LoooSeR Posted June 26, 2019 Report Share Posted June 26, 2019 So i partially skipped previous mission and went to next one. One of death animations involve launching weapons to the side with some speed. Can produce "cinematic" moments. Spoiler Enemies under fire somtimes do slides or dive into prone in "cinematic" animation. One of rare weapons (other than G36s) that enemies are using. I like how mags are not getting deleted seconds after reload animation was done. This enemy managed to fire around 90 bullets at us before being shot in the middle of reloading his gun. Mi-28 getting hit by F&F AT missile Enemies that are engaged in long range firefights can leave this amount of mags on their positions. AI in GRAW easily/seamlessly can navigate through buildings, unlike Arma AI. Mi-8/17 in use by rebels. Spec Ops soldier, can eat more bullets (like 2+ compared to 1-2 for regular rebels) Little fun CQB nightmare You can avoid it be engaging enemies inside of it from above. Just saving a president of US. Plot of this game is trying too hard sometimes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted June 27, 2019 Report Share Posted June 27, 2019 This operation is again left for player only to complete. I like this type of operations, feeling of tension is higher. Spoiler And again i was given a drone for recon. UAV visible on tactical map. UAV can mark targets and updated thei location only when they are in LOS and inside of his sector of vision. This is good, enemies are not getting spotted inside of buildings or after breaking LOS/getting out of vision cone of that drone, so there is always an element of risk and possibility that some asshole is just behind a corner that was not detect by a drone. Slow movement combined with attention level that this game can squeeze out of me are enough to spot gun barrels, carry handles and other pieces of gear of enemies before seeing those enemies. They heard shots. MG gunner on the right can provide long suppressive fire if left unsuppressed or killed. Those militants are covering flanking path to hardened position with a jammer. That one serious position to take out single handedly That one took some time to take out, because of his location and open field between me and him. Trying to find an angle on him took severalm minutes (thanks to him also moving) - 1 tank. F&F ATGM that Ghost team have is some sort of fly-over type of missile in pretty compact size. This enemy was not spotted by a drone and almost managed to kill me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted June 28, 2019 Report Share Posted June 28, 2019 Few missions left before end of GRAW 1 Spoiler Good overwatch of that dead end, AI. Another of those cinematic death animations. That is way too close for GRAW Quick double tap, second enemy decided to use same death animation as his comrade. and sniper is doing same death animatio, lol Sniper in damaged house. At this point i decided to load previous checkpoint, too little health left for rest of operation (although if you reload save file while having little health game will give you "medium" amount of it as small help) I can choose where to go - to first roadblock or for second one, using this net of streets and some backstreets/paths not visible from top view. One of reasons that majority of this game i played through optical sight. Saw that soldier on tactical map moving to me, one of rare moments to ambush enemies who are actively searching for player. SCAR H, deal plenty of damage. Hand grenades throwing against targets that you don't see can be tricky, but with help of this view it is a viable option. "Defend this position" section. Of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted June 29, 2019 Report Share Posted June 29, 2019 After that one only 1 mission is left. That is quite cramped. Spoiler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted June 30, 2019 Report Share Posted June 30, 2019 Last op. Was pretty bullshit, thanks to a lot of enemies being spawn + AI being unreliable. We were brought by APC and went to firefights second or 2 after exiting Stryker. Spoiler First 30-40 seconds we were just holding our positions against lots of enemies. After initial fight started to clear remaining rebels near our insert point. Decided to reload save files to get some health after pretty bullshity "ambush"/wave of enemies. Now pushing forward and slowly taking out Mexican rebels one by one. Random explosion, maybe mortar of artillery. Don't know, just scripted harmless crap that teammembers were constantly reacting on. Street by street firefights is where GRAW is pretty good. Feels like scale of things is right in GRAW, for some reason. Really sales feeling of being in the city. Ops, that is almost certain death situation in GRAW. I was really fucking lucky with that one, ha. Resupply Familiar places... That is a square where US embassy was, which we defended in 3rd mission. Now enemies are inside of that damaged building. I probably reloaded checkpoint about 6 or 7 times to clear initial mass of bad guys without getting killed or losing team members. Game throws rebels in scripted spawn "waves". Some of enemies were hand-picked by devs to be RPG gunners, on top of all other million dudes with automatic rifles rushing us. I circled around to place where enemies in 3rd mission managed to advance really close to us thanks to bad LOS to that direction. Cleared building with UGL and now we are pushing to it. When i will get to a certain range, script will spawn even more bad guys inside and game don't give a fuck about me shelling that building few moments earlier until everybody was dead. Fresh mag in, pushing last group of bad guys and their leader who is supposed to be super bad guy, but i don't remember his name, face or anything about him, lol. And... we are done? That ending came from nowhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 1, 2019 Report Share Posted July 1, 2019 Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter review Tom Clancy`s Ghost Recon - Advanced Warfighter is a 3rd game in the well-known series of tactical shooters published by Ubisoft, game was released in 2006 on peasants gaming devices for their television and PCs. In unusual move versions for Peasants and Master race were developed by different companies and had number of differences in them, in this review I will cover PC version only. Game is set in far future of 2013 when US adopted Future Warrior system and Mexico decided to implode with coup and civil conflict during summit to sign North American Joint Security Agreement. You take command of super-duper elite low speed high drag (or something like that) Special Forces unit known as “Ghosts” to further destabilize region and blow up things in Mexico City. Visuals For 2006, game looked pretty good, although far from top notch. Main feature were big urban maps and use of new PhysX engine by Ageia for cosmetics (didn’t affected the gameplay). Main problem of visual side of GRAW are frequent use color pellet consisting of brown and grey, copy-pasting small number of buildings across those relatively big maps, bland look of most of areas in those levels because of colors and copy-pasting, very low variety of bad guys uniforms, vehicles, gear. Spoiler Gameplay This entry in Ghost Recon goes away from crappy consoles-only Ghost Recon 2 corridor shooty game and goes closer to original GR, except consoles versions of GRAW that had cover based shooting and forced turret sections of firing from miniguns or something similar. Spoiler Main character can’t take much damage, movement speed that facilitates accurate shooting is slow, no medkits, low number of bullets needed to take out enemies, somewhat realistic distances of firefights in urban conditions and no ability to change weapons mid-missions (for most of the game) gives this game very methodical gameplay and tense feel because of big urban maps with lots of dangerous LOS. During most of operations you command a squad of super-duper elite dudes, you can give commands to whole squad or to each of 3 members individually. Commands can be given in real time or using tactical map/view that allows putting chains of commands and then executing them. Although this system does not allow to coordinate movement between different members so we are not speaking about well-timed breach-and-clear of compounds or areas. Sometimes you can get a support from recon drones, tanks, airstrikes, but those are scripted moments and feel like CoD way of giving toys to player to use it few times and forget about their existence. Spoiler AI of team members is unreliable in