Adam Parker -> First Impressions Are Easy Sometimes (9/10/2009 3:02:31 PM)
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A reasonable purchase price makes buying a game an easy choice. What a reasonable price offers, is the ability to mitigate risk. At $35 USD, buying Operation Barbarossa is fairly much a risk free adventure and that's a good thing. Because wow, sometimes first impressions are very easy to write. An Ogre? Having downloaded the game seemlessly as usual with Matrix, the first oddity we receive after being told to install Direct X 9c, is a screen that pops up with the inviting title "Ogre". What is Ogre you ask? I haven't the faintest shmeck but it wants us to choose a "rendering system" and with pot luck, it happened to offer a suggestion that with me, it liked. By 2009, haven't these things been hidden under the hood? Scenarios and Campaigns So I figured the best way to see this game straight up was to choose a scenario and see how intuitive it all was to play. A grand total of 9 scenarios were on offer. One started in 1941 and my guess is, all are linear. I selected it anyway. The good I'm happy to report, is that these scenarios, in the spirit of ye olde Panzer General offer levels of victory based on hex occupation within a turn number. In other words capture the needed towns by turn 7 for example and you score a "Brilliant Victory". You get the gist. Lights, Camera, Render! In the biggest anticlimax of PC wargaming in 2009 I almost cried. It seems this big ogre is fantastically necessary to render the game's units in the most pixelated 3d I've ever seen. I just couldn't make some of these units out. I'm running a high end nVidia card with 768mb of video ram. And the way the units move, they glide, misses so much atmosphere that owners of the Panzer General franchise have been used to. Oh moving units and fighting is easy for those used to the PG interface. Left click move. See odds. Left click fight. But with no map zoom out (there is wheel mouse tilt aka slight zoom out) and such bad unit art, this game will be a chore to play. Yes, fire up Kharkov 43 for example, and the map opens with not a unit in sight! Scroll, scroll, scroll to find them. Scrollllll. Whose are they when you see them? What are they? You can't even zoom the map out to obtain some strategic perspective. Not even the Shogun Total War inspired victory hex flags (banners with crowns) will redeem this one without a huge facelift. Summary I remember buying Panzer General 1, firing it up and thinking wow. This game wants you to play, it wants you to think and feel like you're in command. Panzer General 1 circa 1995 with 2-d, side-on graphics, is still the king of the genre. How cool was it to nurture those easy to see, easy to recognise elite units from battle to battle? I knew the risk. Operation Barbarossa at first sight, feels like it was made in a garage. Happy gaming, Adam. EDIT: See below for a discussion of what Ogre actually means and its implications for your system and graphics quality - Adam. And remember: "The Lord can give, and the Lord can take away. I might be herding sheep next year" - Elvis Presley. [image]local://upfiles/6105/CE5D8AD8D84B4AA6AC3F62B5CCC82132.jpg[/image]
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