TheWombat_matrixforum
Posts: 469
Joined: 8/2/2003
Status: offline
|
I played the first tutorial scenario (got an "Average" score, 900, with ten aircraft lost, ouch). The tutorial messages work ok, but 1) you have to unpause the game for them to start, and they trigger on time or events thereafter, and 2) they tend to disappear if you muck around with the pause/unpause button while they're open. They're also a bit laconic, sometimes even cryptic. They'll give you the bare bones of what to do, but there's very little hand-holding. Still, I was able to get through the tutorial, and learned stuff. I suspect, though, that like most of the players buying this being an old Harpoon hand will help. I pity the poor fool who buys this without any experience in the genre, though!
The game seems to run by default in a window, at more or less full screen size. I think I'll play around with sizing, because I think I'd like to put the message log (with the optional display as separate window ability) off to the side of the playing area. I've got a 24" widescreen monitor and even in the tutorial there's plenty of stuff to occupy screen real estate; goodness knows what the big scenarios are going to look like! I'm sure fiddling around with layouts will have to evolve over several play sessions.
Ditto with all the map and display options. I found that turning on the contour layer I think it was really improved the look of the maps, not that they look bad anyhow. It's very cool to have real geo-data stuff. It ain't quite Google Earth quality but it's miles beyond Harpoon.
I did find a few times that unit labels were in, um, Cyrillic? Or Greek? Something like that. But they switched back to Latin characters on their own. And these were US units :). Other than that, the labeling and text displays are clear and, though there are a LOT of them, relatively easily readable.
The message log has a bunch of filter options, which I think I might want to explore, as it fills up pretty rapidly. Kudos for the option to show probability rolls and results.
The actual action is pretty sweet. Great sensor and weapons stuff, really nifty handling of BDA, and at least at first glance things seem to be playing out realistically, or expectedly at least. My difficulties right now are in mastering setting reference points and managing those. I get confused which ones go where, and it would be nice to be able to label groups/areas of ref points with the mission name their attached too, and have them toggle-able perhaps.
At first I wasn't getting any pictures in the database, but I downloaded the image file from the developer's website, and once I put it in the right folder (the instructions were not quite correct) I now get pictures for, well, most of the units, but not all. Not sure if this is WAD or not, but it's no biggy.
I have to read the manual and play around a bit, but it's very promising.
|
Printable Version
Early Impressions - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread