First Impressions

[Nicholas 5]

I have played this all evening and I have to say that I am really enjoying the campaign so far (other than the Walrus path-finding which I think you will have got the gist of the complaints by now!). So far I like the fact that I don't have to deal with the other carrier and can just go through each island at a time. I'll probably play the campaign through before moving on to the strategy game.

To build on my previous post I am now of the opinion that you should drop the FPS part from the beginning of the campaign. It's a shame you didn't have this as part of the P&C beta because I think that you would have got the idea that it wasn't really needed. The problem is that it doesn't really set the scene, and it doesn't add anything to the game - it doesn't really fit at all. In fact I would say there's a real danger people will see this bit and dismiss the game outright even though it only forms about 20 minutes of game time. I hate to say it, but it is not even that well done. If you wanted to introduce the whole idea of how we are in a carrier, you could have just used a cut scene.

So niggles apart (path-finding is a rather large niggle) it's a great game so far. I think it will serve as a solid base for mods as well - looking forward to seeing what tools you deploy for this.

I think the whole purpose of the FPS part was to show how you got the carrier. Rather than a long and boring explanation of how you got the carrier, you can play through it yourself. I didn't mind it.

[gamerbase 1]

A couple of other points to move on from my main post earlier.

BIG POINT: Now Ive patched to 1.02 the Walrus AI has GREATLY improved. To the extent its not really an issue anymore, well done. How did the QA allow this to happen in the first place?!

1) At the end of Evergreen the story becomes a little confused. Im not sure if I have completed the island as the 'objectives' listed does not make it clear. I've uploaded the blueprints from the research centre so do I move on to other islands and search for more blueprints or continue searching the island?

2) SFX and Music audio settings. Can you add a setting for the voices? Its tied to SFX and the engine noises are far to loud and I cant hear what the guys are saying.

3) Controls. Why the HELL can't I set the Manta's elevation controls to my mouse wheel?

4) In the evergreen island game, Im 'rewarded' at the end of it the blueprints for the Quad Gun. However, I already have access to this weapon at the beginning of the map! Slight bug?

5) It would be nice to control the weapon of a walrus while its in automode.

[tortuosit 486]

I wish we can enter multiple waypoints quickly... and not have to wait until the Manta is undocked. (Bad behaviour which has been introduced with Beta 3)

[parmenides 11]

I like the ambiente (island light weather) so much that I find me driving around just for fun through a wonderfull landscape :)

[species1571 64]

1) At the end of Evergreen the story becomes a little confused. Im not sure if I have completed the island as the 'objectives' listed does not make it clear. I've uploaded the blueprints from the research centre so do I move on to other islands and search for more blueprints or continue searching the island?

Sometimes an objective you start out with is not possible, for example the enemy self destructs the command centre, so the objective to hack the command centre is not possible and gets replaced with rebuild the command centre.

2) SFX and Music audio settings. Can you add a setting for the voices? Its tied to SFX and the engine noises are far to loud and I cant hear what the guys are saying.

Yes I am finding this too, especially the conversations during timewarp. No need for a separate slider, just make all other sounds reduce volume during conversations.

4) In the evergreen island game, Im 'rewarded' at the end of it the blueprints for the Quad Gun. However, I already have access to this weapon at the beginning of the map! Slight bug?

At the start of the mission you only have the one that's on the walrus you found. After you are rewarded with the blueprint, you can make them yourself.

[Gnrl_Grad 1]

It would be nice to control the weapon of a walrus while its in automode.

The ability to do this would be nice. You could fire back at chasing mantas while the walrus ai moves to destination, that would be fun.

[jedra 11]

Aaaaaarrrghhhh - there is more of the FPS later in the campaign. And, and, and, Turret Sequences!!! What the fiddle? Is this CoD?

[sav112g 10]

Got to emit I never got the idea behind the FPS especially when everyone can see it looks like a poor five year old bargain basement FPS you pick up for £2. Time would have been better spent on other endeavours within the main game.

At least its only in a campaign mode that will be entertained once then forgot about. The real meat to this game was forgotten about :(and I mean who ever made the no multiplayer or signed off that it would come much later proved idiotic in my view) What we all dreamed of after we had won over the enemy carrier was to play other humans. But back then we could not imagine how MP would rule the gaming world and become so central to basic inclusion in today’s games.

