[Overon]

I got the game from a Albany NY mom and pop kind of store called "Krik's."

Anyway here is some stuff. The box is pretty, it looks a lot like dvd boxes, it's that kind of size. I know why they did those boxes to save money on packaging and transportation, so that games get the dvd mystique as they share the same size box, and so that more games can fit on store shelves. They are no doubt hoping other publishers adopt the new boxes as well.


Single Player Game
I was hoping for it to be a half life killer in terms of story and scripted sequences but right now it just looks like a bunch of unrelated missions. The main character never talks and he just doesn't seem to have a personality. There have been some lame arcade style sequences where you take up a mounted gun and shoot enemies as they come like a shooting gallery. The second I hit use the machine gun, the enemies started popping up and I'm supposed to shoot them down, like shooting ducks in a barrell. It was lame. There haven't been any cool scripted sequences yet, nothing like half life. So what I'm saying is that the single player game is pretty disappoiting so far. The lamest part right now in the single player game is that enemies (when certain alarms are triggered) respawn INFINITELY outside and rush into the building. If you walk out the building you can see the enemies just spawn right in front of your eyes POOF and they are there. You kill them and POOF more respawns right in front of your face. That's ultra lame if you ask me. It makes the game difficult artificially.


Multiplayer
Anyway I went on Gamespy Arcade and they have a room there but it says that whatever you type won't appear because the room is not officially open. But there were 200+ people there already and around about 88 servers a few dedicated but most not. There is NO cd key authentication online! That could explain why there were so many people playing already. Many of these people are so damn good it's like they learned the maps days ago, damn warez bitches.

Anyway I played a lot of the objective based maps (there are only 4 included in the game, which is lame) and they are cool and all except that their design is pretty brainless given the weapons that are available in my opinion. If you have 5 people they can cover any choke point with rocket launchers and just pop them as soon as they see someone in the choke points on many maps. Some maps have too many choke points like the omaha beach map. Allies have an almost impossible task of trying to storm the beach because there are 3 choke points which they HAVE to pass through in order to blow up these 2 axis guns. As the axis you can just stand there and pop nades and rockets into the choke points just ass soon as you see an ally and it becomes ultra lame.

I really hope someone will make mods for this game that make it more realistic, make the levels have fewer choke points, and maybe prevent the use of rocket launchers all together. The number of grenades should also be reduced. And sniper scope wobble should be added as well. Ammo should be more limited.


Cheating/Doing What's Most Effective Online
I see the following statement as a irrifutable: "people on public servers will use any bug, cheat, exploit, "cheesy" tactic, "cheep" weapon, or anything that is effective to their advantage." Why use harder to aim smg's and sniper rifles when you can use a rocket launcher at medium range and with its splash damage take out enemies even if you don't hit them directly? Why not rush to the nearest choke point and spam grenades and rockets? People will do what is most effective not matter how "cheap" it is. The job of a map maker and modder is to think about how people will play the game. What's worse is that it's so easy to span camp the enemy. People do it all the time because it's so easy. They figure out where the enemy respawns and wait close to that area and as soon as someone respawns they shoot them dead. They will run out of ammo eventually right? Well not because ammo is cross compatible which is super lame, just like in the demo. Kar ammo can be used in the m1 grande and in the springfield and vice versa. Panzershreck ammo is compatible with bazooka ammo and vice versa and such is the case with all the allied and axis weapons. This ensures that people can spawn camp and never run out of ammo as they can just keep collecting the ammo of the people that they just killed while spawn camping.

That reminds me, you remember how the multiplayer demo had have that anit cheat patch released, an new gamex86.dll file so that cheats wouldn't work online? Well guess what, EA didn't fix that for the full version multiplayer game! You can cheat using god mode etc just like you could in the unpatched multiplayer demo severs which means just like in the multiplayer demo. The good news is that I have tested whether the EA released cheat patch for the multiplayer demo works in the full version multiplayer and IT DOES. So server admins, make sure you download that demo anti cheat patch because it works in the full version too! Also this new patch didn't seem to hurt the single player game or anything else, I have been using it to play the single player game as well.


Performance
I have a geforce 2 gts 32mb ddr, athlon tbird 1.4ghz, 512 mb of ram, windows xp, I turn off background programs before running the game, and many places my performance in levels drops to 20 fps. It appears to happen when bushes and trees are visible. I run at 1024x768x32 with 32 bit textures. I have volumetric smoke turned off. I have all the detail settings to the highest values. But what's weird is even if I turn everything to the lowest detail settings I only improve my fps in the areas of trees and bushes by about 5 fps!

EA's game shows signs of being rushed and not going through playtesting.
Evidence:
1. The inclusion of cheat codes working like they do in the mulitplayer demo.
2. Only a pitiful few 4 objective based maps.
3. Poor performance screams unoptimized code. RTCW also has some very pretty graphics but it runs alot better on my system then mohaa.
4. Levels designers creating too many choke points and rocket launchers and grenades and the rush and rocket spam and grenade spam mentality being pervasive. The easy of spawn camping.

5. No cd key authorization ala quake 3, return to catle wolfenstein etc.


[This message has been edited by Overon (edited January 21, 2002).]