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First Impressions (General)


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There are many here who are detail oriented, and God bless you all. I'll leave it to you to discuss whether ammo loads are proper, or the accuracy of weapons fire. For me, the first major impression I had was on how much faster the load screens are, and how much more quickly/smoothly the camera bops around the field of battle. And your first impressions?

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Actually, even the Beta team is playing the game with add-on beta test functions removed for the first time and the game just flies! My computer has never liked 'huge' maps. CMBS does even better in that regard that CMRT, which was a huge improvement over earlier title.

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Actually, even the Beta team is playing the game with add-on beta test functions removed for the first time and the game just flies! My computer has never liked 'huge' maps. CMBS does even better in that regard that CMRT, which was a huge improvement over earlier title.

I was slogging through a CMBNMG battle of Road to Nijmegen today, passing the time until I could buy CMBS, and the difference is night and day in terms of camera nimbleness and other graphical processing.

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Here are my initial impressions. The load screen's armed MTLB was stunning, leading me to hope for better graphics (have only 256 MB VRAM on Intel 3.06 Core 2 Duo iMac w/4 GB HD, OS X 10.7.5) than I have in CMBN. Was I ever right. Tremendous difference verging on miraculous. Thank you, BFC! The rendering, considering, say, what Barkmann's Panther looks like, even CMBN 3.11, is almost jaw dropping. Before that happened, though, I ran into repeated sound glitches, interruptions and hangs while loading, which made me wonder what was going on, together with what seemed to be abrupt jumps in the score. Loading was much faster than full on CMBN lacking only the Vehicle Pack, but this may be from interactions involving coding, file size and other matters, alone or in combination. In-game sound was bell like in clarity, thunderous, reverberating. And I was listening to it through my internal speakers. Am going to have to really be careful when wearing headphones and encourage everyone here to do the same. 

 

Selected QB and picked Armor on Armor--Auto Select. Hit button and waited several seconds to be taken to Briefing. Same thing when going from Briefing to game. With very few forces on the board, there was a significant delay before the turn began. But when it did...Let's just say the Americans got the drop on me, raining 25 mm fire on the rears of several BMD-3s pointing the wrong direction. Boom! Boom! Boom! M1A3SEPs went racing up the hill (and I do mean racing), knocking out one T-90 frontally while running and gunning, but at least it didn't explode. The AMP round did, though, right over the crew which had gotten out. Nasty business, war. But it wasn't all in favor of the Americans, for my other T-90s lased two Abrams perpedicular to and in front of them and hit and penetrated at least one. Was very hard to tell because of two tanks' worth of broadband obscurants in the way. With the tanks all behind the smoke, the presumptive Bradleys had another go at my BMD-3s, which had had no time to react, so were still mainly headed for the village while executing Move orders. More explosions. In one minute of combat, half my force was destroyed. Those used to WW II gunnery, movement and OpTempo are in for quite a terrible shock from this game. It was blazingly fast, but having analyzed such modern combat dynamics for many years, I was prepared for the speed and the carnage, at least to some degree.

 

BFC, you guys have outdone yourselves! Even with my anemic video card, the game looks great. The vehicles are spectacular, and the men (was too busy to do anything with them, so spared only a glance) looked good. Terrain's very nice, particularly after being stuck in the bocage. What I especially loved is that the UI is now crisp, clear and easily readable--a huge contrast to the bitmapped awful eye test of yore. Bravo Zulu. Well done. I would suggest, though, you return the Go button to bright red. I almost missed it because my brain's programmed to look for that. While I do know the basic UI and controls, I still find it impressive I was able to bang out commands and be in battle in under two minutes. This has huge implications for people who wish to play but are time constrained, for CMBS is a near instant game when played with QBs and force Auto Select once core parameters are decided. I had the forces set faster than the time it took to get to the Briefing after that.

 

All in all, I'm hugely impressed, and will, of course, share my excitement with my brother and others who may be interested (or whom I waylay). I believe you have not merely a real winner, but more like a, if not the (my bet), top computer wargame for 2015. As far as I'm concerned, this game is a category killer at minimum and ought to win a Charles Roberts Award. I almost feel sorry for your so-called competition. I hope you've got room there for all the awards--I expect a slew to come. This is how I'm responding with a total of less than ten minutes spent, beginning with loading the game. You know I'm no sycophant. I call them as I see them, and as they say in comedy, this game kills! 

