The word is that the release version will be 1.01, not 1.00, so no one will buy the crappy version I suppose.
But they sent out 1.00 for review, not 1.01, and the onus is not on the reviewer to make sure PR does its job.
For anyone who doubts Tom Chick’s wargaming chops, I can point them to a strategy article on Age of Rifles that he wrote 150 years ago.
Troy
I thought about answering Steve Grammont’s post, but decided against it. He seems to be in full-bore pissing match mode and I’m not really inclined to get into it, particularly when I can appreciate and respect the ambition behind his game. Some of the comments over there are really childish as well, and it sounds like a lot of them just want to vent. Which is cool. The irony is that they’re making fun of C&C, and yet many of them sound just like the 13-year-old C&C fanbois. It’s just the nature of gamers, I guess, no matter what the genre.
It’s disappointing to me that Grammont isn’t inclined to reach out to a new and wider audience. Shock Force would have been a great opportunity for Battlefront to break out to a wider audience, to Battlefield 2 and Call of Duty 4 players, to Company of Heroes players, to Blackhawk Down fans, to students of the war in Iraq, to modern military sim buffs. The last wargame to have the temerity to reach out that way was a real epiphany despite bucking some well-established conventions. But it changed the face of wargaming for a lot of people. And it was called Combat Mission.
Just to reiterate what I wrote earlier: “You used to be beautiful, man…”
-TomAh, then the version I played was not the released version? OK, then I tone down the comments a bit. Still, you send out a version for review, don’t complain when it gets reviewed.
EDIT: NM, my sarcasm detector didn’t function well. I didn’t notice that what I was commenting on was obviously SwampIrish’s joke. Heh. Nothing to see here, move along.
What Martin at Battlefront told me and at least one other writer was that this was the gold master that Paradox would be distributing. The sole caveat was that they had to fix a bug that prevented direct TCP/IP connections, and that this fix would be in a day zero patch.
Otherwise, we were told this was the final version that players would be getting on the 27th. The version number on the main screen clearly reads v1.0. Martin knew we were covering the game, and if there were any substantial changes to the build, I’d have hoped he would have let us know.
-TomMan, I’m sorry I missed it now… on both forums no less.
. However, generally someone who buys a game will actually try to learn it, tutorial or not. We do, however, want to do more with feedback. Expect that in future patches.
an FPS is reasonable to assume that people can fend for themselves, for an RTS or RTS/hybrid tactical game its just assuming too much. I can only speak for myself but any game of sufficient complexity that doesn’t have at least a basic tutorial is going to be ignored.
Exactly. Whether there was a changeup or this was a publisher error, any reviews they get based on review copies are certainly fair.
I love all the blather on the forums from people who haven’t even played the game. And when they see 1.01, maybe they’ll point at all these negative comments and laugh.
But if they saw the condition of 1.0 they wouldn’t find it so funny.
Troy
There are at least two (maybe three) of you who can be credited with saving me $55. They can blather all they want, I owe you guys a beer.
Talk about your heartbreaker.
I’m the same way, I don’t have the patience to spend several hours just learning the basics of any game. With any tactical game I always go straight to the tutorial , and if it doesn’t help me the game is pretty much shelved fast.
I remember trying one of the Combat Mission games from a feature in pcgamer several years ago. Really not my thing and it was taken back within 2 hours back when you could take back pc games.
Damn, I was thinking of picking this one up too.
As for HEAT rounds, we were trained to favor SABOT rounds (the depleted uranium lawn darts that Wombat mentioned) when attacking tanks for a couple of reasons. [ul]
[li]They’re lighter and more aerodynamic than HEAT rounds and thus have a much longer range.[/li][li]They’re more effective against tanks than HEAT rounds.[/li][li]Most threat armor mounts reactive armor which can defeat the HEAT rounds that we fire. (Reactive armor is really little more than blocks of high explosive bolted to the outside of the tanks. The idea is that the explosive block would be set off when impacted, destroying the shaped charge inside the HEAT round making it ineffective. My understanding is that it has been tested in combat and found to work. The tank I was on in the Gulf actually had a reactive armor kit mounted. Thankfully, I never got to see if it worked for myself.)[/li][li]SABOT rounds aren’t as effective against softer targets like APCs, bunkers and rolling stock, so we should try and save the HEAT for that stuff if we can.[/ul][/li][quote="“TheWombat”"]
Truth is though that against T-72s I imagine pretty much anything the 120 on an Abrams spits out will do the job…
[/quote]
Funny story. Our sister company, who were already on M1A1s, ended up in a firefight with a battalion Iraqi T-72s and BMPs that happend to stumble into their position. The fight was somewhat even for the first fewminutes with both sides firing at muzzle flashes since our sister company had stopped to get a few hours of sleep and the crews had foolishly turned off their, admittedly noisy, thermal imagers.
Once their thermals were back up and the M1 crews could see what they were shooting at they quickly switched from using SABOT to HEAT. The problem was that a hit with a SABOT round is bad for the crew because it sets the air in the tank on fire but unless you got lucky and hit the target’s ammo it wouldn’t do anything to the tank itself. It’d just sit there and that made the M1 crews nervous. Their solution was to shoot HEAT instead which would blow the target’s turret clean off.
I’m sorry to hear this. CM was such a wonderful game. It seems as if the sluggishness is the most serious, irritating problem. If that’s been fixed, would you re-evaluate the game, Tom & Troy, or are the AI and other problems too severe?
It reminds me of the Silent Hunter 4 debacle. I wonder if the modders will ride to the rescue here, too.
Nelson
My official review will be of 1.01, the release candidate, since that’s what gamers will get on Friday. I’m told it’s better. It almost has to be.
Troy
My opinion of Steve’s opinion of Tom’s opinon is that Steve sounds like someone beaten down by the development process of a game that didn’t turn out as well as he hoped. He lobs excuses to meet criticism. He’s now stuck defending something he wants to love.
I’ve heard the same thing from several tankers who were in the Gulf–one was a classmate of mine in grad school who led a tank company there. Very funny guy, if a bit…odd. Had a whole set of WWII uniforms and weapons, as well as a bunch of “artifacts” he brought back from the Gulf along with his stories. I think tankers by nature are a bit addled, in a good sort of way. Then again, the cannon cockers I used to work with (WWII vintage) were a strange bunch too…and deaf to boot.
CM:SF being apparently broken makes me want to cry.
I was hugely into CM:BO. I joined a site called “Band of Brothers (it was basically to set up multi player matches)” and made a lot of friends there. We even had a get together at Phillips Seafood Restaurant in DC and drank and talked about military history for oh, 8 hours. One of the very best games I’ve ever played. Also, first time I’ve met people off the internet related to a game.
This was a day one purchase for me. Now, I feel like I have to wait a month or so for the patches to iron things out.
Heck, I almost bought CM:BO twice just to give money to the developers, I liked it so much.
Anyway, here’s hoping they patch things up and some gaming sites pass the word on that the patches fix things, if they do.
The launch version includes a day one patch that cleans up a lot of the performance issues. If you buy it tomorrow, you won’t have all the same problems I’ve been having with the supposed review code I was sent.
Troy
One of the links on the Battlefront site brought up this hilarous review. I’m sure most of you have seen it but it’s new to me.
Greg Kasavin reviews Chess (circa 1999?)
Wargaming chess, where everyone takes blind simultaneous moves.