The real Out of Eight review (text)

[sfhand]

Well, it's out, and it's a more balanced than the video... the guy really is attached to the mousewheel zooming to the cursor location. I'm actually equally attached to the mousewheel changing the camera's elevation. I guess I win this one for the time being...

http://www.outofeight.info/2012/08/combat-mission-fortress-italy-review.html

[Baneman]

Yeah, does seem a bit more balanced, but the obsession with "dissing" the Combat Mission camera controls seems weird to me, since I find the camera controls both easy and intuitive ( maybe from years of playing Total War as well, which also had the mouse-at-edge-slide-or-swivel - maybe they nicked it from BF )

I don't use the keyboard to navigate at all barring "Tab" to jump to a unit and occasionally "1" to get the troops-eye view ( quicker than scrolling down with mousewheel ).

But after years of CM1's "view levels" keyed to the number keys and/or the up/down UI arrows, having the mousewheel change elevation is marvellous - already now if I'm playing a CM1 battle I often first use the scrollwheel before remembering that it doesn't work like that in CM1

I'm guessing that the reviewer plays more MMO/FPS style games where this kind of usage of the mousewheel is more relevant - but in a wargame, the elevation above the "wargames table" is much more important - IMO.

So I'm with you, sfhand, hoping that BFC never change the mousewheel function. Too useful

[Destraex1]

If you play the game like you have a UAV in the sky and do not zoom in to get down with the grunts and enjoy following their story, then yes I can understand.

As you get lower the need for "speed" becomes paramount. I am enjoying the game immensely, however I need a falcon more than I need a pigeon.

With the performance increase CMFI brings the game is actually 100% more playable for me as I do not get as much camera stutter or slow down.

I miss my zoom to cursor and hold shift to accelerate camera from other games.

[c3k]

If you play the game like you have a UAV in the sky and do not zoom in to get down with the grunts and enjoy following their story, then yes I can understand.

As you get lower the need for "speed" becomes paramount. I am enjoying the game immensely, however I need a falcon more than I need a pigeon.

With the performance increase CMFI brings the game is actually 100% more playable for me as I do not get as much camera stutter or slow down.

I miss my zoom to cursor and hold shift to accelerate camera from other games.

Do you play WeGo or RT?

[MikeyD]

Sometimes these reviews resemble an auto review written by a highschool sophomore complaining about the difficulty they had parallel parking the test vehicle. Maybe part of the blame falls on the reviewer's relative inexperience.

[pazuzusmiles]

Personally speaking I use trackball exclusively...it is really immersive tool for the combat mission series as you are able to casually up, down & roll aross screen without much mouse management/wrist movement at all and zooming can be tweaked in the customizable slots of the trackball....I first discovered it from an old school flight simmer who refused to fly IL2 without it....I called him a real snob.....well I dare say now I too am I snob and will not play combat mission without a trackball

[Battlefront.com]

I still don't understand the focus on the graphics. Watch some ARMA vids up on YouTube and you'll see all kinds of clipping and animation nonsense. And they have a budget measured in the tens of millions of Dollars. So nope, I don't think we should take a knocking.

I don't mind the slight of saying the things we added, some of which you guys have been begging us for since 1999 or later, aren't aren't important in his opinion. Each to his own. However, he seems to miss the fact that Italy costs the same as Normandy cost without the features. Which means Italy customers aren't paying a dime for the extra features, if you get right down to it.

Also, the ignorance of game development should not be inline with the average customer's. I expect more from a reviewer. Seems he thinks all those features in, including the graphical improvements, were no big deal to do. No magic pixie dust available for our game development, unfortunately. We had to do it the old fashioned way and pay someone to work the better part of a year to program all those things in. Guess we should have had him spend the time making an interactive Tutorial system and a faster way to zoom the camera instead. Though I suspect we would have gotten a lower score if we had.

As I said earlier, I'm just glad that reviews don't influence sales like they used to.

Steve

[Destraex1]

Do you play WeGo or RT?

real time is what I play

[pazuzusmiles]

"....the inability to use the mouse wheel to zoom towards the cursor position really needs to be fixed...." The reviewer states..

