Quality control.

[nanni]

In the last months two new games have been released by Matrix Games, Flashpoint Campaigns Cold War and War in Spain. I bought both and am certain they have outstanding potential and will become favorites. Note the future tense. They both have, however, a fatal weakness, pre-release quality control.
In FCCW, the cascade of glitch reports, inaccuracies in equipment specs and assignments (eg. M1A1 performance, missing Dragon missiles), crashes, freezes and so forth appearing in its Forum columns is worrisome and greater than with most other recent new games released on the market, at least the ones I bought. I don't remember this happening with WITE2 or DCArdennes, for example. A Beta update to correct this debacle has been announced, but as yet unseen. Hopefully it will soon emerge. FCCW's manual, however, is adequate (C+).
WiS huge weak point is the manual. The whole thing is 440 full-sized pages of mostly unsatisfactory padding. WITP-AE, from which it is derived, made do with a paperback 330 pages long, with clear, concise and complete instructions, no fluff, grade A. The complaints on the WiS manual are in the game's Forum column for all to see. Apart from the unneeded padding, the text's syntax is appalling and the wording sometimes baffling: aircraft "indigenous" to ships (embarked? if so, say it); "devices" (weapons, men, vehicles, horses? specify). Plowing through it to learn the game is unpleasant. What you manage to extract woefully incomplete. In sum. the whole thing is long on mangled discourse and seriously lacking in the specifics necessary to play the game (D). When Matrix came out with WITE 2,it released with it a 500-page long manual, but also a nine-page Guide you could print out, put next to you and get on with the war. In WiS, instead, they suggest watching the tutorial video. I did. Waste of time. WiS also has software issues, but not as serious as the manual.
My suggestion is to have a professional editor and/or proofreader go through the whole thing, pull out the padding, correct the syntax and vocabulary, and use the result to replace the one now on the game's website.
Thank you.

[Mobeer]

Absolutely agreed about the War in Spain manual