Hence why the game is still in Alpha. Remember this mod has been in development for less than three months. Furthermore it's pretty much a hack to connect ArmA2 to a DB. Of course architecture is fragile. There hasn't been another ArmA mod to gain this much traction with the general public and the fact that it went viral really fundamentally changed the ArmA landscape.
Perhaps, but this was just a side project to experiment with new gameplay. It was never meant to be a commercial project. As someone who was one of the initial testers before it went public, I can say that no one expected DayZ to blow up like this. It was a surprise to everyone.
I spent about ten minutes laughing when I found out it had rideable bicycles. Five minutes for the discovery of the vehicle, and a further five when I accidentally discovered it had a little brrring brrrring bell. I'm absolutely determined to ride one into combat at the first opportunity now.
Edit - Oh, and when I started using my 360 controller for flying like I do in battlefield, I went from being 100% unable to fly (which lead to some amusing moments on it's own - "Okay, we're at the LZ...You're on your own, fuckers!" *Eject* Walker and Joeboomer: "What? OH FUCK WHAT OH GOD" - to being a reasonably competent-if-a-little-slow chopper pilot in about five minutes.
Playing the old ones again, there is a clear dichotomy between every game up to DS, and then Days of Ruin. I've always generally believed this, but playing them again, it's basically proven in my mind.
The former games are just puzzle games. They don't scale well to very large maps, managing momentum is extremely important (a la Battle Balls), city-harvesting in the early turns must be 100% optimal or failure is a foregone conclusion, and there is only one real level of engagement (i.e., the whole map is "tactical", or the "strategy" has no meaningful sub-components).
Great games, to be sure! But decidedly different from DR.
DR introduces both map-wide strategy and force-level tactics. While in the old games, one is always thinking on the level of "move three spaces south, capture the city within five days, move AA two spaces north, etc...", we are able to think in terms of "send infantry support to the northern front" or "build out a combined arms force and send it east until it encounters resistance." Then, within each force or front, one effectively plays out the tactical thinking of the original Advance Wars games.
There's obviously more to it than that, but my views on the strengths and differences between DR and all former offerings has crystalized in the last week. (Also, Grit is hax, but Sami is pro hax).
Im playing Max Payne 3, and its a super good game. Its making me see why non-regenerating health can be really cool in shooting games. I know people always complain about regeneration, but Ive always thought its just a convenience that streamlines gameplay. Pain pill pickups in MP3 are like few, far between, and usually kind of hard to spot, so it really adds a lot of tension. You often have to hunt around and think of the most logical places a bottle of pills would be stashed for the area youre in.
Im playing Max Payne 3, and its a super good game. Its making me see why non-regenerating health can be really cool in shooting games. I know people always complain about regeneration, but Ive always thought its just a convenience that streamlines gameplay. Pain pill pickups in MP3 are like few, far between, and usually kind of hard to spot, so it really adds a lot of tension. You often have to hunt around and think of the most logical places a bottle of pills would be stashed for the area you're in.
I like the way they handle the difficulty - if you die a few times in a row, you respawn with full health. If you still keep dying, they give you some more painkillers. Still more, you get full ammo, and so on. They even sometimes change the enemy spawns, so they either come in faster or slower, to give you a slightly better chance.
My only consistent complaint about MP3 is that while I LOVE (way more than I should really) that Max doesn't carry his rifles on the rare earth magnet embedded in his shoulderblade that all other video game protagonists carry their unused large weapons on, and I understand WHY Max must always default to holding a pistol in the cutscenes, please PLEASE, if you're going to cut scene in the middle of the fight, give me my rifle back by default when you're done having your moment...
Also, that game gets pretty savage when you get to Panema.
There's obviously more to it than that, but my views on the strengths and differences between DR and all former offerings has crystalized in the last week. (Also, Grit is hax, but Sami is pro hax).
Yeah, this threw me for a loop when I first played Days of Ruin. My first run through I tried to figure out optimal patterns and such, and it just wasn't clicking.
Sami is pro hax, but I remain an adamant supporter of Colin for multiplayer shenanigans. Having so much more money (and thus units) means you can have enough mechs to sit on all the good terrain, cities and chokepoints and still have enough cash left over to build more artillery than the enemy, and win simply by Gold Rushing over and over until you have critical mass and roll the enemy with your super. It's the least efficient and most hilarious way to win, and it'll get wrecked by any competent player, though I don't have too many of those around here, but very much fits Blue Moon's WW2 russia theme.