I challenge that this is an operater error on his part...hes talkingabout the cursor for camera angles and clicking on diff. targets.... the software allows players several ways to achieve the same zoom effect for whatever ur grognardian delights may desire ect ect...and a lot of the other issues are the usual birthing pains of new product but nothing that distracts from the gameplay...My GOD! If anythin the AI is even more intelligent than ever..(Dave? what are you doing Dave?")...which I might add there are already hotfix's available on the website .......a lot of people will be hard pressed to find a more hands on team of developers that stay in regular touch with their fanbase...clearly this kid that reviewed this is a newbie.......in essence what im really trying to say is:

'f*** 8 out of 8.'

...Ive been playing CMFI for days now..need to shave....say hello to neighbors...get some sun..eat...things like that......You've done it again guys!!!

thanks battlefront!!! hahaha

[Destraex1]

I still don't understand the focus on the graphics. Watch some ARMA vids up on YouTube and you'll see all kinds of clipping and animation nonsense. And they have a budget measured in the tens of millions of Dollars. So nope, I don't think we should take a knocking.

I don't mind the slight of saying the things we added, some of which you guys have been begging us for since 1999 or later, aren't aren't important in his opinion. Each to his own. However, he seems to miss the fact that Italy costs the same as Normandy cost without the features. Which means Italy customers aren't paying a dime for the extra features, if you get right down to it.

Also, the ignorance of game development should not be inline with the average customer's. I expect more from a reviewer. Seems he thinks all those features in, including the graphical improvements, were no big deal to do. No magic pixie dust available for our game development, unfortunately. We had to do it the old fashioned way and pay someone to work the better part of a year to program all those things in. Guess we should have had him spend the time making an interactive Tutorial system and a faster way to zoom the camera instead. Though I suspect we would have gotten a lower score if we had.

As I said earlier, I'm just glad that reviews don't influence sales like they used to.

Steve

I agree. Clipping is no big issue for me.

[ZPB II]

I do love a review which features a sentence such as "The menu music is generic."

I don't find clipping problematic at all. Like Steve said, it happens in all games. You even get to see clipping in the latest and greatest Call of Duty. Heck, you even see metric boatloads of clipping in the most expensive video game of all time, Star Wars: The Old Republic. An estimated 150-200 million dollars didn't get rid of clipping, so expecting a 5-man outfit to do it is...well...I'm not going to comment on it more. Other than saying that SWTOR had extremely lackluster animations when you take the budget into account.

The reviewer also doesn't know what monochrome means or he has a corrupted installation of the game.

The other of his pet peeves...Camera controls. I simply don't get it. CM has pretty much the best camera control of any game I've played. It has so much control. I absolutely loathe the camera scheme of Total War games and the like. It glides way too much, lacks precision and is too restricted. In CMx2, I can be anywhere on the map at an angle and altitude of my preference in a split second. Control-click somewhere and use V to rotate the camera 180 degrees and use the mouse to do the rest. Simple, accurate and fluid. This is coming from a gamer for life. I've played so many RTS games that I like to think that I know what I'm talking about. Maybe I should record a video of me playing just to showcase how fast and flexible the camera can be, since almost all Youtube videos of people playing CMx2 have me screaming "Waddafaaak, it's like watching a humpback whale parallel park an articulated lorry!"

I do agree that it is not easy to learn the ropes, but once you do...

I don't mean to sound too harsh but some adjustment of expectations might be called for.

[Childress]

Though I suspect we would have gotten a lower score if we had.

It's pretty clear that Allen/Jaguar was loaded for bear from the start. It's hard to come out a winner when you have to satisfy more stringent- and, frankly, frivolous- criteria than applied to other products within the same genre. CMFI was heading for an even lower score on his site but the strong and contrary reaction to his video on this and the Wargamer forum softened, one suspects, the final blow.

How influential is this guy, anyway?

[Steiner14]

This is the last sentence of the introductionary paragraph:

"Is Combat Mission: Fortress Italy worth the investment for newcomers and veterans alike?"

