StarDestroyer.Net BBS

In the Vein of my old SH3 review long ago:

I got this based on Sea skimmer's recommendations; it's a simply awesome Real time strategy game which breaks a lot of the conventions of the genre; suchly as:

1.) You are always in charge of everything -- in WIC, you'll be in charge of a single unit which is running around on the battlefield, while the computer controls the rest of the force and the battlefield. So while you might be fighting a fierce fight for a village; you'll see airstrikes, artillery etc coming in on the distance; being called in by the computer. It really does immerse you.

2.) You will be given inadequate resources to execute "puzzles". -- In WIC, the puzzles are straightforward, like "clear that village", "hold that bridge", and you don't have to carefully husband your units, and do everything just right. You get near unlimited reinforcements; plus unlimited airstrikes; and you can call in multiple strikes at the same time.

So when 1+2 are combined; you get to see simply ABSURD amounts of firepower being called in; which is only approrpriate in a full blown World War III situation; and really does make it feel like a war is going on, even if the computer AI isn't too bright; the firepower more than makes up for it.

And you cannot just help but love a game that lets you call in ARC LIGHT strikes.




The graphics are really good. As Skimmer has said to me over AIM; they could actually be used for a First Person Shooter; the one drawback is it makes even my rig scream for mercy; I have to turn down some settings to get an acceptable average of 40 FPS in the benchmark with a Quad Core computer and a GeForce 8800 GTS 600~ MB card.





But what really makes it shine is the FULL SUBTITLING.



Yes, that's apparently an old NIKE missile as a monument in the background in front of a High School. Great little details like that abound in the game.

They even at least managed to get some of the lingo right:

You know, there's like a 3 page World in Conflict thread in this forum.

It's full of spoilers for the missions, so there!

MKSheppard wrote:It's full of spoilers for the missions, so there!

Buuuuuulllllllssssshhhiiiitttt.

Lonestar wrote:

MKSheppard wrote:It's full of spoilers for the missions, so there!

Buuuuuulllllllssssshhhiiiitttt.

Get back to work, you!!! (says someone on their couch waiting for service calls)

So... can you call in an Arc Heavy strike?

If in the single player you've saved up enough TA to call in 3 B52 strikes, you seriously should have been spending it already

Chris OFarrell wrote:If in the single player you've saved up enough TA to call in 3 B52 strikes, you seriously should have been spending it already

Actually when I was playing the single player mode I found that I was completely swamped in TA (this was on hard). A simple choke point lets you grind through enemy units like crazy, giving near limitless TA.

I never ran out either. I often forgot to use it for ages, since the game is pretty easy until the absurdly hard 'take the four points in the middle of Russian Spawn Country' mission. Where's my fucking CAS and carpet bombing now????

Stark wrote:I never ran out either. I often forgot to use it for ages, since the game is pretty easy until the absurdly hard 'take the four points in the middle of Russian Spawn Country' mission. Where's my fucking CAS and carpet bombing now????

Use triple=heavy arty.

It isn't even the time limit that makes it hard (I've got 30m till the nuke hits), it's the 'spawning Russians at the front of destroyed warehouses and crushed cranes'.

I wish my rig could play this on anything other than "very low". Those graphics make me drool.

EDIT: The game's perfectly functional, and I'm having a lot of fun, make no mistake.

I'm getting a new gaming PC just for this beauty. Honestly, the game's still shots make me orgasm just looking at them. Seeing it in motion... wow.

I the sooner I get my new rig, the sooner I'll be able to play it the way it was meant to and join our SDN clan.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:I'm getting a new gaming PC just for this beauty. Honestly, the game's still shots make me orgasm just looking at them. Seeing it in motion... wow.

I the sooner I get my new rig, the sooner I'll be able to play it the way it was meant to and join our SDN clan.

My rig can already do that.

Anyway, it's an awesome game, but I've noted that a lot of the units that were in the preview screenshots and videos didn't make it into the final game - like the 2S9 Nona-S, and the BMP-3. It's pretty ridiculous, in my view, that they had what amounts to a Red Dawn scenario with shitloads of Soviet VDV, but not a single BMD type vehicle to be seen.

Perhaps the designers didn't want to succumb to TA-style unit spam. Is a BMD sufficiently different from a BMP in a game-level-of-detail sense?

(assuming there's a BMP-1 or -2 but not the -3)

Vympel wrote: My rig can already do that.

Mine will be even betterer. Hey, I hear you need upgrading soon, it's over a month old.

Anyway, it's an awesome game, but I've noted that a lot of the units that were in the preview screenshots and videos didn't make it into the final game - like the 2S9 Nona-S, and the BMP-3. It's pretty ridiculous, in my view, that they had what amounts to a Red Dawn scenario with shitloads of Soviet VDV, but not a single BMD type vehicle to be seen.

Did they ever correct the BMP-3's wacky firing time anyway? It was too fast to be the 105 mm and too slow to be the GSh-30.

Admiral Valdemar wrote: Did they ever correct the BMP-3's wacky firing time anyway? It was too fast to be the 105 mm and too slow to be the GSh-30.

Not in the game anymore to know

[Vympel Mode Engaged]The BMP-3 has a 2A70 100mm gun, not a 105mm, and it doesn't have a GSh-30, it has a 2A72 30mm autocannon.[/Vympel Mode Disengaged]

Shep, please post more screenshots immediately.

Ubiquitous wrote:Shep, please post more screenshots immediately.

Ask and thy shall recivce

Vympel wrote:
Not in the game anymore to know

[Vympel Mode Engaged]The BMP-3 has a 2A70 100mm gun, not a 105mm, and it doesn't have a GSh-30, it has a 2A72 30mm autocannon.[/Vympel Mode Disengaged]

It was five in the morning. I goofed.

And it's funny when you can marvel at screenshots from an RTS like this. Shall we do a similar thread for C&C:RA?

2000AD wrote:

Ubiquitous wrote:Shep, please post more screenshots immediately.

Ask and thy shall recivce

Shameless plug.

Thanks to Shep I'm now doing my part in defending American soil from the Communist invasion. Well...I decided to grab the demo, and it's not that his screenshots are so great they just gave me the heads up on what's a decent game.

I find the fact that the game was developed by the same people who did Ground Control 1 and 2 really helps, since I found their control schemes very easy to get in to.

That people into wargames could have not heard of WiC before is really strange to me.

That's because sometimes people into wargames have sloppy or incomplete writing. I said "heads up" when I should have said "finally got me interested in enough to try and wow it was fun."

I had seen trailers and screenshots before but Shep's little blurb finally made me interested enough. The third screenshot is just delicious. At first I thought it was from a movie and he was just making a joke.

Well, while it isn't personal, WiC has been the only even remotely interesting RTS coming for more than six months. And yet SDN is full of people saying 'wow I just tried it'. Waiting for someone to say 'it's good' when it's been discussed all around the world for months seems bizarre.

I guess my perspective is skewed by the fact that my ISP is a huge WiC whore with piles of servers and beta keys etc.