CM:SF PREVIEW DID you see it?

[Chad Harrison]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

Now at this point, the day before release, I am just as excited to recieve CM:SF as I was to recieve CM:BO.

That's too bad really. Maybe you should go see a doctor about your delusions that CM:SF will be better than any of the other CM games. You should get M2TW instead and play on vh/vh or vh/h you'll have a much  more enjoyable game take it from me.

Ha, cant argue with you there. M2TW is a great game. I played it when it first came out and stopped playing until I can get a better computer where I can have all the settings maxed out with the largest unit size. Ahhh, dreams are good

Ill tell you what Ravinhood, the game comes out tomorrow and I will play the full version off and on this weekend and then post back here with my own thoughts. And this will be from someone who has been playing the CM series from the start. By no means am I falling into a fanboi trap of saying that it IS going to be the best game ever. It might not be all that and a bag of chips and as with any new release, bugs may be a problem. But hey, with only one more day to go, Ill find out soon enough. If its not all that, Ill let you know and I will go back to waiting for an updated WWII version of CM to come out, which is what I wanted in the first place anyways.

If I may predict the outcome, by Sunday, I will have 3 or 4 PBEM games going and loving every minute of it [:)]

[ravinhood]

Well for your sake I hope you do. I'm not a fan of modern day warfare so that unsold me right off the bat. Then to even make it US vs Syria was the 2nd nail in the coffin. Had I liked Modern day warfare I'd much rather pretend I'm stomping Iraq, Iran or god willing CHINA. Now THAT I would have bought. I'd love to stomp on China right now in a modern day wargame (but I'd want nukes and lots of rockets and missles). But, Syria? A PUNY little nation like Syria? Why pick on something so puny and tiny hehe. Is there a circle in this thread?

[Chad Harrison]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

Well for your sake I hope you do. I'm not a fan of modern day warfare so that unsold me right off the bat.

I am not either. Not in the least. In a similar way though, I loved BF 1942 and when they announced that BF2 was going to be modern, I was equally disappointed. But I gave it a shot, and even though its an EA game (**spits**), my brothers and I had a blast playing it together as a squad, at the time one of whom had just recently arrived home from Iraq. As a side note of my side note, are they ever going to finish FH2? Man. [>:]

So again, I am no fan of modern warface, but its CM. And CM is my favorite game franchise. Just becuase its CM I will give it a try. If its anything like the others, I will love it. If I dont enjoy it, my $45 will bring BFC closer to being able to make the next WWII CM even better. That alone makes my money worth it.

I feel like the only one who sees this as a game and not a political statement. Play it to have fun. Play it to be competitive (man I love PBEM). Its a game.

[JudgeDredd]

Well Magnum is a respected reviewer over at SimHQ and he has a write up.

Admittedly, it's just one scenario, but he got positive vibes from it.

Read it here

[Neilster]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

Well Magnum is a respected reviewer over at SimHQ and he has a write up.

Admittedly, it's just one scenario, but he got positive vibes from it.

Read it here

Thanks for the link. Quite a nice AAR. I'm not sure of some of his tactics though. Having one's armour silhouetted on top of hills is a good way to get it killed. Also, an editor who doesn't know how to use the apostrophe, calls "respective" "respected" and writes "there" instead of "their"? Not too flash.

Cheers, Neilster

[JudgeDredd]

Well I didn't say his English was perfect, nor did I say he was a professional reviewer. Simply that he is respected over at SimHQ for his "personal" reviews of games that might be of interest to the community over there. He is certainly a better simmer (flight simmer) than he is a soldier...maybe he was in the Air Force...I don't know.

I'm sure if he was writing a professional review, he may have taken more care with grammar and spelling. It's just been released to him, so he was excited about having the game and wanted to post a review for the lads as quickly as...I think I can forgive him his English mistakes given the circumstances. Besides I was more interested in what he said about the game rather than his English or tactics. I think he portrayed, in a very small AAR, how the game plays out, and from what he says, it looks as if it may stay along the lines of Combat Mission....we'll see. After Theatre of War, I'm not buying this until I hear good things...and I'll be looking specifically to the Combat Mission community for their thoughts.

Something that struck me was the map...very long and thin. There weren't many tactical options presenting themselves there.

[Chad Harrison]

For what its worth, they just posted on BFC that the game is on schedule to be released today and can already be downloaded from a couple of sites or bought in stores.
 
Also, the demo will be coming out today also. It will include for now one 'tutorial' mission and one full mission. They plan to release an updated demo very soon thereafter with one more additional full mission.

