Firstly, I aint a cheerleader.....never have been, never will be.
Testing done on:
AMD Athalon 900Mhz
256Mb PC133 RAM
40Gb HDD (7,200rpm)
GF2 GTS
Soundblaster Live!
MS PP2
WW2OLJesus H Christ what a load of hype. Damn they did a good job of stirring up the market before dropping the product on us. And when I say dropped that's not quite what I mean.......dumped would be a better word. Still, not CRSs fault, Playnet wanted some money back and they got it (what was it? 20,000 copies sold on the first day?).
The promise: A 24x7 virtual war covering every theatre from WW2 plus a few more, incorporating FPS, tank sim, flight sim, ship sim.......in the pre beta FAQ it was stated: If a piece of equipment saw action in WW2 then it'll be in the game eventually. 10,000 player server capacity (10 servers each with 1000 capacity that players can move between seamlessly). Well that's a big promise but no reason why it cant be fullfilled.......eventually.
The launch: Beta? Ahem. 20,000 copies sold on the 1st day, 15,000 people trying to register at Playnet that night and the server had a capacity of.......100. Was up to 1000 within a few hours.......then they put up 5 or so more servers. So, er, what happened to 10,000 player capacity with seamless movement between servers? Well apparently it's on the way. Ok, no worries, we can wait.
Equipment available: A13 cruiser, Char, some other poxy slow allied tank, couple pzrs, few field guns (inc 88), 2 weapons for infantry, few trucks, 109, spit, Ju87 and some crappy French air force fighter. Um.......ok, we can wait.
The Terrain: Now waaaay back at the start of the closed beta, when CRS were releasing demo films and suchlike a lotta people said "oooo, crap terrain". The response from CRS was that the current terrain was merely a placeholder until the final terrain was finished........well the game went gold and we've still got the same terrain. Um..... it's kinda gone quiet on the subject of terrain but some folks are still expecting it to change for something better........ok, we can wait. As it stands the graphics remind me of Seal Team from 10 years ago but with a little more clutter. It's not too badly done though, plenty of dips and rises, bridges, buildings etc. Kinda makes you feel very small and all alone on a big scarey battlefield.......and therein lies the problem. From ground level it all looks fairly good, but take a plane up and it all goes downhill very fast. Visibility of the ground is only about 10 miles, so the world has a sort of cut off look. From 10,000ft the terrain really does look very, very bad.
Gameplay: There isn't any. That is to say there is no direction, yet. People spawn, go kill stuff and then die.......there is no limit on spawning, it's just a matter of how quick your PC loads up (comin to that later). Now this is a minor problem for all these 14 year olds who have no imagination......they spawn as inf, they run for 30 minutes in the wrong direction and then scream that it's boring. When they finally find a fight they run headlong into it and get shot straight away so they scream and scream and scream until they're sick. There's no rank system, there's a crappy mission system and an even worse radio system (comin to that as well) but there are plans......ok, we can wait.
Now this all sounds pretty bad so far but the game does have promise......The actual experience of playing is not that bad. The tanks move and gun very, very well......really feels good and the sight of an A13 bouncing around as you cross rough terrain is damn immersive. Silly little things like the tank filling up with smoke when you fire the main gun, external sounds getting louder and clearer when you open the hatch......all help.
To play as infantry you REALLY need a lift. However, there's a bug with multiple players riding on the same vehicle......randomly the game will dump those players on the ground and not allow any of em to mount any form of transport whatsoever. This happened to me with 3 others in a truck heading for a German airfield, it was kinda cool though cos we decided to do a Bravo 2-0 and yomp it to the field, hitting the deck and hiding when a German plane or tank went by.......and it took bloody hours, but strangely kept me amused and the boredom factor at bay. Then we reached a city that hadn't been finished yet.....just a big grey tarmac square on the terrain with no houses. Kinda killed the immersion. Ok, we can wait.
Another cool infantry action was another player and myself holding a treeline with some long grass.......musta killed 15 German troopers and took out 2 Panzers by emptying SMG clips into the view holes.......way cool. Then the Germans figured out that anything that went past this line of trees died so they shelled the crap outta it with HE. No infantry AT weapons yet.....ok, we can wait.
The Flight sim: LMAO, what a joke. 4 planes, very dodgy flight models, unreadable instruments and no pan view (snap views only, poxy). Well......plans are there for lots more planes and the FMs are apparently being reviewed. Ok, we can wait.
Other problems: Well lessee here......MINIMUM 256Mb RAM (I really mean that), better with 512Mb. Initial load times are measured in minutes, personally I go make coffee when loading. Spawning takes another few mins to enter the game world and then a further few mins for the HDD to stop churning. Best to cycle through all the views (including map) to pre-load before combat, nothing like a 30 second pause when switching to the gunsite to ruin your day. Frame rates on the ground are around 30FPS on my system, playable. In the air things get slower.
