Sorry I haven’t posted.
The review isn’t happening this weekend, as you’ve probably noticed, and instead will probably happen in the next coming weeks.
My boss has transferred me to the other coast, and, as such, I have a lot of packing to do before I leave. As a result, thanks to the lack of an IT department at the place my new office is located at, I can’t promise I will be up for business for awhile after I get there.
Sorry for the inconvience.
Jumble, End Post.
World in Conflict was released September of 2007, devoloped by Massive Entertainment and published by Sierra. It was released initially for Windows on the PC, but will also be released on XBox 360 and PS3 under the title World in Conflict: Soviet Assault in 2008. Soviet Assault will feature a soviet campaign, as well as new maps, and new stories, and will be released as an expansion for the Windows version as well. While it is officially an RTS, but there is no resources or buildings to manage, so it is really more along the line of an RTT.
Story: World in Conflict is set in 1989, just before the fall of the Soviet Union. Instead of collapse, however, the CCCP instead makes a military push into Europe, in hopes of sparking the nation back into power. The opening of the game features a surprise Soviet invasion into the Northwest US city of Seattle. During the opening film of the campaign, it speaks of the invasion in both a humanistic and tactical stand point. Both my and The Tick, my fellow reviewer, experienced a huge emotional response to this opening. It struck home to us as Americans and, for me, as a Northwesterner. This response was even to the point where I was genuinely concerned with keeping my troops alive. Another thing that amazed me in World in Conflict is that, despite being an RTS/RTT, there is some amazing character development by NPCs. I can’t explain anymore without giving anything else away.
The moral of the story is that World in Conflict went way beyond the call of duty for the story of an RTS/RTT. Because of this, I finished the campaign extremely quickly, despite its length. The story changed the way I played the game completely. I’m definitely giving World in Conflict a 10/10 for story.
Visual Appeal: While the visuals are impressive, they are quite intensive. As a result, even on my relatively new laptop (about as old as the game), I’ve had to turn the graphics down considerably. Never the less, unless your zoomed in all the way, they still look great. Additionally, the menus are rather simple and easy to understand as well. The main screen is a work of art. Despite featuring the World in Conflict title directly in the middle of the screen, you hardly notice thanks to the balanced image.
For visual appeal, they get a 7/10. There are some mistakes, but you don’t notice them.
Interface: The human-unit interface of World in Conflict is actually very impressive. Most of the in game menus feature large pictures clearly defining each unit, with text that pops up in case you have more time to look into their specific abilities (what they are good against, etc.) It does lack a few of the classic commands like “Attack to here”, but that something that you can live without in most games, where your lucky if you have 6 squads/units. The rest of the menus are visually balanced, and equally easy to navigate without getting messy. It does get a little annoying when the Shift-select to select multiple units doesn’t work quite properly, or when double-clicking will select all of a type, while triple clicking (which is an accidental possibility in the heat of battle) will select one unit and move the camera to it.
For interface, World in Conflict scores a 8/10. Seriously, if your designing a game out there, with menus and interfaces, simplicity makes things a lot easier.
Gameplay: The gameplay of World in Conflict is by far one of the most intense I have ever played. I found myself so on the edge of my seat, I would start getting a headache from the tension in my neck. Despite being simple, it is extremely fast paced, with a lot of things to keep a hold of. Like I said before, “attack to here” doesn’t become much of a problem. With 4 or 5 squads/units against many other people/computers, the divide and conquer tactic rarely works. If you do end up having to divide, it does get a little on the nerves, and hot-keying certainly helps, but I get the idea that Massive Entertainment was pushing for a more human run battle with less computer guided attack to movements.
There are no resources to gather, or upgrades, or even any buildings to build at all. You have just one resource: command points. These are divided into to pools (three, if you want to get technical), one of points available, another of points that will become available, and a third of points of units you currently have in battle (not displayed). While these will always add to a constant number, when you lose units on the field, their points will go into your points to come pool. These points will then drain into your available points much like a bucket with a hole in it (faster when there are more, slower when not as much). Each unit costs a certain amount of points, yada yada. In reality, the system is much simpler then I just made it sound and is really easy to get the hang of.
For gameplay, World in Conflict earns a 9/10.
