Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Fineus on October 12, 2006, 06:40:00 pm
-
Having dabbled with the newly released Battlefield 2142 demo, here's why I think that EA has managed to kill a damn fine franchise.
In short - it's simply not Battlefield anymore.
Battlefield 1942 was fantastic fun. It was well balanced, challenging and consistently entertained. The expansion packs added new aspects and were great fun to play with, as well as some nice free maps as well. Desert Combat was released for it which breathed a breath of fresh air into it that it didn't need but massively benefited from.
Battlefield Vietnam renewed the engine a bit but bought with it a slew of problems. Despite this it was quite fun and quite nicely themed (the included music being a particularly nice touch). It was somewhat rushed though.
Battlefield 2 saw a massively improved engine and graphics overhaul - and with it an entire sack of bugs and errors. For all these though I still find it entertaining - although it did see more novel ways for people to be idiots than I've previously encountered. Such things as dolphin diving and bunny hopping were both pathetic and unacceptable - and ways to prevent them should've been built into the first patch release but still haven't. Overall though the game is well worth playing - although I've spent more time on the core game than on any of its expansion packs which are unashamed cash-ins and nothing more. Certainly more effort was put into the expansions than into bug fixing and patches.
Battlefield 2142 is - to my mind - another downward peak in the Battlefield franchise. The first to not be based on any present or historical conflict - it plays very much like a dumbed down, glossy mod for Battlefield 2. The engine is incredibly similar with few advancements there, a lot of the menus have only experienced a new skin. It once again feels like EA has done two things:
1. Rushed out a game to make a buck. This is no suprise, they have a history for it. It is a great shame however as the premise of Battlefield is an excellent one and doesn't deserve to be dragged through the mud.
2. Nerfed, toned down and removed all aspects of skill from the game.
As I said, the first instance is no suprise. The second however is a great shame and somewhat alarming if it's any indication of the requests of who is buying online FPSs these days. There are more auto-lock weapons in the game than ever before which make it play more like a point-and-shoot than something you have to bother aiming. Weapons are unoriginal and it seems they rely heavily on unlocks which are only available in the full game. While I quite like the idea of working for unlockable features - I feel they've gone rather overboard with the idea and should have done things differently.
If anyone has played the mod POE2 for Battlefield 2 - they'll know the kind of gameplay I had in mind. Accuracy is everything in this mod and if you're a crappy shot then you'll get no kills - it's as simple as that. The auto-lock features of BF2142 are so intensely boring that I really didn't enjoy the demo that much at all.
Following that trend, the handling of all vehicles feels more and more arcade than before - with jeeps bouncing across terrain as if in 3/4 earth gravity and the aircraft of the game handling very strangely indeed. I long for the days of a nice BF1942 dogfight - it might not be pretty by todays standards but the level of skill required - and the amount of entertainment provided - were much much higher.
All in all I'm disappointed. EA seems to be squeezing the life out of the game in favour of making a quick buck, and the direction of dumbing down rather than challenging players is sad to see indeed.
End review/rant.
-
bf 2141 is gonna suck a long monkeyschlong. its really just a gimick to score buys from the unreal and quake crouds. it will loose to things like quake wars and the new unreal engine. hell id rather just play ut2004 over the new bf game. bf2 was ok, it had a gameplay wich didnt feel like a penis measuring contest. where was some skill involved. you couldnt successfully apply any generic fp[s tactics, so it made the game different enough to level out the playing field. the frag rackers of old had to learnt the game over again to be any good. of course the noobism element still exists. and you have your share of idiots, people who would kill for a plane only to crash the damn thing and not score any points. there are is room for games like bf2141, but its a mistake to add it too the battlefield series.
-
also battlefield 2 has just about the lamest players in the known universe
you wouldnt beleive some of the crap that goes on
-
I still enjoy BF2. I especially enjoy the attach helicopters and jets. Yes there are asshats out there that seem to think that the point of the game is to **** over your team mate.
