Would be nice to get word on whether or not the enemy turn times is going to be MUCH improved in the full version. It’s crazy how long their turn takes and I’m on a 2.5ghz machine. I dig the game, but don’t think I want to drop 45$ to spend 80% of the time watching a red bar slowly fill up.
For me, the cam is the best and worst thing about it (having done the tutorial and briefly dabbled in the Axis mission). I’m sure the fix will help a lot.
I really liked the warehouse fight in the tutorial! And for some reason I like that anonymous recruit better than the characters in the Axis mission…Maybe because I was initially expecting fairly generic soldiers and not full-blown (and maybe overdrawn) characters a la JA2 or “The Guns of Navarone.”
Use the camera hack. The camera was driving me crazy without it. Maybe it’s just me, but the default camera doesn’t seem to ‘angle’ enough. It’s always a variation on ‘top down’, no matter what you do. With the hack, it goes down to street level. And there’s no more annoying camera bounce when you zoom out fully.
Looking forward to this one hitting the shelves.
DeanCo–
AS someone said earlier, shooting through walls is sweet. I spotted a guy between two buildings that I could not reach without great risk. The medic was inside one of the buildings, two rooms away and next to where one of my female soldiers had her head literally blown off. He picked up some heavy, high caliber weapon that had a stand attached (forgive me, I am not the wargamer, weapon nut that many of you are :) ). I had him aim at the wall, fire, and a hole opened up in the brick and mortar. There was the soldier crouched in the alley. He turned and got one shot off at my apron-wearing medic and the next round Doc proceeded to open up on him. Brick was flying and another hole opened up in the adjacent building. When it was all over, that Nazi bastard had been blown out of the alley and all the way into the other building where he lay dead.
Another time, I lobbed a grenade into the middle of 3 or 4 enemy combatants, it blew, they went flying in seperate directions, and one went through a plate glass window. He flew through it with the sound of glass shattering only a split second after the grenade’s explosion and he had been catapulted from the street and into a building several feet away.
I would say in some ways it is superior to JA2…on the surface. Without the full version and with my friggin’ technical difficulties, it is too early to tell. Sufficed to say; Me likey.
Yeah, I’m looking forward to it also, but the demo is chock full of crashes and bugs. I’m hoping for more from the full version.
Maybe the performance will even out a bit. Or should I say,
Please turn-based gaming gods, I sacrificed Empire of Magic along with 40 of my very own bucks at your altar. Help to improve Silent Storm’s performance on low-end machines between now and the game’s release. I beg of you.
:P
Performance isn’t a problem for me other than enemy turns.
Crashing on start, crashing on turns, crashing in general. Can’t make it all the way through either Axis or Allies side without it crashing.
I’m having no crash issues. But the game seems pretty hard at first, at least in the allied mission. Then I figured out that the best thing to do is to put the game into turn-based mode immediately, so you can control your character’s initial directions a bit better. After that, it’s merely tense.
Someone pointed out that throwing distances for grenades start out very limited. But you can still drop them with great effect out a second story window into a crowd of enemy soldiers trying to enter a building. 8)
Man, house-to-house is brutal. This captures that feeling much better than JA2. I liked JA2 a lot, but the tactical engine here seems a lot more sophisticated.
Ditto on what Loyd said regarding the grenades. I pretty much had to jump from around corners toss one and jump back. The range is only a few feet it would seem.
Those are some seriously bombed out buildings. They are worse than Swiss cheese. I spent the first half of the Allied mission not realizing I could climb up one floor at a time and the Axis soldiers were firing off shots from all over the place. It was worst when I was in a building and did not realize I needed to look up down and all around.
I like the soldiers sighted and soldiers heard icons. I miss the feature that JA2 had which told you how many enemies each merc could see and then you could click on that number to cycle through them.
BTW, my technical difficulties had nothing to do with crashes. I have had zero crashes. Mine is all slow down during fire fights and choppy sound during the intermittent dialogue from my and enemy soldiers. The enemy turns do seem a bit long, but I thought JA2 had fairly long turns as well. I could just have a hazy memory. I have not timed them, but they are tolerable.
While I have you all here, I have an AMD Athlon 800mhz and I have no idea at the moment what the mobo is. ANy idea how much or what I can upgrade that to? I know enough to change stuff out now and again, but with regards to compatability issues I am only slightly above clueless.
I like it a lot. I suck at it (managed to clear the Axis mission on normal after the third try), but that doesn’t matter that much. Ran into my first bug first time I played the Allies, Viper for some reason decided to almost jump down where he couldn’t jump down and spent the rest of the time in “about to jump” mode and therefore out of action.
I don’t think I like the voices that much. They are a bit repetitive.
I had great luck with grenades using the Guernica chap.
The physics really add to the atmosphere of the game, I think.
I’m definitely favouring the Balkan/Spanish/Italian characters, I think it’s because of the more gritty, partisan feel.
{Tyjenks receives a knock on his door}
{He opens the door, to see two skinny pale men in casual clothing}
Skinny Pale Man #1: Are you Tyjenks?
Tyjenks (warily): Yeess.
Skinny Pale Man #2: We’ve received a report of a lack of Geekness in you. Hand over your credentials please.
{Tyjenks hands over his Geek Card}
{The men huddle over the card in fastidious scrutiny}
Skinny Pale Man #2 exclaims: This card is a forgery!
Tyjenks: Who the hell are you guys, anyway?
Skinny Pale Man #1: We’re the Geek Squad. We enforce Geekness.
Tyjenks: I… I meant to get a real card. But when I went down to take the test I looked around and they were all Geeks! So I had to go to the alley a few blocks down.
