Well, not really a mountain, more of a client. I'm stuck in Maine for a month with no gaming opportunities at all. Qt3 is my only gaming outlet, and I can't stop reading that stupid stupid stupid Gord thread. Please help! If I read that thing any more I'm gonna go down to Blockbuster and start throwing DVDs at the clerks. I need a meaty game thread!

Anyone get through Commandos yet? Do the missions get more interesting, or does it get stale?

Any DOAC beta testers on our board? Is it just Everquest rehashed, or is there something fun about the game?

Who's winning the Qt3 SMAC pbem game? Are there plans for a Civ III Qt3 pbem tourney?

Help. I beg of thee. Save me from that stupid thread!

Commandos 2 does get better as it goes along.
I know nothing of DOAC.
I'm winning the Qt3 SMAC pbem game. Chick is on the ropes and Geryk is a smoking corpse.
I vote heartily for a CivIII version of same.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some punk kids to slap around.

Acts of Bub
-Andrew

Ya know, I picked up Commandos 2 on a whim (I'd never played the 1st one), since it was on sale at Best Buy, and I'm really really surprised by just how much I like it. I'm only about 1/2 way through, but I've found all the missions very interesting so far. I like the way your teams vary mission to mission, which encourages you to try diffent ways of solving problems. Gotta love the Diver! Give him the Green Beret's knife, any spare knives you find in a mission, and some cigarettes and he's a killing machine.

How is Desperados? C2 has me really interested in this type of game. I liked the setting, but didn't really give the demo the time of day, because I never bothered to learn the interface.

-Matthew

I really enjoyed the 1st Commandos, although I only played a limited number of missions (some pseudo-demo version of the game I got at Best Buy), so I've been looking forward to the sequel for a while. But my experience with Desperados was poor in comparison. I only played the demo, but the graphics were dated and the gameplay was messy. I remember Commandos as being pretty tight on the control side. Can you still cut up the screen and watch multiple activities?

I'm curious as to what the diver is doing with cigerettes.

I heard (read) the install was massive for Commandos. Do you think my Dell 600 mhz laptop from work could run it? I don' think it has any kind of graphics card, but its got a lot of hard disk space. It runs Combat Mission ok.

I think Civ III can handle a 16 person game max. That would be pretty cool for the Qt3ers. Our very own shoot club! Except its more of a Long-turn Club rather than a shooting type club.

I have played some DAOC; my mighty dwarf Seer (cleric) is up to level...THREE!

IMO, it's "Dark Age of EverQuest." Very nicely done, and in some respects better than EQ (it looks like soloing is more feasible), but the cool stuff--PvP by realms--is pretty much out of reach until you have put in untold hours slaying spiders and such so you can get enough levels to be on the front lines.

"IMO, it's "Dark Age of EverQuest." Very nicely done, and in some respects better than EQ (it looks like soloing is more feasible), but the cool stuff--PvP by realms--is pretty much out of reach until you have put in untold hours slaying spiders and such so you can get enough levels to be on the front lines. "

Thanks Robert. This is exactly what I'm looking to avoid. I would play DOAC in a heartbeat if it used the WW2OL model of combat (meaning realtime and somewhat twitch-based), but I can't suffer through another game with the bar going back and forth determining when I swing my blade. Give me my MP-38 any day. I guess I should be looking forward to Planetside, but I just know that game is going to make me barf due to my pedestrian earlobes.

Rob,
The Diver in Commandos 2 can use the cigs to bribe guards. Y'know, Marlboro Country, smooth flavor, good times, and all that.

16 player PBEM sounds agonizing. Since the seven we've got with SMAC can't do it daily, this one is somewhat painful. It's shaping up nicely though, but, to be honest, I was lying in the above post. We're all still in the very, very, very, early game portion at the moment.

-Andrew

Yeah, it seems like you guys have been playing for months, but nothing meaningful has happened yet. Are you guys still pod hunting and building the first roads, or are you stapling nerves and changing governments and building jump jet armadas?

I bailed on Desperados early on. The graphics are worse than Commandos and the puzzle motif just doesn't work as well in a western. Gunslingers don't put a musical watch on the ground as a diversion so they can sneak past someone. I'll forgive that kind of inanity in a WWII commando game, but in a western I expect to shoot instead of sneak around.

