barely fatal

Project Reality 0.5 for Battlefield 2 has been out since Friday and today I spent a fair amount of time checking out the new features. I’m not gonna list ‘em all, just what I think is worth mentioning; go to their website if you wanna know all the details.

First off, they nerfed the M4 and the british L85A2, they are now less accurate. While that makes sense gameplay-wise, the L85A2 now seems a little too weak im my opinion. The kit changes require the teams to play more efficiently. However, the one guy that changes to the pilot or the crewman kit to get the others into battle (as a transport) now has a great problem when he has to leave the vehicle. Armed with just a pistol he can’t do much, so the position of chauffeur isn’t very popular.

The rallye points require the officer kit. The officer kit requires a squad leader and so-and-so many squad members. You can only spawn at your own squad’s rallye point and if you select another, you spawn at the home base, usually faaaar away. All that makes it quite difficult for inexperienced players to get into the game and understand what to do. You have no idea how often I wanted to shoot my squad mates for trying to cap an incappable flag or getting in and out of vehicles without crewmen kits. People, read the game guide first, pleeeeeze. And if you’re a squad leader, doubly so.

To fly an attack helicopter is like walking on eggs: Once you break one (i.e. lose control), all hope’s gone. That’s even worse now that you need pilot kits, the few who can fly don’t want to – as I described above. In one map there were twenty US troops standing on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier looking at each other, not daring to pilot the helicopters. So I gave it a try. Lucky enough for me, all passengers jumped off before I actually made it, err, fly. In the end I confirmed its diving capabilities (not bad, 10 meters at full speed).

The new maps are really great, and the sound has been further improved, too. Not such a big step as 0.3->0.4 was, and not yet perfect, but still on the right track.

Now I’m still sitting at work, but man, we really managed to get things done today, and the right things. Job’s great, boss’s great, and if you work for QA, you have to be always on your guard. Keeps you sharp. Believe me, that’s the hardest part of it all after such a long day.

It looks cold outside. We had plenty of snow today, but of course there’s nothing left now. Good thing actually, I hate riding my bike when it’s freezing, y’know. I don’t really wanna go out there, but it’s the only way to get to my bed. Ok, shower first, but still.

New York, I’ll finally get to see New York City. Got it aaaall set, hotel, flight, RFID-enabled privacy-killing passport, Don’t-Shoot-Me-I-Am-From-Duesseldorf-Sign. In May. Yeah, no kiddin’, I’ll fly this time. Really!

The Supreme Commander demo starts with no problems, but when I build a few units the performance – or lack thereof – literally makes it the greatest real-time strategy game ever created. At 5 FPS you have plenty of time to think and make decisions in grand proportions. Supposedly it’s an issue with the German version of Windows. Well, darn.

Infernal has no performance problems at all, on the contrary. And it looks pretty pretty. Special powers like teleportation, good set of weapons, short but interesting boss fights, all nice. But the controls … it’s a console game at heart. Heavily scripted, opponents of the same type all look the same, search all enemies (booooring), varying level design. If it had parents, I’d say … Max Payne, Messiah, and that forgotten one I can’t remember right now.

I would like to direct your attention to the Superbowl Ads that are now all up on YouTube. There are some great, great, great ones on there and I wonder why we don’t see more like these every day. We have some fairly funny ones in Germany alright, but those are hilarious.

My favourites are Class Menci, CareerBuilder Performance Evaluation, Reception and Rock Paper Scissors.

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By the way, I’m downloading the Supreme Commander and Infernal demos, they’re out. I’m really curious about it.