execution of orders. They don’t understand meta situation so they can easily get into dangerous zones (sniper, RPG gunner, tank) or accidently get inside of compound that you are planning to breach, fucking up themselfes and your plan. Sometimes they are doing competent movement and cover sectors, but that is working somewhat well mostly when following you and against small numbers of foot soldiers. All that lead to a fact that most of enemies were killed by me alone, as I was moving first into areas and leaving squad behind to cover my rear, I was not sure in their abilities to not get into bad situation. Examples of when AI does things more or less right. Spoiler Many of "competent things" can be achived with micromanagment of troops via tactical map. Bad guys for majority of missions were rather passive – almost all firefights were started by player and during those fights enemies were not moving much from place where they were engaged first time. Individual rebels were not terrible in their capabilities to find cover and return fire. Hostile tanks were moving on rails between 2 points only, so tanks felt like environmental danger to go around, rather than serious dynamic threat that you need to constantly think and evaluate. Weapons were ok, GRAW arsenal of guns is small and some guns don’t really feel different from each other. In semi-auto and with ADS all guns are very accurate, shots were satisfying thanks to majority of enemies dying from 1 (sometimes 2) shots. Missions mechanically were simplistic and had small variety, in fact I remember only 3-4 of them – clear area, defend from attack, blow up X. Each of those were not really interestingly made. Clearing area involved going to place and taking out bad guys one by one with little tactical or squad/base garrison wide response to your actions. You just went there and shot number of people in order of their visibility and range. So overall PC version gameplay of GRAW is above average because of ability to create feeling of tension and danger hidden behind all corners and dark places thanks to big complex urban levels coupled together with realistic-ish damage/health system and weapons handling, but game never goes beyond simplistic situatons/gameplay. Plot Story begins from believable situation but presentation of it and where it went managed to destroy initial immersion. Whole time game was actively praising Cpt. Mitchel (player’s character), in-mission chat was trying too hard to be mix of edgy and military “heroic”, all that mixed with mission objectives like saving presidents and stopping nuclear missiles without any build up felt… desperate. Like developers really wanted to cover their basic\simplistic mission design behind military jargon and constant verbal prizing of [Insert player’s name] for his heroic actions. Story became less immersive for me as we went further; dialogues were getting to cringe territory. Tactics. TACTICS!!! For something that is called tactical shooter GRAW contained very little of “tactics”. Tactical map didn’t gave a good enough look at the battlefield to make tight plans with flanking and suppressive fires to take out enemies. In fact, most of the time enemies were spawned when you entered triggers/scripted areas, which at times was so obvious that it was immersion breaking. Enemy spawning was very CoD – enemies appear in scripted parts only when you get close enough to that place, most enemies were placed around without much of tactical reasoning behind it, sometimes just to fuck with you. Like why RPG gunner overwatch a small section between houses with enemy patrol in it? It is obvious why from game design POV – player will likely walk there, but not from realistic shooter POV. GRAW stuck in the middle between something like Arma and CoD. One of rare non-copypasted areas in GRAW, you don't need tactics to clear it, just walk on higher ground around this unfinished basement and pop heads of rebels inside. Spoiler Attempt to use some really basic tactics. Wasn't needed, those 2 bad guys just never moved away and got shot pretty quickly. Looks like a serious position to assault for just a 1 guy, but i had more problems with sniper overwatching big open field that those 3 HMGs are looking at. Flanking them was the only possible way, so not much of "tactical" part of my mind was used. MG gunner located above already dead HMG gunner. Reason is simple - to cover HMG gunner rear, problem is that this guy is already on the high ground and could cover well every other direction leaving flanks for rest of troops packed inside of that warehouse. It feels very game-y, in the moment i saw that my brain produced a picture of level maker going "heh, player may try to get around my HMG, so i will place this specific dude with MG in that position overwatching rear entrance of warehouse to make things harder!" Sniper aiming at camp of enemies, packed with SF guys. Why you would do that in real life? Covering possible entry points makes more sense, not just waiting for player to get to objective area itself and then shoot him. MG nest placed right in the middle of a crossroad which makes it easily flankable. Note how sandbags are covering only their other flank and not from my side, kek. Where is my achievement for killing 2 militants with 1 bullet? Enemy AI was ok at doing basic stuff like finding cover from given line of fire in big complex levels where it is hard for level makers to designate each cover node by hand, but completely incapable of squad-wide tactical movement. Their general passiveness shaped most of my gameplay to be “find LOS on that bad guy” type of action, where I was running between 2-3 corners to fire at those bad guys from 2 sides. Spoiler One of really rare moments when AI decided to push us, and it just happened that it moved through hard to see/overwatch corridor inside of building nearby that i was using to sneak to enemy position. Most of the time AI just sit in one place and unload mags in a spot where it saw you. Again, rare moment when AI is moving somewhere. Most likely reason is that in mission closer to end of the game devs decided to increase aggressiveness of enemies But increased aggressiveness produce those moments - rebel from Aguilla 7 rushed our squad, alone. Very dumb move, thanks to AI not being capable of evaluating danger of their move or at least pretending to care about their lifes. This is what they do most of the time, even if they hear shots and lose comrades to gunfire. One of problems of AI - they don't understand layout of locations so they don't look in proper directions. This guy is looking at a wall 5 meters away from him instead of corridor entry where his comrade was killed about 20 seconds ago. When times come to "defend this position" part of missions, level makers spawn lots of bad guys with AI set to "rush" and those rebels are acting way too aggressive. Note that in this particular case nothing was done by devs to build up or explain this jarring switch of enemy behavior - they just went all berserk all of the sudden. Only 3 times in the entire game I actually thought about my actions from squad-scale tactical POV – first time in first mission where we were tasked with taking a warehouse and third time in the very end of GRAW before assaulting destroyed US embassy building. First time reason were RPG gunners on roofs and HMG inside of warehouse overlooking main entrance + patrols around warehouse and 3 entry points into it, 2nd time i was alone on a mission and decided to push into enemy base from the side instead of closest entry point as it was open, 3rd time reason was very high damage output of big horde of rebels around and inside of embassy, so I needed to find better path to approach to it. Every other decision was on the level of your usual nont-totally corridor shooter like your Far Cry and similar. Additional support like tanks was clunky to use and generally felt unrefined. 