“Fall of the Samurai opens up a toybox of terror for Total War gamers. There are so many new gadgets to get to grips with in this new standalone expansion, from pocket derringers to pocket battleships, you’ll just have to convince your subjects to get with the times.”
“This is not Command & Conquer as we know it. In fact, it’s not even war as many of us know it.”
It’s not unknown for us to hear stories about animal bravery, about wartime mascots and about the strange an unusual service performed by creatures that went off to war but probably didn’t really know what was going on. Many a ship has had a cat or even a dog as a mascot, while dogs have been associated with all kinds of stories of heroism, tenacity and extraordinary wagging. Then, of course, there are horses, which are sort of like very large, nervous and uncomfortable sofas, the wartime utility of which has been well understood for centuries.
But you may not know that there are many other infamous, nay legendary animals who have (whether they wanted to or not) performed some form of military service. Here are four.
Hello, my name is Paul Dean. I'm a freelance writer and journalist based in south London and this is my semi-personal blog. You might've seen my beard on the board game show Shut Up & Sit Down, as featured on Penny Arcade, or you may have read my words splashed across a magazine, website or even broadsheet newspaper somewhere. I'm also the writer on the excellent indie game Maia.
For more about me, including a pseudo-CV and background, click here. Email me at paullicino at gmail.com if you need writing, editing, screenwriting, copywriting or any of those other word-based services. I also have experience as a broadcaster, because I'm pretty neat like that.
I occasionally Tweet here. I occasionally upload photographs here.
I'm interested in information theory, feminism, science fiction, technology, philosophy (which I studied), games of all types and how the internet changes our culture and our media.
My heroes are people like Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula Le Guin, Anne Frank, Alan Moore and Carl Sagan.