Difficulty: World in Conflict sports a relatively gentle learning curve. This isn’t to say the final levels are not hard, oh no, despite your slow training throughout all the levels, the final levels are extremely brutal. It does make it much more accessible to players that have not yet played RTS/RTT games much. This does mean an experienced player will find the first level or two quite boring. Don’t worry, it picks up
Certainly, on the other hand, multiplayer, even with bots, is a brutal training ground as well. That was my trial by fire, but it ends up being a ton of fun, and extremely intense as well. For being accessible, yet difficult, I’ll give World in Conflict an 8/10.
Replay Value: The campaign has a relatively low replay value. Once you know whats coming, tactically, the whole issue is much simpler. There are medals for secondary objectives that you might need to go back and grab if you missed them though. What gives World in Conflict its real replay value is the multiplayer. Even just against a bunch of bots with The Tick and the Super-Expert-Gamer-Pro-Guru Extraordinare, the games were a ton of fun, and we accidentally wasted 5 or 6 hours on a beautiful day playing instead of (rightfully) being outside enjoying the weather. Woops! No complaints though, it was a ton of fun nevertheless.
I haven’t personally tried the online multiplayer with tons of other people, but if the Guru speaks truth, it is much more intense then anything I have yet experienced in the game. Woah. For this replay value, I give World in Conflict a 7/10. Awesome, but if only the campaign had a bit more replay value.
Overall: I deeply enjoyed my experience with World in Conflict, and will probably continue playing it with my friends for quite some time to come. Overall, World in Conflict scored an 8.167/10. That gives it the scraping edge above Freespace 2 as the highest scoring game yet. I do suggest you pick this game up.
Screenshots:
Anyway, thats all I have for today.
Jumble, End Post.
So yes, as rumors posted around the internet suggest, I will be reviewing World in Conflict rather then Company of Heroes.
Sorry if this has disappointed you. Feel free to leave a comment below if this is the case, and I’ll take your complaints to the Board of Directors.
It’s how things work now a days, I’m afraid. Depending, I may cover Company of Heroes the weekend after this, but no promises. I have some important presentations with extremely influential people.
Anyway, thanks for reading.
Jumble, End Post.
So after a bit of convincing, I have decided to review World in Conflict this weekend instead of Company of Heroes.
And by convincing, I mean I watched a few friends play it, and it simply rocks.
I’m going to try to stay objective, but I watched a few of the intro videos and they certainly did move me.
Go Northwest USA!
Jumble, End Post.
Yay! Review up early!
Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory is a RTS released on April 1st in 2008 by CDV in Germany, and developed by Fireglow. It was the next installation of the Sudden Strike series, featuring 3d isometric graphics compared to the 2d graphics of its predecesors.
Story: Sudden Strike 3 follows World War 2, from the side of the Germans, the Allies, the Russians, and the Japanese. As such, they don’t get a story score.
Visual Appeal: Sudden Strike 3’s graphics were a surprising let down. Surely a game that comes out in 2008, only a year after Supreme Commander and only a few months behind Soulstorm, would sport flashy graphics, nice effects, and look just damn pretty. Sudden Strike 3 doesn’t do any of these. The graphics are something I would expect to find closer to the year 2004. In addition, their water graphics, while competitively pretty, crash my graphics driver, despite supposedly being compatible, and with my drivers fully updated. I give SS3 a 5/10 in graphics. Acceptable, but come on.
Interface: Fireglow got some seriously great music for the loading screens and main menu, but for some reason, they didn’t let it trickle over to game play. And thats about the best thing I have to say about the Sudden Strike 3 interface. For being an officially published game, it has to be among the most buggy I have ever encountered. Often when you tell a unit to “cancel” the order, it will instead deselect it and click whatever happens to be on the ground behind the cancel button. Lets not forget, of course, that selected units don’t actually give you useful information about the unit to tell you what you’ve selected, or even how many you’ve selected. If you give a special unit a special command (Technician -> Repair) after right clicking, it does not pop out of the repair command automatically, leaving you to wonder whether or not it actually registered. Of course, a snappy “Right on it, Sir” or something would have solved that nicely, but there isn’t any of that either.
While the menus are pretty and shiny, the in-mission interface is impossible. 4/10.
Gameplay: Sudden Strike 3 takes a different approach to RTS games. It takes managing resources, building units, and upgrading and gives them all a miss. This, in a lot of ways, makes it more interesting. With a given set of units, you have to accomplish the goals you’ve set out to do. Success brings reinforcements. While an extremely interesting approach, Fireglow botched it.