1st mission last objective - warehouse with some sort of proper defence going on. Spoiler Inside are also full of rebels packed into every corner. Position on top is looking at areas around warehouse instead of usual way. Conclusion Competent shooter with good short gameplay loop (shooting feels good and guns are powerful) but lacking in tactics, planning, tight execution and story. GRAW felt like a prototype of a tactical game, where developers got basic gameplay loop done but nothing else was finished or was simply underdeveloped. Still, game is good enough to enjoy for tactical shooters fans. Scolopax 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 2, 2019 Report Share Posted July 2, 2019 Next game - Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, released just 1 year after 1st one. Screenshots from special island made to showcase capabilities of Ageia PhysX cards. Basically they added some trees and bushes and turned heavy wind "on". Not bad, but was not as cool as in Crysis, released in the same year. Crysis foilage simulation was more detailed + destructible trees trunks (in a spot where you done damage to it) + destroyable buildings and so on, which this game don't have. Spoiler 1st mission. Insertion now is a cutscene with fancy camera movement. Spoiler Rebels got much better gear compared to last game. Squad controls became better and less junky to use for something more complex than just move order. Place where AI will go now is shown on HUD, which is useful. "Cover that" order is now means "shoot there" instead of "overwatch", i never used it in GRAW 2 after testing it, actually. AI was improved in some areas, but not by much, they are still somewhat "robotic", like Arma bots. Comrade drone is back. Map is now 2d, so buildings now don't get in the way, especially when you need to give orders and place waypoints in tight spaces between 2 buildings. I see some re-used assets. As usual - "defend position against wave of enemies" mission segment. Although this time it is a bit more refined - enemies don't just spawn behind corners from thin air, we were not placed in random street with copy-pasted surroundings. Still, this is such a CoD moment when helicopter drops troops in direct LOS and in effective range of enemy weapons just to be mowed down by HMG and/or player. Explosion also now have their own camera operator and fancy cutscene. Ghost Recon Solid: CoD Eater. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 2, 2019 Report Share Posted July 2, 2019 Another mission with intro cutscene that showed nothing interesting. Spoiler Real time order system is not too intuitive to understand how to use first time, but after first few uses it becomes quick and easy to use even in stressful situation. Lol, looks like a player in multiplayer shooter trying to find an angle on enemy team from prone position. One of small things that suggest that devs were desperate to make GRAW into some sort of brand thing. Mule drone, used just for resupply and nothing else. AI doing stupid shit. They were shouldering their guns and breaking aiming for each other in endless cycle. AI agent preparing for a parade. At least his upper body. Recon via tactical map. You can command troops and drones from camera view mode. Usual mission objective - blow up SPG. Just like previous operation. Nice Black Hawk model Mission ends with another strange cutscene of rebels getting killed by somebody for some reason. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 3, 2019 Report Share Posted July 3, 2019 GRAW 2 allows you to pick LZ, but most of the time your choice consist of 1 LZ. Spoiler Another cutscene with General McMilitary spewing military-sounding BS in your ears. This does look dumb. Great idea - assault big warehouse through open parking lot. One of many CoD-ish moments. ATGM is out. For some reason Scott can't hold RPG-7 right, probably because he is too edgy and cool for that. Some sort of SF dudes, usually those are models used for snipers. Sometimes AI in GRAW 2 act ok for tactical shooters. In fact, more often than in GRAW 1. Looks a bit basic, although it was 2007. Weapon models are detailed. ... sometimes AI decided that taking position in the middle of the open area is the best idea. Danger in previous GRAW was behind every corner, but in GRAW 2 that feeling of tension was much less pronounced for me, because of more linear maps. Game very rarely allows you to find a place to look over your objective. Bad spot to dive in. Now player was given all explosion-making abilities in this game just to assault small building and another parking lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 4, 2019 Report Share Posted July 4, 2019 Next operation inside of city. Spoiler Saw him? Here it is. Some places that are walkable in some buildings are blocked on others (copy-pasted from previous one) by those tiny pieces of concrete. Game level is designed is such way that you get to rear of those troops just by going through level. Maps are much more linear this time, even in cities (which wasn't case in GRAW 1). Game spawned enemy tank just behind our troops. Good job, level makers. Those troops are merely a background extras. You never will see serious battles between 2 factions. At this point Mule feels useless. It could have been replaced simply by boxes of ammo on enemy checkpoints/positions, so player will not waste his time moving this thing around. Map makers love to put enemy soldiers somewhere on top, which is not exactly realistic, but fucks with player. Just look at this. In realistic conflict all those troops would have been easy spot for recon (air, UAV, etc). They are here just to fuck with a player. Sniper is visible Voice from Unreal Tournament: *Handshot* Great color pellet of brown and brown-ish brown with few drops of browhish blue. That is a lot of soldiers overwatching one entrance. Finally, we are on the road of jihad. Feels like this is a model of US soldier from first GRAW. Kek, camera is not centered and clips through body. Exiting cutscene showing how car slowly reverse and drives away. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EnsignExpendable Posted July 4, 2019 Report Share Posted July 4, 2019 I'm 5 hours into Kingdom Come Deliverance, and I think I have yet to win a fight. Highlights of the game so far include getting beaten up by the village idiot, running away from law enforcement, getting beaten up by law enforcement, and getting beaten up by looters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 5, 2019 Report Share Posted July 5, 2019 12 hours ago, EnsignExpendable said: I'm 5 hours into Kingdom Come Deliverance, and I think I have yet to win a fight. Highlights of the game so far include getting beaten up by the village idiot, running away from law enforcement, getting beaten up by law enforcement, and getting beaten up by looters. So... getting beaten up in medieval Bohemia simulator? That is very niche product, kek. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 5, 2019 Report Share Posted July 5, 2019 Yet another cutscene showing things that could have been more effective if they were part of gameplay. Spoiler Heh, don't know what will happen next, i'm on the edge of whatever i'm sitting on right now! So tense! Nobody expected that, it wasn't really obvious that such thing would happen! If only we had Dodge Evenger we wouldn't get into this shit! This time i can sort-of command 3 Mexican soldiers. They refuse to move for long distances, though. Are devs implying racial steretypes of lazy Mexicans? proposed positions of AI are "snapping" to cover when cursor is close to it, so giving orders is faster and you need less time to get what you want as pixel perfect clicks are no longer required to get soldiers in proper position. Mercs. They are a bit more aggressive than regular rebels and take more hits to kill IIRC, but AI routines are mostly the same. New map, but it looks like any other previous and next map. AI now understand corners and play appropriate animations. Ctrl-c+Ctrl-v Rebels for some reason have more detalied and better-made models than friendly Mexican troops. In order to mae those friendly forces to actually move you will need to give such chains of move orders, lol. Devs really licked that XM8 rifle. "Move here" "no, we can't do that, sir" "Fucking idiots" - *clicks each few meters* I set that idiot to follow and he just run away to other level of that hill village and now tries to come back through this unwalkable slope. Great job, AI. In GRAWs all levels outside of cities make AI go nuts much more often than urban maps. Maps don't have good flow to them, they are almost endless pukes of randomly placed buildings without "micro" structure to them. AI need some time to take cover, especailly whena group of them get to positions near each other Clearing this church was same as clearing any other building, enemies didn't had some serious positions there or anything noteworthy. Taking over this church also didn't gave you anything - no good overwatch position or good cover. This is a problem of maps in GRAW 2 - they do give you unique models for some of buildings, which makes them to stand out against a background of copy-pasted filler, but in gameplay those buildings are same filler as rest of that map. Hell, Burger king in CoD MW2 was much better