My only consistent complaint about MP3 is that while I LOVE (way more than I should really) that Max doesn't carry his rifles on the rare earth magnet embedded in his shoulderblade that all other video game protagonists carry their unused large weapons on, and I understand WHY Max must always default to holding a pistol in the cutscenes, please PLEASE, if you're going to cut scene in the middle of the fight, give me my rifle back by default when you're done having your moment...
Yessss, this is driving me crazy. Why does he even have some strange compulsion to pull a pistol out all the time when he's carrying a perfectly good shotgun or rifle..
I still APC-pull regular infantry around in DR. Gives me an edge to have a bunch of non-motorcycle infantry hanging around the edges of the non-factory-supported front, especially if there are mountains about.
Apparently, the reason for this and the 30GB+ download is that all the load times are covered over by pre-rendered cut-scenes which flow from game to game, very high definition ones.
Grit is a total badass and was my first favourite CO. There is just something about having enough range to hit your average unit with rockets twice before they get into range, but only having to hit them once...
Sweet Christ, where do I start with what I've been playing. In France, I had no internet access so I played through several single player iPad games. Beneath a Steel Sky, Tactical Warrior, a couple of racing games, Sword and Sworcery being the big ones.
Once I got back, I started catching up on stuff. Picked up Pocket Planes (oh god it's so fun), and a couple more games. Put some time into Endless Space (it really can't be Alpha, that game is too good), Silent Storm 2, Xenonauts, got back into Battlefield 3... also Little Big Planet 2 was free on the PSN Plus network so I grabbed that, as well as Shank 2.
I also snagged a beta key for Planetside 2 and am lusting over the mech controller that Razer is developing, so I'll play Mechwarrior Online...
Right now? When I get home I'll be finishing up a Rogue Trader character based on Hot Dog from Battlestar Galactica and then maybe hopping back into Silent Storm 2.
I made Skyward Sword fun using USBGecko, so now I'm playing that. Yknow, the way they played it during development, where text scrolling didn't take hours for every cutscene.
Comments
Edit - Oh, and when I started using my 360 controller for flying like I do in battlefield, I went from being 100% unable to fly (which lead to some amusing moments on it's own - "Okay, we're at the LZ...You're on your own, fuckers!" *Eject* Walker and Joeboomer: "What? OH FUCK WHAT OH GOD" - to being a reasonably competent-if-a-little-slow chopper pilot in about five minutes.
Dude, it's a banana!
The former games are just puzzle games. They don't scale well to very large maps, managing momentum is extremely important (a la Battle Balls), city-harvesting in the early turns must be 100% optimal or failure is a foregone conclusion, and there is only one real level of engagement (i.e., the whole map is "tactical", or the "strategy" has no meaningful sub-components).
Great games, to be sure! But decidedly different from DR.
DR introduces both map-wide strategy and force-level tactics. While in the old games, one is always thinking on the level of "move three spaces south, capture the city within five days, move AA two spaces north, etc...", we are able to think in terms of "send infantry support to the northern front" or "build out a combined arms force and send it east until it encounters resistance." Then, within each force or front, one effectively plays out the tactical thinking of the original Advance Wars games.
There's obviously more to it than that, but my views on the strengths and differences between DR and all former offerings has crystalized in the last week. (Also, Grit is hax, but Sami is pro hax).
Also, that game gets pretty savage when you get to Panema.
Sami is pro hax, but I remain an adamant supporter of Colin for multiplayer shenanigans. Having so much more money (and thus units) means you can have enough mechs to sit on all the good terrain, cities and chokepoints and still have enough cash left over to build more artillery than the enemy, and win simply by Gold Rushing over and over until you have critical mass and roll the enemy with your super. It's the least efficient and most hilarious way to win, and it'll get wrecked by any competent player, though I don't have too many of those around here, but very much fits Blue Moon's WW2 russia theme.
It pisses everyone off, makes the game take forever, and is hilarious to watch.
Hawk, Sami, Grit... I really don't use anyone else in AW:DS. Sometimes the Olaf/Drake or Hawk/Drake combo, but it really depends on the map.
Once I got back, I started catching up on stuff. Picked up Pocket Planes (oh god it's so fun), and a couple more games. Put some time into Endless Space (it really can't be Alpha, that game is too good), Silent Storm 2, Xenonauts, got back into Battlefield 3... also Little Big Planet 2 was free on the PSN Plus network so I grabbed that, as well as Shank 2.
I also snagged a beta key for Planetside 2 and am lusting over the mech controller that Razer is developing, so I'll play Mechwarrior Online...
Right now? When I get home I'll be finishing up a Rogue Trader character based on Hot Dog from Battlestar Galactica and then maybe hopping back into Silent Storm 2.