The obvious approach is that if you have only a few units, you micromanage and use them wisely: flanking maneuvers, distractions, traps, whatever you can manage. However, most of this is impossible. With the interface they gave you and the clunky movement of troops, these finesse maneuvers are impossible. In the end it basically comes down to shelling the bejeebeez out of a location, then doing a combined infantry/armor rush. While effective on some level, it is sort of repetitive.
The reinforcement idea gets really annoying too. You only get more troops if you are successful. You lose men, but as long as you kill tons, your in luck. If, however, the enemy makes a major push, and you manage to push it off with heavy casualties, your basically dead in the water. Enemy artillery shelling your troops and you can’t find it? Too bad. That was also something that seriously bothered me: enemy artillery doesn’t actually need spotters. Occasionally, they will use them, but usually they won’t.
With limited resources and without the ability to manage those resources well, Sudden Strike 3 just manages to get you frustrated. 3/10.
Difficulty: Sudden Strike 3 makes for realistic. Each and every soldier has counted ammo that needs to be replenished, armor and vehicles have fuel which needs to be replenished. This is all fine and dandy, but even on normal, the AI just takes out all your ammo trucks and fuel tankers, then just sits back and shells you. Armor is devastated without infantry, and vice versa, but it is not uncommon to have a machine gun that was spared from the preceding shelling to mow down your infantry, leaving your armor exposed. Even on normal, Sudden Strike 3 is an extremely difficult game. The tutorial isn’t any help either. All throughout the tutorial they will tell you to do something, but never tell you how to do it, making the learning curve so steep, it was hard for even an experienced gamer like myself to figure it out. (”Alright, well, how do I repair the bridge?”)
I don’t think this would be true if they gave you the ability to manage your troops to the extent that other, modern RTS’ do, but Sudden Strike 3’s fatal flaw has given it a low score in this category as well. 3/10.
Replay Value: I honestly stopped playing out of disgust and frustration before I could properly measure replay value. As a result, I can’t justify giving Sudden Strike 3 a replay value score.
Overall: Sudden Strike 3 had two fatal flaws: a horrible interface, and sketchy graphics. These combined to give it a whopping 3.75/10. While it looks interesting, I personally advise you do not buy this game. It is simply a waste of money. If you are looking for the same sort of style with crazy-limited resources, I have heard wonderful things about World in Conflict. Pick that up instead.
Screenshots:
Thats all I got.
I was referred by a friend to Company of Heroes, which may be next on the review list. For now, I’m going to uninstall this god-forsaken game.
Jumble, End Post.
Just an FYI, expect to see the review closer to Sunday night.
At the request of my boss, I’m going to be focusing on my academic responsibilities on Saturday rather than Sunday. As a result, I won’t get a chance to poke around the game completely until late Sunday.
Just letting you know.
Jumble, End Post.
Oh what a week, what a week!
Stressful, but overall quite enjoyable.
In any case, this weekend, the Secretary of the Treasury over here at graydenadams.com gave me the go ahead to get a game on the cutting edge. Good news, that is. As a result, this weekend I hope to publish a review of Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory.
Don’t get your hopes up too much, I was forced down from some of the nicer games that recently came out (like Assassin’s Creed) because of their still hefty price tag ($50 was too much). We’ll see how it goes.
Expect more this weekend, probably on Sunday.
Jumble, End Post.
I realize this is rushed but I feel its worth noting.
Today, my little blog, started on someone else’s whim, has accomplished something I never thought could be true: I’m linked to by a website I’ve never heard of.
I suppose this could have been true for a long time, starting a few milliseconds after my blog was created (with ping and all), but until now, I was unaware.
You can find a link to my Freespace 2 review at trynewshit.com. Apparently, trynewshit.com is a website that’s goal is to link people to blogs that might interest them, so it seems logical why I’m up there, since I write a blog. They are also a start up blog, having archives back only to March, and have yet to edit the about page.
I am aware that the only reason I’m mentioning this is because, up until now, I was under the impression that I had a total view base of 2, both of them close friends. This is truly milestone.
In the future, at some point, I hope to add in a view counter. At the moment, my theme doesn’t support widgets, so its sort of impossible, but hopefully that will either be changed, or the theme will change. Either way, it probably won’t get fixed until the week before finals, in which I will do anything to take a break from studying.
