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#4350492 - 04/11/17 06:08 PM GRW Some Thoughts and Some Vids  
Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 3,704
Rick_Rawlings Offline
Senior Member
Rick_Rawlings  Offline
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Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 3,704
Hey guys, been playing for a while now and thought I would put out some thoughts for those of you on the fence.

I stumbled onto this in the open beta and had never heard of it before. Of course, I had played the original Ghost Recon, Rainbow 6 and Raven Shield and therefore spent the first twenty minutes or so trying to figure our how to switch to first person! Unfortunately, it is third person only but I have adapted to it and it works well in context. I had enough fun playing coop in the beta to preorder the full game and have been playing mostly coop ever since. I have to say that this is where the game shines. It isn't a tactical shooter in the way that ARMA can be or SWAT 3 or 4, it's more of a arcade shooter with tactical elements. Still, if you drop the HUD, it can be pretty thrilling.

The world is huge and the terrain varied and there are lots of things to do. As you enter each new province, you first have to find intel before new missions become available. This is a nice, if slightly simplistic, touch as you capture lieutenants or hack terminals to gain the information. You will then progress on a series of missions that will either advance the story, find new equipment or build up your standings with the rebels. While most of them are cookie cutter stylistically, because of the different environments, they play out with enough variety to still keep them interesting 6 provinces into the game. As you complete each province by killing or capturing the main guy or gal, you will unlock a special weapon or equipment item and then be ready to move onto the next one. You can progress across the map in any order, although some provinces are more "difficult" than others, mostly meaning that enemy response time will be quicker with more forces.

Actual combat is pretty fun. The third-to-first person switch is fast enough to be usable without the crosshair, although sometimes (well, OK, most of the times) you will come into your sights not aiming where you thought you were. You can see how this works in my video at the bottom. I found COOP to be actually more difficult than solo play for combat, as my real life buddies would often execute the plan ( or lack thereof) differently than I had anticipated. We started off on "extreme" difficultly and then after getting wiped repeatedly, finally settled back into "normal", which can still be tough with minimal hud and no minimap. Also, there are multiple factions around: Santa Blanca: the main bad guys, Unidad: the less-than-neutral police force, and the Rebels who are more or less on your side. Depending on the situation and luck, you can have all three sides and you shooting at each other at once. This can create a hectic and fun environment, unless you were going for the stealthy approach and it blows the mission.

You have a variety of tricks and tools available that can be unlocked over the course of the game. You can get more grenades, C4, mines and flashbangs to blow stuff up with, there is mortar and rebel support available on a cooldown timer and they will even drop off a vehicle for you if you are stuck on the other side of the map and don't want to fast travel. (I never do) It would be nice if they actually dropped the vehicle off though, and it didn't just magically appear in a puff of smoke.

As you have probably heard, vehicle controls are probably the weakest point of the game. Cars and trucks are ok, but not great, boats are pretty good and planes are terrible. Helicopters are terrible at first until you learn that there is a weird switchover mechanism. As you takeoff, you hold shift and W to get going. Then there will be a little camera bob and you are now on a sort of altitude auto-hold and just have to hold shift to keep flying and you can adjust the up and down height with w and s. You get out of the auto-hold by reversing the process. As you can see in the below video, it is possible to fly somewhat competently, but it is awkward to get going or land under fire and the whole thing is unintuitive and deserves to be rethought, certainly at least by the sequel.


As far as actual bugs, there haven't been a lot, certainly none game breaking. There have been a few desyncs where convoys have shown up in different places for the different players in my squad and in the 14th video of my series, you can see one of my buddies flying (and swimming!) along about 15-30 feet behind the helicopter. But overall, it has been a great coop experience. Joining in or leaving a session is seamless and mission progression is handled nicely in that you can help people complete missions that you have done and they haven't. It's a really nice system. One other non-bug but still weird thing is ballistics. Bullets drop, which is nice, but they drop waaay too much and move waaay to slow. This is, I believe, to make longer range shooting more difficult in a world where distances and timeframes are greatly compressed to avoid you having to spend hours running over realistically scaled terrain or enemy bases to accomplish anything. I'm not opposed to the idea, it just seems like they overdid it a bit. You can see numerous examples in my videos.

Enemy AI is also a bit of a mixed bag. They will alert if they see you and will actively hunt for you, use cover at a basic level, and throw grenades. Sometimes they go into alert mode in ways that seem unlikely based on how stealthy you have been and many times it seems like they are too good at finding you. While I know that they have radios and communicate with their teammates like we do, there are times where you are spotted at a distance and an enemy vehicle will almost instantly show up behind you and start unloading on you. Also, in harder provinces, if you get Unidad mad at you, Apache helicopters will just start showing up one or two at a time one right after another. It's not a bad system, but there is definitely some tweaking that needs to happen.

