I stopped playing NS about a month after it came out, for all the reasons that 2.0 is dealing with. So i can't wait to see what Flayra's been up to! My major complaint about FPS/RTS hybrids is that commanding players (about 5% of the server) have far too much influence over the rest of the players' fate (95%). But hopefully NS 2.0 will reduce the importance of the commanders.

I hope a Serious Sam-like mode of play is available for HL2, either through the Sven team or someone else. It's simple, but fun.... and I wish more FPS's would have this kind of gameplay. This feature alone would probably make me buy Elite Force 2. I'd love to blast hundreds of Borg drones as they slowly march towards me across 200 yards.

I think 2015 is trying to finally move games out of simple entertainment to something bigger, something closer to what we usually see in television and film media. Especially regarding war. Take a look at Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Band of Brothers. They all show people being people, with pride and prejudice of their own. Platoon's got black and white issues, BOB has jewish issues. Another thing is that 2015 may have seen their MOHAA games as too Indiana Jones-ish. It's like a comic book war game, the music swells up as you heroically drop two dozen German soldiers without a sweat.

I think the other guy's post about how the game is now "tainted" is a bit shortsighted. Games that deal with such important topics as war should be realistic and respectful of how a soldier's life really was. This is why movies like Saving Pvt Ryan are much more highly regarded by actual veterans. I don't think the average veteran wants people going into some Rambo-like movie, they don't want you to glorify war. And so, MOHAA, and games and movies like it are the ones that are tainted. They're tainted with an insulting portrayal of history and reality, in an attempt to boost profits and enjoyability.

If you're not going to treat the loss of millions of REAL lives with this respect, you shouldn't try to make money off of their corpses.....

It's about time. I can't wait to have carrier battles in the Pacific

Interesting. Being good means you stay alive. Which means you kill other people. Which means you are the cause of boredom for anyone you kill.

America's Army is a load of shit. Play DOD instead. It's better in every way, more immersive, exciting, fun.

Bah, America's Army is a chatroom with a game attached to it. The intense boredom this game produces probably hurts Army recruitment more than it helps.

the 3d voice chat feature will be amazing if done right, a good step towards virtual reality. TeamFortress 2, using the HL2 engine, was the first to mention that feature more than 3 years ago. But it looks like UT2004 will beat TF2 to the punch.

That said, i still won't get UT2004 probably. It's gameplay is too arcadey and teamwork chatter is never very common. I'm more of a DOD type. But dang, if DOD had 3d voice chat, it'd be amazing. Especially since you could hear players yelling orders to each other as they run past your position. Then you could say "Surprise surprise!" from behind them as you mow them all down. haha. What would be even cooler is if when you get killed, you could continue to voice chat for about 5 seconds. So you'd be like "Damn.. you got me.... Jim! Avenge me, my brother! Guhh......"

Also, we'd finally be able to warn people of danger in their area. Right now, you say "Behind you!" on voice chat, and everyone on your team turns around.

This comment was edited on May 13, 19:26.

They said there won't be compatibility issues like CS.

I wish they had let us beta test 1.0 before they released it. The game needs massive customisation, through player-made files, right out of the box (or out of the download) to make it decent, if you ask me.

Actually, at least two nations were bombed in the Vietnam War. Cambodia and Vietnam. I'm quite sure there was a third as well. The secret bombings of Cambodia were kept secret by Nixon, but eventually revealed, which proved to be a pretty big embarrasment for the Nixon administration. The bombings of Cambodia, by the US, played right into the political desires of the murderous Khmer Rouge, who could now point to a significant example of "US imperialism."

This comment was edited on May 7, 17:12.

The past 2 years of DOD beta experience were totally thrown out the window during the development of DOD 1.0. Every post the DOD community has ever made to the forums has been proven to be a total waste of time, not a single shred of it mattered. The general consensus towards 1.0 is that the game is terrible, it's been extremely noobified, the new sounds are a joke, the mp_consistency feature is ridiculous, and that Valve forced the DOD team to abandon almost everything that made the game good. The automatic guns now shoot 30-50% slower, so newbies can better dodge in between bullets and live longer. The MG42 now shoots at the same speed as the MG34 and .30 cal. The machine guns seem identical each other. The same goes for the SMG weapons.

The sniper can move while scoped. Huge, lame looking lighting effects plume out of your player as he shoots, giving away his position to even people orbiting in Space miles above. The new graphical effects such as bazooka exhaust cannot be toned down, from what we can tell, and it's effect is quite draining on your frame rate, even on my p2.4 ghz 256 mb RAM GeForce 4 system. God help you when multiple bazookas are shot off in your vicinity.

With any luck, DOD fans will be able to bring about change immediately. I would love to see all DOD server admins shut down their servers until 3.1 gameplay is brought back. The effect would be devastating on Valve, I would guess. With no servers to play on, the retail product will flop. But it's more likely that newbie players to DOD will find the new graphical style cool looking and won't have any idea what they were missing just a day ago. And thus the greatest FPS to ever grace humanity is buried forever.

