ShoobieRat
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"Band of Brothers: Road to Hill 80"
I just got ahold of this game this weekend.
Let me tell you...I am officially not impressed.
Okay, the strategy was tough, and its a refreshing new game style, with you being first-person but also in charge of a squad so dynamically. And the AI is decent.
But the rest of the game totally sucks. I could only play it for like 30 minutes at a time, because I just got so disgusted/fed-up/bored/angry.
First off, there's this stupid attempt to make you "think" and feel sad or wowed...which I totally agree with, but they did it so horribly that it comes off like some kind of dark comedy done for a low...low budget film. Overly dramatic, and if the characters weren't AI, I'd say they were bad actors. Plus all the voice dubbing was terrible. It sounded like the studio guys just hung out around a cassette deck and recorded randome crap.
Scenery: It was good, but could not compete at all with anything on the market today. The architectures looked great, until you got close to them. And correct me if I'm wrong, but when you're wandering around a map, isn't it a BAD thing to be able to easily see that the map ends just outside of your reachable area? The limits of the maps rendering distance was horribly covered (if covered at all) which totally sucked for realism.
AI: Okay, the AI was really great...for the first 4 or 5 maps. Then they became stupid and bothersome. They move to a cover position, but then instead of standing behind the wall (like they should) or even just getting confused and first standing in front of the wall (which I might even still understand), no, they stand at the END of the wall...so 1 of them dies instantly from machinegun fire, and the other two stand around staring at each other yelling "OMG! We're gonna die! Help! No way Sarge! No way!" Idiotic...
Oh, and did I mention that if you get yer whole squad killed, the game doesn't care? I thought this was supposed to be a team-oriented strategy game? I found out that it was often easier to just get my team killed off as soon as possible, then play the missions single-person.
Okay, but those things, would not have made the game so bad, if it wasn't for this: The damn strategic awareness view!
Oh god, I about cried. This thing, is totally worthless!
For those of you who don't know, the concept of the strategic awareness mode in BandofBrothers is this high 3rd-person view where yer supposed to be able to view enemy positions and strategize great manuvers to take them out. There's only one drawback...the viewing system is so dumb you can't navigate the view easily, AND the view doesn't take away the trees, so you can't see ANYTHING!!! I couldn't believe it. What good is a Strategic View if you can't bloody see anything?!? Sure, you could see identified enemy positions (and by "identified" I mean, shooting at you now), and those have a little halo of transparency that lets you see them through walls...but the transparency is only as big as the soldiers themselves, so you can't even see if they're next to a wall, let alone how to flank them! I often knew more about the enemy positions and who was shooting at me by just looking around rather than using the SA mode!
Next, vehicles.
Okay, they were neat, and they moved okay...but the enemy tanks were all identical and rather dumb compared to their infantry-based AI counterparts. Plus, all you had to do is run around behind them, press the use key, and bang, you climb up and throw a grenade into an open port. Tank dead. This is made even simpler by the fact that the tanks don't seem to recognize you unless you stand in front of them for over two seconds, or if you shoot at them. It's kinda like the Krauts are sitting inside going "we're invisible...shhhh...they can't see us if we don't attack...maybe they'll go away..." Also, while yer climbing up on the tank and lobbing a grenade into the open hatch, no one shoots at you...the bloody tank even holds still so you can climb on!
Weapons:
Okay, the weapons looked authentic, sounded pretty good, and worked (mechanically) pretty well. BofB even includes a aiming mode that lets you look right behind the sight. Only two problems: 1, you can't hit jack with a rifle if you ain't in aim mode, 2, you can't hit jack even if yer in aim mode. You've got to practically stuff the gun into their chest to score a hit, and btw, one rifle round from a mauser won't kill anything...which is just dumb. So you end up firing at an opponent till they are suppressed, then you have to flank them and literally run them over and beat them with the guns to kill them. Oh, and even though a German is crouched in "suppressed position" you can still see like their whole head or their leg or something shootable, but you can't shoot it...which totally sucks for realism and my patience. If I can see part of an enemy, and I can aim at it, I expect to be able to hit it. No, instead, the game puts the Krauts into some kind of invincible mode when they are in "suppressed position" so you can't hit them, even if you got a nice shot of their head. Ugh.
Levels:
The levels provided nice, historically acurate battlefields and towns, with good strategy scenarios and situations...but combined with the above problems, and the fact that it is INCREDIBLY simple to circumvent the battle plan and do something totally different, it just sucked. I mean, you could simply go a different direction than indicated by your "plan" and end up in the middle of a map, take out some peice of artillery easily (because all the guys you SHOULD have been fighting you walked around) and then the map is over. There's nothing holding you to actually playing the map as it is intended, and I'm not talking about the freedom of discovering yer own way to do things, I'm talking about being able to easily screw up the whole scene and plan of the map.FPS games need to have SOME level of direction built into the maps, keeping you from just doing anything. Imagine playing HL2, and yer fighting the combine soldiers who are on a wall, and instead of having to find cover and fight or lob a good grenade, you could just wander over, open a door next to the wall, walk around behind and kill them all? It'd be dumb. Well, that's the kind of stupid stuff you can do in BandofBrothers.
