 |
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Played more, loving it less by FABIO 09/14/2004, 12:42pm PDT | ||||
 |
 |
|||
Fussbett wrote: Do whirlwinds and other explosive stuff like missile launchers damage your own troops? I can't tell. I've seen melees where my whirlwind fires into it and a bunch of bodies go flying, but I can't tell if my guys flew from the whirlwind or something else. I'd like to think they don't damage your own guys because having them automatically fire into melees where your own guys will get killed is extremely fucking dumb. My first order of business when a massive fight breaks out is move my whirlwinds the fuck out of there. Heavy assault: These guys SUCK. Well, they don't suck, but they're fit only to take on infantry squads, and serve a very dimished role in every other capacity once you're 10 minutes into the game. You can't attach some (all?) units to them like the Apothecary and Librarian. I get a max of two regular squads at one time, for the SOLE reason of attaching a force commander or Librarian to them, and even then it's just so those two heroes are less of a target. I don't even bother with Apothecaries, since it seems like individual units heal almost instantly when out of combat anyways. Regardless, they can't get those weapon upgrades, and I even had a squad of four flamers (homosexuals) burn them to a crisp once. The flamer's effect on morale can't be understated, niggas be on the run. Just jump jet away from flamers. He can't outfit ALL his squads with them, or else he'll suck against anything else. The real problem is vehicles. As you saw with the Ork elephant thingy, the heavy assault is crap against vehicles. EVERYTHING was crap against the Ork elephant thingy. I'm hoping that some unit not available in the demo can counter it. Terminators maybe? They seemed to be the only unit left out. It says to get terminators you have to "steal a relic". Huh? Is that possible in the demo? Ah, I just realized that I didn't try the anti-vehicle melty-bomb upgrade on the heavies. That will probably make them useful in the end game again. Cool! Melti-bombs are deadly beyond belief. Just one of them can destroy an ork guard tower at full health, or take off one-half to two-thirds of a dreadnaught's health that otherwise would take your missile squad a minute to whittle down. Decimate a dreadnaught/tank instantly, jump multiple assault squads into an enemy base, instantly level a couple buildings, then jump out and wait for the melti-bombs to recharge before doing it again. Have you tried the frag grenade upgrade on the infanrty yet? It's awesome. Very actiony in that you see the bad guys coming, you click on frag grenade, toss it, and watch the bodies fly. I did, and it just seemed to cause a couple guys to go prone. Much less impressive than whirlwind shots or dreadnaught claws. Other new things I noticed and appreciated was how misses are graphically represented -- shots going long or wide. Especially the heavy artillery stuff like the Whirlwind, lobbing bombs at a base or into the enemy. A hit is pure decimation, but not guaranteed, so it's some nice extra tension -- and that works on the receiving end too. Above all it looks awesome and gives a "human" feel, not compuerly. Yes, graphical effects are very very nice, but I think that's the main thing this game has going for it. One thing I didn't like are Force Commanders who seem unkillable. At the end the computer will throw Force Commanders, one at a time, at my vehicles as they're mopping up the map, and those dudes take FOREVER to kill. Even with Whirlwind explosions juggling him and those mechs lasering him constantly. He doesn't do much harm to my tanks, but it's annoying, and you never want to send in troops, because he'll just swing hammer them. True dat. Maybe they were ment for coutnering the big scary demons in the final game? Tried a few skirmish games on multiple difficulty levels. It was just like Rise of Nations where the optimal strategy is to spend 75% of your time clicking build buttons, otherwise I would never be able to spend all the money I was raking in. Constantly clicking "build" (many build buttons: barracks build buttons, reinforcement build buttons, heavy weapon build buttons) and rally pointing new unit directly into the grinder worked much better than trying to take direct charge of ongoing battles. Not that I could control much in a battle. The infantry all looks the same. It's hard to tell the difference between assault and regular in the middle of mass combat, and impossible to tell which squad has what heavy weapons. The only micromanaging I ever managed to do was toss the occasional grenade or use battlecry/emperor's will. Rise of Nations had generals and commandos with special abilities, but how many people took a break from pumping out infantry from half a dozen barracks to actually use them? Everything just happens so damn fast (except for killing force commanders). In C&C Generals I'm patting myself on the back for when some fool rolls thinks he's won by rolling in half a dozen overlords into my base, only to have them all die when my battle bus loaded with RPG guys drives circles around their slow rotating turrets. In Dawn of War I'm crossing my fingers that I picked the right army configuration before I lose all control over a chaotic battle. Another minus: tons of custom options for mutliplayer game types. This will eventually lead to everyone online only playing the least possible fun one exclusively. Giving players a choice in online RTS games can only be bad. It does have those awesome graphical touches though, plus you get to play as puritanical conquistadors clad in power armor. I'll probably end up picking it up just for those, but I can almost guarantee that after beating the main campaign and trying a few multiplayer matches I'll get bored with it and go back to Generals. Here's hoping Battle for Middle Earth will be the next RTS of choice. |
||||
 |
 |
|||
|
