Skip to main content

Flagellants Of Our Fathers: Scourge Of War bit

The Rock Paper Shotgun logo repeated multiple times on a purple background
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

Why isn't there a weedkiller called Scourge? Or a rat poison? Consider these baffling questions while downloading the 272mb hunk of grognard goodness that is the Scourge of War - Gettysburg demo. The game that picks up where the fine Take Commands left-off, appears to do a lot of things right. Anyone arriving dust-caked and sweaty from Napoleon Total War is likely to be disappointed by the sprite-based spectacle and feeble rifle reports, but bowled over by the wily multi-tiered Battle AI and the extraordinary courier system.

There's only one single-player scenario included and that's a brigade combat tutorial, meaning you don't get to watch orders trickle all the way down the command chain getting lost and mangled on the way (a TC/SOW speciality). You do however get to beg assistance from fellow commanders with the aid of galloping messengers, and pit your wits against a Rebel opponent reassuringly expert in the art of flanking. Multiplayer, impossible in the Take Commands, is also there for the trialling.

Read this next

Tim Stone: A vereran PC games journalist, Tim has been covering simulation, strategy and management games in print and online for over 30 years. At Rock Paper Shotgun, he was the writer of The Flare Path, a weekly column, from 2011 until 2022.
View comments (4)
Related topics

Rock Paper Shotgun is better when you sign in

Sign in and join us on our journey to discover strange and compelling PC games.