Expansion wise, I did fully enjoy Armored Fury. yes it is 3 maps and a A-10 for 10 dollars. But those maps were truly enjoyable.
-
My opinion is simply that BF2 isn't worth the time or effort it requires.
-
It depends. Do you have a bunch of friends that you like to play with? I do: www.codebluebf.com
On a side note:
(http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comics/20061013.jpg)
-
I simply don't see the fun in a game that has iron-sights less accurate than the crosshairs. Yes, it's fun sometimes and I enjoyed it when I first tried it, but ultimately I find it.....dull.
-
My brother plays BF2 for several hours every day, but I never got much into it. All these modern FPSs are too slow paced for my liking. I want to see a return of the old school UT or Q3 style gameplay. :D
-
Anything past BF1942 secret weapons isn't Battlefield, So i wont play it......... :ick:
-
My brother plays BF2 for several hours every day, but I never got much into it. All these modern FPSs are too slow paced for my liking. I want to see a return of the old school UT or Q3 style gameplay. :D
That's a whole different debate right there ;)
I think slow paced FPSs have a place, it's fun to tactically out-think your enemy then blow them to dust once you've done so. That's what BF1942 and BF2 let you do - it's a great feeling to see an enemy tank heading at you, so you pop the smoke and drive around the building block to come up behind them and blow them away. In a more fast-paced FPS you simply can't do that - it's far more "run and gun".
-
They certainly have a place, but it seems like all the games are like that these days. :p Even UT2004 is pretty slow compared to the original UT. Sucks for me, as that is the sort of gameplay style I like best and excel at. I'm hoping UT2007 will change things in this respect.
-
My brother plays BF2 for several hours every day, but I never got much into it. All these modern FPSs are too slow paced for my liking. I want to see a return of the old school UT or Q3 style gameplay. :D
That's a whole different debate right there ;)
I think slow paced FPSs have a place, it's fun to tactically out-think your enemy then blow them to dust once you've done so. That's what BF1942 and BF2 let you do - it's a great feeling to see an enemy tank heading at you, so you pop the smoke and drive around the building block to come up behind them and blow them away. In a more fast-paced FPS you simply can't do that - it's far more "run and gun".
It is even more of a blast when you can ask your commander for closed air support and an Cobra comes and oblitherates incoming armor.
-
Fair play then... are there any third party mods out there that speed things up?
I still think Quake 3 has the definitive combination of a solid engine, good netcode and fast gameplay in that respect. I know some people like UT and some like Q3 and yes both were good - but Q3 seemed that much more of a complete package.
-
Just wait until Forgotten Hope 2. It'll make pissing away $50 for BF2 seem totally worth it.
-
Mmm, it looks fantastic but when is it coming out? The nearest answer I can find is "when we're ready, we don't want to make false promises" - but that's not much of an indication of how long I'll have to wait ;)
-
I personally enjoyed Delta Force Black Hawk Down... alot more fun... no commanders... a few cool weapons...
the best thing was sniping on a certain desert map for MP... it was 2 spawns/armories and 3 spawns between them... all north/south of each other, with each team starting east/west of them... the classic thing for snipers was to go gunner, capture the north spawn (i think it was north... maybe south), die, and respawn as a sniper with MRCT .300 Tactical... Claymore the spawn point to keep it for a bit, and run around to the mountains...
It wasnt that hard to get there, but about 1km from the enemy armory was a mount range... you sit back and start antisniping, staying behind the mountains. It was fun looking for snipers that were 3px high with binoculars... the scope was 18x on the sniperrifle, with like 100 rounds or something. I ran out of ammo a few times.
Turn off tracers on weapon fire and it got alot better...only thing is you have a problem calibrating your fire when at odd distances (850m, 1100m, etc) with only 4 "buds" (which are 250m each or so)...
it was fun and balanced because it was fastpaced with calm spots... sort of the gunners who protect flags... four or five of them start out... sniper fire and then random shooting at anyone and anything that moved... including the grass (since you could easily hide in them... it takes alot of patience to find everyone).
