Early Impressions

[22sec]

I'm stuck at work for six more hours, and tired of reading opinions about the game's price. Anyone care to share their early impressions?

[thewood1]

Good first impressions. If you have played Harpoon and liked that, you will like this game.

Only minor issue is the slowness in mouse scroll. It is a little jerky even on small scenarios. I could spend weeks reading the database.

[Rob322]

Funny. Sometimes I got so into the encyclopedia found in Harpoon I forgot about the scenario I was playing.

[Djoller]

Fucking awesome so far!!!

PS. Can I swear on this forum?

[Titanwarrior89]

Ive turned on the game sound but still nothing.  Anyone know if i'am something wrong?

[CoffeeMug]

I like it. My 4 tomcats get wasted in 1st tutorial, but there are always some losses.

Sound is working.

[Titanwarrior89]

Thanks for the response....is the sound only working for weapons firing or thru out ship/air movement.

ORIGINAL: CoffeeMug

I like it. My 4 tomcats get wasted in 1st tutorial, but there are always some losses.

Sound is working.

[Titanwarrior89]

Ok, sound is working when weapons fire. 

[CoffeeMug]

ORIGINAL: Titanwarrior89

Ok, sound is working when weapons fire. 

Yes, through all events, but not constantly, for those of you wondering ...

[TheWombat_matrixforum]

I played the first tutorial scenario (got an "Average" score, 900, with ten aircraft lost, ouch). The tutorial messages work ok, but 1) you have to unpause the game for them to start, and they trigger on time or events thereafter, and 2) they tend to disappear if you muck around with the pause/unpause button while they're open. They're also a bit laconic, sometimes even cryptic. They'll give you the bare bones of what to do, but there's very little hand-holding. Still, I was able to get through the tutorial, and learned stuff. I suspect, though, that like most of the players buying this being an old Harpoon hand will help. I pity the poor fool who buys this without any experience in the genre, though!

The game seems to run by default in a window, at more or less full screen size. I think I'll play around with sizing, because I think I'd like to put the message log (with the optional display as separate window ability) off to the side of the playing area. I've got a 24" widescreen monitor and even in the tutorial there's plenty of stuff to occupy screen real estate; goodness knows what the big scenarios are going to look like! I'm sure fiddling around with layouts will have to evolve over several play sessions.

Ditto with all the map and display options. I found that turning on the contour layer I think it was really improved the look of the maps, not that they look bad anyhow. It's very cool to have real geo-data stuff. It ain't quite Google Earth quality but it's miles beyond Harpoon.

I did find a few times that unit labels were in, um, Cyrillic? Or Greek? Something like that. But they switched back to Latin characters on their own. And these were US units . Other than that, the labeling and text displays are clear and, though there are a LOT of them, relatively easily readable.

The message log has a bunch of filter options, which I think I might want to explore, as it fills up pretty rapidly. Kudos for the option to show probability rolls and results.

The actual action is pretty sweet. Great sensor and weapons stuff, really nifty handling of BDA, and at least at first glance things seem to be playing out realistically, or expectedly at least. My difficulties right now are in mastering setting reference points and managing those. I get confused which ones go where, and it would be nice to be able to label groups/areas of ref points with the mission name their attached too, and have them toggle-able perhaps.

At first I wasn't getting any pictures in the database, but I downloaded the image file from the developer's website, and once I put it in the right folder (the instructions were not quite correct) I now get pictures for, well, most of the units, but not all. Not sure if this is WAD or not, but it's no biggy.

I have to read the manual and play around a bit, but it's very promising.

[Emx77]

ORIGINAL: TheWombat

I suspect, though, that like most of the players buying this being an old Harpoon hand will help. I pity the poor fool who buys this without any experience in the genre, though!

Thank you for informative review. As I've never played Harpoon and with price as high, I will skip purchase for now.

[At Ease]

Yeh haw...Shootout in the North Pacific is a shootout!!Lol fun so far!

[Primarchx]

Everyone's got to start somewhere... [:D]

ORIGINAL: Emir Agic

ORIGINAL: TheWombat

I suspect, though, that like most of the players buying this being an old Harpoon hand will help. I pity the poor fool who buys this without any experience in the genre, though!

Thank you for informative review. As I've never played Harpoon and with price as high, I will skip purchase for now.

[thewood1]

Harpoon was the same way. That is why it was loved hated.

[Dimitris]

I like the love [:D]

[Titanwarrior89]

Thumbs up!!  Excellent!  So far, no crashes, runs great....you guys should pat your selfs on the back.  Great job.  So far I have not had any issues.  The game totally draws you in.   Matrix, you guys have another winner.[&o][;)]

[At Ease]

The game mechanics are very nice..easy to set up missions..ai behaves very well..color sets are sweet...looks like i'll be havin some fun building scenarios!

[At Ease]

Also nice,pulled message log to second moniter....

[LittleDogmaOne]

In 1st Tutorial, VF-51 screaming eagle NE 100 - 107 successfully downed four MIG 23 and Four MIG 21, but lost 3 F-14 in a close/intense dogfight. A-7 gunslinger squadron couldn't able to penetrate RED Force AAA/SAM defense wall with anti radiation missile(s), and I decided to order them to RTB (force myself to re-evaluate & re-plan the whole strike package.) Major Defeat : (

Awesome mission/game, but will take some time to "master" the game.

[mkjhartmann]

This is sure to be a long term keeper. It is very deep and tons of information. I suspect the interface will improve some in future upgrades (not bad know, but some right click functionality on units to give them orders for one). Clearly a premium price, but then this is also a very premium product. I shudder to guess how many hours of work went into this one.