Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: bssybeep

Some things that bug me:
1.Weapons sounds. Very muted and wimpy sounding, nothing like JA2.Did you try adjusting the "effects volume" in the options panel? I had the same complaint until I did this.

2.Merc personalities. Again muted and soleless. I'm playing JA2 and Hired Guns in parallel and JA2 has so much more personality and is just more fun.Agreed, this is my biggest complaint in the game. To be fair, however, the mercs do have somehwhat different personalities...and the more you play, the more differing things they say. Still not up to JA2 standards, though.
3.As mentioned elsewhere, the lack of accuracy feedback.This only bothered me in the early part of the game. Once your mercs accuracy rating improve, it becomes much less of any issue.
4.The bugs: The broken reaction phase. I'm also experiencing a slowdown in the AI's turn. AI turn takes 5-10 min! The game has crashed several times.The lack of a reaction phase doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would. I just make sure my mercs are all under cover before I hit the "end turn" button. I've been playing multiple hours a day since it's release, and I've only experience one slow down. That was yesterday when I kept the game running while I hosted Christmas. I came back about eight hours later, and everything was running slowly, like it had used up all my RAM. There may be a memory leak in the game. Anyway, I saved and reloaded, and that fixed it. Only had one lockup of the game. This was while trying to save once. Never happened again, though.

Overall I'm disappointed with my purchase. I'm playing JA2 with the latest 1.13 patch and it is a lot of fun.Actually, I felt the same way when I had only played HG for a few days. But the longer I've played it, the more I like it. The way mercs can move is very impressive. I really like the strafe move, that alone is a huge improvement from JA2(at least, I don't remember that being in JA2).

For Hired Guns, they need better sounds for weapons fire, redo the merc voices, and iron out those bugs.

quote:

ORIGINAL: fbs

5. Gotta get a writer to add some jokes; JA starts with a big joke, which is the oddball questions to get your traits (who you wanted to be? Marylin Monroe? hello, you got the Neurotic trait.. :^). The oddball questions are the only joke kept in game.

6. Then use.. what?... a writer (!) to put some character in these storylines. In this one you get to save a shaman that is prisoner in the base... uh?... in JA you had to save a girl that was prisoner in a prostitution house - much more interesting, and more engaging.

7. Then get the writer to beef up the NPC personalities too; I remember that it was hilarious in JA that I had to find a new porno movie to get a bored movie rental lady out of the way.

8. And as you now have a writer, make him re-write the manual. I played for days until someone said CTRL+A selects all... gah, that's not written anywhere in the keyboard shortcuts. The keyboard shortcuts also misses that you must CTRL click to use the medikits.


So, a lot goes back to the writer. Also, the game designer probably didn't play the game -- or at least he didn't try to get any fun from playing it.

Now, having said that, I must point out that the artwork, 3D animation and 3D programming are very nicely done. Sometimes the game engine amazes me, for example when I caught my merc leaning sideways so that he would avoid an obstacle when shooting - very impressive. Also when I managed to shoot someone out of the North base bridge - very nice when the dude fell down into the river.


Cheers :^)
fbs

1. The AI is really poor.  If you want to win on most of the maps try setting your mercs as a group up in prone positions with as many rifles and shotguns as you can muster, behind some cover and preferably on higher ground.  After you detect your first enemy, fire at them but hold your positions. 
   
2. The AI enemy will keep running towards you from all over the map and you can just keep knocking them down until most are dead.  Then you can collect all their weapons and mop up and stragglers. 
   
3. The AI makes almost zero use of cover and has a hard time seeing you if you stay prone.  You may need to stand in order to shoot - just watch your AP and make sure you have enough to go prone again.
   
4. If you setup right the AI is only truly dangerous when they get close enough to throw their grenades.  These may match some theoretical spec, by the way, but grenades in open spaces are nowhere near as lethal as this (in my personal experience which includes running a military grenade throwing range and blowing duds with C4).  It's the concussion in enclosed spaces that'll kill or injure most often.  I stand to be corrected.
   
5. The AI hardly uses cover and the devs seem to have made the Guardsmen and Special Forces tougher by just making then 'healthier'.  In other words, it takes two or three 5.56 rounds to the head to kill a Guardsman apparently, although I only managed to enter 1 battle against them before my game siezed up.