Jumble, End post.
Freespace 2 was originally released in 1999 by Volition, Inc. In 2002, Volition released the source code to the public, because they are super-uber. It should also be noted that the prequel (Descent: Freespace) is a barely affiliated sequel in the legendary Descent series, which I grew up with. Look it up. Freespace, it turns out, didn’t end up incorporating the original Descent ideas, and moved in a new direction. Alas.
As a result, as you read this review, keep in mind that Freespace 2 is now completely free and available for download legally on the internet.
The .exe installer file can be found here, and the OpenAL files (which you will discover you need when you install it and it crashes) are available here.
Also keep in mind that Freespace 2 works on all the mainstream desktop OS’s: Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.
Now, the review:
Story: Freespace 2 has a pretty standard plot for a sci-fi game. Actually, the plot can be likened to Mass Effect in a lot of ways: there is a main alliance (the GTVA [Galactic Terran Vasudan Alliance]) between two of the three races (the terrans and vasudans, duh), a rebellious splinter organization of all humans (the NTF [Neo-Terran Front]), and a mysterious, Reaper-esque race of aliens called the Shivans. Surprisingly, for a first person starfighter game, the plot is rather in depth, growing nicely off of the plot in Freespace one. Although the main character (you) is just a cog in the machine, your reports from superiors and a few cut-scenes provide an interesting look into the events unfolding around you. Coincidently, you just so happen to be present at all the major events. Awesome.
As you complete missions, you get awarded medals for achievements, and slowly climb the ranks. Along with rank, they give you slowly more information and responsibility, literally. They will give you more strategic data (which has no affect on what your doing, just an fyi sorta thing), put you in charge of multiple fighter/bomber wings, and give you access to better weapons and ships. Although most of this has an immediate affect on your missions, the extra strategic information just made it feel more realistic.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by Freespace 2’s depth and breadth of story they managed to shove into what is (essentially) a 4-D FPS. I award FS2 a 9/10 for Story.
Visual Appeal: The internet took Freespace 2 and ran with it. As a result, the version now available has been updated in many, many ways, including graphics. Although not incredibly impressive, FS2’s graphics are competitive. Before the source-code was released to the public, the game saw many awards for the explosions the game sports. It is true, the explosions in FS2 are incredibly impressive, growing from just white smoke leaving the ship (decompression) to lighting arching across the surface (systems down!) to massive, room shaking, explosions as capital ships come apart.
Although FS2 does not actually have the best graphics available today, they are not at all bad. For this, I give them 8/10.
Interface: The in-mission interface of FS2 is perfect. It has the most important, relevant information centered in your vision, with less important information around the peripherals. During combat, finding the information you need takes no time at all. Where Freespace 2 falls short, however, is outside of the mission. The rest of the interfaces and menus are much more difficult to navigate, and are less intuitive. For example: there is a default ship for a mission, but if you choose a different ship, you have to choose your armaments. Pinpointing what, exactly, each weapon does and its recharge/energy consumption so you can pick an effective combination, is extremely confusing. The main menu falls short of adequate as well. While it is a nice picture of the inside of a capital ship, nothing is labeled, so you have to mouse over it to tell what it is (if it is anything at all). It is possible there is a menu I’m not even aware of because of that.
Freespace 2 scores a 7/10 for interface.
Gameplay: Freespace 2 was designed with a joystick in mind. As a mouse user, this made things difficult, especially for 180 degree turns. If you plan to mouse this game, leave a lot of room open for your mouse if you want nice fluid turns instead of picking up your mouse 3 times. Additionally, for those of you who don’t want inverted vertical, the trick is to go into options -> controls, then look for pitch, click it, and hit the invert button in the lower left. Other than that little flaw, the game plays amazingly. It ends up using very little computing power (impressively so), so things in the background don’t much bother it. FS2 does not like being alt-tabbed, however, which made getting screenshots difficult. It will come back up, and will tab down nicely, but it keeps trying to call attention to itself again. I digress though. The gameplay in FS2 was right on the money. The ships were amazingly balanced as well: interceptors rocked bombers, but couldn’t touch capital ships and cruisers, while bombers rocked capital ships and cruisers, but couldn’t touch fighters. While there is a ship that clearly dominates as the best bombing ship, and a ship that dominates as the best interceptor/fighter, there is no single end-all ship
The mission endings are also very interesting. For the most part, it is very hard to fail a mission completely, except later in game when your actions matter slowly more and more. If one of the cargo ships you were escorting is destroyed, you get lectured for it, but you still continue. Usually, the next mission relies on these supplies, so your a little more pressed in the next mission, but you always have the choice to redo the mission. This neat little feature does go a little too far at times, though. During an special ops. mission, for example, I accidentally committed a war crime. (I hit spacebar (torpedoes) instead of x (missile countermeasure) and destroyed a civilian ship) Despite being told I was being brought up on charges and would likely be executed, the game continued normally. Though the mission before, failure would end up with you just being executed, and that was a total failure. Apparently the trial changed everything. But I digress.