And he starts with:

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

That's incredible!

He obviously has the focus right and he also sets the reader's focus correctly - especially of potential newcomers... :mad:

Incredible after all the discussions about the bashing video camouflaged as a review, for me it is clear now, it is intention to mislead potential buyers and keep wargamers distracted.

BTW: Did anyone notice the given impressive examples of tactical combat, the "reviewer" experienced during his "testing" to give newcomers, as a target-group of his readers, a glimpse, what CMFI is able to model?

[ZPB II]

Indeed, anyone can write a review on how they feel about things. Say, go to the cinema to watch an art film and complain about the Polish dialogue and the lack of oneliners, helicopters, car chases, tits & explosions. Wait, scratch that, a lot of art films prominently feature tits. But that's not exactly a review. It's an opinion.

The truly good reviewers worth following are able to place things in context. They are able to see what a product is designed to do, who it is for and criticize accordingly.

The rounding up statements are good, but they feel a bit disjointed from the article in general. (I would say tactical instead of strategic but)

"Satisfying strategic gameplay that lacks some feature polish common in contemporary titles: 6/8"

"Buy it if you like the genre"

[imperator07]

Maybe I should record a video of me playing just to showcase how fast and flexible the camera can be, since almost all Youtube videos of people playing CMx2 have me screaming "Waddafaaak, it's like watching a humpback whale parallel park an articulated lorry!"

Such a video would be really interesting.

I second the wish to hold shift for a faster camera.

[Javaslinger]

I think combat mission could use a good Let's Play video by an experienced player. There are a few but they're clearly done by starcraft or fps transplants...

I love how they mass select a platoon or more of infantry and just move them forward without any specifics...

AAR's are great but they can't hold a candle to a good Let's Play. Being able to watch a CM game 'live' with running commentary on tactics,etc by a good player would be a wonderful thing. Let's Play's are also great advertising when they help newcomers grasp the game and demonstrate the tactical scope and possibilities with this engine!

I would do one, but I am no CM guru by a longshot...

Volunteers???

[ZPB II]

I could give it a go when I get some free time. I'm not sure about the voice-over though, my verbal English is quite rusty. But the last time I spoke English I did score so it's not completely hopeless!

Maybe if I do some kind of over-exaggerated accent. If there's no educational value, atleast there can be comedic value.

I will need to do some testing with FRAPs running and see how it impacts my FPS and how it looks in general. My rig is ancient. I've been planning to start doing Let's Plays and some CM machinima anyway.

[Tequila]

In my opinion, what the biggest issue of the interface is, is that there is very little room for customizing it. There is practically nothing wrong with the options the camera controls give you*. Instead what I find irritates me most is that those options aren't arranged on the keyboard+mouse in a very practical manner. It is neccessary to change the position of your hand to get from camera keys to hotkeys and back, again and again. This, I think, comes from inefficient use of those keys and buttons.

For example in World in Conflict by Massive Entertainment you would order units to move by clicking. Pretty standard I'd say. If you clicked and dragged however you could also set the units facing and spacing(in case of infantry units or multiple units), thereby giving one button three related and often used functions. Also Zoom To Cursor, which was mentioned in the review, made camera work much more efficient as you could zoom out completely and then from the big picture zoom in exactly where you need to be with minimal effort and mouse movement.

Another approach to keys I know from ARMA which can detect the difference between pressing once, double tapping and holding a key or button, enabling you to have many different functions on very little keyboard space. Also using keys as modifiers could be used to make things more efficient.

Now these methods may or may not be applicable to CM, but certainly they can set an example of how efficiency can be achieved.

In this context I find it further irritating that I can't use the number keys, space bar or wasd keys(+q and f for some reason) for other things than the functions they were originally given as they will then perform two functions at once. This might be a bug though. Further it would be very helpful to have an adjustable slider to regulate scroll speed (+ perhaps the speed of other camera functions).

This game is much like eating raw chilis, at first incredibly painful, but if you've done it enough very pleasurable.

