The pace of publishing was such that I could spend a full week on a review rather than dash through as fast as possible. I am almost certain I reviewed at least one Cossacks game during that period, though I can remember nothing of it.
It takes me back to a time when, working for PC Format magazine back in the days when magazines were something other than an expensive way to pass a train journey if your phone battery was running low, games like this would arrive on my desk every week. Cossacks 3, which in a sentence is a traditional build and bash RTS with higher unit counts and a little more focus on formation, is a comfort blanket, and I regret nothing. It's so thoroughly unreconstructed as an RTS, a straight-to-the-point rarity in changed times, like a visitor from an alt-timeline where strategy games never gave up on the Age Of Empires formula and were still the same in 2016, but slicker and flashier. It's a demi-remake of the 2001 original, in fact.
GSC Gameworld (they of STALKER fame, at least in name) are behind this 17th- and 18th-century Europe-set real-time strategy game, which though it bears a 3 in its name does not present any particular barriers to series newcomers. Cossacks 3 is not PC gaming's norm in 2016 any more than Mario or Sonic are consoles', but I must admit that I found it to be something of a balm. I sought, somewhat in vain, to defend myself, because in truth it has been many years since I played a historical RTS. Our interests and stereotypes had not changed since 1997. This, these tiny men, those cod-historical serif fonts and that expanse of terrain - this was what PC gamers played all the time. He didn't say anything when he glaced at my screen didn't have to, for his face said it all. My old Vista problem with PicasaWeb is still there on my guest Windows XP under VirtualBox, but was gone when using VMWare.Whilst I was playing Cossacks 3, a console-focused journalist of some reknown (TV's famous Simon Parkin, since you ask) popped his head into the rotting cupboard above a coffee shop that I attempt to call an office. The virtualization technology seems to be quiet different: I believe VirtualBox uses more of the host operating system than VMWare. Audio started working after I switched the Audio settings for my virtual machine from “Null Audio Driver” to “Windows DirectSound”. I use Shared Folders instead which works nicely: the shared folder can be found in the Explorer under My Network Places –> Entire Network –>VirtualBox Shared Folder. I couldn’t get USB support to work so far: it does seem to recognize my USB devices but I was not able to access my USB memory stick. What I also like is the dynamic size management of my hard drive image ( up to a pre-defined maximum ). Scene from Cossacks European Wars, Baltic Campagne: On my new computer with 4 GByte and a Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q9300 with 2.5 GHz this mission runs pretty smooth under VirtualBox 2.0 – thus the overhead through virtualization does not seem to have a major negative impact compared to the gained hardware resources ). Since I am working on one of the last and obviously very complex missions with lots of active units I have been running into limitations on my old Windows XP Sony PC with 512 MByte RAM and a Pentium 4 1.7 GHz processor: the simulation was running a bit bumpy. What is also very beautiful is that I even was able to get one of my old strategy games to run properly on this virtual machine ( “ Cossacks European Wars”, which doesn’t run on Vista of course and did not run well on VMWare due to video problems. What is really nice is that it starts my Windows XP fast and smoothly without any major hiccups on my host. What I really like is the seamless adjustment of my guest systems desktop when resizing the windows and the seamless catching of mouse and keyboard as I move into the guest OS screen this had been enabled after I installed the virtual box extensions on the guest system. Installation went smooth as well as setting up my first Windows XP guest system.
There is also a good chance that it freezes my PC.Īfter Lifehacker mentioned VirtualBox 2.0 I decided to give that a try.
After in June I have set up a Windows XP under my Windows Vista Box my first enthusiasm has been decreased a little bit: it turned out that VMWare Server ( V 1.0.6 today it offered an update but their web site did not respond ) actually does not play very nice under my Vista: the first time I try to fire up my guest operating system it starts eating memory like hell and takes forever to start.