[ravinhood]

I'm with yah Judge (unusual) I have less respect for people that point out others grammatical errors and spelling than I do for people that put out good reviews with them. There is no rule of society that says a person who has bad grammer or who doesn't punctuate in the proper places is an idiot or to not be respected for their thoughts. Great minds do not have to spell correctly or be professional writers. If I'm not mistaken Einstein wasn't very good in English grammer. I don't much care how someone spells something or places a comma or semicolon as long as they are getting their point accross. I pretty much feel that people that point out others grammatical errors appear to put themselves up on some sort of elitist pedestal like they are supreme or something when in reality they are nothing more than inferior to all the rest in all other catagories.

[Joram]

ORIGINAL: Marc Schwanebeck

ORIGINAL: Neilster

Battlefront made a modern-warfare game because they wanted a change from WW2.

That and a government contract [;)]

Did they really? I agree with the AI assessment that it's probably not the best for individual training but if they were doing a remote game (or PBEM, whatever), I could see this as a valuable tool for them.

[JudgeDredd]

Well, I didn't quite say I had less respect for Neilster than Magnum, but yes...my point was I was more interested in the content of the "mini-review" than how he used his grammar or failed to use his spell checker. And I'm not going to judge Neilster in "general" terms simply because he chose to point out someones grammatical errors.

I respect Neilster very much as a poster here, as I'm sure you do generally.

Some bad reports of stuttering are showing up on the BF website and also some people not able to run it at all....some not happy bunnies.

Of course these are teething issues and nothing to do with the game mechanics, which I am interested in.

[Chad Harrison]

Just wanted to post really quick here.
 
Have the full version of the game. Downloaded it directly from Battlefront.com this morning, so its version 1.01, unlike the version that many reviewers had from Paradox.
 
I will post more details and impressions (again from a long time, original CM player) after the weekend as promised. But for now, I can assure you that it was not all hype and I am very impressed. Graphics are great. Sound is very, very good. After playing the original CM's for years, the effects leave me speechless. LoL, I even make my wife watch them. Certainly there are bugs, and graphical glitches, but they are not detracting from my enjoyment of the game and given BFC's track record, those will be gone with the next patch(s).
 
Before I head back in, Ill leave you with this tidbit:
 
Some Syrian troops were holled up in a one story building and putting quite a lot of fire out of the building. I had my engineer squad run back into their Stryker, get a 1000 rounds of 5.56mm to reload their personal M4's (best added feature in the game, as anyone who had played the original CM's for more than 5 minutes will agree), and had another guy in the squad take the Javalin missle launcher and three rockets from the Stryker. They got back on TOP of their building and I ordered them to fire at the enemy troops in the building. I wasnt sure what was going to happen, and what they were going to use, and all the sudden that guy with the javalin lets one go. BOOM! The enemy building comes down on top of everyone inside. They got the javelin firing so right, it looked like a movie off of Youtube I was speechless and very impressed.

[JudgeDredd]

From what I've read, it is CM in the modern era. Myself and others were not sure how that would pan out, but as a concept it seems achieveable.

How do you play? WEGO or RT?

What CPU GP do you have? I've heard people with AMD/nVidia bitch about performance

What's your system specs?

Thx for the post

[Hertston]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

What CPU GP do you have? I've heard people with AMD/nVidia bitch about performance

What's your system specs?

Thx for the post

That's not universal anyway; I'm running a humble 3400+ , 6800 GS and one gig of RAM and the demo runs sweet as the proverbial nut; no performance issues at all. Oddly there are guys at BF who have systems that make mine look like a pocket calculator who seem to be having all sorts of troubles.

It's rather good actually, at least judging from short exposure. I must confess I've just pre-ordered the UK box release (a princely £17.99 inc. postage from Play) despite misgivings about the subject matter.

[hadberz]

If your sitting on the sidelines I recommend you stay there until the next patch. Right now the game is just plain unstable. I have yet to finish a battle without it crashing. If anyone can get it to not crash I am open to suggestions. Battlefront

I should have said if you running Vista to wait for the patch. It seems that the game runs fine on XP for the most part.

[Chad Harrison]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

From what I've read, it is CM in the modern era. Myself and others were not sure how that would pan out, but as a concept it seems achieveable.

How do you play? WEGO or RT?

What CPU GP do you have? I've heard people with AMD/nVidia bitch about performance

What's your system specs?

Thx for the post

I would agree 100% with that: CM:SF is CM:BO, BB, and AK except much more deadly and modern. If your troops are caught in the open by a Bradley, or a Stryker with a MK 19 (full auto grenade launcher if you didnt know), yeah, your imagination can do the rest.

So far, I have only been playing WEGO. Since a month from now all I will be playing is PBEM, might as well get (stay) used to it.