Alot of good maps have large bushes that you hide in... I would go gunner and sit in the grass. You cant watch your six easily in small bushes or your M60 will be seen moving...
took skill to get everyone out... alot of spawns were captured fast...
but anyways i got BF1942 and BF2... I like BF2 a bit more cause its modern but i cant play much cause I dont got MP anymore and my system is crap.
-
I gave up on the battlefield series when I realized they hadn't bothered to find out what kind of weapons the Japanese used.
-
Bob-san, Delta Force: Black Hawk Down had so much potential for a strong multiplayer and a tight action/team based game. Unfortunately, Novalogic doesn't know how to design a game to save their lives - none of the weapons have reqoil, you travel just as fast with every gun, the guns have basically unlimited range, no ballistics drop, and one to three shots from every gun kills you. This basically means that everyone either picks the sniper (to scope on those super long range maps), or the machine gun, which has a massive ammo belt.
If someone would go in there and tweak DF:BHD's weapons, it could become a serious competitor IMO.
-
lol, UT you should play Joint Ops. you'd love it. instead of different speeds for different weapons, your speed is based on how much all your stuff weighs. there's bullet drop and effective team tactics. non-cheap vehicles that are reasonably balanced with anti-vehicle weapons, and with the expansion, up to 150 people on a server.
-
Aaaaaah, Joint Ops. Good game, that. It's oddly amusing to be flying your Blackhawk around with your minigunners laying down some serious hurt below you. :yes:
-
I'm a huge Battlefield 2 fan, and I'm nothing but psyched about Battlefield 2142.
The end.
-
Good rant there Kal. I agree allmost whole heartily, and being an old BF player from the good ol' days of BF1942 MP Demo :D I feel truly saddened by the fact that these elements you have mentioned (cash-ins, bunnyhopping -and the bloody bad "fix" for it- etc.) have been put into the BF franchise.
I still enjoy playing BF2 enourmosly (allthough time to times I wonder why :P ), but mainly the core. EF and AF are good add ons IMHO, nice maps and AF expecially is fun time to times when I wan't to enjoy a good armored warfare, if you can find a server for it. SF on the other hand.... I quite regret buying it now, end of story.
I still have a 50-60 feeling towards BF2142. Sure everything in it screams MOD, not a new game at all, but it doesn't bother me THAT much when I roam around with the walker or lauch myself sky high with the launchpod or slide around with Nekomata. I try to enjoy these small elements in it which are done quite nicely. If some miracle happens and the prize will be about same as it was with the SF then I might consider buying it. Otherwise, forget it.
-
I'm a huge Battlefield 2 fan, and I'm nothing but psyched about Battlefield 2142.
The end.
Which reminds me, you missed some great Karkand rounds yesterday! :p
-
Having spent some time on the BF2142 forums over at PBF I fear I've become something of a troll myself. I seem to spend all my time there arguing on the "BF2142 sucks goats, here's why:" side of things and don't have much of a positive note to say.
That said, I'm not alone.
This is interesting as there seems to be a hell of a lot of people with complaints / disappointments about the game. Only a handful are really defending the game and even a few of them are being open minded enough to say "yes, we can see how this would be annoying - but overall like the game anyway".
Looks like BF2142 really is a bit of a stinker in most peoples books.
Which reminds me, you missed some great Karkand rounds yesterday! :p
What server do you play on mate?
-
Their are a list of servers here: www.codebluebf.com
Also type codebluebf.com into the filter field and you will see their servers. In the evenings it is active.
TS: cbbf2.com:8812
-
The codebluebf server that's in my favorites list is almost never full when I check it.
-
Evenings is the best times. Some times it takes a while to get it started up.
-
Even though they are almost 10 years old, I still enjoy playing Sin and Quake 2.
