IGN Review

[Derfel]

IGN Review of CMSF

[Hertston]

I always worry about a reviewer who calls maps or scenarios in a wargame 'levels'!

However, a reasonable enough review, I think. I don't share his opinion on the UI, but then I rarely do when the reviewers moan about UI in games I have played. The SMSF UI is actually rather elegant IMHO, once you get used to it.

[monkeezgob]

Seems very fair in my opinion. The poor AI really kills any potential to be a serious wargame and the lack of WEGO for online play means it degenerates into a click-fest. Guess the reviewer (like me) "just didn't get it".

[Thomm]

The review certainly represents a valid, albeit 'half-empty' point of view.

However, it all boils down to individual preferences. The last hyped game I came in contact with was the BioShock demo. It got 9.7 points from IGN. Strangely enough, I would rather take CM:SF to a lonely island than BioShock.

Two quotes from the 'incredible' 9.7 Bioshock demo review:

Oh, who am I kidding, batting those things away with a wrench was awesome, and I can't wait to do it again.

And the Big Daddy? Wow. First introduced in a scripted event, a Big Daddy appears to defend a Little Sister from a Splicer, and does so by grabbing the Splicer, drilling it--literally--in the chest, and slamming it into the wall several times. Owned.

That does not make the CM:SF review invalid, though.

Best regards,

Thomm

[Cpl Steiner]

Yep, pretty fair from what I can tell. The reviewer obviously wants to like CM:SF but the problems just get too much in the way.

[Nidan1]

I agree, I would make the same observations based on my experiences playing the game so far.

[Sgt Joch]

seems like a fair review to me, BFC positioned CMSF as a "mainstream" game and it is being reviewed in that light, like GRAW 2 for example.

CMBO,CMBB and CMAK were positioned as serious wargames and were reviewed as such, which is why they received such great reviews.

When you look at CMSF as a mainstream game for casual gamers, it has shortcomings, the graphics are 1-2 years behind the current crop of games, the single player AI is average, there are technical issues with certain hardware combinations, etc,..

Let's face it, only "detail obssessed wargaming grogs" appreciate the potential of CMSF and CMx2, but we are no longer BFC's main target audience...

[Abbott]

Originally posted by Sgt.Joch:

Let's face it, only "detail obssessed wargaming grogs" appreciate the potential of CMSF and CMx2, but we are no longer BFC's main target audience...

Can't blame BFC for trying to make a buck. I plan to hang on for a few more patches and see what happens.

Moreover, the graphics, though capable of displaying great until detail in extreme close-ups, don't scale very well and don't run very well at any setting.

If I don't read here that CM:SF has become a good wargame then I will likely wait for the next release.

Animations and unit detail are really fantastic up close. Infantry outfits and vehicle detailing are very high, so you can definitely get lost in the action when viewing things from ground level. The animations of soldiers running or tanks rocking back and forth after firing their guns definitely adds to the realism here. The interface doesn't really work at this scale, however, so you'll have to bounce back and forth between this and the more traditional high-level view. As you move out, the graphics get scaled way back; textures get blocky and animations for some of the units disappear altogether.

I don’t get the fact that the unit graphics look so nice up close but the game makes them almost impossible to enjoy during play.

Line of sight and line of fire seems to matter a great deal in the game but it doesn't always match the geometry of the level. So while you might not be able to trace an unobstructed line directly from one unit to another, that doesn't mean that they can't see and fire on each other. Given the scale of the game, it's not a surprise that there's some abstraction going on here, but it can be very disappointing to get your units behind cover only to discover that they can still be shot at by nearby enemies.

For me that and the poor AI are game killers, much like Squad Assault.

Battlefront can be commended for their speedy patches but that doesn't excuse the sorry state of the game when it was released or make it any easier to endure the problems that still exist, particularly with regard to the apathetic AI, gummy interface, or poor overall performance. There are undoubtedly a small number of CM fans out there who can look past these issues in anticipation of future fixes but for the rest of us life is just too short to allow for these sorts of compromises.

They just don’t get it.

[ September 14, 2007, 08:05 AM: Message edited by: Abbott ]

[MarkEzra]

I loved the reader comment: "Does anyone give a ****? I've never even heard of this series."

[[ Censor profanity. -- DB ]]...

Posted by: CaptainGoober on September 12, 2007

It speaks volumes. As to the review: It spoke to the issues of the game fairly accurately. I wouldn't expect general gaming reviewers to delve into the accuracy and fidelity to detail needs that wargamers do. I read Jim Cobb's excellent review of CM:SF. I Read IGN's Mediocre review of CM:SF...I "GET" both.

[thewood]

I actually think mr. Cobb gave a little bit of a pass to CMSF. The bugs were pretty much glossed over. I think Cobb's review was a good review of how the game works, but I like to see the issues the game has intertwined with the review at points where they are relevant. A simple statement like it has a few bugs that are being patched is a little too much of a pass when people are trying to decide if they buy or not.

I think the IGN review is probably a more realistic appraisal of the state of the game at 1.02.