Realism:
I have to admit, there are three things that really impressed me for realism. 1, the Krauts were accurate looking and acting, 2, there's lots of stuff happening in the skies, which is rare for a WWII game, 3, the levels were based on real battles, and it shows. Other than that, it was really easy to tell that this was a game and not real. Even the Half-Life mod "Day of Defeat" (which I love) felt more real than this game! Terrible.
Characters:
Okay, we've all seen that great mini-series Band of Brothers, right? For a game that's supposed to be similar, the game totally sucks. None of the characters were that great. In fact, only Legget has halfway believable dialog. The rest of the game's cut scenes play out like cheap versions of Saturday-Night-Live skits, done by poorly-animated morons in WWII costumes. You get introduced to a character, who you're supposed to be all heartfelt with (some kind of life-long friend or some crap) and before you have any chance to really get into the character and make that player-character bond, the guy gets killed. So you feel NOTHING at all. I mean, if you played like half the game with this guy, and THEN he got whacked, you'd probably go "Aw, damn!"...But the way they did it in this game, is that you meet the guy, and then he gets whacked, with no story in between. It's stupid. Then you get this retarded cut scene where the NPC's are standing around going "Wow, he's dead" "That sucks" "Yeah, that sucks" "Wow, I never thought he'd go." "I don't think we're gonna make it."
Yer supposed to feel something, get involved, but this game never gives you the chance, so it's all wasted and turns out very overly dramatic and morose. When you combine this with the coffee-shop voice dubs and the crappy animation, it's just terrible. You'll be using yer escape key automatically in no time!
Making it Good:
What would I fix to make this game better? Well, first off, I'd fix the blood maps. It's alright to give a player options, but you don't just take a big flat map and put objectives all over it with no order or direction. If they had made the maps with 2 or 3 possible directions, they would have been great. Otherwise, there's no direction, and I just ended up wandering around killing stuff with no purpose or reason until it said "Objective Completed". Ugh.
Second, I'd fix the damn weapons. I know how to shoot a gun, I ain't a n00b in that respect. And I know that just because you have the crosshairs on something, it doesn't guarantee you'll hit it. But when I'm 10 feet from an object that's filling the crosshairs on a very accurate German rifle, I expect to be able to hit it. I hate a game denying you the ability to hit something you should be able to hit. If the target is truly in "Suppressed Position" you should not be able to see any of them...else you should be able to hit them. Also, when yer not in Aimed Mode, you should get some kind of targeting sight. In real life, you'd have a feel for the gun and be able to shoot fairly well from the hip. In a game, you don't get that. Lastly, I hate being stuck in a reloading process and not being able to switch guns. If I'm attacking someone and my ammo runs out, I want to be able to immediately switch to my pistol (or other gun) and keep fighting.
Third, I'd fix the damn tanks. Tanks were nuclear bombs as far as unequipped infantry was concerned. If I walk out in front of a tank, or I'm hiding behind a wall, I expect that tank to clear my guts from existance. Also, if I climb up on a tank, I shouldn't be able to just lift the hatch and throw a grenade in. They have latch-locks on those things, ya know! Also, I'd expect someone to pop up and start shooting at me!
Fourth, I'd make it so the enemy AI would outflank ME too. In the game, the enemy never moves past their positions. They either go up and down a wall, or fall back. They never send guys around to flank YOU instead. In real life, while I'm trying to outflank them, they'd be trying to outflank me! If you stay put and keep your head down, NOTHING will happen. The enemy will just sit there and have coffee. Dumb.
Fifth, while in Strategic Awareness mode, all the tress would be cropped down to their stumps so you could see the layout of the surrounding area. Also, the mouse would do all the camera view controlling, giving you a true 360-degree universal camera mount control, so you can actually study a plan and target.
Sixth, since this is a TEAM STRATEGY game, if your team all dies, you should fail the level. It's your job to lead the team to victory. You don't get victory if you kill them all.
Seventh, I'd make some real studio voice dubs for the characters, instead of dubs that sounded like they were done with a laptop microphone and some cassette tapes.
Eighth, give players the ability to save WHENEVER THEY WANT!!! This is a big beef of mine against UbiSoft games. You can only save the level, not yer particular spot along the way...which sucks. If you die, you have to play the whole level over again, and you might have been playing for over half an hour! This is a major downer and really drains my fun and patience, and after one death I'm already read to flick over to another game.
Alright...So go buy, enjoy, puke yer heart out, and start hating the TV commercials like me. Have fun!