played out from gameplay perspective. One of strange positions for HMG - it is located on small side street (if it even can be called a street) overwathcing 15 meters of space in front of him. This position is obviously there to fuck with a player, not to represent something realistic or just sensible. Those maps are so fuckign bland and boring, full of copy-pasted filler of some crappy buildings. A structure on right lower corner of screenshot is exactly same building as in first mission where we took cover from gunfire. Now "defend position X from a unstructured stream of unorganized baddies" part of incredible GRAW mission design is coming. Such a CoD moment - transport choppers stops directly above position that rebels are attacking, and they brought gunship (Mi-28) to do this which implies that they are "story-wise) expecting heavy resistance. Great job, this was dumb. Just to be clear - those guys appear from thin air in the middle of the road and player can easily see that if he gets to the roof, which is very likely as Mi-28 and transport Mi-8 attracts a lot of attention to that roof. Heh, enemies don't even try to do anything smart about their zerg rush. Even in same CoD MW2 burger king defence sequence devs at least scripted some smoke screens to cover AI advance. This was pretty boring mission with mostly linear layout of village and dumb/simplistic defence part. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 5, 2019 Report Share Posted July 5, 2019 This operation was somewhat fun, although crappie spawn system and general passiveness of bad guys made it less memorable. Too bad, location was cool and had a lot of promise. Spoiler Scouting via map. They probably should had change how enemies are displayed here - only one that are in LOS of a player or friendly troops. Stealth is very very basic in this game. I'm not sure if enemies even can react to dead bodies, as game engine clears them pretty quickly. Sometimes AI does something not totally generic - this guy heard shots\saw his comrade killed and ran away to hide. Here is a place where we need to find US pilot and blow up remains of Black hawk Guards outside aleady spawned. ... but not inside of this compound. Later this HMG will suddenly get a gunner and additional soldiers around from nowhere. With few changes to map design and scripts this could be more tense sneaking mission. Village nearby is almost unused by mission creators, just 1 rifleman and sniper hidding in one of those buildings Position that i wanted to take is already occupied, heh. Well, it is the only good/power position on this side of map, i guess it is not surprising. That is again one of those "fuck with player" type of enemy placement that doesn't make sense other than to punish players that are too aggressive. Soldiers near HMG and inside of hacienda spawned. 12-15 seconds earlier compound was clear from enemies and full of dead bodies, but after moving too close to it scripts spawned additional groups of soldiers. This is immersion breaking stuff. At least this map have some unique looks compared to brown porridge of rest of levels Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 6, 2019 Report Share Posted July 6, 2019 Next operation, back into Juarez city full of copy-pasted brown buildings. RPG gunners are capable at creating cool-looking explosions Spoiler He, gunner's turret now have some sort of ballistic protection to be not killed in first second after getting into our LOS. Pixel hunting through damaged car, too many enemies on other side to expose. There is no penetration of objects in GRAW 2, you can easily hide from fire behind wooden walls. Special effects gun. After killing those 3 we must defend this random ass building by sitting inside of this small area in front of it as it is probably the only one good cover. Enemies are doing same stupid crap as few missions before - zerg rush our positions. Probably giving to AI a grenade launcher was both good and bad idea. Stream of bad guys ended few minutes later Mission objectives feels fucking random and completely disconected from what happened on the screen. We just took out hordes of those rebels, why we need to get reinforcements? The answer is "cause tanks making explosions and they are cool!" Just want to point out - player already got artillery support as well, which make tank kind of useless or visa versa. Artillery in those conditions of RPG soldiers around would have been better idea. Enemy tanks can take many hits frontaly before getting destroyed. ... artillery actually did the job. ANother reason why tank was pretty useless for gameplay. I don't understand why we needed that reinforcements other than "cause xplosionz!" Armored car and tank are not new or hard enemies, especially when you have artillery support that respond very quickly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 6, 2019 Report Share Posted July 6, 2019 Next op. Dam level. Yet another brown map. Spoiler Yes Overlord, i can confirm that this level is as brown as it can be. Can you now take me to some other place? PMC now are main bad guys, but the only thing that changed is level of their aggressiveness. That is... heh, basically same as it was in GRAW1 Rushing sniper position through open area - very tactical. PMC models are slightly changed models of rebels. AI doing their "unreliable" thing again - they all are looking in same exact way, leaving main path from where enemies are coming without overwatch. Now they are doing sort-of competent formation. PMC running in the middle of the road. Year after GRAW 1 AI still have same problems. For some reason PMC like to move on their road. One of rare moments of getting under the surface. Secret gov. facility, kek. PMC or rebels are watching into this corridor. A group of PMCs just spawned behind me. Cool, game. Corners now are recognized by AI and they are using specific animations. "Defend you position", yet again. Scripted car arrives just to be shot 20 times from 4 different directions by us. Now helicopters appear. Badly modelled Mi-28. I was interested in how much bullets can take one of those things and apparently a lot, so i gave order for AI to attack (without it they would never use their guided missile launchers against those choppers). After few more steps futher than location of N2 soldier script is triggered and spawns a wave of PMCs That MG have long and detailed reload animation, heh. Rainbow Six Vegas have same gun and similar-ish looking animation, but it was faster. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 7, 2019 Report Share Posted July 7, 2019 Last operatiom in GRAW 2 and it was total shit. Most of that mission was designed so badly that it is not even funny. Let's begin with insertion, which was completely fucked. Ukrainian nuclear warhead mounted on missile put together by Mexican rebels and some sort of PMC, and located in a facility next to Mexican-USA border and SF unit was sended to destroy it... this is as dumb as it sounds. Spoiler Bridge on top of which we will be dropped. Heh, no cutscene showing some trivial crap like car reversing. No it is obvious why there were no cutscene - action starts in the moment when we live helicopter hull. Also, this camera view allows to see Dodge adv. And this is reason why this insertion is fucking terrible - player didn't even got control in his hand and he is already under HMG and RPG fire. On this screenshot RPG hit helicopter, but because it wasn't intendend to be destroyed and it is scripted AF Black Hawk didn't gave a shit and all Ghost are alive. This looks really bad, like developers didn't even tested that level. Player is dropped in bad spot with HMG having no problem cutting you. 2 dead door gunners of Black Hawk didn't survived RPG hit, kek. This scene really looks broken - there were no dialogues about gunners being dead, hecicopter pilot didn't said anything about RPG hit and all Ghost soldiers are totally fine while those gunners are dead from same RPG hit. It is like some of level makers forgot to make them unkillable. Attempt to find good cover from incoming fire by moving back on the bridge is met with angry screen telling you to go back as you are leaving area designated by level creators. "Partners" managed to get themselves killed by all that HMG and RPG fire, which is not surprising as their AI routines are optimized to work against "small groups of tangos", not hardened positions. Those idiots don't understand difference between when they are receiving inaccurate fire by single guy 500 meters away and hail of HMG fire + RPG bombardment. At least Dodge advs is really easy to see under HMG