out of each other, as I’d rather be doing if I had the time. Instead, we’re treading that time two tribes went to war, as Frankie said when he went to Hollywood, and two ideological economic systems both wanted to prove themselves right by being two extremes. Call it what you will, I’ll call it apathy, bickering between America and the USSR over who had the bigger nuclear weapons isn’t an interesting war unless you make it like all the others.

Eugen Systems’ Wargame: Red Dragon is an RTS set in an alternate world where the war between the United States and USSR continued on. It got bigger, flashier, and I’m already in my bed sleeping due to boredom. Honestly, the most interesting thing about this entire war wasn’t the tanks, the helicopters, or any of that, it was the back alley deals, the espionage, the horrible politics of it all as states sponsor other states, and so on. Call me a boring stick in the mud or a masochist, but I find that secrecy and the threat of the nukes coming, more exciting than the shooty-bang Company of Heroes-style real-time strategy/tactical warfare.

Maybe I’m the only one, but when it comes to an RTS I want Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, Rusted Warfare, Command and Conquer, or Ashes of the Singularity. They are all about building up to a huge battle. The problem with the US and USSR conflict is the resolution to that large-scale battle is one we already know, it results in nuke chucking like its Olympic Shot Put. Again, the most interesting bit isn’t the resolution here, it is all the darkened allies and slow bits behind closed doors.

All this week you can pick up WarGame: Red Dragon for free, until the 11th of March. That’s when it will be replaced with something I’ve already covered before but I’ve always wanted to come back to since I last spoke about it: Surviving Mars. It is an economy-based city builder set on the red planet and is one that will always interest me, especially since we all watched that documentary where Matt Damon pooped on his food for the better part of a year.