I just got ahold of this game this weekend.
Let me tell you...I am officially not impressed.
Okay, the strategy was tough, and its a refreshing new game style, with you being first-person but also in charge of a squad so dynamically. And the AI is decent.
But the rest of the game totally sucks. I could only play it for like 30 minutes at a time, because I just got so disgusted/fed-up/bored/angry.
First off, there's this stupid attempt to make you "think" and feel sad or wowed...which I totally agree with, but they did it so horribly that it comes off like some kind of dark comedy done for a low...low budget film. Overly dramatic, and if the characters weren't AI, I'd say they were bad actors. Plus all the voice dubbing was terrible. It sounded like the studio guys just hung out around a cassette deck and recorded randome crap.
Scenery: It was good, but could not compete at all with anything on the market today. The architectures looked great, until you got close to them. And correct me if I'm wrong, but when you're wandering around a map, isn't it a BAD thing to be able to easily see that the map ends just outside of your reachable area? The limits of the maps rendering distance was horribly covered (if covered at all) which totally sucked for realism.
AI: Okay, the AI was really great...for the first 4 or 5 maps. Then they became stupid and bothersome. They move to a cover position, but then instead of standing behind the wall (like they should) or even just getting confused and first standing in front of the wall (which I might even still understand), no, they stand at the END of the wall...so 1 of them dies instantly from machinegun fire, and the other two stand around staring at each other yelling "OMG! We're gonna die! Help! No way Sarge! No way!" Idiotic...
Oh, and did I mention that if you get yer whole squad killed, the game doesn't care? I thought this was supposed to be a team-oriented strategy game? I found out that it was often easier to just get my team killed off as soon as possible, then play the missions single-person.
Okay, but those things, would not have made the game so bad, if it wasn't for this: The damn strategic awareness view!
Oh god, I about cried. This thing, is totally worthless!
For those of you who don't know, the concept of the strategic awareness mode in BandofBrothers is this high 3rd-person view where yer supposed to be able to view enemy positions and strategize great manuvers to take them out. There's only one drawback...the viewing system is so dumb you can't navigate the view easily, AND the view doesn't take away the trees, so you can't see ANYTHING!!! I couldn't believe it. What good is a Strategic View if you can't bloody see anything?!? Sure, you could see identified enemy positions (and by "identified" I mean, shooting at you now), and those have a little halo of transparency that lets you see them through walls...but the transparency is only as big as the soldiers themselves, so you can't even see if they're next to a wall, let alone how to flank them! I often knew more about the enemy positions and who was shooting at me by just looking around rather than using the SA mode!
Next, vehicles.
Okay, they were neat, and they moved okay...but the enemy tanks were all identical and rather dumb compared to their infantry-based AI counterparts. Plus, all you had to do is run around behind them, press the use key, and bang, you climb up and throw a grenade into an open port. Tank dead. This is made even simpler by the fact that the tanks don't seem to recognize you unless you stand in front of them for over two seconds, or if you shoot at them. It's kinda like the Krauts are sitting inside going "we're invisible...shhhh...they can't see us if we don't attack...maybe they'll go away..." Also, while yer climbing up on the tank and lobbing a grenade into the open hatch, no one shoots at you...the bloody tank even holds still so you can climb on!
Weapons:
Okay, the weapons looked authentic, sounded pretty good, and worked (mechanically) pretty well. BofB even includes a aiming mode that lets you look right behind the sight. Only two problems: 1, you can't hit jack with a rifle if you ain't in aim mode, 2, you can't hit jack even if yer in aim mode. You've got to practically stuff the gun into their chest to score a hit, and btw, one rifle round from a mauser won't kill anything...which is just dumb. So you end up firing at an opponent till they are suppressed, then you have to flank them and literally run them over and beat them with the guns to kill them. Oh, and even though a German is crouched in "suppressed position" you can still see like their whole head or their leg or something shootable, but you can't shoot it...which totally sucks for realism and my patience. If I can see part of an enemy, and I can aim at it, I expect to be able to hit it. No, instead, the game puts the Krauts into some kind of invincible mode when they are in "suppressed position" so you can't hit them, even if you got a nice shot of their head. Ugh.
Levels:
The levels provided nice, historically acurate battlefields and towns, with good strategy scenarios and situations...but combined with the above problems, and the fact that it is INCREDIBLY simple to circumvent the battle plan and do something totally different, it just sucked. I mean, you could simply go a different direction than indicated by your "plan" and end up in the middle of a map, take out some peice of artillery easily (because all the guys you SHOULD have been fighting you walked around) and then the map is over. There's nothing holding you to actually playing the map as it is intended, and I'm not talking about the freedom of discovering yer own way to do things, I'm talking about being able to easily screw up the whole scene and plan of the map.FPS games need to have SOME level of direction built into the maps, keeping you from just doing anything. Imagine playing HL2, and yer fighting the combine soldiers who are on a wall, and instead of having to find cover and fight or lob a good grenade, you could just wander over, open a door next to the wall, walk around behind and kill them all? It'd be dumb. Well, that's the kind of stupid stuff you can do in BandofBrothers.