Well, I hope that helped some of you decide weather to jump in or not. If you have people you regularly coop with and have been looking for a good game that is seemlessly campaign coop, this is a good one. The singleplayer I have done so far is not nearly as strong. Your AI mates are annoying and not very believable in conversation, but are almost too useful in a firefight. Also, the mission repetition would probably grate on me if I didn't have buddies to go through this with. One nice aspect is that areas respawn after you leave, so while I wait for my friends to log on, I will often wander around the areas of the map we have already been in to practice my shooting or tactics.

If you are planning to Coop this, I would give it an 80-85% in the current state. If you are soloing, I would knock 20 points off.

Here' s the beginning of the video series. You can find the others by clicking on my user name on youtube. Keep in mind they will obviously get more spoilerish as the series continues!


salute


The older I get, the more I realize I don't need to be Han, Luke or Leia. I'm just happy to be rebel scum...
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#4350510 - 04/11/17 06:57 PM Re: GRW Some Thoughts and Some Vids [Re: Rick_Rawlings]  
Joined: Feb 2000
Posts: 49,716
Jedi Master Offline
Entil'zha
Jedi Master  Offline
Entil'zha
Sierra Hotel

Joined: Feb 2000
Posts: 49,716
Space Coast, USA
I would concur with most of what you wrote except I actually find airplanes easier and more controllable than helos. I have done some ridiculous stunts to avoid missiles and lived and put the thing down in about 80 ft of runway.
By comparison, the helo is almost a sitting duck if it takes fire from the ground, your only hope is fast and low in moderate terrain to provide some cover. Too open, you die. Too hilly, you hit the ground or canyon walls and you die.



The Jedi Master


The anteater is wearing the bagel because he's a reindeer princess. -- my 4 yr old daughter
#4350546 - 04/11/17 09:44 PM Re: GRW Some Thoughts and Some Vids [Re: Rick_Rawlings]  
Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 3,704
Rick_Rawlings Offline
Senior Member
Rick_Rawlings  Offline
Senior Member

Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 3,704
Yeah, I can't remember, were you flying keyboard or with a gamepad? For me, the all-or-nothing keyboard commands make the plane really touchy, neither it nor the helo are what they could be...


The older I get, the more I realize I don't need to be Han, Luke or Leia. I'm just happy to be rebel scum...
#4350606 - 04/12/17 11:01 AM Re: GRW Some Thoughts and Some Vids [Re: Rick_Rawlings]  
Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 121,383
PanzerMeyer Offline
Pro-Consul of Florida
PanzerMeyer  Offline
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King Crimson - SimHQ's Top Poster

Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 121,383
Miami, FL USA
I will say that playing with 4 human players absolutely rocks. I got to do that for the first time last night with Jedi, Bill Grant and Conkris.


“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
#4350651 - 04/12/17 01:39 PM Re: GRW Some Thoughts and Some Vids [Re: Rick_Rawlings]  
Joined: Feb 2000
Posts: 49,716
Jedi Master Offline
Entil'zha
Jedi Master  Offline
Entil'zha
Sierra Hotel

Joined: Feb 2000
Posts: 49,716
Space Coast, USA
I've only flown the plane with kb, haven't tried with gamepad yet. I only just started using the gamepad for helos, and even then I've forgotten to connect it a couple of times and had to revert to kb helo control.

Yes, I have to tap-hold-release-tap-hold-release the keys to fly. It doesn't fly smooth, certainly, but if you time it correctly you get where you need to be safely even if the passengers would have spewed all over the cabin. smile


The Jedi Master


The anteater is wearing the bagel because he's a reindeer princess. -- my 4 yr old daughter
#4350692 - 04/12/17 03:28 PM Re: GRW Some Thoughts and Some Vids [Re: Jedi Master]  
Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 3,704
Rick_Rawlings Offline
Senior Member
Rick_Rawlings  Offline
Senior Member

Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 3,704
Originally Posted by Jedi Master


Yes, I have to tap-hold-release-tap-hold-release the keys to fly. It doesn't fly smooth, certainly, but if you time it correctly you get where you need to be safely even if the passengers would have spewed all over the cabin. smile


The Jedi Master


Yeah, in a couple of the videos we try the steal-the-plane missions and you will definitely see some flying that would lose one's pilot license... clapping


PanzerMeyer the seamless drop in-drop out campaign is something I have been waiting for for a long time. It smokes Far Cry 4, which we still had quite a lot of fun with...


The older I get, the more I realize I don't need to be Han, Luke or Leia. I'm just happy to be rebel scum...

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