First off, I will play this again later. It definitely needs some time to work into you.
But...it just feels so similar. Not so much in a shameless rehash sense, but the similar issues. You tell guys to start shooting at something, but they bitch about not being able to do it. I send them to another position, immediately making them open and taking hits, so they can attack. I tell them to suppress, but I swear the focus just on the one guy rather than the cluster of the two/three. The suppression thing still seems a little wonky - I do not give a f*ck who you are, having four or more guys with machine guns shooting at you
makes you be suppressed. It gets to a point where I just want the squad to take cover, but they keep on sticking their heads out, taking hits. I sneak ahead and flank the germans myself; I note, again, that the weapons have incredibly bad aim (yes, even for this era weapons.) I ask my squad to come to follow me, but then they go out into the open rather than taking the side route I took or they just lag about eight feet behind me, leaving themselves open to fire and not supporting me. Then I realize I rushed a script and my squad is all here and two germans rush barrels that are, literally, two feet away from me. But no biggie, right? We vastly outnumber them...but the squad struggled to react dynamically to this new threat and I am the one that kills both of them. Alright, I will go back to flanking myself; I am about five feet away from the encampment and I am effectively sniping them one by one and they are not reacting to me, the dude five feet away, becuse they are fiddling around with my squad. I am at full health, using cover, and avoiding these guys while, intermittently, my squad is taking hits.
Alright, that is stupidly long and I am stopping; you get the idea. For this
expansion game, it sure feels a bit chunkier, especially in contrast for looking very similar. Besides that...it is a quality product, but it is just all this small AI crap that gets on my nerves.
Really gets on my nerves. This is even more frustrating given how confined and relatively linear this game is; it really is "War by chess" in its design. That is cool, I like a thinking FPS, but the AI just really gets on my nerves and that makes it all that much easier to spot the other obvious, game-related restrictions (pathfinding, Nazis that always appear at set points, the scripting, being designed around you playing the one specific way, etc.)
It is not bad, please do not take that from my words, but...I guess I just really have a hard time with the AI flaws. I would re-buy the oringal game if only it did not so routinely keep on doing this.
I can see myself buying this, but as ever these days, not until after I play all the Christmas goodies and it is at a sub-$30 price point. If Randy or anybody from Gearbox pops in, I would like to hear their comments on this. If I suck badly, I want to be the one dying. Am I breaking the AI that much? Do they at least see/know what I am talking about? Too often, I just feel like I am babysitting the squad or I really have to go through the repetitive paces to have a somewhat-competent squad.
Try it out, any BiA fan will love it, but I do not see it converting the haters and I am curious to see how the other "middle of the fence" types, people like myself, respond.
But that is all why I will play it again later.Preferring Baker over Red,
Ray
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