-
Well, I just saw some pre order ads here for the 2142 and looks like the prize is indeed like a full game prize, about 45euros. That's prettymuch it then. Oh and also including the adware program to the package breaks the camel's neck. This one shall be left to the shelves if I'm concerned.
Oh and for the other BF2 players here (other than Kal who allready knows it) if you spot a player named "Hakka Gortef" (Hakka being just a prefix) in any BF2 server then give a holla, that's me. There aren't any precise servers in which I resident, I pick them randomly depending on the ping and available slots.
-
I gave up on the battlefield series when I realized they hadn't bothered to find out what kind of weapons the Japanese used.
Ha! I remember that. You'd think they could do a little research, but no...
I really think the whole Battlefield genre has stagnated. They need some new and creative ideas. What about World War I or the Korean War?
-
I was thinking of something like Battlefield 1812 or Battlefield 1787... place it in the War of 1812 or American Revolution!! There's possibility to have accurate battles at many places...
They'll need to fix the engine a bit, however. Allow for more primary rifles, shorten range, ETC. I think cannonading would be cool... or breaking out of a fortress under heavy bombardment...
Basically any war would be good to be set in... I'd like one in feudal Japan... 13th century France... French and Post-French revolutions...
They should expand it to basically all known wars in major countries.
-
I really think the whole Battlefield genre has stagnated. They need some new and creative ideas. What about World War I or the Korean War?
Oh no, I wouldn't think the genre is stagnant... they're just not expanding their scope enough.
Rather than pick a modern day conflict they decided to remake Tribes 2. That's great and all but it's not what a lot of people are looking for. Personally I'd be happy if they revisited World War 2 again but really got ambitious. A new graphics engine featuring full weather, day and night cycles, fog and mist etc. - fighting across the entire WW2 stage including hypothetical situations such as a D-Day landing type mission based on a Nazi invasion of the UK etc. Inclusion of hundreds of different units and a whole range of class skills and abilities with customisable options (you could choose to be a sniper/spec ops type with a couple of explosive charges, a sniper rifle but virtually no protection etc.). Basically taking the WW2 arena and really going for it rather than limiting themselves in any way.
No pussy "random cone of fire" either. A full working physics system applying to everything universally. Units can get stuck in mud and troopers couldn't run as fast... water has the same effect. Bullets fire accurately to their weapons and do appropriate damage. Smoke grenades, air strikes from air support etc. could be called in...
Basically... really ambitious, but it'd be legendary.
-
*Snip*
Yes, but that would be expensive, and there is no assurance it will be received well. As such, nobody'll go anywhere near it. Nice, but incredibly fanciful.
I was thinking of something like Battlefield 1812 or Battlefield 1787... place it in the War of 1812 or American Revolution!! There's possibility to have accurate battles at many places...
...
Basically any war would be good to be set in... I'd like one in feudal Japan... 13th century France... French and Post-French revolutions...
They should expand it to basically all known wars in major countries.
Other wars just aren't as interesting, or simply a bad idea for development into a game. Feudal Japan would be nice, but it's too damn obscure for it to be anything more than a niche game, the same applying to the Korean War. French war-games probably wouldn't sell all that well what with the moronic public view regarding that particular nation, and the American Revolution is nice in mods, but with a very restricted pantheon of weaponry, it would get stale rather quickly. And World War 1... well, anyone who knows anything about that war knows it's just not a war you make a big-titled game about, for numerous reasons.
-
Sadly you're right. It's ambitious because it's what I'd want but whether it'd be commercially viable is another question.
That said if you really aimed for the sky - as it were - and created a landmark game, I think the profits would be there. The sort of game I have in mind is something epic... both fun but massive in scope with something for every FPS player out there.
-
Squadwar meets C&C plus a little Counterstrike = Battlefield 1942.
-
Oh, there's no question that it'd be well received, and i'm sure that if someone made a game half as good as the one you've described, it'd rake in cash like nothing else. But to make it would be an unnecessary gamble when you can make a reasonably cheap game that's nowhere near as ambitious, but will sell to a respectable degree.