Realism:
I have to admit, there are three things that really impressed me for realism. 1, the Krauts were accurate looking and acting, 2, there's lots of stuff happening in the skies, which is rare for a WWII game, 3, the levels were based on real battles, and it shows. Other than that, it was really easy to tell that this was a game and not real. Even the Half-Life mod "Day of Defeat" (which I love) felt more real than this game! Terrible.
Characters:
Okay, we've all seen that great mini-series Band of Brothers, right? For a game that's supposed to be similar, the game totally sucks. None of the characters were that great. In fact, only Legget has halfway believable dialog. The rest of the game's cut scenes play out like cheap versions of Saturday-Night-Live skits, done by poorly-animated morons in WWII costumes. You get introduced to a character, who you're supposed to be all heartfelt with (some kind of life-long friend or some crap) and before you have any chance to really get into the character and make that player-character bond, the guy gets killed. So you feel NOTHING at all. I mean, if you played like half the game with this guy, and THEN he got whacked, you'd probably go "Aw, damn!"...But the way they did it in this game, is that you meet the guy, and then he gets whacked, with no story in between. It's stupid. Then you get this retarded cut scene where the NPC's are standing around going "Wow, he's dead" "That sucks" "Yeah, that sucks" "Wow, I never thought he'd go." "I don't think we're gonna make it."
Yer supposed to feel something, get involved, but this game never gives you the chance, so it's all wasted and turns out very overly dramatic and morose. When you combine this with the coffee-shop voice dubs and the crappy animation, it's just terrible. You'll be using yer escape key automatically in no time!
Making it Good:
What would I fix to make this game better? Well, first off, I'd fix the blood maps. It's alright to give a player options, but you don't just take a big flat map and put objectives all over it with no order or direction. If they had made the maps with 2 or 3 possible directions, they would have been great. Otherwise, there's no direction, and I just ended up wandering around killing stuff with no purpose or reason until it said "Objective Completed". Ugh.
Second, I'd fix the damn weapons. I know how to shoot a gun, I ain't a n00b in that respect. And I know that just because you have the crosshairs on something, it doesn't guarantee you'll hit it. But when I'm 10 feet from an object that's filling the crosshairs on a very accurate German rifle, I expect to be able to hit it. I hate a game denying you the ability to hit something you should be able to hit. If the target is truly in "Suppressed Position" you should not be able to see any of them...else you should be able to hit them. Also, when yer not in Aimed Mode, you should get some kind of targeting sight. In real life, you'd have a feel for the gun and be able to shoot fairly well from the hip. In a game, you don't get that. Lastly, I hate being stuck in a reloading process and not being able to switch guns. If I'm attacking someone and my ammo runs out, I want to be able to immediately switch to my pistol (or other gun) and keep fighting.
Third, I'd fix the damn tanks. Tanks were nuclear bombs as far as unequipped infantry was concerned. If I walk out in front of a tank, or I'm hiding behind a wall, I expect that tank to clear my guts from existance. Also, if I climb up on a tank, I shouldn't be able to just lift the hatch and throw a grenade in. They have latch-locks on those things, ya know! Also, I'd expect someone to pop up and start shooting at me!
Fourth, I'd make it so the enemy AI would outflank ME too. In the game, the enemy never moves past their positions. They either go up and down a wall, or fall back. They never send guys around to flank YOU instead. In real life, while I'm trying to outflank them, they'd be trying to outflank me! If you stay put and keep your head down, NOTHING will happen. The enemy will just sit there and have coffee. Dumb.
Fifth, while in Strategic Awareness mode, all the tress would be cropped down to their stumps so you could see the layout of the surrounding area. Also, the mouse would do all the camera view controlling, giving you a true 360-degree universal camera mount control, so you can actually study a plan and target.
Sixth, since this is a TEAM STRATEGY game, if your team all dies, you should fail the level. It's your job to lead the team to victory. You don't get victory if you kill them all.
Seventh, I'd make some real studio voice dubs for the characters, instead of dubs that sounded like they were done with a laptop microphone and some cassette tapes.
Eighth, give players the ability to save WHENEVER THEY WANT!!! This is a big beef of mine against UbiSoft games. You can only save the level, not yer particular spot along the way...which sucks. If you die, you have to play the whole level over again, and you might have been playing for over half an hour! This is a major downer and really drains my fun and patience, and after one death I'm already read to flick over to another game.
Alright...So go buy, enjoy, puke yer heart out, and start hating the TV commercials like me. Have fun!