Right now there's arena's full of 14 year olds complaining that players are ignoring them......which is due to the radio not allowing local area transmissions, only specific channel and 'origin'. This means it's possible to not be able to communicate with a player stood next to you unless you shoot him several times to get his attention and then shoot letters into the ground to spell out what you wanna say.......being addressed in an update, ok.....we can wait.
Few annoying bugs, CTDs, invisible enemies, etc. One of the worst is that small terrain items (bushes, etc) are generated on the local PC so you think that you're trooper is hidden behind a bush whereas on your enemies screen you're lying down 10 feet from some cover. Ahem.
Once code is streamlined, graphics improved, FMs improved, more stuff added, rank and mission system finished, other gameplay additions finished things wont be bad at all.
And the point is: Wait. WW2OL WILL get better.
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Operation FlashpointThis is more like it. Graphics are how WW2OL SHOULD be.
I really, really, really like this game. That is not to say it's without it's problems, but what I see I don't mind.
The terrain: shreckin brilliant. Crisp, well drawn, plenty of cover (and yes, you can go right through the forests, not just the edges ala WW2OL). The actual terrain is visible for miles but terrain objects (trees, houses, etc) don't get drawn after a certain distance. This has no effect when on the ground but in the air you notice it......ok, it's a computer game, forgivable.
Equipment available: Wow. Far too much to detail here......loadsa light arms, 4 tanks, trucks, jeeps, boats, 4 heli's, grenades, flares, mortars, cars and the A-10. more comin too, Codemasters have announced an intention to release monthly updates with new equipment, new terrains and missions plus add-on campaigns......all downloadable, all at no charge. Um.....wonder how long that'll last, prolly not long but:
Multiplay: Right now it sucks. Netcode is bloody awful. However, this is all supposed to be fixed in the US release (patches will be available for the UK release to bring it to the same level as US release). However, in an interview with one of the developers it was said that there is no software limit on players in an MP game. It all depends on the host PC and bandwidth. There are plans for 1000 player persistent worlds.......ooer! If that does happen then the monthly updates could continue for a very long time....
Single player: Ya have 4 options, the campaign included with the game (damn good so far), one of the stand alone missions included with the game, download additional missions from the net, create your own.
Now the campaign included with the game is kinda cool. You start off as a buck private with an M16 in an infantry squad. 1st comes basic training, then you're in the game.....if ya ask me the campaign should be renamed: Tutorial. Everything is explained in the first few missions.....how to do stuff, tactics, gunnery, operation of vehicles (which is kinda handy since my game manual is entirely in Dutch). It's all very well done.
The biggest thing about the game though is the mission creator......it's possible to design entire campaigns (and plenty of people are). So far I've built a massive battle covering the entire south coast of one of the islands. 30 T72s, 10 M1A1s, 20 M60s, 140 soviet soldiers and around 80 US infantry. Loadsa empty vehicles lying around, absolutely shed loads to do......was playing it last night for 3 hours, got wounded in an assault on a town, returned to base to get to the ambulance, just as I got there a Hind flew over and started firing rockets at the base......dont remember putting that in the mission editor but it was damn cool nonetheless.
The enemy AI is really, really good. Dont wanna spoil the surprise for anyone but dont expect Quake here......the second you start shooting the enemy will be trying to outflank you, suppress you, call in support on you, you name it.
The AI of the campaign can be somewhat dodgy. See, this is more human error than game error though. Things like mission critical transport being destroyed, soldiers being wounded and crawling after you cos they cant walk any more (no carry option, may be addressed in a patch since lotsa people complaining). Campaign and mission builders really need to think about every eventuality.......
Speaking of which.......there's already mods and further campaigns in the works. So far there's talk of a Vietnam mod, a Normandy 1944 mod, Falklands 1982, and someone's designing a "Camp David" campaign. I'm sure they'll be LOADS of add-on campaigns in the near future.
The flight sim: It is? Nah, that aint a sim......this is where the game gets a tad arcadey, but it could be a lot worse than it is. The very fact that external view is available will turn a lotta people off.....but the good news is there's no padlock.
Or if there is then I dont know what padlock is in Dutch so cant find it in the manual.....took me 3 days to work out 'Verander Blaad' means external view. Guess I really should get an English manual from somewhere......nah, who needs it.
All in all OPF has the potential to be another WW2OL......but it's got a MUCH better grounding and once the netcode is optimised it wont have far to go to be a major challenger.
ok, now you can call me stupid and point out all the typo's.
[ 07-04-2001: Message edited by: Swoop ]
