Alliedassault - View Single Post - Those Who Bought MoH:AA Deluxe Edition...

Ydiss · 06-30-2003, 03:19 AM

Ok, here's as fair as a review I can give the game whilst still trying to be impartial.

I'll keep it simple, positives and negatives:

Positives:

New weapons: There are some nice additions here. The Russian weapons are all excellent and the British weapons, particularly the Lee Enfield rifle, are top-notch. Excellent sound, quality models and good balance.[/*:m:2033c]
Fairly decent single player missions: Although short the single player missions are quite well scripted and are quite fun. A little too easy, even on hard, but the strong references to Band of Brothers adds a lot to the atmosphere.[/*:m:2033c]
New skins: Some of the new skins are good quality, some less so. There is definitely more variety here (particularly for Allies).[/*:m:2033c]
Improved UI: Better voting tool, clearer and more defined text and a much more professional feel to the HUD.[/*:m:2033c]

Negatives:

Single player is too short and too easy. Although what is there is good quality it’s far too short-lived to make it worth paying anything more than budget price for.[/*:m:2033c]
Horrible Multi-player maps: Most of the “new” maps are user-made. Most of these are ok looking but run like hogs and are horribly slow. This is due to either inconsiderate mappers who refuse to create playable and well designed maps and plump for “realistic” settings, or it is due to inexperienced mappers who just do not know how to create a map that performs well. There are one or two well-made maps in this expansion but there are far more poorly made ones which will ruin your experience. Even on an Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67Ghz), Geforce3 64Mb and 512 DDR ram I experienced less than 10 FPS on some maps with only 10 players. Disgusting, really, considering the game is supposed to have the same spec requirements as MoH:AA. Plus there are no new objective maps. The poor quality maps aspect is the single most critical negative this expansion suffers from – With quality maps the game would be just about bearable.[/*:m:2033c]
Bugs: Plenty of them – More so than MoH:AA. I won’t go into details (mostly because I’ve not bothered to play the game long enough to learn them all) but the most glaring bug is the infamous “butt-slide”. In MoH:AA when a player is hit they would flinch slightly and a puff of smoke would emit. This is quite subtle, perhaps too subtle for some, but it was enough to show that you had struck your opponent and it didn’t interrupt with the flow of the game. Well, in SH, EA took it to the other extreme – And how. Now, when a player is struck, 9 times out of 10 they will react with an animation that, in its own right, looks fine. They fall back on their behind and hold out a hand to stop themselves.
Now, that looks fine if they are standing still but combine it with a player who is moving and firing their weapon and you have a comical-looking butt-sliding effect. Not only is this seriously off-putting but it is ridiculously unrealistic. Quite how a man can slide around on his arse with both hands on the ground and still manage to fire as accurately as standing, I don’t know. It means that you can no longer “pop” your opponents with the rifle as accurately as in MoH:AA (which is a huge skill) because the first shot that hits them makes them duck, twist and turn as if they were on acid, making that follow-up shot incredibly difficult. Unfortunately this means that most players will plump for automatics, or the more powerful sniper rifles, particularly in realism modes.
Whilst I imagine you could get used to this bug, I don’t particularly see why you should have to. It doesn’t add anything to the game, it’s totally unrealistic and it looks far worse than any lean-strafing freak from MoH:AA ever looked – But with this bug everyone does it even without trying; Very poor.[/*:m:2033c]
Very few servers: Unfortunately, due to the general apathy towards this expansion, there are very few servers compared to MoH:AA (and that hasn’t exactly got tens of thousands). This means that there is less choice. And, with a game that has so many variables (Realism, Stock, TDM, RB, Objective, TOW and so on – Plus you’d want to find a server that doesn’t play the slow and horrible maps, if possible) that is a very bad thing.[/*:m:2033c]

There you have it. I actually bought the expansion at a reduced price despite what everyone told me about it. I’m glad it was reduced because I uninstalled it only a couple of weeks after I got it.

If you have a behemoth of a PC or don’t mind playing with less than 10 frames a second then you might want to try this out.

Otherwise, save your money. This expansion takes a lot of hard work to get used to it, unless you’re very lucky to find a server that runs only decent maps, that happens to run the mode that you enjoy and has a mod to eliminate butt-sliding (if that works at all).