As long as we're talking about games we'd really like to see; i've always wanted the ultimate RTS: Basically, we're talking a completely real-time multiplayer game that starts out in ancient times, expands, expands and expands as technology develops, transitioning to a global stage when you get the technology. You can build cities, armies and navies in incredible detail and customisation, with a completely fluid and massive tech-tree. You can zoom from several kilometres in the atmo right down to a few metres of the ground, and have realistic physics and scales. Think of launching a strike on an enemy held Hawaiian islands with your entire WW2-style Navy of custom-chosen design aesthetics and weaponry, all the while capable of seeing each and every gun firing, from flak to 240mm cannons.
Once you reach a certain stage, you can start building spacecraft [fully customisable to the nth degree], and eventually leave the Earth and colonise the solar-system, and then intra-solarsystem throughout local systems, and then the galaxy. Of course, the scale would itself be scalable, making the most detailed view larger and larger as technology and the size of your territory increase. Think Spore crossed with Civilisation and Supreme Commander, with a dash of Sword of the Stars.
Show me that game, and there would be no limits to how far i'd go to show my thanks. :nervous:
-
Speaking of games that we've always really wanted - I've always wanted a starship commander game where you have the freedom to define your own techniques, to shout out orders and use complex strategizing to win. Not just "Turn and fire" or in Bridge Commander, "Shoot him you stupid AI! Shoot HIM!"
Hell, I want an RTS that doesn't have simple unit grinding. I want something epic, where you can use fleet carriers in massive multi ship fleets, use flanking maneuvers, and have a game that basically REQUIRES strategy, not just "resource/build/resource/build". Something like Homeworld crossed with Dawn of War crossed with a fleet tactical simulator crossed with Ground Control.
-
Bridge Commander, "Shoot him you stupid AI! Shoot HIM!"
You could take over control over the ship, that's what I always did. It was much more fun that way.
-
I simply don't see the fun in a game that has iron-sights less accurate than the crosshairs. Yes, it's fun sometimes and I enjoyed it when I first tried it, but ultimately I find it.....dull.
Wait, what? Iron sights are less accurate than crosshairs.
-
UPDATE: I just got it yesterday, and I can safely say that it should be illegal for a game to be this awesome because my head is going to explode.
-
2142?
-
Yep. The amount of destruction I've wrought in a 24-hour period is ridiculous. I like the features they added for customizing your equipment set. And fighting on future, post-apocalyptic battlefields is just cool. Titan mode is also fun but it's hard.
-
Do you not get the feeling it's more of a mod than a full game though? Don't get me wrong - I'm glad you like it...
-
I've heard it go both ways, which means I still can't justify spending the money..
-
Do you not get the feeling it's more of a mod than a full game though? Don't get me wrong - I'm glad you like it...
Well it has a similar feel in that it's the same engine, but I think it's definitely a far cry from just being BF2 Redux. I guess I'm not quite sure how radically different people were expecting BF2142 to be; all the Battlefield games have had a similar format, after all. And BF2's engine is great for this kind of large-scale strategic warfare, so if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
-
That's the trouble though... I think it is broken.
I will say one thing for it, in 2142 they radically reduced the loading times whilst apparently increasing engine detail. Shame they didn't include that in a BF2 patch as the loading times for that are terrible.
But I'm seeing them put things like the Titan mode in, but the Planet Battlefield forums are awash with people complaining that moving the Titans (or even walking around on them) causes massive lag.
I can't help but feel they're in need of a new engine that doesn't suffer from lag, glitches, easy exploits and so on. I don't get the impression they've fixed much between BF2 and BF2142.
-
Well they'll keep on patching it, I guess. I've never found that exploits detract a great deal from the overall game experience. You get a few jerk-offs using them but I've never seen an exploit that noticeably altered the dynamics of the game. (With that said, I only play a few games.) As for Titan mode, I can only speak from my experience, which is that it gets some lag, but not usually massive amounts. I certainly agree that the engine isn't the smoothest ever crafted, but if the game itself is something that I really like, I'm usually very forgiving. I guess I'm basically a fanboi for the franchise.
