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| Brothers in Arms is sitting about a third of the way finished on my desktop by athodyd 10/28/2005, 8:06pm PDT | ||||
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I really really wanted to like this game (it has iron sights!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) but it consistently left me cold. The level design is so damn linear it hurts, and while this is okay in virtually every other WWII FPS I've ever played, the emphasis on tactics and strategy and suppressing fire and turning little red floating circles into floating white circles reduces each firefight to a logic puzzle with one correct tactical solution that can be only slightly deviated from. Here's something I wrote a while ago after playing through the demo:
Hmm, the Germans have set up two AT guns in a church courtyard? Well, maybe I can duck into this deserted house, go up the stairs, and... hmm, this door is apparently painted on. Well, I can open this gate into an alleyway while my men keep them occupied and... odd, that gate sure looked like something I could open. Can I maybe just kick it down? It looks pretty flimsy... well, maybe there's an alley somewhere or wait are these buildings really all joined into one big clump? What the--okay, I guess I'll double back to nearly the beginning of the level, take the one passage to the other side of the buildings, and then scamper back to where all those screams are coming from. American screams, it would seem. Huh. I still remember that stupid little fucking gate, too, which looks totally short enough to jump across or at least sort of clamber over or fucking knock it down with the butt of your rifle or SOMETHING, but no, it is an impassable and indestructible barrier to help funnel you into the pre-planned action scenario. It killed both the tactics boner and the realism boner for me, and those are two crucially important boners especially in a WWII game. At the time, I figured the unopenable doors and gates and such were due to engine constraints since everything in the demo looked so bland and underwhelming, but now that I've played more of the game I think it's because the amazing sophisticated true-to-life AI isn't set up to handle wide and varied fields of fire. Another thing the AI isn't set up to handle is me emptying a clip of .30-06 into and around its back (I really really don't like the artificial inaccuracies that seem to be built into the guns) from ten feet away, because after I had reloaded and peeked back out from behind my cover Fritizie was still gazing placidly off to the south, possibly daydreaming about the line of sophisticated sports sedans he would design after the war. It's been a few months since I played it; the last thing I remember was running out into a big deceptively open field where MG42s were lying in wait to cut me down... oh hey, here's a convenient trench I can use to run from one MG nest to the other while my squad distracts the enemy. Fancy that. At any rate, there were at least a few times where I had fun, and since I got it for free I suppose I can't complain too loudly. If you're really desperate for suspenseful squad-based suppressing-fire action that also features at least two ways to get to a certain target, go ahead and get DOD: Source and hunt around until you find a decent clan server where people actually use the voice comms and a modicum of strategy. Then be incredibly frustrated by the shitty fucking maps that were chosen for the relaunch (god dammit, the only possible way to have fun on Avalanche is to have an all-pro Allied team, otherwise you're either in a turkey shoot or a punishfuck WHERE THE SHIT IS CAEN2). |
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Brothers in Arms demo review by 10/28/2005, 2:56am PDT  Brothers in Arms is sitting about a third of the way finished on my desktop by 10/28/2005, 8:06pm PDT Full game pre review: boy is it hard. by 10/29/2005, 8:28pm PDT front page special should go to the cable brothers reviewing brothers in arms NT by 10/29/2005, 10:34pm PDT Or we should do a feature called "Bruddas in Arms." by 10/30/2005, 1:54am PDT For fucks sake BUUUUUUMP by 10/04/2006, 12:03pm PDT That article could really help bring you two closer to one another. by 10/04/2006, 12:31pm PDT BiA was not bad NT by 10/04/2006, 11:48pm PDT Coop games would be awesome. In the HL2 engine. HINT NT by 10/04/2006, 4:55pm PDT |