It’s just an amateurish effort, in my opinion.

	(#21)
Ydiss is Offline Senior Member Posts: 2,377 Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Nottingham, England	06-30-2003, 03:19 AM Ok, here's as fair as a review I can give the game whilst still trying to be impartial. I'll keep it simple, positives and negatives: Positives: New weapons: There are some nice additions here. The Russian weapons are all excellent and the British weapons, particularly the Lee Enfield rifle, are top-notch. Excellent sound, quality models and good balance.[/:m:2033c] Fairly decent single player missions: Although short the single player missions are quite well scripted and are quite fun. A little too easy, even on hard, but the strong references to Band of Brothers adds a lot to the atmosphere.[/:m:2033c] New skins: Some of the new skins are good quality, some less so. There is definitely more variety here (particularly for Allies).[/:m:2033c] Improved UI: Better voting tool, clearer and more defined text and a much more professional feel to the HUD.[/:m:2033c] Negatives: Single player is too short and too easy. Although what is there is good quality it’s far too short-lived to make it worth paying anything more than budget price for.[/:m:2033c] Horrible Multi-player maps: Most of the “new” maps are user-made. Most of these are ok looking but run like hogs and are horribly slow. This is due to either inconsiderate mappers who refuse to create playable and well designed maps and plump for “realistic” settings, or it is due to inexperienced mappers who just do not know how to create a map that performs well. There are one or two well-made maps in this expansion but there are far more poorly made ones which will ruin your experience. Even on an Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67Ghz), Geforce3 64Mb and 512 DDR ram I experienced less than 10 FPS on some maps with only 10 players. Disgusting, really, considering the game is supposed to have the same spec requirements as MoH:AA. Plus there are no new objective maps. The poor quality maps aspect is the single most critical negative this expansion suffers from – With quality maps the game would be just about bearable.[/:m:2033c] Bugs: Plenty of them – More so than MoH:AA. I won’t go into details (mostly because I’ve not bothered to play the game long enough to learn them all) but the most glaring bug is the infamous “butt-slide”. In MoH:AA when a player is hit they would flinch slightly and a puff of smoke would emit. This is quite subtle, perhaps too subtle for some, but it was enough to show that you had struck your opponent and it didn’t interrupt with the flow of the game. Well, in SH, EA took it to the other extreme – And how. Now, when a player is struck, 9 times out of 10 they will react with an animation that, in its own right, looks fine. They fall back on their behind and hold out a hand to stop themselves. Now, that looks fine if they are standing still but combine it with a player who is moving and firing their weapon and you have a comical-looking butt-sliding effect. Not only is this seriously off-putting but it is ridiculously unrealistic. Quite how a man can slide around on his arse with both hands on the ground and still manage to fire as accurately as standing, I don’t know. It means that you can no longer “pop” your opponents with the rifle as accurately as in MoH:AA (which is a huge skill) because the first shot that hits them makes them duck, twist and turn as if they were on acid, making that follow-up shot incredibly difficult. Unfortunately this means that most players will plump for automatics, or the more powerful sniper rifles, particularly in realism modes. Whilst I imagine you could get used to this bug, I don’t particularly see why you should have to. It doesn’t add anything to the game, it’s totally unrealistic and it looks far worse than any lean-strafing freak from MoH:AA ever looked – But with this bug everyone does it even without trying; Very poor.[/:m:2033c] Very few servers: Unfortunately, due to the general apathy towards this expansion, there are very few servers compared to MoH:AA (and that hasn’t exactly got tens of thousands). This means that there is less choice. And, with a game that has so many variables (Realism, Stock, TDM, RB, Objective, TOW and so on – Plus you’d want to find a server that doesn’t play the slow and horrible maps, if possible) that is a very bad thing.[/:m:2033c] There you have it. I actually bought the expansion at a reduced price despite what everyone told me about it. I’m glad it was reduced because I uninstalled it only a couple of weeks after I got it. If you have a behemoth of a PC or don’t mind playing with less than 10 frames a second then you might want to try this out. Otherwise, save your money. This expansion takes a lot of hard work to get used to it, unless you’re very lucky to find a server that runs only decent maps, that happens to run the mode that you enjoy and has a mod to eliminate butt-sliding (if that works at all). It’s just an amateurish effort, in my opinion.