For gameplay, I’m giving Freespace 2 a 9/10.
Difficulty: Freespace 2 is not a particularly difficult game at default settings. It has a very nice tutorial missions which, while a bit buggy, do very well at familiarizing the player with the controls. From there, the learning curve is quite gradual, you barely realize you learned anything at all. There are a few missions (mostly optional special ops. missions) which are extremely difficult, ones that, on Very Easy, I would still fail over and over (keep in mind I was playing on medium, 2 levels above that). Speaking of impossible missions, Freespace 2 has a nice little feature that allows you skip a mission if you attempt it and fail it 5 times. Personally, I love this feature. 5 times is just enough to make a few good attempts at it, and just few enough before you get absolutely pissed at the game. Since each mission takes about 10 minutes beginning to end, this is only about an hours worth of trying. If only everything in life would let you skip it if you failed at it for an hour.
On the other end of the scale, however, very hard is basically impossible. In medium, your wingmates will slowly be shot down, but in very hard, your basically flying solo against an armada of Red Barons. The scale does have upwards of 8 different levels, so there is plenty of room to choose the difficulty right for you.
For difficulty, Freespace 2 scores an 8/10 for difficulty.
Replay Value: Freespace 2 is probably one of the most modded games out there. Get bored of Freespace classic? Try it in Battlestar Galactic, Star Wars, Star Trek, Bablyon 5, or even Starfox flavor! If you prefer the classic plotline, just want something new, there are 20 odd different mods for campaigns in different eras before and after the classic plotline. Coupled with an active and intense multiplayer community, Freespace 2 has plenty to do when your done with the classic campaign.
Essentially, Freespace 2 has 20 expansion packs. All of them as free as the original. For replay value I give FS2 a 7/10 because, despite this, 4D spacefighting gives me a headache.
Overall: I was incredibly impressed with Freespace 2. Incredibly impressed. I would have considered forking over $20 for this game, maybe even $30, especially considering the mods available for it. The best part, of course, is that I didn’t have to. Freespace 2 is sticking with me for awhile. Its final score is: 8/10. Highest scoring yet!
Screenshots: It should be noted that I was originally running Freespace 2 via OpenGL instead of Direct3D8, which not only runs smoother, but looks better. Vista, however, would only provide an entirely black image when I took a screenshot with OpenGL, so all the screenshots I took are with Direct3D8.
Pretty impressive, hm?
Jumble, End Post.
After mentioning briefly to my brother that I don’t have any games recent enough to be worthy of reviewing, he pointed me towards an internet cult classic: Freespace 2.
From what I understand, Freespace was made a long time ago (about 10 years ago now) by a company that eventually went belly-up. Just before they were dead to the world, they released the sourcecode for Freespace to the internet. Lo and Behold, the internet took it and ran with it. Now adays, the graphics are comparable to modern day games, and the source has been updated for better streamlining, etc. etc. Essentially, the game has been completely remade by the internet and its goons. The game has turned into a heavily modded game, with things such as a Battlestar Galactica campaign, as well as Star Wars, Bablyon 5, basically every scifi you can name (though I don’t know about Firefly).
Seems like it might be an interesting trip. A little about the game: Its a first person space fighter game. You play a pilot of a spacecraft and engage in battles and encounters fighting against some enemy. Not really sure who that is yet, but time will tell! Seems to be like it will be interesting.
If you don’t think so, thats okay. You don’t have to play it, but you still have to read the review. Muahaha!
Jumble, End Post.
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