*(I say practically because I would prefer the Right-click-drag to translate mouse movement directly)

[Javaslinger]

That would be GREAT!

Though I highly discourage over-exaggerated accents for comedic value... As a frequent listener to Let's Play's I can promise you the the end results comedic value is often the only thing highly exaggerated...

[Sergei]

Maybe if I do some kind of over-exaggerated accent. If there's no educational value, atleast there can be comedic value.

No, no, no. Rules: get yourself a bottle of Kossu. Start recording when you are halfway through the bottle. By the end of the video the bottle must be empty.

[Baneman]

While we're on the subject of controls, while the key-mapping ingame is an excellent concept, I found that mapping "Clear Target" to "X" ( 'cos I'm used to all the old CM1 key commands ) - it shows "X" on the button in the UI, but it doesn't actually work - is Clear Target a non-modifiable command ?

[sfhand]

Personally speaking I use trackball exclusively...it is really immersive tool for the combat mission series as you are able to casually up, down & roll aross screen without much mouse management/wrist movement at all and zooming can be tweaked in the customizable slots of the trackball....I first discovered it from an old school flight simmer who refused to fly IL2 without it....I called him a real snob.....well I dare say now I too am I snob and will not play combat mission without a trackball

Hmmm... point taken, I have been using a trackball exclusively since I broke my mouse's cable playing Doom when it first came out. Whenever I happen upon a computer with a mouse now it seems incredibly non-efficient.

I use a cordless optical trackman, btw, and no, I'm not going to ask Moon for an exemption to post the link !

[Cpl Steiner]

Just skimmed through the review. To be honest, 6 out of 8 is a pretty decent score for a niche game by a small company with a minimal number of permanent staff.

Some things he complains about are actually already in the game! For instance, he talks about how the interface should have a mini-OOB so you can navigate between units. It already does. The left-hand side of the control panel shows where the unit is in the OOB and clicking on a higher echelon unit takes you to that HQ. Meanwhile, the middle of the control panel shows units in that HQs formation, so you can go to a lower echelon HQ. Once an HQ is selected, pressing the '+' key repeatedly takes you through all subordinate units (although admittedly you will move off this HQ's units if you press '+' enough times).

It may not be that obvious but then again, that's why there is a manual!

A "hotkey" approach to OOB navigation would be nice to have though. "Gettysburg, Scourge of War" had a nice one, in which the arrow keys took you up or down a layer in the OOB and left and right within the same layer of the OOB, allowing you to easily see who was in command and what other units he controlled. If BFC could think of a similar hotkey feature it would be nice to have (although as described above, you can already navigate the OOB quite easily using the control panel).

[womble]

Some things he complains about are actually already in the game! For instance, he talks about how the interface should have a mini-OOB so you can navigate between units. It already does. The left-hand side of the control panel shows where the unit is in the OOB and clicking on a higher echelon unit takes you to that HQ. Meanwhile, the middle of the control panel shows units in that HQs formation, so you can go to a lower echelon HQ. Once an HQ is selected, pressing the '+' key repeatedly takes you through all subordinate units (although admittedly you will move off this HQ's units if you press '+' enough times).

It's not as good as a dedicated OOB pane would be. There's no way to use the current TO tools (yes, there are two, in different places in the UI: there's a different UI element for going "back up" the Table, to the one for digging deeper into it) to navigate between Batallions (or whatever Formations you've got selected).

[Steiner14]

Just skimmed through the review. To be honest, 6 out of 8 is a pretty decent score for a niche game by a small company with a minimal number of permanent staff.

Writing reviews is about presenting things. Even more, if a reviewer states, that he writes it for newbies.

If I review a camera and talk about it's finish and design, (which everybody can see on pics anyway) and I wouldn't explain how the quality of the the lens is and the photos look like, who with only the slightest interest, would give anything about the score?

This reviewer deliberately avoids to talk about all important aspects why CM has been made and why it stands on his own with nothing coming even close. But his score was not that bad? It's an ugly Leica, it doesn't have any fancy gimmicks and it's "decades behind", but it's capable to make photos - so i give it a 6/8?