Much Ado About Everything

Well, I finished another game, this time on my PC.  I played the original game on my Xbox so this was a good chance to compare them.  I guess controls worked fine on PC, using all three mouse buttons in combination with keyboard.  The result was a game that was easy to control, which is a relief.  The only problem was the occasional incorrectly marked location for your squad to take cover at.  Those controls were a bit finicky but it wasn’t a major problem.  Graphics were very nice and even on my GeForce 6600GT, at 1600×1200, they seemed snappy enough.  It wasn’t super smooth, or even just smooth, but it worked out ok, with occasional major drops in framerate which overall made only a minor impact on gameplay.  It can never be smooth on a 16ms LCD monitor anyway.

The bigger problem with this game was the gameplay itself.  Yet another game that managed to frustrate me.  Luckily, at least it had a few helpful features such as the ability to heal the squad and yourself when loading a checkpoint (if you died 3 times without progressing) as well as reviving any squad members that died when they shouldn’t have.  Without it, the game would’ve turned into yet another totally frustrating experience.  With it, it was “merely” frustrating.  The main reason for frustration is the lack of sufficient number of well-placed savepoints.  Often, there wouldn’t be one after either very difficult or very long sequence, forcing you to redo it all when you unexpectedly die – sometimes from a single shot.  And because in many ways the game isn’t realistic – come on, taking several tanks at once and having to defeat infantry at the same time in order to “liberate” panzerfausts from them – that’s just nuts.  But never mind that, how about having to take out a tank with panzerfausts which are in a quite far away crate – and then of course being eligible to die by a single shot and having to replay for 10 minutes or more to get to the same point?  Can’t any of your teammates help by carrying some extra ‘fausts?  No way you’d be running a few hundred meters back and forth, in order to fire 3-5 ‘fausts necessary to take the tank down. 

And then the issue of the game forcing you to take a certain path through the level.  Which makes many level trial-and-error.  Meaning, die many times until you find out exactly how did the level designer envision it to flow.  That’s just crazy.  Or rather, artificially prolongs the game.  Thank God they decided to at least add the heal feature as I mentioned before.  And I rarely ran out of bullets, because I’m pretty good at using short bursts.  And why are german guns so much more precise?  Supposedly supperior M1 Garand is next to useless because it’s impossible to line a shot with it.  Just where the hell am I supposed to aim with it?  Only the machine gun ends up being a useful ally weapon.  Oh well.  I’m done with it anyway, so I can move on to next one.  But I’m not sure what’s going to be the next game.  Maybe Serious Sam 2…