I have an nVidia and I updated my drivers this morning before the install. If you are playing and having graphical problems, UPDATE your drivers now. I play on a 2 year old Alienware, 3.2 P4, 1024 MB RAM, 256 MB 7800 GTX. When I bought it, it was top of the line. Now, its not [:)] I have the settings pretty high and its running great on the smaller battles.

I have been reading about CTD's, but so far, outside of funny shadows at times and other minor graphical glitches I have had no problems with playing the game, installing the game, downloading the game, or activating the game online. I know I sound like a fanboi, but atleast for me in my little world, it has been a perfect launch. On my birthday no less [:D]

Back to playing, but only after a quick WitP PBEM turn gets done. My counteroffensive in Burma still takes priority over CM [;)] Ill post at the end of the weekend my extended opinions of the game, warts and all. Ill see if I can get some good screenshots.

[Chad Harrison]

The demo is now available too, by the way.

Its a great demo too. Two missions, playable by both sides. One of which is a Stryker and Abrams match against a Syria Mech unit. Best part is, the demo has PBEM, hotseat, and TCP/IP activated. Along with the editor for scenarios (but you cant save the scenario, so you can just see what you could make). A great demo in my opinion, especially with PBEM activated with a free game demo.

Fileplanet CM:SF Demo

[JudgeDredd]

ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison
...I know I sound like a fanboi, but atleast for me in my little world, it has been a perfect launch. On my birthday no less [:D]
...

Not at all. When the day comes when posting your own findings is considered FANBOI, then it's time to leave the forums to others le intelligent.

Thx for your input.

[Neilster]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

I'm with yah Judge (unusual) I have less respect for people that point out others grammatical errors and spelling than I do for people that put out good reviews with them. There is no rule of society that says a person who has bad grammer or who doesn't punctuate in the proper places is an idiot or to not be respected for their thoughts. Great minds do not have to spell correctly or be professional writers. If I'm not mistaken Einstein wasn't very good in English grammer. I don't much care how someone spells something or places a comma or semicolon as long as they are getting their point accross. I pretty much feel that people that point out others grammatical errors appear to put themselves up on some sort of elitist pedestal like they are supreme or something when in reality they are nothing more than inferior to all the rest in all other catagories.

Err...I thanked him for posting the link and said that I appreciated the review. I then merely pointed out that I thought it was a bit unimpressive that someone who is apparently an "editor" had appalling written expression. Your attack on me is completely unjustified. I've never claimed anyone was an idiot. How one writes on the Internet is how one is perceived. If one wants to be perceived well, write well. It has nothing to do with being elitist. As for your intimation that I may be "more than inferior to all the rest in all other catagories (sic)", I had a career in the Australian Air Force as a fighter aircraft technician in which I was dux of my course and went on numerous back-seat missions and test-flights. I've over 20 years experience in several martial arts styles and am considered an excellent basketballer, footballer, cricketer, volleyballer and tennis player. I look 10 years younger than my 36 years, am 186cm (6'1") tall and weigh 85kg with almost zero body fat. I achieved a degree in computer science and mathematics, making the Dean's List, winning a Commonwealth scholarship and being accepted into international honour societies on the basis of my results and I now work as a software engineer. So no, mate, I don't think I'm inferior.

Thanks JudgeDredd for defending me.

Cheers, Neilster

[JudgeDredd]

I've over 20 years experience in several martial arts styles and am considered an excellent basketballer, footballer, cricketer, volleyballer and tennis player. I look 10 years younger than my 36 years, am 186cm (6'1") tall and weigh 85kg with almost zero body fat
.....
Thanks JudgeDred for defending me.

My pleasure!!! [X(]

[Howard7x]

Ive just played the demo for the last 2 hours and im impressed with the game. I think it will definatley grow on me.
Im a bit annoyed to read someone stating that the game is crap because you cant fight modern warfare tactics with a WW2 engine. Thats stupid. They revamped the engine specifically FOR modern warfare.
 
It plays alot like the old CM games but as BF have stated, you must take your time, theres no blitzgrieg tactics here! Move slowly and take down targets from range. I found it to be a brilliant simulation of modern warfare. I STILL dont like the camera though. Its ok but clunky. Why didnt they just go with the middle mouse button to allow rotation?
 
The infantry in the demo are pretty much useless. I could not get them to fire at tanks even though they had Javelin rockets yet the enemy had no trouble dispatching my Abrams from long range using infantry. Am i doing something wrong? In the manual it states that you cannot pick a wepon for your units, they simply select what best fits the situation.
 
The graphics are average if you compare them to many other RTS games but then again CM was never exactly cutting edge graphically. I think that people that are into wargames dont have such high standards in the graphics department. I was amazed to see some people on the Battlefront forum actually saying they were blown away by the graphics. Ive no idea which century they think there in!
 
The only real question is can a simulation of modern warfare truely be fun? So far so good...