won't share too many because saving some for the review... lol...

but why does fatty hate me so much:



more:

I've been hearing that the game is VERY buggy and/or just plain "bad"... Curious to read the review to see how much of that is true or not. Screenshots don't look bad though.

it's buggy, but they have been releasing patches almost every 48 hours... gameplay is great.

I think the game play is kind of bad, not really like RO:OST at all. But I think they will fix it. If you guys are on later I will come play.

whats bad? the only problem we had is hit detection and sound issues last night... alot of people are saying it's bad...but not explaining it.

yet everyone who was playing on our server last night thinks it's pretty damn good, with issues.

Not enough sway on the rifles. Right now, it seems if you pop your head out for a second you are dead. I usually play as the machine gunner and I always get killed by someone who just pokes around the corner and kills me right away. There is also no spawn protection, and on half the levels you can see into the spawn. There are also some little bugs that are annoying but hopefully be fixed, like having to confirm you want to respawn, and "committing suicide" when you change class. Other than that it's fun.

Oh OK... ya I agree with you on those issues... drive me nuts... I guess that could be considered gameplay, when I say gameplay I actually mean force on force, friend vs friend combat... the actual fighting... I consider those design decision flaws.

LOL, nice death cam shot.

Having never played the first game, I have no benchmark for comparison. But I find RO2 frustrating. It's 75% there as a really brilliant, realistic first-person shooter. The weapons feel 'right,' the cover system works well, the team-based gameplay is fast and furious, etc. But the other 25% of the experience is rife with bugs and glitches; falling down ladders to my death, interface confusion, having teammates spawn in my line of fire, abysmal sound effects and sound positioning....

If I could sum up the experience by way of analogy, I'd say it's like getting frisky with a gorgeous woman and bringing her home only to discover that she's really a man. So close, yet so far.

But from what I hear, the developers supported RO1 for a very long time. So I'm going to stick it out, looking forward to many patches for this diamond in the rough.

now thats a good opinion Fatty... one I agree with, and couldn't of said better... matter of fact I think I'll steal that one line for my review conclusion. JK

I played the first one, since IMO it was a great game after fixes and updates, I still found it extremely difficult, almost to the point of no fun. With this series, again IMO, you have to be devoted to it to enjoy it... get plenty of hours with it... and thats not me... I play a game for 4 to 6 months and move on... but i have no doubt that if I stuck with these games longer, i would enjoy them more.

Yeah I am in a similar place as Fatty, enjoying it 75% but I see the same gameplay gotchas, the other main thing I am not really enjoying is how short the rounds are... it seems like just when I start getting good situational awareness and am in the middle of flanking some group I get a message that the round is over and get respawned somewhere else and have to start all over figuring out where the enemy is coming from and what good approach there is to counteract them.

Maybe that is just me not used to how the RO game system works (never played RO1) but so far the game hasn't got the hooks in me to keep coming back like some other shooters do (TF2, Arma2, BC2)...

I am hopeful the team continues to tweak it and improves it, as the 75% shows a lot of promise and I like the setting.

The default was like 10 mins, on our server i doubled it... agree, default servers are too short.

Most of the issues are related to server config. I´ve been in a RO clan for years, and now we are starting again.
The "dead-cam" can (and imho must) be disabled, but it depends on server admin, like the time of each map, can be defined up by server admin.
It has some bugs, but the hard work is done, and the dev team will support the game as they did with the first one. Give it a little time, and it will give you years of fun.
Surely, it has a very hard learning slope, but the gameplay is fantstic.
You have to take care with every single window in the game, dont forget to set the distance in your iron sight, reload your bolt rifle after every shot and...have tons of fun

I've never had that gender switcharoo thing happen to me but I agree with ya fatty Everything but the sound part. I think the sound effects are brilliant. The guns sound great and some of the comments the from soldiers make me laugh.

Any game that allows me to double tap Nazis is fine by me ...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL-VvdWZc3A

couple more, finishing review and submitting.

I got in the other evening and really took advantage of knowing where the enemy was going to spawn and was killing them in two's and three's at a time, they were of the option to take another route but came out of the second floor of that building where the slope of debris leads to ground level on 'Apartments'
In typical online shooter style, running out into Battle head-first.
I nearly dominated the whole match by myself till they started trying to aim from cover.
I really like the game and yes, it has some bugs but there are more arcade than simulator qualities to this title that are being utilized yet by many servers and those get you the frantic spawn-right-in-front-of-the-enemy situations more often than the objective based realism servers I have found. I wouldn't mind having servers that had Co-Op Human vs AI or even light population for ambiance when there are few players on. I'd like to see more Tank with infantry maps like the original RO, But I'm sure we'll see more maps soon and fixes for the bugs.

yea i'm with most other people, its nearly there as a great game, i cant wait to see what modders will do to it!

I think RO2 is great. I like it MUCH more than the previous RO.

It doesn't look quite as brilliant as BiA:HH on the same engine...

first one looks like ted danson pulling a gun on you. animations are astonishing, like the detail of rifle slung on his back. lack of visible slings somewhat disconcerting.



there is no comparison. this game looks better, it has better textures, more crisp shader effects and general more work done visual-wise. biah:hh looks better at first glance because it has grunge nosie filter over everything and the backdrops are more or less overdone hollywood-style. ro2 looks far more natural and realistic.

Tripwire is also a smaller company, so I'd prefer they spend their limited manpower on fixing design/gameplay issues like those mentioned here than working on shaders and skyboxes and whatnot.

