Anyone get this game yet? If so, how is it?
I hadn’t even heard of it until about 2 weeks ago, but after seeing the reviews my interest radar went up a bit. Still, think I’m going to wait for the price to drop a bit before checking it out unless it gets some good buzz.
It seems pretty cool but the only time I’ve had time to play so far I was in the first mission and hit the wrong key and dropped my silenced pistol in the dark. It was like something out of Austin Powers or some other bumbling spy farce. Here I am surrounded by patrolling armed guards in the middle of an enemy base, crawling around in the dark feeling around for my gun by constantly hitting the “pick up” key. I think someone should revoke my license to kill…
IGN review date: Feb 04, 2003
Actual game ship date: March 04, 2003
The demo didn’t impress me. Descent graphics and the gameplay seemed like a poor mans shooter with weak stealth aspects. Maybe if I hadn’t just finished Splinter Cell I might have thought better of it.
I tried the demo and noticed the “quickload” key is F7. Yet I have not found the “quicksave” key yet. Can someone help me find it?
Oh wait, it doesn’t exist. Never mind. Gee, maybe IGI3 will finally have this #1 requested feature.
Also, no compass in HUD? And why doesn’t <ESC> escape the map/obj screen?
Otherwise, awesome demo!! :D
a game thats very okay. You won’t remember it in month.
You can save your game any time you like, they just call it “Upload mission data to HQ” for some reason.
I can’t help but compare it to the IGI demo. I must have played that 50 times before the game was released. It was like there was always some new way to approach the mission, some new weapon to be found. The IGI 2 demo seems to have none of this, just plain basic gameplay without all of the extras that made IGI fun.
Of course, it could be that it’s not a new game anymore. Anyway, even if it’s just IGI with new missions and a save feature I’ll pick it up, I loved the game and they can’t have messed it up that much.
As I said, there’s no “quicksave”.
For those of you who complained that “oh no! Splintar Cell is too linear for my delicate, refined gaming tastes!”, I submit Exhibit A, level one of Project IGI2. It’s certainly not linear-- you can run around the gimongous level doing pretty much whatever the fuck you want to get to the objective.
However, the stealth mechanics are so screwed up that they’re basically worthless. Example. In the final lift room, I activate a loud-ass generator and trigger some switches to call a massive 30x30’ mechanical floor lift from deep underground. All the while, two guards are standing nearby, doing nothing. Clearly these guards wouldn’t notice a GIANT MECHANICAL LIFT and a LOUD GENERATOR being activated right behind them, no more than twenty feet away. Naw.
Which reminds me: it’s a good thing there’s that stealth indicator bar on-screen!
I don’t know about you guys, but I’ll take stealth mechanics that make sense and actually work over a meaningless directive that the game be “non-linear” any old day. The gameplay is the part that matters; whether you have a choice to go to points B or C from point A isn’t material.
I played the earlier demo (which included the silly lift that wumpus mentions) and the new demo. The only things I really like are the giant levels and the AI search routines. If you trigger an alarm, the AI sends out a squad that sweeps the area.
In addition to the funky stealth stuff, it also suffers from Stingy Quartermaster Syndrome. If I’m the hotshot operative with the $10000 silenced sniper rifle, is it beyond my employer’s ability to give me more than 20 rounds of ammo for it? Apparently so.
" If you trigger an alarm, the AI sends out a squad that sweeps the area. "
Its not that impressive. I triggered the alarm before crossing the river. A group of guards comes out and starts running from one end of the compund to the other, standing at one end for a few seconds before going back. They do this over and over while I lay on the ground watching them. One gaurd keeps running right by me but never sees me. They just repeat themsleves. Nothing to right home about IMO.
I think they improved the search AI between the two demos - it was pretty weak in the first one. In the second demo, the squad of four comes out, but they seemed to be searching around a more before heading back. It looks like they fan out some from where you were when the alarm triggered. If they see you, they start throwing grenades and flanking your sighted position. I was shocked in one fight where I thought I had cleverly sneaked around a hill to a different firing position, but one of the AI soldiers went over to my previous position, then came around the hill behind me.
Nevermind that they would not have gotten that far if I had not run out of sniper ammo.
What’s your point? I also had “review code” CDs for this game long before it shipped.