I'd been interested in Commandos for awhile though I never played it. I was going to wait for Commandos 2, figuring they'd have worked out the kinks of the genre in the sequel. But when I saw Desperados on Compuexpert last week for less than $20, I decided what the heck.

Personally, I like it quite a bit. The environments are nice, at least at higher resolutions (although the zoom mode uglifies them REAL quick). I was wondering if it would really be as much of a stealth game as Mark implies, but I've found by far the best strategy is to use the distractions to knife or punch out opponents. Carry their body off to an uninhabited building and problem solved! Of course, I just got access to the real stealthy character...

Still, without Commandos to compare it to, maybe my expectations are too low. Fine by me -- just means I'll be that much more impressed with Commandos 2.

You need a gaming laptop.

I enjoyed Commandos 1, but the one big problem I had was that the game demanded a precision that the interface sometimes made hard to deliver.

I can't remember how many times I was screaming at the PC because I wanted Tiny to knife a guy from behind, then had trouble quickly switching to the 'drag body' icon, then clicking again on just the right spot, and doing it all before another sentry arrived. Sure, it was great when I finally got it to work, but it could be darn frustrating too, like mini-golf.

Is the Commandos 2 interface any better about this?

"Who's winning the Qt3 SMAC pbem game?"

I think Bub was kidding. It's still only about 40 years into the game. Six of us have found each other, but Jason McCullough's University is sequestered away on some island, so we can't hold elections for Governor. There are no publically announced wars and everyone seems to be trading tech and playing nice.

"Are there plans for a Civ III Qt3 pbem tourney?"

Where is Civ3 with multiplayer support? Did it make it in? Will there be PBEM support?

-Tom

The only real difficulties I'm having with precision in Commandos 2 are when I'm in an interior area. The rotating camera (BTW - I love the fact that they took the time and effort to draw the exterior maps from four different angles) lets you get focused on what you want fairly easily, but the interiors tend to be very cramped. Sometimes I'll try to have Tiny punch a guard from behind and he'll walk by and knock on the wall instead. Oops :) This isn't terribly often though, so I don't consider it a big problem. You generally have to be quick about punching, tying and carrying off, but if you just hold shift and keep clicking, you'll tie and pick up the guard much faster than the animation would indicate that you can.

The interface for C2 is fairly draconic - you have to use lots of hotkeys to do things quickly. However, there are generally only 2 or 3 critical keys per character, with a lot of overlap, so you can learn it pretty quickly.

-Matthew

I haven't played DAoC but see my comments in the other thread about it. I will say that I am pretty excited about this game.

"Where is Civ3 with multiplayer support? Did it make it in? Will there be PBEM support?"

Using my advanced powers of "visiting the Firaxis website" I've learned that...

"Will there be multiplayer support for Civ III?
We're working on some unique things with multiplayer, but we're not ready to start talking about it yet. It has always been challenging to make multiplayer really fun in turn-based games and we're looking at new ways of approaching that."

Which is disturbingly vague. This must be because they haven't updated it in a long time. Ah well, we'll know by the end of the month I suppose.

Has anyone done a more recent preview or interview with them? I honestly just assumed PBEM would be there, it works well enough in SMAC. Sure, not a popular feature, but I like it.
-Andrew

Re: The SMAC game

Actually Tom, Bub just pulled ahead of me in the last turn or so, so he is winning, according to the information screen.

I'm sure he's done this through guile and deceit.

I'm currently dressing up all my scout patrols as elves to scare Geryk off my continent.

And count me in on a CivIII multiplayer. If it has multiplayer support, that is. CivIII is probably the only game I'm going to pay full retail for this year (or next year, most likely). I don't think I've payed full retail for a game since I bought SMAC.

"I'm currently dressing up all my scout patrols as elves to scare Geryk off my continent."

You might also trying playing some Dave Matthews really loud. He hates that stuff.

Also, I've confirmed that Civ III didn't ship with multiplayer.

-Tom

No multiplayer! That is shocking. If Civ III is Civ II whipped into SMAC-shape than this is very strange. Did SMAC ship with multiplayer? By not having multiplayer, Civ III just raised the bar as far as I'm concerned. What improvements were they making that they had to scrap multiplayer?

SMAC shipped with Multiplayer. It did NOT ship with PBEM multiplayer which was added later. In fact, Mulitplayer was a big component of SMAC's launch and they talked it up quite a bit.