fire. Hell, sparks from bullets hit are visible on that bus to my right. Attempt to peek from corner was met with incredible reaction time and more of HMG and RPG fire. Next attempt. We just landed and i gave an order to get to cover. HMG killed one of members before they could execute my good damn order. At this point a was really angry at all that shit. I walked closer to a bus and was cut by HMG through a gap between road surface and the bottom of that bus with accurate fire. Next attempt, dead gunners already landed. Fucking ropes are still falling down and one of team members is already dead. Jesus Fucking Christ, this is "pizdets" level of total bullshit. Second guy decided to peek a corner of that bus in front of me, i ordered him to move to the left but to late - HMG landed a killing headshot. This is a good example of AI not being capable of dealing with HMG fire and reacts to it as it is sparadic inaccurate gunfire from an individual rebel. Last one was killed by HMG bullets from under the bus. Great. Next attempt will be better. Just to be clear - developers specifically dropped you on a bridge that acts as long corridor with HMGs and RPGs on one end and "return to mission area" script behind you to funnel you into outpost. On top of that HMGs and RPG gunners start to kill your soldiers before you even have time to react or AI to execute orders to get to cover, so survival of your team is basically an RNG. Add here very good spotting capabilities of HMG (you can't even fucking see them without optics while those 50 cals have just iron sights) and no good cover around LZ and you get really unfair situation. The only place i found for team to be outside of HMG fire is to not take cover behind things around us but on the edge of "return to mission area" script. Spoiler Our task was to take back US border checkpoint and at this point i forgot to take screenshots of enemy positons that destroyed us several times. When you walk closer a script actives that starts endless mortar barrage. Other ghosts were moving to slowly and got killed, only sniper left alive. Just fucing great. Next attempt Game decided to give us some support. Now we are free to advance back on that bridge and go beyong "return to mission area" script to attack Mexican side of border crossing. AI don't respond to my orders now, heh. He probably realized how unfairly that mission was designed. "Assuming direct control" At this point devs were trying to make mission hard just by throwing more bad guys at you than ever before. One of those obvious and very game-y "fuck player" map makers actions - put 2 HMGs together behind a corner of a building. Reaching blockpost without frequent save files loading is possible by cheesing game systems like this tactical map. I didn't made screenshots of taking out RPG and other HMG gunners because they were just several pixels on my screen. Enemies continue to spawn time to time and rush to you (or sound of gunshots, not totally sure). Tank arrived, but i saved mission supports for those moments. Airstrike took it out. Nice Dodge. After reaching Mexican border checkpoint game took US marine support from us, although were kind of useless anyway. Game still can produce this war-torn look from normal-looking areas. PMCs got spotted by some scripted shit and i decided to use artillery to not deal with more HMGs. Nice job, PhysX. You put tree trunk through concrete structure just by blowing some wind on it. Because of corridor-like mission design i know that nothing will come from this road. That knowledge/expectation kind of kills tense feeling of danger behind every corner that first GRAW gave me on urban maps. Not surprising that Marines support was taken away from me - those idiots managed to get stuck. Now my team members start to act strangely. AI is set to follow me but that one decided to run somewhere away. Now we need to find a missile for some reason. I guess just dropping bunker-busting bombs is something that US forces don't know how to do. Also that mission objective would have been funnier if it said "Secret missile bunker entrance" lol. Basically bunker was full of bad guys and when missile was reached you had to run away with some speeches of your incredible heroics in the background, the end. Scolopax 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EnsignExpendable Posted July 8, 2019 Report Share Posted July 8, 2019 On 7/5/2019 at 4:45 AM, LoooSeR said: So... getting beaten up in medieval Bohemia simulator? That is very niche product, kek. I got drunk and stole everything from a dude's house, so far a quick reskin can make this into a passable 90s Russia simulator. Lord_James 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 8, 2019 Report Share Posted July 8, 2019 6 hours ago, EnsignExpendable said: I got drunk and stole everything from a dude's house, so far a quick reskin can make this into a passable 90s Russia simulator. I was thinking more about GTA but with horses and swords, but yeah, gopniks and musora also will work. Lord_James 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 8, 2019 Report Share Posted July 8, 2019 Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 review Tom Clancy`s Ghost Recon - Advanced Warfighter 2 is a 4th game of Ghost Recon series released in 2007 and it’s a direct continuation of Advanced Warfighter released in 2006. GRAW 1 managed to get good scores in gaming press and sold pretty well, and it appears that publisher tried to grab more cash, which is why second game was released just 1 year after first one, when public was still “hot” for more. GRAW 2 was released as a separate game on peasants gaming devices yet again as a cover based dumb shooter and had dedicated PC version on top of that. Yet again this review will cover PC version only. Game picks up just after events of GRAW 1, telling dumb story about stolen Ukrainian nukes and PMC operating with Mexican rebels trying to blow up US. You again take command of “Shpeshial” Forces unit known as “Tom Clancy`stm Ghoststm” with a task to penetrate deeper into gamers pockets and support flow of cash to publisher. Visuals For 2007 game looked outdated, thanks to Crysis. Overall, technical level is “ok”. Main problem of visual that were seen in GRAW 1 (frequent use of brown and grey, copy-pasting small number of buildings across maps, bland look, very low variety of bad guys gear, vehicles) were not solved. In fact, some things got even worse – GRAW 2 is very “brown” game with very little colors existing in GRAW 2 universe other than brown. Copy-pasting assets problem and bland look of maps was in some places solved by adding more unique buildings/structures, but at cost of small and linear maps. Frequent re-use of assets was ok for me, but game did not went away from previous GRAW far enough in terms of overall visual impression. Almost everything, other than some better light render and filters, was the same for my eyes. Enemies are still basically same deal as before –about 2.5 somewhat distinctive models are used during the whole game, so bad guys becoming really bland and boring, progression\escalation of conflict is not really conveyed through their gear or more “serious bad guy” look, at least not better than in GRAW 1 (which was not enough). PMC (kind of “upper tier” bad mooks) in GRAW 2 are just Rebels models with changed heads for the most part, while in GRAW 1 “SF” Mexican rebels had noticeably better gear than usual guys. Spoiler PMC and rebel model have very little different, they are mostly a re-skin THis is just a rebel model with added goggles and deleted helmet, used mostly for snipers. All of those models are generally the same thing, there are no distictive bad guys to shoot in GRAW 2. Vehicles are the same with exception of Panhard armored car getting armored plates to protect MG gunner… and that is all. Even Mi-28 model looks like developers just directly ported it from GRAW 1 without solving problems with unfinished parts of it (like light-sucking black hole inside of cockpit, lol). Spoiler The only reason i can think of why this image is here is "we added giant symbol of our game into the game (on this helicopter in particualr) for brand recognition purposes" This place only looks like it have different paths to take, in reality you either will hit a fence or "return to mission area" script. This one and previous screenshots are from different missions, BTW. Also, this area in layout is bascially a "snake" corridor, packed like human digestive system. Probably the only level that is not brown, but that is because you can't really see brown textures without light, lol. Black