-
lol can't wait to see political ads in bf2142
-
I haven't seen any of these infamous ads yet. I wonder if it takes time for it to extrapolate on the information it gathers.
But yeah, political ads would be hilarious. "What? Hilary Clinton approves this message? UH! MEDIC!"
-
lol can't wait to see political ads in bf2142
It's ruin gameplay, that's for sure. Whenever one appears, everyone'll stop what they're doing and shoot at it.
-
As long as we're making up games...
I've always wanted to see a series of games - an RTS, an FPS And a Flight/space sim that all integrated together. Not just with similar storylines, or three perspectives on the smae comflict but truly integrated together. For example, imagine if in Starcraft you could build your base, set up your army and go and attack the enemy base, but instead of doing it from the standard SC perspective, you could jump into the cockpit of a wraith and actualkly take part in the attack directly.
You'd have three separate games, of course, so that you didn't get the sort of "Jack of all trades master of none" syndrome you get with games like universal combat, and each game would be playable as an independent game (in this mode it'd be more or less three perspectives on the same war). But if the game detected that you had one or both of the other games installed, they started integrating together. Trying to infiltrate an enemy base as a spy but can't get past a watchtower? Don't sneak around for hours and hours looking for a way through - just load up the RTS And send a squadron of fighters to perform an air strike, and then load up the flight sim to take part in that air strike. Or forget about the watchtower and send a squad of marines to create a diversion at the other end of the base and just mosey on past while the guys in the watchtower are looking the other way. Or maybe you're playing the space sim and you've been guarding a convoy of ships going to set up a new military base on another planet. Protect 90% of the convoy, save your game, load the RTS and get 90% of the resources you would have had if you'd saved the entire convoy.
Of course, no matter how hard you tried to reuse sounds and textures it'd be a massive RAM hog and trying to have three separate games loaded at once would probably mean massive loading times when you switched between game modes but wow... I doubt I'd ever play another game.
-
Meh... why have the integration unless you have integration? I'd rather make one game capable of all that, and do it properly. The few genre-mixing games I've played (Battlezone 1 & 2, mainly, although I'd count Hostile Waters in there too, and I'm sure there's something obvious I'm forgetting to mention) were quite fun to play, and benefitted more from the integration than they lost in not being specialized. And FPSes are commonly including "vehicular mode" or however they term it, let's not forget.
While we're on the subject, here's a few games I'd love to see as mash-ups: ;)
- SimCity 4 and Midtown Madness (or SC4 and GTA2?) - this was done decades ago both in Streets of SimCity and in SimCopter, but not very well.
- Freespace & a Voyager Elite Force-esque FPS
- X-Wing / TIE Fighter & Jedi Knight
- Ground Control 2, Battlezone, & FarCry
- A 4X game (MOO, GalCiv2) & various kinds of space sims, from trading to combat to MMORPGs.
Basically there's 2 kinds of game mash-ups I'd like to see. The logical ones, where you can hop into a fighter, fly off to the enemy capship, board, and race through the corridors (already done to a minimal extent in SW Battlefront 2) - basically, encompassing the entire realm of likely actions a soldier would take. The other kind would be the creative kind (like the SC4 & MM2 combo), where you're not playing any one role, but instead, using something you create in one game style (city building, galactic-empire building) for another purpose entirely (racing, GTAing, corporation-building).
-
I've always wanted to see a series of games - an RTS, an FPS And a Flight/space sim that all integrated together. Not just with similar storylines, or three perspectives on the smae comflict but truly integrated together. For example, imagine if in Starcraft you could build your base, set up your army and go and attack the enemy base, but instead of doing it from the standard SC perspective, you could jump into the cockpit of a wraith and actualkly take part in the attack directly.
It's called Urban Assault, a Microsoft game from 98