Another matrix failure
Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 3:40 am
The 2 previous games I bought at matrix simply do not work (one does not even install the other one CTDs so as to make it unplayable)
This one CTDs frequently including so far a completely reproduceable CTD at the start 4th mission of the german campaign (and there wer ea number of other CTDs as well)... Moving an air unit makes the game crash... Ergo I can only play the first 3 missions.. .Great
Other than that this game is somewhat disappointing. I have played all the games in the general series and other clones of the system. It is fascinating that the first one remains better than any of its descendants. Operation Barbarossa does not unfortunately break that trend. One would think than more than 10 years later it would be possible to come up with a variant that improved on the original (and panzer general was a mere 8 MB and never ever crashed).
Yes there is 3D but really that does not add anything and in fact diminishes the comfort of play.
Ergonomy is the major issue here:
Selecting units is sometimes a challenge especially when there is an air unit in the hex (even this was better in the original PG)
While the game highlights the hexes your units can get to, sometimes you cannot get there for unexplained reasons (even when there no ennemy units anywhere around)
When you click on engineer units to move them, about half the time they do something else instead and get frozen
VP hexes are not always clearly visible on the mini map (in scenario 2 I think I had to look over each town individually because some points were missing and were not visible on the mini map)
In PG you could easily distingish the units that were your core army and the others, that is not the case here
In PG you could also easily see which units had acted and which had not
The unit graphics (as well as the terrain graphics) are somewhat outdated
Undo icon and end of turn icon are similar.. Since there is no confirmation for end of turn, if you confuse the 2 you end up ending the turn instead
In addition to the ergonomy which makes the game not so plesant to use, the AI is really not very strong. It seems no worse, but no better than the one in PG. The main thing it knows how to do is to aggressively hunt for for your artillery units. If one of your arty units is in attack range then the AI will throw everything but the kitchen sink at it
In short this game has potential but needs work on the ergonomy and AI to make it better. And needless to say that CTDs on such a simple game are simply not acceptable
This one CTDs frequently including so far a completely reproduceable CTD at the start 4th mission of the german campaign (and there wer ea number of other CTDs as well)... Moving an air unit makes the game crash... Ergo I can only play the first 3 missions.. .Great
Other than that this game is somewhat disappointing. I have played all the games in the general series and other clones of the system. It is fascinating that the first one remains better than any of its descendants. Operation Barbarossa does not unfortunately break that trend. One would think than more than 10 years later it would be possible to come up with a variant that improved on the original (and panzer general was a mere 8 MB and never ever crashed).
Yes there is 3D but really that does not add anything and in fact diminishes the comfort of play.
Ergonomy is the major issue here:
Selecting units is sometimes a challenge especially when there is an air unit in the hex (even this was better in the original PG)
While the game highlights the hexes your units can get to, sometimes you cannot get there for unexplained reasons (even when there no ennemy units anywhere around)
When you click on engineer units to move them, about half the time they do something else instead and get frozen
VP hexes are not always clearly visible on the mini map (in scenario 2 I think I had to look over each town individually because some points were missing and were not visible on the mini map)
In PG you could easily distingish the units that were your core army and the others, that is not the case here
In PG you could also easily see which units had acted and which had not
The unit graphics (as well as the terrain graphics) are somewhat outdated
Undo icon and end of turn icon are similar.. Since there is no confirmation for end of turn, if you confuse the 2 you end up ending the turn instead
In addition to the ergonomy which makes the game not so plesant to use, the AI is really not very strong. It seems no worse, but no better than the one in PG. The main thing it knows how to do is to aggressively hunt for for your artillery units. If one of your arty units is in attack range then the AI will throw everything but the kitchen sink at it
In short this game has potential but needs work on the ergonomy and AI to make it better. And needless to say that CTDs on such a simple game are simply not acceptable