That's nutty that CivIII isn't going to have it in the box. Kinda crazy when it's all based on the SMAC engine. Did they really have to rip out all the MP code? Sheesh. Anyone else think Infogrames/Hasbro had a hard and fast date for this game, completion be damned?

Bub was listed as the top dog last turn in the SMAC game but it's been fluctuating. You can tell when trades of tech are happening. That's usually how one player makes a jump up the list. The graphs are still fairly even though. :)

--Dave

'That's nutty that CivIII isn't going to have it in the box. Kinda crazy when it's all based on the SMAC engine. Did they really have to rip out all the MP code? Sheesh. Anyone else think Infogrames/Hasbro had a hard and fast date for this game, completion be damned?'

It's not that crazy. Read any of Brad Wardell's stuff, which makes a pretty good case that multiplayer gaming isn't comparitively that popular; especially so for 4x games. I don't think they'd be leaving all that much money on the table if they didn't include multiplayer at all.

Mark:

"I bailed on Desperados early on. The graphics are worse than Commandos and the puzzle motif just doesn't work as well in a western. Gunslingers don't put a musical watch on the ground as a diversion so they can sneak past someone. I'll forgive that kind of inanity in a WWII commando game, but in a western I expect to shoot instead of sneak around."

Of course it's your right to dislike Desperados for whatever reason you want, Mark, and I'll agree that the musical watch may be a bit goofy, but IMO Desperados outdoes both Commandos games in terms of design and gameplay.

Its greatest strength is the enemy AI, which is the most "realistic" of any similar game out there. Enemy behavior is far more believable and dynamic than the Commandos games, and varies enough upon repeat plays to make many of the missions replayable just for fun.

The design allows for quick thinking and response to rapidly unfolding situations, and less of the the painstaking, step-by-step planning of Commandos and Commandos 2. Any two players of Desperados will give very different accounts of playing through a given mission.

And there are many missions that involve a LOT of fighting, that end up feeling *exactly* like a western should. The first time I played the riverboat rescue mission, my guys got into an extended shootout on the dock, hiding behind crates and exchanging fire with enemies (who seek cover and try to flank you on occasion) until I managed to get Doc into a position good enough to pick some of them off and shift the balance in my favor.

What I would really love for Desperados and the Commandos games is an option to reply the film of a completed mission, because some of them really do play out like a good genre flick.

The Civ2 multiplayer debacle drove me and my friends crazy, especially when they dared to offer the Multiplayer Gold Edition as a separate retail product.

While the omission of multiplayer might not affect sales numbers among the general gaming community, I personally have one less incentive to run out and buy *my* copy of Civ3. I too am curious to see what difference are offered beyond SMAC, since I'm now forced to trade off single-player against multi-player. If SMAC were still selling strongly, I might even suspect Firaxis of *purposely* removing multiplayer from Civ3 for that very reason.

Oh, speaking of SMAC, I'm not sure how accurate the leader-graph is. When playing multiplayer, we used to play meta-games with the leader-graph.

- Alan

To: Jason
Re: Desperados

I'm lovin' Desperados, but I'm a little mystified by how you can manage a full-blown shoot-out in the game. I mean, if you're going to have multiple characters shooting at once, they all have to be shooting at the same guy... their ammo runs out at different times... and it's impossible to track ammo or weapon overheating for each of them as the battle gets protracted. I'm curious to hear your combat strategies.

Good news. I am leaving the Mountain and heading back to sunny Cambridge MA (our fair city). In a few hours I will be back at the controls of my Panzer IIc in WW2OL, or fighting my way across Malden in Flashpoint, or beating the Nazis in Commandos 2. In fact, I bought Commandos the other night and it runs pretty good on my laptop, but the hotelroom gaming experience just blows, so I'll be firing it up on the Dell at home tomorrow. Oh-no! Just remembered...must help girlfriend...CLEAN.....storage space...*choke*...fall cleaning weekend....all closets must be cleaned...*gag*...help....me...

Chris --

The face-to-face gunfights that I've played out involve getting my guys behind some kind of cover (the crates at the dock in the riverboat episode were perfect for this), and single-selecting individuals to shoot at targets that present themselves. It's definitely clickfesty, and can be a challenge to manage, but it's a lot of fun in the midst of an otherwise stealthy game (especially when the smoke clears and your gunslingers are bleeding but alive). Desperados models a "3D" tactical area much better than either of the Commandos games, in terms of applicable cover, etc.