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tpope -> The decision to buy Harpoon (8/6/2008 9:37:32 PM)
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So after playing a demo about 6 years ago, watching (from a safe distance, and only intermittantly) some of the history and trauma unfold, downloading the demo again and posting questions on this forum, I finally decided to buy Harpoon on Sunday.
This has been an interesting process. Far more interesting than any other computer game purchase has been in the past, and arguably far more "interesting" than it should have been. So, I wanted to provide an AAR of sorts to the process, in the hopes that it will either allow the next person to make an informed decision or provide the developers and publishers with feedback that is useful, or hopefully both.
The Good
- Herman Hum. Between answering every question I had on this forum, a handful more over IM and offering to play a MP scenario once I'd taken the plunge, Herman pretty much single handedly convinced me to buy this game, rather than wait another few years.
- FreekS, VDCH and other forum members. Many other folks here were quick to answer my questions as well, usually within hours of posting. The answers were not always what I wanted to hear, but the general amount of attention to the forums and helpfulness was a big plus. The fact that several prople have very strong (often negative) feelings and are STILL willing to answer questions here is impressive.
- Likewise, answers to questions by rsharp was another big plus. Seeing that a lot of my complaints with the demo are being actively addressed by the developers mitigated a lot of my worries.
- The demo. Bugs, problematic features and UI aside, the core game engine still does what it is supposed to to. Being particularly interested in as high a realism quotient as possible, I can't really express how cool it was the first time I launched Harpoons from a P3, watched them fall off my scope as the plane turned away, then watched them come back on as their active seekers lit up, and then seeing them disappear when they reached the target, though with no indication of damage until the follow-up plane got close enough to confirm destruction. That was a small moment, but something that you couldn't find in any other game, and pleased me all out of proportion to it's importance in the grand scheme of things.
The Bad
- ANW vs HCE. The fact that two games exist at all, and that there is no clear reason WHY two games exist, is a serious stumbling block in the process. The FIRST line in every FAQ on the Matrix and AGSI websites and forums should answer this question. I realize it's not an easy question to answer cleanly, but it needs to have an answer, and that answer needs to be easy to find and understandable.
- The demo. When the demo contains mostly tutorials, and those tutorials don't work as stated in the manual, this is a serious problem. There is no need to harp on this, it's being fixed shortly. One thing I would suggest however is to fix ALL flakiness in the tutorials, even if the fix is forced. For something like the bug about not shooting at unarmed targets, if a fix doesn't make it into 3.9.4 then give the overflying planes a light weapon that will trip the ship's auto defense AI. Make certain that when the manual says "do X and you will see Y" that you really get that effect in all 8 tutorials.
- The bugs. As above, no reason to harp on these. They exist, they need to get fixed, and they're getting fixed.
The Ugly
- UI annoyances. I'm not looking for a beautiful game here. If I want pretty explosions, I can always get my fix playing Fleet Command or Dangerous Waters. But there is a significant amount of clunkiness in the interface, and a fair bit of it isn't even tied to the windowing engine, but is just odd design choices. This was a serious turnoff when I played the demo however many years ago, and even now, with multi-monitor support (sort of) and some fixes, was basically a lead weight dragging down my initial impulse to buy the game.
- The flamewars on the forum. I don't see a solution to this, it simply is what it is. If "The Bad" are fixed above, it'll have much less of an effect on whether or not you get a sale, since you'll be seeing existing customers coming in hopefully more often than people looking for help to make their decision.
In the end, I made my choice because of the good, despite the bad and with the ugly looming in the background. When all is said and done, I'm not at all sorry I bought the game, and as I said in the beginning I hope that this has some small value in suggestions to make this process easier for the next person.
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