void in Mi-28 crew compartment is easily visible for a player, because a gunship with effective weapons range measured in km is flying about 150 meters away from player. Model is so basic, it probably was supposed to be used for some background stuff far away. Gameplay PC version of GRAW 2 is where I started to really see how franchise degraded, from realistic tactical shooter where you were trying to moving squads around big maps wisely in order to solve some sort of tactical problem, to something like last Medal of Honor games – dumb action about “hardcore” military dudes with beards and guns blowing things up with force of Hollywood pyrotechnics. Singleplayer campaign is short and dumb both in story and in how it plays. Almost all maps are now linear and corridor-like. Feeling of tension that came from big urban areas with many directions from which enemies could shoot you is nearly gone (with exception of few maps) thanks to corridor design of playspaces. Ability to choose weapons for squad before mission and to pick LZ is just cosmetics that don’t affect anything from gameplay perspective. Many times you could choose only 1 LZ anyway, so this feature was completely useless. Most of guns work in the same way; I could not tell what is different about using M8, Scar L, HK 416 or RX4. Enemies also became more bullet-resistant, decreasing feeling of deadliness of guns. Good example of how tight and linear those maps are. All paths are blocked by debris except one, most of buildings are closed or don't have most of their internals modelled. Spoiler You can choose between insertion "A" and insertion "A". Also you progress through this map in linear fashion, and only objective 2 give you some space to move around, but not really that much - just few buildings is between central objective 2 and edges of this map. Positioning of opponents is even worse in GRAW 2 compared to 1st Advanced Warfighter. At this point developers were putting them just to fuck with players and force them in situations with high chances to be shot. Spawning system for enemies is exactly same as in worse linear shooters – scripted, can spawn bad guys at rather small distances from you in places that you could see earlier and you were sure that they were clear. On top of that, some of those spawns are obvious and not immersive or interesting as a result. Spoiler That guy near my cursor is not visible from any place where player can get, thanks to being prone, angle from a roof where player can get is obscured by piece of fence in the center of screenshot. It was placed there just to block very specific LOS (and thats why this piece of fence is so short). He will crouch when you get close enough or when AI feels like it is time to fuck with you. RPG gunners have no problems firing at close range with their allies being near his point of aim. GRAW 2 is frequently just a pixel hunting quest. Devs really like to put bad guys on roofs. Sometimes it feels like you fight with enemies on the roofs more often than on the ground. Another example of pixel hunting. Gameplay is still based on clearing level by moving around and finding LOS on enemies, who are continue to be passive most of the time. Sometimes developers changing that rather bland routine to fighting horde of enemies mindlessly rushing to your position, which you are supposed to defend. All missions are again same “clear X, defend X, blow up X” routine as in first game with no creative approach to mission design, interesting twists or small features to spice things up. Hell, there are defense sequences done better in CoD Modern Warfare 1 and 2 than in both GRAWs, which just shows how basic those missions are in those “tactical” shooters. For example, fight for a hill in a village where you found Al-Assad in MW 1 had multiply defensive lines, remotely controlled bombs that player used against attackers, MG positions; this level had a build up, crescendo, and a twist. Alternatively, battle for Burger King (or whatever it was called) in MW2 where enemies tried to attack from different angles, used smoke screens, etc. There is nothing like that in GRAW 2. Bad guys just spawn and rush to your position without any kind of coordination. Sometimes helicopters are also scripted to appear, but those are so easy to shot down that I considered foot soldiers to be higher threat. Spoiler Another attack of waves of rebels That explosion comes from one of Ghosts armed with 6-shot grenade launcher Mission marker shows "Rebel stronghold" but in reality we need to clear this parking lot and then kill a wave of rebels spawned behind that building. House don't have internals modelled, so whole battle is just exchange of bullets on a parking lot, simple and rather boring (we have a tank that makes this fight even easier) Sometimes enemies are not spawned from thin air, but after getting out of car they usually just stand around. Each helicopter have its own mission marker on top of it, just to be sure than even brain dead players can find them. It is just few steps away from placing individual mission markers on top of each rebel. During operations, you also sometimes get a support in form of tanks, artillery or drones, but most of them now feel even less as tools and more like toys to play until mission makers decide to take it away when they feel like you had enough of them. Spoiler Maybe the most useless mission support - Mulle drone that allows you to resupply. Commanding squad became easier because of few tweaks, but I never used this system for anything “tactical”, just ordered Ghosts to move to next cover. Usually team members were left behind to cover my back, as their AI was not set up to fight with how enemies placed around by level designers, who were obviously assholes. AI also is not able to understand difference between being under sporadic semi-auto inaccurate fire by one rebel and being under accurate rapid fire by HMG and RPG gunners. Taking into account how frequent those 2 are used by devs to fuck with players, sending AI forward is just a lottery where those idiots have good chances to became “kind of dead” and no longer bother me until next mission. Spoiler AI being dumb, again. Bad guys are still relatively passive, although in GRAW 2 they move just a tiny bit more often than in GRAW 1. AI still have same problems with long reaction when they see player or just looking in wrong way after they spotted player and started to move, leaving their backs or sides open for lethal shot by a player. Spoiler Dead body is near and that soldier was shooting me, rest of those rebels are not even trying to look in that direction. We just exchanged bullets few seconds earlier, now he looks somewhere else, thanks to AI automatically looking away from nearby walls when they are not in combat. Relatively rare moment of AI moving somewhere. Gameplay of PC version of GRAW 2 is average at best and in few cases I would rate it as lower than average, thanks to incredible difficulty spikes in several missions, really bland mission designs, ~corridor layout of maps mixed with bland enemies populating them. I really had more fun in one of night operations in original Ghost Recon when were surrounded and cleared small house with just 2-3 hostiles inside than in most of GRAW 2. Maybe a reason was that in that night mission I put together a plan in sandbox-ish environment and executed it with understanding that it could be fucked up if I missed anything, not just following objective markers and memorizing locations of bad guys and moment when they are spawned. Plot Story in first GRAW started at realistic note but devolved in nearly cringe territory. GRAW 2 decided to burst through a bottom of the pit where GRAW 1 managed to fall down. Now we are hunting Ukrainian nuke that were sneaked by PMC to be mounted on the missile that was supposed to be launched from place next to Mexico-US border crossing checkpoint for some reason. I don’t remember anybody names in this game. Story was happening somewhere outside of gameplay, in radio chatter and mission briefing text. Speeches now are full of edgy bravado and military-sounding crap. GRAW 2 story feels like something out of over-the-top agitation pamphlet for US Army made into dumb action B-movie. Conclusion GRAW 1 felt like a foundation for interesting and rich tactical shooter and GRAW 2 is a tasteless hooker saloon built on top of it that also sell cheap bear with cat urine in it. GRAW 2 is dumb B-movie made into a game that at times tries to look like it still have few drops of noble blood inside by throwing at you long briefings and pre-mission preparations but those are just a