 

Regards,

 

John Kettker

Edited by John Kettler
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After the initial disappointment of crashing download last night I woke up early today and the download was swift and without problems. First off the initial tiny battle featuring "the usual suspects"  ;) . Having played other CM-games with terrain mods I can't really remember what stock terrain looks like, but my impression is less saturated colors. Good call. More life like. The game runs very smooth, even before changing nVidia settings that has helped the other titles. I am super charged to enter the modern era. The new weapons tech is a blast (literally!).

 

A few oddities:

 

Map edge hugging taken to the extreme:

mapedgehugging_zps832076ff.png

 

shadows_zps02a74df0.png

Still has problems with shadows. I really want to play with them on, but from certain angles they look great and from other down right ugly. Can't figure out if I can have settings that make them look good all the time. I had hopes that this would have been fixed in CMBS.

 

But, overall, great first impression. I think I have to quit my day job to find time to play all the CM-games.

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First impresions?

Stil unable to diwnload my predorder fron the fully collapsed server, what a shame....

Does anyone been able to download from Europe??

No more preorders fron BF.

Yep, from Sweden early this morning. Download speed between 3-5 MB/sec. Hope it works out for you soon.

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My first impression is from the first mission of the Russian campaign - I didn't start small :) , I have found that the terrain and the way the scenario designer deployed the enemy in it are satisfyingly challenging.

An impression that is of no consequence and doesn't matter in the slightest is that in the cemeteries on the territory of an Orthodox Church only people of the Western Christian, Jewish, and Communist faiths are interned. I'm Not sure I can enjoy this game with this travesty (this was sarcasm, relax)

Enjoying my experience thus far.

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Downloaded around midnight in UK. Iniially got stuck in "Preparing Download" but a few refreshes later and it started downloading fairly fast. As to general impressions, I have only played the first two stand-alone battles so far, and one of them only half way, but I am enjoying the game immensely,

 

In terms of terrain, doodads of bycycles, fork lift trucks and kiosks give the maps a nice up-to-date look. Buildings look how you would expect them to look from watching news reports from the region. No problems rendering the maps in "Best" settings with decent frame rates on my laptop (which admittedly can handle pretty much any game on max settings).

 

In terms of units, they are excellent. I love playing as the Russians vs. Ukrainians right now, whereas in Shock Force I found that playing anything other than NATO wasn't that satisfying, for me personally anyway. The Russians in this game look fantastic, and their kit is great too. I haven't tried the Ukrainians yet but seeing as they are currently giving my Russians a pasting in "Going to Town" I think they will be fun to play too.

 

In terms of gameplay, I am going to have to adapt my tactics considerably due to the new weapon systems such as air burst munitions. Rooftops in Shock Force were unpleasant places to be but in Black Sea they are a death sentence!

 

I am also glad to see a lot of small-sized battles ship with the game. I have always thought that Combat Mission is at it's most enjoyable when the battle is platoon to company level, so it's nice to see such battles included compared to the full-battalion monster battles that seemed to be all the rage in Battle for Normandy and Red Thunder.

 

Great job BFC!

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Well, what to say? Looks great, and plays even better. Outstanding!
When i bought CMSF, i imagined how awesome it would be, playing WW2 battles with this engine( even at 1.0 CMSF, with a bit of fantasy i felt it would be a great game). With BN, FI and RT my fantasy became true and i thought that it would be so cool playing with the upgraded engine with modern equipment, and here we are. Oh boy, what an experience.

 

Started playing the russian campaign, im 15 min in and the battle is more or less over for the ukrainians, with smoking wrecks littering the landscape and the few poor surviving ukr troops are awaiting annihilation from above. Absolutely brutal. Im stunned.

 

If i had anything to say, id have reigning politicians play this game untill they understand just how brutal modern warfare is, in the hope they wont  see it as an option for politics any longer...

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