10-17-2003, 08:34 AM
OK, my local games shop finally stocked this thing, and I can give my first impressions on it.
This game pisses me off.
No, really.
For starters, I see no reason whatsoever for it to lag at 1280x1024 in my box (without antialiasing or anything of the sorts), an Athlon XP 1900+ (1600 MHz), GeForce ti4400 and 1.5 Gb of memory. The world is not that choke-full of detail and the textures are in general pretty bland, so I say that's poor optimization.
Second: Aiming and reloading. Having to "aim" with a circle that is 1/10th of the screen and the bullet might land "anywhere in the circle, sometimes outside", and having to reload your weapon is fine for games like Splinter Cell (tangent: what a friggin' great game), but in my opinion it has no place in a fast paced first person shooter.
Third: I'm tired of throwing grenades when I want to zoom in with the sniper rifle. In every game right click zooms with the sniper rifle. I can define the right click to be the zoom but that'd render it useless with the other weapons.
Did I say other weapons? I can carry only two anyway.
Fourth: Having to drive the vehicles with the mouse. It's great that you can, it sucks that you cannot just use the keys like in every other driving game. It was not that hard to implement was it?
Fifth: The incredible lack of good ambient sounds. I have a surround system, I like to be able to rely on my ears to know when something is happening behind me. Talking of sound, I have a 7.1 system, but the game doesn't use standard positional sound, so the rear two don't do anything.
Sixth (this is no fault of the game itself): Localized versions. I'm downloading the original english one so that I can replace all the german. Aliens speaking german, tsk tsk tsk.
Sure it has good things, like the great NPC interaction (those marines sure kick ass :lol:), and the immersion, and I can't wait to try cooperative multiplayer.
But it pisses me off. I give it a 6.5.
This game pisses me off.
No, really.
For starters, I see no reason whatsoever for it to lag at 1280x1024 in my box (without antialiasing or anything of the sorts), an Athlon XP 1900+ (1600 MHz), GeForce ti4400 and 1.5 Gb of memory. The world is not that choke-full of detail and the textures are in general pretty bland, so I say that's poor optimization.
Second: Aiming and reloading. Having to "aim" with a circle that is 1/10th of the screen and the bullet might land "anywhere in the circle, sometimes outside", and having to reload your weapon is fine for games like Splinter Cell (tangent: what a friggin' great game), but in my opinion it has no place in a fast paced first person shooter.
Third: I'm tired of throwing grenades when I want to zoom in with the sniper rifle. In every game right click zooms with the sniper rifle. I can define the right click to be the zoom but that'd render it useless with the other weapons.
Did I say other weapons? I can carry only two anyway.
Fourth: Having to drive the vehicles with the mouse. It's great that you can, it sucks that you cannot just use the keys like in every other driving game. It was not that hard to implement was it?
Fifth: The incredible lack of good ambient sounds. I have a surround system, I like to be able to rely on my ears to know when something is happening behind me. Talking of sound, I have a 7.1 system, but the game doesn't use standard positional sound, so the rear two don't do anything.
Sixth (this is no fault of the game itself): Localized versions. I'm downloading the original english one so that I can replace all the german. Aliens speaking german, tsk tsk tsk.
Sure it has good things, like the great NPC interaction (those marines sure kick ass :lol:), and the immersion, and I can't wait to try cooperative multiplayer.
But it pisses me off. I give it a 6.5.