smokescreen (I never used them in game as well, kek). Stay away from it, if you are not really a big shooter fan hungry for badly designed FPS from 2007. Scolopax 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 9, 2019 Report Share Posted July 9, 2019 Next game for review: Tom Clancy'stm Ghost Recon Future Soldiertm Spoiler Game begins with this sort of cutscene from bad guys perspective. Thanks for exaplaining for me what i need to do in shooters. Just to be clear this is unskippable and part of main singleplayer campaign, not an optional tutorial. They probably wanted to model/represent night vision goggles fused with thermal imager, but this is not how it looks on real things, AFAIK. Tadam! Russian nukes or something like that. Great, now this game is explaining what "ghost" is. Well, black guy in 2012 game. Options are: heroic death as a team leader or no deaths in a squad at all, because of 'Murica. At least in live action Ghost Recon: Alpha black guy died first and people were making fun of it. Spoiler "MRTs" are used to spew briefings videos at you. CoD MW-style of briefing videos are pretty terrible. Edgy military jargon-filled bullshit without any useful info in them, [crappy] style without substance. That thing can see through walls, but model shows just a sphere with cameras. Ulock this camo by doing XYZ challange! Weapon modification screen. Gives plenty of options, most of which are useless. Devs used a model of a bad guy that you constantly see during firefights, lol. You kind of killed him, but not really, you will see his clones many many times during this mission, lol. Thanks for examplaning to me what that button will do, especially after i set it up in options. Small note - Future Soldiertm feels like a remix of CoD Modern Warfares. Tutorial continue to annoy me. Splinter Cell: Conviction at least had more "stylish" way to annoy me. Some of those challenges are fun to do, but most of them are boring or annoying. Some of usefull equipment is locked behind crappy challenges, which is also not good for a gameplay. Augmented reality is used to display information that you should already know by now... Map shows how tight and linear this level us. Hey look, this guy is alive! At least developers added bullet penetration. Cars like to explode, unsirprisingly. Shooting gallery, kek, like in old days... Frequently game will ask you to stend in specific spot to play a useless cutscene showing team openning doors or gates. Those cutscenes are there to conceal loading of next area, as engine for Tom Clancy'stm Ghost Recon Future Soldiertm had problems with optimization. Game needed plenty of patches to work ok-ish on PCs (1.8 is last version of Tom Clancy'stm Ghost Recon Future Soldiertm). Sometimes you are doing room breaches like in MW 2 (with slo-mo) Some limited cover destruction. ... they could "teach" all that crap in first tutorial mission. Main characters models quality is pretty good, although others - not so much. Bodarks have some polygons missing on their helmets and lower part of gas masks, for example. Those animations never do something usefull other than "open next part of level" or relevant for gameplay. Once you got to those moments you know that you are safe as during those animations no enemies are going to attack you as it would require to motion capture even more expansive animations for when opening door leads to immidiate firefight (and to make a system of dynamic cutscens on top of that, heh). Once again that guy with grenades belt that was killed in opening cutscene, kek. This is "dimond formation" sequence, which is completely on rails. You no longer control movement of your character in any shape of form, the only thing you can do is move aiming circle and fire gun (which don't need to be reloaded, BTW). This is really fucking dumb. Enemies suddenly no longer playing cover based shooter, but rush you and move in scripted zig-zags. This sequence is supposed to be exciting, some number of explosions and enemies is high. "Elite" SFs can dodge point blank RPG shots, lol. This mission was brain dead, on rails (in last part - literally) and was jumping all over the place with type of action - stealth sequences with jarring jumps to open firefights without proper transitions or explanations how the hell enemies suddenly know where we are if we were supa-sekrit few seconds earlier and bad guys had no clue that we are even close to their location. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 9, 2019 Report Share Posted July 9, 2019 Next op. Military is about expensive cars, beers and other cool stuff, i'm seriuos! Spoiler New equipment that will be used through whole Future Soldiertm - Predator suit. It is called adaptive camo, but i think Metal Gear 4 had better representation of "adaptive" camo. Kek They did model canted magazine on AN-94 Stereotypical Africa Ghoststm will save the day! Game continues to do tutorials... Technicals killing civilians with full auto HMG fire while driving through rough terrain, heh. "AAAAAAA" "AAAA" continues all the way, lol. Ow, Ghoststm have X-ray vision Guess where area avaliable to player ends. Tutorials continue to prey on player. This time - Sync shot ability where you can mark enemies (up to 4) and kill them in the same time. Shishiga, hahaha. Almost Google, lol. Another boring ass cutscene about slowly driving around. It conceal loading screen, but in really boring and useless way. "221 rounds, need to write something about this window. Everything written on this ammoиcrate is written on Russian language" At close range character autoaims and can silently take down enemies by gun or by hands. Nice intro cutscene - short and gives overal impression of place. AN-94 with rails and cool camo in hands of African militia wearing hobo clothing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 10, 2019 Report Share Posted July 10, 2019 Next operation. "Modern Warfares had maps all over the world, so we will have as well! Brings more money!" <- that is the only reason of "geographical jumps". Spoiler Hey, well know UAV mechanic is here - fly around and mark enemies. This thing was in many other "open world" games from Ubisoft and copy of their generic open world shooters. Modification system is detailed and devs could had used it better. Sad that it doesn't change things much outside of choices of optics and ammunition. Firing range is avaliable to test frshly-made abominations. Mission begins, this time cutscene shows basically same thing as previous one - bad guys doing bad things. Like PMC cleaning villages from locals for some fucking reason. Spoiler Casually pushing dead bodies into dirty swamps, just to be sure that you understand that those guys are really bad. Another slow-mo room breach. Conviction liked to project text on objectives/models near it, Future Soldiertm likes to put big ass arrow on top of that. The thing is that player don't need it, as few steps later a cutscene kicks in. Evil Russians are going to appear pretty soon. ... Jesus, this is 3rd operation and game still force me into tutorials. I can't exit this view/control of UAV and i must mark those enemies to teach me sync shot, yet again. ........ fucking game, i just completed forced and unskippable "tutorial" how to use that stupid drone, i don't need those shitty hints. Map details are pretty good, level generally feel hand-made and have some memorable parts. Force choke, apparently. Heh, that looks unnatural. Funny how those PMCs have better equipment than Russian Army troops and some of Spec ops. Also those models are more detailed than many others in that game, but PMCs will be used only in this mission IIRC. Maybe there were supposed to be in more missions or be more serious enemies? Strange choice of guns of that PMC for African operations - SR-3. X-Ray shows some parts that you can fire at to do extra damage. But vehicles just have HP bars, if it will drop to 0 - car will explode anyway. So nothing cool like firing at engine to mobility kill a car that have armored crew compartment, but unprotected engine (like some of Tigr models have IRL) Another useless and time wasting cutscene of clearing shipping container that i already searched with X-ray vision. Uhhh, god damn "diamond formation" sequence of on-rail shooting gallery. The thing is.. we cleared this camp silently, without raising any alarms. Why all of the sudden that place is now crawling with PMCs that managed to appear here in 20 seconds cutscene of searching shipping container with VIP? "Gameplay" just jumps at you fron all angles, dear player! Just press LMB frequently enough to continue this