Honest Review

[theFightingSeabee]

Hey medlinke, glad you liked the demo. To shortly answer the first set of questions... it's worth every penny. I have played this game and loved it for a year now. Yes, there are a few annoyances, but I have watched the number of them dwindle with every patch.

Second set:

1) Rough terrain is rough. Imagine driving through a boulder field, you'd have to make a lot of turns and drive over a lot of big rocks to get through it.

2) Lack of a kill sheet... yeah, that does suck. They best be working on that .

3) A perfect illustration of balancing the game. US forces may have better optics at long range, but that does no good in house to house fighting. Really, all it means is that the enemy was hiding... waiting to pounce... and bang! they attack. Same thing happens all the time in Iraq and Afghanistan.

4) I don't remember the particular scenario, but there are different types of objectives. One you have to touch, one you have to clear out all of the enemy and hold it until the end of the scenario. If your guys touched the obj and it didn't go away, odds are that you must clear out the bad guys and hold on to it.

Try to have no casualties. Go sloooow or fast when you need to. When you have dead/injured guys (laying on a red disk), send a unit to sit by them. They will eventually apply medical care and might improve your ending stats. Above all, put yourself in the shoes - sorry boots - of the commander on the ground. You wouldn't send your guys to die without trying to achieve the very best outcome. For me, this makes the game that much more tense.

[Cpl Steiner]

Just to add my own two-pennyworth.

When I first got the game I was deeply disappointed and felt very let down by BFC because it was in a terrible, pre-beta state. It turns out BFC had no choice but to release the game unfinished because they signed a contract with Paradox they couldn't get out of.

After the initial "slap in the face" release, BFC worked their arses off to finish the game with subsequent patches, and have largely succeeded. With the 1.1 patch it looks like they will finally have a finished product. That is over a year after release but at least they stuck with it and listened to their customers!

In it's current state the game is already pretty good, although still missing some CMx1 features such as kill sheets, as has already been mentioned. With v1.1 I expect it to be even better.

Another thing you should bear in mind is the support of the community. There are lots of mods now that raise the game to an even higher level, such as "ragtag" US uniforms and improved flame graphics.

My advice - buy it. It's only the price of a few rounds of drinks, and will give you far more enjoyment! It's not the best game ever, but it is a pretty good and interesting game none the less.

[c3k]

Cpl Steiner stated it exactly as I would.

[Pandur]

Any tips so I can squeeze the most out of the demo experience?

just one, play it as RED too, at least once.

you asked about how the sides are different in "balance", go ahead and try it out.

also if you are not interessted in playing RED, just give it a go once it wont hurt and you are getting good info about RED capabilities while trying to get em to fight the BLUE side.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Actually Pandur, the demo was set up for Red to take the dive. While it's possible to play as Red and even do well, it's not an accurate insight in typical Red v Blue balance.

[medlinke]

Yeah the demo scenario features 2 anti-tank teams for the OPFOR and about 10 vehicles for the BLUEFOR.

While it seems like an accurate depiction of what would happen if BLUEFOR were actually going to take down a town, I'm not sure playing OPFOR could ever result in a win. There are roughly 67 turns that the OPFOR would have to nurse their forces through.

A great introduction though.

Maybe that 3rd scenario with an open terrain meeting engagement would feature a better opportunity to learn about the OPFOR in CMSF.

[Pandur]

ok, honestly i just played the 1.1 demo, the first there was. did the provided battles in the demo change to version 1.07!?

Elmar Bijlsma,

as it seems the demo battles changed, i have no clue of the particular balance in that scenario, but from my expirience, if you dont mess up big time with the blue force, red will allways take the dive in some way or another.

at least thats what i expirience.

so the challenge in playing red vs blue is to keep your guys from being destroyed rather than destroying the blue side. and in the best of all outcomes you even killed enough of them while doing that so you managed to score some points too.

than you call it a win, but i dont know if medlink is thinking about that when he talks about a "win" on red side.

however, when playing the AI that can change slightly. if the scenario tries to give red some good stuff and is meant to be balanced you "can" destoy blue, but well, thats rare.