Geek Squad Member #1 puts his arm around Tyjenks: Its ok, lad, we all make bugs from time to time. There are classes to become a Geek, you know. Here’s the email address of a place…
Geek Squad Member #2 looks puzzled as he scans his report: It says here you’ve made nearly 4500 posts to Quarter to Three. You really want to be a Geek, don’t you?
Tyjenks with tears in his eyes clutches the email address to his chest: Yes, Yes I do! Thanks for everything guys!
Geek Squad Member #1: Just doing our job, sir… just doing our job.
{Geek Squad Members #1 and #2 carefully take an ancient software out of their pack, lay it down on the ground, and kneel next to it facing Northwest}
Tyjenks: What the…
Geek Squad Member #1: Shhh… we’re worshipping the Geek god. Come join us… it can be your first lesson.
{Tyjenks joins the others in prayer}
Geek Squad Members #1 and #2 intonate: Grant us bug-free leet skills, O Gates…
800MHz may be pre-socket A, in which case upgrading will be a major effort involving CPU, motherboard and memory. When you open up the case, do you see the CPU as a big cartridge in a slot, or a small package under a heatsink in a socket?
[quote=“Case”]
800MHz may be pre-socket A, in which case upgrading will be a major effort involving CPU, motherboard and memory. When you open up the case, do you see the CPU as a big cartridge in a slot, or a small package under a heatsink in a socket?[/quote]
Sorry Case, I am at work. I will check when I get home. I seem to remember watching the guy put it together and take out an 850mhz Athlon that would not post on reboot for the one in there now. Like I said, it was a hodge-podge of parts he threw together for me last year from a graveyard he had in his house. Thanks Loyd.
Koontz - that was kinda funny. :) And yes, I am a wannabe Geek, but my wife would strongly disagree with the wannabe part.
True Geeks worship The Torvalds.
I’ve beaten the game in Russian (it’s on sale since Aug. 21 in Russia and CIS), I can tell you something about the full version.
Yes, you will be able to choose up to 5 characters at the base. If any of them dies, you can: a) reload your last quicksave; b) hire another. Didn’t try what happens if I run out of people, though.
The good: lots of weapons, nice gfx/sfx and positional sound, pretty animations, tons of small details on levels, death animations and the ability to shoot through walls and destroy the scenery, mods support.
The bad:
- weak balance (who needs pistols, knives and all other crap when you have amazing sniper rifles and submachine guns? Even bazukas aren’t that necessary, though fun when used in right place);
- the lack of character interaction. The story itself is very simple and predictable. Expect no JA2-style conflicts between the members of your squad or cool villans;
- the same “kill the bad guys - capture the bigwig - pixel-hunt the premises for secret documents” routine repeats in 90% of the missions;
- experience points are given not for killing people, but for completing mission objectives and gathering “vital documents”. A very effective, but lame way of controlling the advancement of a player’s team;
- dead people, blood, debris can become a real resource hog on larger levels (though maps are usually small and prolong the gameplay by throwing 20+ enemies at you);
- good pathfinding code (enemy soldiers actually USED the hole I made in a concrete wall), but disappointing AI. Sometimes they even do not care to check if there’s a friendly unit standing before them when firing;
- no multiplayer support at all;
- a completely unnecessary attempt to insert a sci-fi story full of annyoing cliches into a perfectly normal world;
- no breakdowns/misfires for all weapons. How come WWII weapons have become reliable? The Russian PPSh was a horrible piece of crap, the Germans had their troubles too. The feature was in pre-beta builds, but was removed after the beta testing;
Yet my overall feeling about Silent Storm is good. Yet, it has lots of unpleasant drawbacks (including some interface mistakes; I hope they rectify them soon!) but ultimately fun. But I am not going to play SS the second time, even with the random mission generator (they have a kind of a dynamic mission campaign). It’s more like of a good side-scroller arcade. I came, I played, I won, I uninstalled.
Did you try the game on higher difficulties? Because I’ve heard the AI becomes a lot better/cooler on impossible. I like the demo a lot, but I don’t think it’s the right kind of game for me.
Yep, I tried. The same thing happens on both hard and impossible - the AI just keeps making the same stupid mistakes and missing good opportunities to eliminate my team. I just hope they will patch this by the time the English version hits the stores.
Hey Nomad,
As one OBSESSED with random maps…how are the game’s randomly generated filler missions? Do they all start looking the same after a while? Are they more than just fighting random patrols? Do they have objectives eyond killing the patrol?
The filler missions are just simple… fillers to prolong the gameplay. I dunno, my editor finished the game and never participated in a single random encounter. There are no other objectives rather than “kill this bunch of Germans/Allies” and hence, no experience to gain (you obtain exp. points only by completing mission objectives and picking up vital documents scattered around the storyline levels).
As for the look… Yes, even though each region features its own distinct set of prefabs and their combinations, they become familiar quite fast. And the other downside of random missions is that you rarely have the chance to stumble upon a really exciting new weapon or object. The best places to get cool equipment are storyline levels and the base. After playing about a dozen of random encounters in different regions, I found them pretty much useless.
By the way, some of the storyline missions are also random-generated, they simply have additional parameters such as locations of vital documents and bigwigs to protect or capture.
It seems Nival gets most of there games right but misses certain things from the games they are trying to emulate. Etherlords was great in the Magic combat parts but really tedious in the HoMM/Strategy part. Evil Islands had great tactical combat but excruciating character development… and Silent Storm seems to handle general turn based JA2 combat well, but messes up the randomness and character nuances of JA… they’re great developers but alot of features in there games seem to be lacking some sort of cohesiveness … good in parts but ultimately disspointing in the whole (in each of there US released games at least…). Still, I commend Nival for taking on subgenre’s that most American developers have already discarded.
etc