cutscene! Explosions! More explosions! Oh now, yet another explosion blocked our path and we are now surrounded by explosions! Predator missi... umm, sorry, this is different game. Missile was launched from a jet, but player is given controls. The thing is - you can't really fuck up this strike, lol, only if you really try. This is an illusion of control of this missile, just to make you feel like you did it. To defeat enemy explosion we brought our own, bigger and better one. Shockwave stopped just 2 meters in front of us, because of plot armor, lol. Everything pass 2 meters is destroyed, with tracks laying on their sides and bodies flying. This pile of ammoboxes is incredible cover, equipped with force fields and shit like that. This place would have been good small arean for firefight. Instead all bombastic stupid action was started and ended in few moments by big explosion shown in cutscene, instead of doing thigns through gameplay. One of those filters of fake camera lenses. Another loading screen concealment sequence of walking through some pipes. Also, all this is linear so it act as kind-of interactive loading screen. Only in very few games laser pointer was made visible/spottable for AI. IIRC in R6 Vegas shooters this was a case, or at least description of that gadget gave this immpression. Sensor is basically AOE wallhack. Name of organisation, symbol of which is visible on PMC car, is stupid as it is doesn't make sense. Another unique place where devs could put some sort of gameplay (like sneaking through search party) but this is just another slow walking around time waster. Tactical movement through empty and safe building Friendly AI actions is heavily influenced by map makers. Sometimes this is rather obvious, when they refuse to move forward around patrols and only when last one is killed in area they resume movement, sometimes they take cover in same places duing re-tries and so on. You don't need to pay attention to their action most of the time as devs decided to make them invisible for enemies during stealth sections. Heh, road is not just a texture - they bothered to make a 3D model of transition step between asphalt and dirt instead of just putting textures on flat surface. Attention to details on maps is pretty great, i should say. God dammit, you can't even open door of the car without waiting for AI to jump to scripted points. Enviroments are relatively well modelled with plenty of unique stuff, which was a problem in previous Ghost Recons. Problem is that engine in GRFS is crap and can't work with big maps. Look here and you can basically see where level ends without problems. AI searching is scrippted - they are moving on rails. During stealth sequences if you are spotted enemy AI switches to combat mode for whole group of bad guys and will never get out of this mode until all are dead. There is no "searching for lost contact" mode of AI once you triggered combat, even if you cloak and hide for long time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 11, 2019 Report Share Posted July 11, 2019 Nex op - in Pakistan Spoiler Uhhh... at least game becamo just a little bit more challenging. This is 4th mission and GRFS continues to teach player how to use basic things. It feels like this game was designed for really dumb people. Lol, i had one of those in my previous appartmen, in 90s. And i mean exactly like this one. If you look just a bit outside of supposed area you will see things like this, those cars were probably not even touched by map maker to fix their location, they forgot about them. One of them even clips through level geometry. "Smuggling Inc.", haha. It is literally a giant arrow pointing at your mission objective. One of many places in GRFS that look interesting as gameplay space, but they are just cosmetic background. Fuck off, stupid tutorials. Now it tries to tell me how to press buttons that i used for past 3 missions already. At this point i just follow mission markers. Why this sequence even exists? UAV in "crawler" mode have Sonic pulse attack that stun enemies. In this particular case - starts a cutscene. Bullets hits in this sequence are completely scripted and come from no particular enemy - they are proximity-triggered by player. This mean you can see very "directed/movie-like" bursts of bullet hits that rips through buses and kills all civilians inside while there are no enemies around. One of scripted scenes. They are not as impactfull, as they could be. Main reason is that game never really bother to note anything about it and your squadmates make no effort to acknowledge and do something about wounded civilians, so i felt like those were just a background objects. That car suspension is doing somethign strange. You can take out all enemies inside, but RCWS will continue to shoot. It is pretty rare when cutscen shows something not totally boring. This time scene is fine, but cutscene takes a bit too much time to get to the point. ... In GRAW 1 and 2 developers didn't copied turret sections from consoles version of those games, but GRFS is different. Forced turret sections will be a recurring event in this one. Do you like EXPLOSIONS?! Yes, this Mi-24 have no pilot and gunner. Yeah, gunship could not shot down a transport helicopter. Our target - russian arms dealer. I think their AI system was so basic that developers needed to "cheat" it with scripted false detection of dead body in order to trigger combat mode of AI for this particular sequence. There are no dead bodies in this zone, heh. Tutorial screens during close range firefight... fo away, stupid hints. Ughhh Triangles show engine, fuel tank or just vehicle hull. Guns with good penetration could take out some vehicles faster if you aim at engine or fuel tank. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted July 11, 2019 Report Share Posted July 11, 2019 And we continue to blow things up and accidently step into unskippable cutscenes. Spoiler Basically walking tank with indirect fire weapons and 4th gen ATGMs, lol. I like this stuff, but in sci-fi setting, which is not totally a thing in GRFS. This thing is just a repainted sandstorm from 2nd operation. Still, kind of cool, if was used more interestingly in gameplay. Problem with x-ray/"magnetic" vision that it doesn't have limitations other than range. Inside of effective radius this device is perfect in it's role. For 2012 that equipment was already pretty outdated. Hell, even PMCs had better gear, it feels like you are fighting with forces from 1990s, heh. Google supplied Shishigas to Russian Army, hehehe. "Follow; Take Cover" now only "Shoot here" objective marker is needed for jackpot. Drone weapon controls HUD - aming circle snaps to enemies, you press buttons, they explode. Kind of fun thanks to explosions that coused by *your* actions. HEAT level rises with each shot, so you don't just fire endless barrage of semi-guided mortar rounds. Interesting - does real Tigr have this much suspension move. Model is not bad, but they little overdid size of T-90. Guided missile view - from missile warhead POV and you have full controls of it. Range is very low, just few hundred meters. "Our efforts to stop those Americans and their UGV failed! What should we do? - Repel down using long ropes while being under their direct LOS for no reason! - Roger that, Comrade Ivan!" "Repelling down didn't helped, rush them head on instead!" Ow, forgot to ad - CoD Hit markers, lots of them. kek, BTR-90. Hit him right into his bottle of babushkas jam. Cutscene incoming with mid-mission loading screen. We appeared in secret sub base all of the sudden. it feels like we are missing something... like how the hell we managed to get inside? No shit, Russian base have Soviet subs. I was way too aggressive, want to complete shotgun challenge (3 kills in 3 seconds with no more than 3 shots). Sometimes you see destruction of big objects, but those are just scripted events. Heh, another attempt ended baddly. AI take some time with execution of player's character. Why would helicopters need to lock on anything 200 meters away from them? Especially Mi-24s, lol. Not really normal to see gatling guns in Russian bases, with tripod from paparazzi camera. Heh, American Gatling gun. They could just put PKP gun model and put a bigger ammobox next to it instead of re-using model of American gun from forced turret sections that may cause uncomfortable flashbacks. Majority of enemies were killed and are going to be killed by Warhound UGV. One of mission challenges is to kill 75% of enemies with UGV. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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