Caltrops - Gamerasutra - Pity its Broken

Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra

by Mischief Maker 06/02/2006, 1:59pm PDT

FABIO wrote:

+ Grenades work. No longer are they super rubbery bouncy balls that have just a good a chance of hurting you as the enemy and can never, ever be thrown through a window except by the most masterful soldiers of dedicated grenadier classes. Who the hell can't throw a goddamn grenade? They're pretty much always right on target in this game, and do a lot of damage. The downside to them is you can't have a gun equipped while you're holding one, and switching weapons takes a lot of action points.

I also like this change, but ironically it's what breaks the game. Everybody is GREAT with grenades, there's no grenade skill. Everybody SUCKS with guns. Only a sniper rifle shot by someone with near-max rifle skill (built up by an RPG experience system) has a decent chance of hitting anything reliably, and even then you can only shoot once a round and do maybe 60% damage.

Plus the stat increases every level are randomly determined, which can potentially prevent you from pumping the specialist skills of your sniper chick or heavy weapons dude. Don't like your stats? Restart the entire level. Weren't paying attention before the level ended? Restart the entire campaign.

What this results in is you dropping everything but sniper rifles and grenades, emphasis on grenades. Why take a chain gun that barely lets you move 4 squares and has maybe a 10% of getting ONE hit in an entire autofire salvo, when you can grab a handful of grenades, be able to move and throw anywhere within one square of your maximum movement range and have a 99% chance of doing massive damage to an entire group of enemies, no matter if they're behind defensive cover?

This gets ridiculous on defense missions. Enemies with heavy weapons are the low priority, if you see an enemy who seems emptyhanded AAAH! Throw everything you have at him, because he'll zoom halfway across the screen, right up to your defensive placements in a suicide charge and blow up half your team. It's quite frustrating when your sniper chick gets him once, twice, but he still gets to you with one hit point and no negative side-effects and decimates everyone in one throw.

This is even worse on small maps because enemies instanly appear in designated "entry squares" with full action points. God help anyone who's within combined running-and-throwing distance (Which is way further than you can expect to hit anyone reliably with anything other than a sniper rifle.) Kinda like those annoying final missions in AW2 when the enemy has a factory that can instantly create units that can take action instantly, including artillery.