I posted my own first impressions in another thread that sank like a stone in a dead man’s pocket.
I enjoyed reading this entire thread. It still amazes me how emotional people get about something like a video game –myself included.
Some things in response to all this response.
1. “Different = bad.” This is simply human nature. We are as a species programmed to find anything that is new and different automatically something to be shunned, disliked or feared. Newcomers to RO and veterans alike are simply reacting to RO: Ost being something different from what they are used to.
It makes me think of my reaction and online review of the film Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. I had waited YEARS for that picture. When I saw it the first time it sickened my heart. This was not what I was looking forward to! This was not what I expected!!! I could not see the forest for all the trees. All I saw was what was different from the book, from my own hopes and imaginings. Sadly and with sagacity of the amateur enthusiast, I could “not recommend it it to anyone”.
Well that all changed by the third viewing. I had been so caught up in what was not there compared to my imagination and expectations that I did not notice all the things they got right or did great.
I see the same sort of thing displayed in so many of these posts.
As such people coming from other shooters will automatically think the game sux. People who played the mod to death and loved it will play the retail version and be disappointed or let down or whatever.
All because what they are seeing or experiencing is different.
2. Game graphics are art. Every artist has a different interpretation of what is “real” or “lifelike”. Every time I see a new game it appears “cartoony” to my eyes, because my brain has come to see some other game as “lifelike”.
My first impression about the graphics was similar to many things expressed so far in this thread. The men running over the land do look like they are imposed upon an unrelated background. The trees and bushes look SO different from the mod. And well, the familiar maps are DIFFERENT, damn it! LOL
But that does not mean all that are “bad” things or “wrong” things. I am glad Kaukaus now has so much green, gentle slopes. The Back Route could have been painted by Tolkien himself! So many of the mod maps were gray shale and dry, lifeless stone. It is nice to see some healthy landscapes. It makes the apocalyptic ruin of other maps that much more gut wrenching.
I played for three hours straight last night. Everything that stuck out as an “eye sore” when I first logged in went unnoticed after a short time. By the time I had to begrudgingly turn it off and go to bed at 1:30 AM I wondered what I was so upset about earlier in the evening.
If there are games with graphics way better than this, I want to see them. I certainly haven’t seen them yet. But then, I have limited experience. I like WWII infantry games. I was very into Red Baron II in the old days. Then I went through the whole Close Combat series. Medal of Honor , Call of Duty and BF42 followed.
I was always having to seek out realsim mods and except for smoke nades in COD no realism mod comes close to what you get in RO and RO: Ost. I have not played Call of Duty from the day I played the RO mod last summer. I did buy that Brothers in Arms game. I think that might be a good comparison for what I keep hearing on here today. Brothers in Arms was super-hyped. It meticulously recreates the exact houses and streets the men really fought on and tries to recreate real life events in terms of specific firefights. It has superb looking foliage and water and stones and the sounds of the M-1s are fantastic. It has a lot of extra graphics stuff where you move out over top of the battle and see it from all sides, like a TV special on the History Channel.
And it is so boring to play I did not get through the first half of the first level and never once had interest in playing it again. Every fight was exactly the same, lay down suppressing fire, run around the side to outflank them, shoot them in the back. Over and over, with enemy bots calling out “Flanken” so you knew when they were going to flank you.
For all its killer graphics it was as fun as peeling turnips.
I did post some quick love, not so love, could be better stuff in my other thread. I will wait until I get a lot more playing under my belt before I say any more.
But, and it is a big but, the map loading times are reallllly awful.
How can Stalingrad Kessel load in 10 seconds on the mod and 4 minutes on the retail??????? This means I am sentenced forever to bolt rifle, unless there server is half empty. On the mod I was always in the first few guys on and had my pick of the litter. On RO:Ost I spawn and the Russians already have the warehouse and have blown a hole in NA so I spawn at SA and am shot leaving the railyard by someone on the Assembly Hall roof.
The slow load times are simply unacceptable for anything like daily playing. This has GOT to be changed, ether by tweaking my Pent 4, 2.36 Ghz, 1gb RAM, 128 mb Radeon 9800 Pro or by tweaking the game.
I am totally open to suggestions to improve this.
As for now, I am buying pizza on the way home so I can get back to playing as soon as absolutely possible.
And as to my gallant foe, whom I shall be seeing tonight, “My only regret is that our encounter will be . . . so brief.” Woo ha ha ha haaaaaaa
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