I haven’t played it in a while. But I am with you in regards to preferring it to PS (Squad still scratches a different itch). Now that you bumped this thread, think I’ll have to fire it up.
If you need more convincing, why not watch A Squad Player’s Impressions of Hell Let Loose?
but on my new pc it seems I can’t get into a game due to the anti-cheat they are using.
That’s a shame. It’s the same one as WarThunder (Easy Anti Cheat) and I’ve not had any bother from it in either game. However I have seen reports online. Hopefully you can google for some solutions
Weirdly, PS should just be “Squad, but WWII”, but they changed some fundamental things that really annoy me. Namely they got rid of the ammo-spawn system, which I think is essential for supply disruption tactics and for having that feeling of being “surrounded”. They also made it so that only 4 people on the entire team can drive the logistics trucks, and that only a single logistics player could build the FOBs. (Technically the squad leaders can, but as they or their infantry can’t drive trucks they never have supplies so it’s useless). I like playing the logistics roles in games, and I really, really hate the PS implementation. They should have just stuck with Squads.
Squad definitely scratches a different itch, but I keep going to HLL rather than it. Again, I wish HLL had copied Squad’s logistics, as I really dislike the current implementation of the “node” and resource system in HLL, and also the way engineers are dispersed through squads. Still, it’s better than PS!
PS does have a lot of positives: I prefer the “gunplay” in PS. You can actually change the sight ranges which is extremely useful on the AT weapons, whereas on HLL you have to memorize absurd guides like this:
https://www.hlltrainingcamp.com/forums/hll-advanced/panzerschreck-range-guide-reference-graphic
But the biggest problem with PS is that it’s completely dead. There are like 10 servers, of which 3 will be 100% full and the other 7 are completely empty. On PC, HLL has as many active players as Squad, andI think when the next big update lands (the British) it’ll attract in a lot more.
I enjoyed messing with it on PlayStation 5. Runs great there too. Probably also helping keep player counts up since they gave it away for a month awhile back.
Free weekend and 33% off sale on Steam.
New update: Falling Dark
I plan to give it a try.
Yeah this is a bit too realistic for my liking.
The game. or the dark update?
I’m not a huge fan of the new dark maps. I’m also not a huge fan of the way the update has taken my computer from 120fps to 50fps on certain maps :(
I looked at a few streams of this today. Parts of the game looked super immersive and somewhat revolutionary for a war fps experience. Other parts were a whole, whole, WHOLE lot of running to instantly die to who knows what. I’m not sure the good out weighs the bad. It made me think of WW2 online from many years ago. I’m thinking the middle age me doesn’t have the luxury of time to get enough of the great moments on offer here.
My memories of WWII Online are mostly of spawning in, spending 20 real life minutes running towards the fighting, then dying from…something…without ever seeing an enemy. That, and trying to hook up an AT gun to a truck. For like a half hour.
The game, it is the pace and time to do anything that is way slower than I prefer.
Red Orchestra 2 back in the day was just the right mix of realism and fun , at least for me. :)
Did anyone try this and enjoy it? If so, please explain how, because it seems to be populated with unpleasant people.
Note for the record I’ve never started it up but I and another person own it because I’m dumb. We’re old WW2OL vets that don’t know if we can keep up in this.
This was exacerbated during the free weekends because the place is full of newbies who don’t know what they’re doing, and so there is terrible outpost and garrison placement, meaning everyone spends a long time walking! Ideally there’s only like 20s of walking, if that, to combat. Most of the time you get exploded by artillery the second you spawn ;)
Then how do you know it’ populated with unpleasant people?
I play almost daily and rarely see anything bad. But I play on clan moderated UK servers.
ps, did you know WWII online is coming back?
It looks like they’re using smaller maps in this. Is this a test bed for a full version of the game with the one large map of part of Western Europe?
Not what I found at all - most, if not all, of my interactions with people were neutral or good. But as Pod said, it’s probably highly dependent on what server you play on. The ones I tried were heavily moderated/admin servers, which probably has a lot less tolerance for asshats.
As to the game itself…that’s tougher for me. I really dont like the “no kill cam or revelation as to how you were killed”. There were times i died and I’d consider it just about impossible - one memorable time i was in a cul-de-sac in a built up area and I got sniped trying to revive a friend who was also sniped (somehow). I looked around afterwards and can’t think of a single place or angle I could have been shot from. Hacks? I dunno, maybe just something wonky like de-sync, but without any kind of visibility, it just makes for frustration.
But, i had a lot of fun playing in tanks. The maps are pretty interesting and I love some of the details in the towns. Arty seems like it could be fun. I like some of the visualizations and some of the core concepts (player run servers, omg!). The question for me is does that whole bundle of stuff i like outweigh the couple of things i dont? The answer is probably not - running for 20 minutes to die while crawling through grass (most likely the ever-present “grass can be turned off on graphics settings and only ever impedes the player with it on” feature that few fps games have successfully moved past) is not fun. Nor is dying in uninterupted sequence just trying to get down a street or across a field. It’s a game for someone, im certain, just not me probably.
I suppose it’s a mistake judging games like this from the admittedly awful Steam discussion thing and reddit. Watched a guy stream last night and it looked pretty nice.
I just read a lot of noise about “hate new players” and such that it makes me really not want to be a new player.
I also don’t know if I have the reflexes anymore either. But since I own it and can’t refund it, I’m sure I’ll try it out eventually. I know there’s no tutorial so I’m trying to use Twitch to figure out how it works.
This is also free to play on Steam this weekend.
I think my problem with ‘realistic’ shooters like this, and what I see in ‘Squad’, is that the aiming control scheme allows for too much precision. I remember Arma2’s mouse aiming was messier and took longer to settle from movement, which felt better for simulating the slop of real life. I see people getting rock solid aim in no second flat.
VR also brings a better realism which is more skill dependant on getting a bead, especially when moving, though the lack of bounce to prevent motion sickness gives a tad too much stability.
But I think it’s the thing that pushes me away from trying games like this, where the mechanics are more unforgiving, but killing someone from a mile away is too easy.
Hell Let Loose is a fantastic game that has a hundred failure points. If your Commander sucks, or you don’t have one, you fail. If even one of your squad leaders sucks, you fail. If the rank and file soldiers don’t have mics, you fail. If the recon squads just farm kills instead of taking out enemy artillery, you fail… and on and on. I’ve had a lot of fun in the game, and I do recommend it as worth trying for those who are interested – I think it’s one of the better realistic shooters. But ultimately I just felt like there’s too many ways for the game to crumble into unfun one-sided fights, disorganized zergs devoid of the tactics you’d want to see, and long stretches where you don’t do much of anything but die over and over.
Artillery looks amazing though. Getting exploded is an audio visual feast that usually brought a smile to my face.
This is a pretty good summation of my experience in FPS MP and why I’ve not played much if any of it since Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.
This has been my experience with hell let loose.
I want to like it more, but I have found a lot of maps and playtime just end up a meat grinder. I played a ton of Red Orchestra, but this doesn’t quite hit the spot like that did.
Squad, otoh, has never felt that way, because even when you are being over-run, you still can go back to the main spawn, grab a vehicle and make a new defensive front.
The few hours of hell let loose I have played the majority of games ended with one side just completely stuck on an objective, usually at a choke point, with no progress either way until the game times out.