The massive changes are just baffling in their stupid ignorance. Only massive Valve influence could have produced such a drastic alteration of DOD mechanics. Don't put too much faith in TF2, or even HL2 possibly.

Good looking maps. Bad gameplay.

The maps are nice to look at, but the CS-style respawns are totally incompatible with the size of the maps: HUGE. Nevermind that the combat mechanics of the game itself are extremely unexciting and uninnovative, making people wait for another round of boring combat just makes no sense. If you dont' have quality, you should at least provide quantity. Footstep sounds are nearly non-existant, the game is very quiet and has an unimmersive audio atmosphere. If it wasn't for the mediocre electronica playing throughout the whole game, you'd fall asleep.

Grade: D.

Got losta lag. Did the rate thing. tried everything. Everything bouncing around. Nevermind that RTCW graphics make me dizzy for some reason. Weird.

I won't be buying DOD retail, but I'll be glad to finally see some non-broadband newbie players flock to DOD. One of the things about these realism themed games is that in reality, most soldiers didn't have the fortune to learn from their fatal mistakes. As such, these realistic games have very unrealistically skilled veteran players running around everywhere as if they were Special Forces troops, instead of 18 yr old kids out of Nowhere, USA that we should be seeing. In other words: I'm gonna look like a GOD compared to the masses. LOL.

But seriously, yeah they should load the DOD retail CD with LOADS of extras, like how WW2 flight sim 1942 Pacific Air War did a decade ago. That sim came with a VERY cool and informative multimedia attachment. Full of video footage, voiceover profiles of the various planes, maps of the battles. It's too bad games don't do this anymore. DOD would be great if it packaged History Channel documentaries and stuff. Also, it should put loads of custom player maps, models, and sounds on there. Most of my DOD directory is custom stuff.

well, i went ahead and downloaded this. What a mistake. There's only like 6 servers for it, and with good reason. You're left wondering why it was a 128 meg file. Where'd the 128 megs go? Did they install a DVD quality porn movie on here or something?

The game's graphics, character models, map designs.... are all mediocre. Nothing new here, folks, move along, move along. The gameplay feels old. Like 10 years old. Older than Doom old.

Eck.

Someone play this and review it for us Compare/contrast to DOD, please.

This patch really helps VC's frame rate. The game's much nicer. Unfortunately, the major review sites have already reviewed the pre-patch game, giving it poor marks for low frame rates, etc. It's amazing really, if the review sites had just waited one more week........

Anyway, this game is fun, but it has serious gameplay issues to overcome to become a great multiplayer game. The footsteps are extremely quiet, the sounds of gun fire often go in and out (dont' work), depending on range. The airstrikes and artillery strikes are pathetically unimpressive to look at. The sound quality overall is pretty weak. The guns are very accurate even when running/standing. Don't expect DOD-level aiming requirements here.

Nothing's really changed since the demo. So if you thought it needed a lot of work then, don't pick this up. And the advertised voice chat is for LAN only, what a bunch of sneaky bastards.

Overall, I regret buying this game, but pray the promised MOD tools let the players fix this up into greatness.

DOD is the greatest game ever to grace humanity. Exciting, fun, teamwork, voice chat. Without a doubt, this game has the best map design from a user community ever. Even Robin Williams admitted to being addicted to this game.
Hopefully they'll package the retail game with all the custom maps. Maybe History Channel videos of the various guns too. "The Gun: The Kar98" "The Gun: The Thompson"

*grin*. They better package a lot of custom made sound packs and models too, because the default ones are never as good as the player made ones

Another failed FPS game, comin up!
First problem I noticed: Footsteps are entirely inaudible, both yours and other players. What a huge mistake. Interactive environments, lame and useless in this demo. You can throw stuff at people, yes, and miss 99% of the time. Frame rate is pretty damn bad. Piling up cover seems impossible and largely futile. Weapons are too weak to make cover useful in the long run. best to just strafe repetitively.

I'm praying Vietcong has improved 3x since it's demo...

This game does suck. While N-fusion is trying to pass this, and Deadly Dozen 2, as value budget "stealth combat" games, in reality their just value budget games. Graphically impressive, the gameplay is extremely lacking and repetitive. Probably not a bad co-op LAN game, I can imagine having fun running around shooting people for the heck of it in a Seriou s Sam kinda way. The AI sees through foliage with IR vision. The AI doesn't need to hear you moving around, or even see you, it has a sixth sense and can detect you by feeling a disturbance in the Force. The demo's mission briefing is so blatantly pro-war in that Jerry Bruckheimer kinda way, that you have to wonder if the creators of the game have even a basic knowledge of the Vietnam war, or the everyday attitudes towards it by the US soldiers themselves (hint: it sure as hell wasn't the gung-ho "let's rock" attitude that oozes outta this game!)

Mediocre game. Wait till it hits $20 or $10 before picking the retail version up.

This game's a great budget game, very unique and fun, but I wouldn't pay more than $15 for it.