Peter
Codemasters sent out a message that the “review code” sent in mid- or late-February wasn’t really quite the final “review code.” I have no idea what version of the code it was based on; it’s hard to imagine it’s the same code available in a box today. I guess it makes sense to someone to send websites “finals” two months before a game’s ship date so they can get those one-day reviews out a month ahead of a game’s actual ship date.
This game is insane. It wants you to use stealth, but provides piss-poor feedback as to why you actually get detected. Sure, there’s the stealth-o-meter, but I still don’t understand when/how I’m being detected.
The “penalty” for being detected is that the AI in the area scrambles looking for you. If the alarm is triggered, either through cameras seeing bodies/you, or through the AI running up to the alarm switch and activating it-- then the AI is activated in a much larger area and reinforcements are called in.
The crazy thing about this is that the enemy AI for searching is horrible. I watched (with thermal vision) a bunch of guys run around aimlessly inside a building throwing flashbangs (“GRENADA! boom! GRENADA! boom! GRENADA! boom!”) for a minute and a half. The combat AI is okay-- they’ll throw grenades, roll, and run around cover. But they tend to bunch up in kill zones and choke points, so you can bide your time and wait for them to come to you, blasting each one in turn.
It’s still difficult, even when exploiting the crappy AI, because there are so many of them, you don’t have access to health packs (that I have found), and guns are fairly lethal.
So here we have a game which demands that you play stealthily, and if you don’t, penalizes you so harshly for not doing so-- playing as a simple run-and-gun doesn’t appear to be an option. And yet, playing properly with stealth is basically unworkable due to the crappy stealth gameplay model. So you end up being forced to suffer through the detection penalties, and you have to exploit the AI to merely survive. Pretty goddamn cheap.
That is, unless you want to tediously creep around the level for an hour trying to decipher the weird-ass detection rules. Whee!
I don’t remember stealth being this unforgiving in the original IGI. I do remember being incredibly frustrated that I couldn’t save my game. Somehow the developers have managed to make the sequel just as frustrating as the original, even WITH the newly added “upload mission data” save ability. Kudos to you, sirs!
The gameplay is the part that matters; whether you have a choice to go to points B or C from point A isn’t material.
Except that having and making such a choice can constitute gameplay. IGI2 may be badly implemented, but let’s not badmouth nonlinearity qua nonlinearity…
“So here we have a game which demands that you play stealthily, and if you don’t, penalizes you so harshly for not doing so-- playing as a simple run-and-gun doesn’t appear to be an option.”
I don’t see that. It looks to me like a standard shooter with a poor attempt to add stealth to it, which in the end doesn’t matter if you do it or not. Again I triggered the alarm on that level before I crossed the river or even got into the building to cross on that conveyer belt(maybe 1/3 through the level?). I continued on and finished the level fine. I was running low on health but it wasn’t that hard.
Except that having and making such a choice can constitute gameplay. IGI2 may be badly implemented, but let’s not badmouth nonlinearity qua nonlinearity…
Nonlinearity does not make a game enjoyable. It’s a mistake to ask developers to focus on that. Concentrate on the solid core gameplay first, then whatever the hell they want to add on top of that, fine. But it’s really not required, and it a lot of cases, can actually be detrimental to gameplay. There’s little I hate more in games than having no freakin’ clue what I’m supposed to do next. Except maybe backtracking. Holy god, is backtracking ever tedious! Good games offer the ILLUSION of nonlinearity, but that can easily be delivered in the form of flexible gameplay. Eg, in Splinter Cell there are a solid four different ways you can approach any given room/encounter. So what if you have to go through room A to get to room B? Or if there aren’t any side quests. Immaterial to actual enjoyment of the game. Now if you’re the type of freakish gamer who wants to play through every game sixteen times, maybe. But that’s not developing for the mainstream.
I don’t see that. It looks to me like a standard shooter with a poor attempt to add stealth to it, which in the end doesn’t matter if you do it or not. Again I triggered the alarm on that level before I crossed the river or even got into the building to cross on that conveyer belt(maybe 1/3 through the level?). I continued on and finished the level fine. I was running low on health but it wasn’t that hard.
The first level (which is the demo level) doesn’t penalize you as heavily for detection as subsequent levels do. I end up methodically assassinating everyone in the level by exploiting quirks in the AI. It’s sort of enjoyable, but I’m fairly sure it wasn’t at all what the developers had in mind.