(Chance Encouter for example)

medlink

Yeah the demo scenario features 2 anti-tank teams for the OPFOR and about 10 vehicles for the BLUEFOR.

thats not abnormal, you will find more than just some battles where you cant take out all blue vehicles even if everything would go perfectly becouse you lack the AT assets.

if you get some T64´s or something to take out some strykers you can be assured blue side is comming with abrams to brew you tanks up befor they could spot anything.

on red side you have to get used to that and play accordingly.

however red on red is quiet the most fun i get out of the game. there both sides can win and loose.

if i want to own the reds from time to time i gona take blue side.

[medlinke]

Yeah I had a lot of fun last night with the 3rd mechanized clash between T-72s and Abrams in the demo.

OPFOR is pretty fun even though when things go perfectly your nighttime optics absolutely kill you. I never realized a 50 ton tank in the desert spewing dust could be so ninja-esque! Very telling about how effective our fighting men and women are both inside and outside of the machines that carry them to battle.

It was still pretty fun trying to set up ambushes drawing the BLUEFOR in close before rushing in at them from my hiding spots.

[MikeyD]

One interesting thing is a lot (I should say all?) of the scenarios and demos were designed using earlier versions of the game engine. As the game continues to improve your old scenario can change drastically! Suddenly units can fire over tall walls, the AI's making better use of cover, etc, etc. The 'easy' scenario you played back in v1.04 becomes a bear to win in v1.08. I've got a 3rd party scenario up on CMMODS.COM that I'm going to have to delete when v1.10 comes out. I had been relying on a 'game artifact' involving Syrian spies that won't be present in the upgrade.

[medlinke]

Well if anything that only reinforces how far the game has come since its release.

I want to thank everyone for being so helpful. I think Battlefront should tip their hats to such a great community. I was pretty active 6 or 7 years ago around here and the community has only gotten better over that time. (It was great when CM was still Computer Advanced Squad Leader too though!) So that's meant as a compliment.

I have purchased the game and look forward to contributing a scenario I'm cooking up based on an actual small engagement near Camp Adder in Iraq.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

I have purchased the game

LOL, he fell for it, good job everyone. There really is one born every minute.

...and look forward to contributing a scenario I'm cooking up based on an actual small engagement near Camp Adder in Iraq.

Looking forward to it. I always expected a large proportion of the user made scenarios to be set in Iraq but it never materialized.

[medlinke]

Yeah I kind of think that Iraq is a tricky one given nature of the accounts thusfar that have been published. Also, Google Maps has large swaths of Iraq without satellite coverage like Nasariya for example. So you're spending a large amount of time tracking stuff down.

Also, sometimes real life scenarios don't hold up as well in a game setting. I remember all those old Wild Bill scenarios from CMBO that were great. For every Wild Bill one though there were like 15-20 ones that sucked even if they were perfectly conceived.

Finally I think having the Marines will make Iraq more attractive given the Marine Corps' involvement in Fallujah, etc.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

And there is Generation Kill. That'll inspire a few people.

I reckon there's truth to what you say. Especially as there are people on the boards ready to say: "hang on a minute, I was there, and this, that and the other is all wrong." That must be intimidating for a designer. A fictional Syrian scenario would be so liberating by comparison.

Besides, there are only a handful of battles that got any airplay in the general consciousness at all. And the popularity of the Iraq war has gone down a lot. It is perceived as 'tainted' and as such it must be hard to motivate yourself to make a scenario for a war everyone is rather embarrassed about and would rather forget.

also the fictional war has cooler kit.

[Cpl Steiner]

Problem with all the Marines battles in Iraq: I don't think they had the M32 Grenade Launcher in battles like Fallujah. We really need the option to field an Iraq-era USMC battalion.

[MikeyD]

For a little Red-on-Red Iraq action you can hunt down my old 'Neighborhood blood feud' scenario at cmmods.com. Sunni and Shia going at it hammer and tong. Originally built for v1.05, updated for v1.08, and when v1.10 comes out I don't know how gameplay will be affected!