[welford 1]

Hello BIS

I am a big Arma fan and had never really heard of this game or the original until earlier this year. But I like strategy games so I thought I'd give it a go. Some quick first impressions :

I know you have been working on this for some time and i don't want to upset any developers who have worked on this but the opening FPS section is flat out bad. I wasn't expecting Arma, and I know that it's not the meat of the game but at this level of quality it'd probably be better to create a good first impression and skip straight to the section where you are in control of the carrier (and the quality of the game dramatically improves) I do not look forward to any further FPS moments, and i can see it putting some people off.

I am only a few islands in but the Carrier Command style strategy game is really well done I can see myself enjoying this. The UI could do with some work, IMO the map zooms out to the global view too quickly. The mouse acceleration is not good. The Radial menu is useful, but difficult to select (maybe a line from the centre showing where the relative mouse position should be like in some of Maya's menus) and the context sensitive nature of it is difficult to understand.

The games runs like a treat on my GTX460, would it be possible to get more than one picture in picture views of your active craft?

Keep up the good work!

[Krasny 0]

My post initial impressions are:

The game is buggy.

The AI is dumber than a bag of spanners.

The UI needs a LOT of work.

The gameplay basically lacks any requirement for skill, machine guns do so little damage to enemy vehicles, the only way to kill them is to park the cursor on the vehicle and hold the mouse button down for about half an hour.

The overall experience is akin to having carnal knowledge of a dead sheep.

How is this game even out of alpha, let alone on my shelf?

[dram 14]

...Let's hope the Mars rover has better AI...

Sunrise at Victoria crater...

I thought the only problem with it was the collision detection (especially for shots, as the collision mesh are not even remotely concave). It is semi-realistic, as in "you can't jump", you can not run at 20km/h and the weapon has a solid feel to it without being a BFG9000. The visuals while not groundbreaking in terms of effects work also quite well to convey the feel of an alien world.

** WARNING - VERY SMALL SPOILERS INCOMING **

Additionally it is *very* forgiving difficulty wise, which brings me to my next observation : IMO (And the devs can definitely contradict me if I am wrong), the whole point of the FPS is to make the world real to the player. You get to visit a base ~in person~, even get to drive a walrus directly (yes... it is exactly the same as steering it remotely, but the context is different), you get to control one of the androids, but even more importantly you get to visit parts of the inside of the carrier, instantly making it *a real place* instead of some abstract idea which might have been a giant inflatable Spongebob doll for all it is worth.

As a player, the whole strategy bits in which you carefully plan how to attack which island (while praying your walrus's won't get stuck) becomes a lot more real and personal once the ship stops being an empty shell.

** END OF MINI SPOILER **

I only finished the first mission (Arachnid), so I can't comment much on the campaign (Although : "yay for british speaker in a non-fantasy role!" ;) but so far I liked what I saw and really enjoyed the experience :)

I think the whole purpose of the FPS part was to show how you got the carrier. Rather than a long and boring explanation of how you got the carrier, you can play through it yourself. I didn't mind it.

Yes, that was the purpose of the FPS mission at the start, to give the player a sense of scale as well as logically starting out getting the Carrier on foot, making it more personal overall.

[Nicholas 5]

Yes, that was the purpose of the FPS mission at the start, to give the player a sense of scale as well as logically starting out getting the Carrier on foot, making it more personal overall.

When I got into the carrier and made it to the command room, I was like "Oh, so this is what we see in the background of the map!" I liked that you guys showed us that (Getting into the commander seat, etc.)

[whoop 1]

I like this game but they are two things that bother me.

1. Since the Mantas has all weapons, i only need one of them to destroy everthing on the enemy island. Ok, you need a wal for captureing, too.

2. the pathfinding: walruse. they cant drive 10 meters forward, without the KI is driving, back, left, right ... i dont know, he has to drive 10 meters forward, nothing more, whats the problem?

[Ash87 1]

Impressions: Great

Solid premise, excellent gameplay mechanics, surprising story, epic scale, punishing difficulty, rewarding exploration. The main actually is a rather good char, which kind of surprised me given it is a strategy game, just because he is so unwilling to take the situation seriously it seems makes him a relatively likable protagonist IMO. The whole thing feels almost roguelike in that it's so easy to get it handed to you early in the campaign, but even then it's as interesting to fail as it is to succeed.

I sunk an entire evening into this game last night and ended up loosing track of time, most games don't do that anymore for me.

Now, I am going to parrot the exact same thing that has been reiterated a billion times before though: Walrus AI has got to be improved. Quite literally the only thing that makes me upset when playing this, is watching my 4 Walri (Walruses sounds funny) have to run up a road, get stuck on rocks and file into a compound in single file... where they abruptly get lasered into oblivion.