The Administration and the State Department pressed its European allies to install economic sanctions on Russia in the aftermath of the Crimea referendum. The U.S. denied any responsibility for the breakup of Ukraine, placing blame on Russia and its President Vladimir Putin. The other eastern provinces also revolted, prompting authorities in Kiev to send troops to try to retake control. The people of that province voted to secede from Ukraine and asked to be annexed by Russia, to which the latter agreed. The coup created an unelected Ukrainian government in Kiev that immediately threatened the rights of the ethnically Russian population in eastern Ukraine and the centuries-old Russian naval base in the Crimea. While NATO made no secret of its actions, the exercise went largely unremarked in the U.S. media.īuilding a military advantage against Russia has of course been one of the intended consequences of the U.S.-sponsored overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Ukraine in 2014 (achieved with the help of the neo-Nazi storm troops of the far-right Svoboda party). The ten-day war games involved 31,000 troops from 24 countries, including 14,000 from the U.S. If the company doesn’t kill it off after a year or two, we could see a new wave of games designed for both mobile and PC, and Play Games could be at the forefront of that movement for a general audience.NATO recently wrapped up “ Anakonda-16,” the largest military exercise in Eastern Europe since the end of World War II. It’s exciting to see what Google has in store for the future of mobile gaming, and this beta is a hopeful but bare-bones step in the right direction.
Overall, I’ll continue to tinker with Google Play Games Beta for PC despite my earlier hesitation in hopes that it improves. This is a frustrating and paltry attempt at forcing compatibility with peripherals since developers have refused for years to port their games properly, but what else could Google possibly do, right? It’s ambitious and admirable but ultimately may never feel as tailored as true PC controls. For now, it’s literally just mapping keypresses to touch or tap functionality and relating mouse drags to swipes of your finger. However, the upcoming Game Overlay could help with this sort of thing, but we’ll have to wait and see.