I think it safe to say that, at release, RO2 isn't as good as RO1 is now. However, you can see the potential is there and I think by 2012 we'll see people arguing that RO2 has passed RO1.



The Jedi Master

I will say this, the GP is new, yes buggy but allot of great potential, there is never a upper advantage, it depends on teamwork that is why im addicted to the game. It is realistic, and finally a WW2 game that lets you take cover. I would give the game a 80% because of the "" storyline. I hope you guys try the, its no Call of Duty but it is fun realistic and fun.

I agree with you Plane the the game is great but buggy, and has alot of potential except for... what story line? SP is just practice with bots, and MP is...well MP.

Yes in single player I've just been assigned a squad and now I order them around, great fun. Reminds me of brothers in arms..

What RO is now in terms of gameplay is great but visually is very old school, eventually RO2 will be everything it's predecessor is and more, I get sweaty palms playing HoS not so much in Ostfront.

i don't know how anyone can say the game looks old or outdated on full setting. i just don't. looks like i'll have to do the comparison thing again. this game looks better than crysis 2

hells highway, which some people are comparing. notice the distinct lack of detailed and crisp normal maps. the shaders are bland and the character models really aren't that good:

http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/773088/bro...?page=mediaFull

ro2. 'nuff said:

http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/8592/officerz.jpg

johncage... come on now, your love for the game is blinding you... All my screens are full image detail, everything on max... and they do look like old school... just look at the character model close ups, those are the worst... that said, I love the game... but needs more loving.

which game has better character model than ro2? certainly not the grunge texture battlefield 3 or midget call of duty 10(or how many they have now)

crisp normal maps, detailed textures and highly articulated animations.

I loled this one. great shot... from fatty too.

Hey RSColonel, I’m surprised finding you commenting on this game. It’s a Steam game! :-D ;-)

Seriously, I’m not impressed by the visuals either. Of course, a good game isn’t defined by visuals only. But if it was only for the gameplay, the original Unreal Tournament mod would still be good enough for me, personally. This is just another team versus team online shooter after all.

I got him with the rifle. The pistol is to make sure he's down (and add a little insult to injury )

I finally installed and played some last night. Runs pretty decent except for some lag moments. Weopon modeling and details as well as sounds are outstanding. The new cover system is really cool. Lots of detail and options for cover and hiding in cover is going to make for some getting used to but its great. I think I've only had two kills so far. Its tuff but fun.

And man, the whole ambiance of running into a concrete building to hear the sound change and weopon firing going off is something else.

The graphics are quite stylized, and it's worth seeing it moving to get the full effect. Like Coot says, the sound design and atmosphere are great but it's a tough game to just pick up and play.

Let me elucidate a little bit. I think the quality of the sound effects is very good. As Coot says above, the crack of rifles inside structures is really exceptional. Artillery/mortars coming down on my head is a pretty cool experience too, so much so that I sometimes forget to take cover or run.

However, there are some weird design choices/bugs with the audio, in particular the positional effects. Why, for example, does my guy make footstep noises when I'm turning around in place while prone? I've spooked myself into thinking someone was near on more than one occasion this way. Plus, in my few experiences of close-quarters fighting in buildings, I find it really hard to tell where the bad guys are based on audio queues like footsteps, even with my nice G930s. I struggle to tell whether guys are above me or below me.

I've noticed as well that the volume of grenades drops off dramatically over distances greater than 20 feet or so.

Not really game-breakers, but small annoyances I hope are improved in future patches.

Thanks for elucidating fatty. (I learnded a new word today ).

Your elucidation sounds a lot better than your original “abysmal sound effects and sound positioning” statement which put me off because I literally said to myself “WOW, great atmospheric positional audio!” when I first started playing RO2. I’ll have to listen a little more closely next time I play which is a bit more difficult for me since I’m partially deaf in my left ear

Have you checked the Dolby switch on your G930’s to make sure it’s in the down position?

I know this game is all about gameplay, tactics, ballistics, etc.

But, sheesh, graphically (at least from that trailer) it reminded me of Call of Duty: United Offensive (circa 2004).

Is there really any reason why this game can't look as good as ArmAII?

That said, the gameplay looks very good.

Can anyone tell me what the MP gamemodes are like (how big are the maps, how long are the matches, what are the objectives)?

While there is a certain way that Unreal engine games do look (squat :)), I don't agree with the ArmAII comparison. A lot of RO2 combat is close-quarters and the building interiors (well, what's left of some of them) are far advanced of anything in ArmAII. BIS's renderer is great for big vista's but it's not great for buildings/internals in my opinion. Some of the maps in RO2 are impressive when the fire and smoke are all around.

The maps can be very big (tank battles) to very choked (fire fight CQB infantry), and Magnum's review covers the modes. The objectives and rounds lengths are really something set on the server - some very tactical groups like to play 45 minute rounds while others can be as short a 5 minutes and limited respawns. There's over 500 servers active so it does take some time to find a group that wants to play like you want to play.

arma2's character models aren't that detailed, texture and normal map-wise. and the proportions and animations are really off sometimes.

graphically, this is just superior to any recent ww2 game out there. no comparison.



those folds on his uniform aren't textures, there' normal maps and they look better while in motion as they change dynamically according to light source. there's also self shadowing, and other advanced features not even available in 2004(stupid comparison to call of duty:uo)