leckig

all right, I was wrong about OFP2. The first couple of days, for some reason, the multiplayer was fun. I believe the first 3 days after release to be exact. Since that time, playing online in OFP2 is just impossible. Only coop with a friend or two works fine but public servers - total crap. lags reaching 1000 ms, crashes, lost connections, just a crap. comparable to Arma1 for the first 12 months. Obviously, we live in a crappy world and we cannot expect a good game anymore. Screw it, I am changing my hobby. Oh, the single player on OFP2 is still good and well made, but I bought the game for multiplayer.

Oblivion is/was the best RPG ever IMHO. Very much recommended to everyone, great graphics, great story and very good mission variety. Well, I just spent 2 hours with a friend playing coop campaign in DR. We had a total blast! Two hours just disappeared, I could not believe we were playing two hours. There is a good system of inviting a friend to a game just by entering his username. We played on Normal difficulty so the game was fairly easy but we did get pinned two-three times. AI can sometimes flank you so keeping all eyes open is important. Zero crashes, smooth gameplay, i sure wish some textures were higher res but then 60 FPS the whole time sounds like a good deal to me.

Reading both the CM and BIS forums is like listening to Rush on AM station and later to the Blast The Right podcast. What CM fans consider excellent AI and at least very good graphics, BIS boys call a total disaster. And the other way around! Human is a complicated species indeed!

I would not say DR is a bad game, not at all. It is just not the same category like the original OFP. It is targeted to a broader audience. The multiplayer is fun if you manage to get on a server that stays on. Out of 4 attempts last night I only finished one mission in MP. Other times I was disconnected. I very much agree that a CM + BIS working together would make the best game ever. At this stage neither A2 or DR is that great.

I only drove a small 4by4 in DR, I kept hitting trees and, in my opinion the vehicle did not react to turns enough. So no, steering is not that great. Simply the vehicle should be more sensitive to steering, thats it.

I bought the OFP DR last night but so far I only have demo of Arma2. I can say these: DR is optimized very well. It runs 60-70 FPS on highest settings with AA and AF. I get about half of that in Arma and there is not much to justify that. The game is quite polished, I did not find any noticeable bugs during about my 2 hours session. DR is also more accessible. There is no need to addons, mods etc. Just start and play. I am having hard time getting used to the graphics in DR. In Arma everything seems to be more clear. DR is just full of tall grass and trees, it is hard to see much. The presentation is very good, just different. the control system in DR is at first strange, but I quickly got used to it. I dont like that you have to stop to give orders, but when you get used to it, it goes fairly quickly. The AI seems to be very good and it follows commands well. It also seems to be more independent. At least in Arma1 my AI comrades were in most cases more of a problem than help. Arma2 has larger scope, more details and I prefer the settings better. DR is much more polished, less frustrating yet still a lot of fun to play. I am yet to try the multiplayer, if it works well, I will be super happy. For sure, DR is somewhat simplified compared to Arma, but I think for most people this is the right balance of hardcore sim and fun. I really wish BIS and CM could combine the resources and make the uber OFP-ARMA game. One that is polished, user friendly, bug-free and fun. For now, I will be playing DR tonight, and maybe will buy Arma2 when the price drops to $30 or so.

well, the 12 months is the problem here. There will be even fewer people playing online by then I am afraid. I remember trying to play multiplayer in Arma. This was basically impossible without joining some teams and scheduling the game so more then 3 people would be on the server. And even at that time: out-of-sync problems, crashes and other bugs. Now, Arma is probably more-less fixed but it only became more outdated and people moved on to Arma2. What is the online situation in Arma2 by the way? It is easy to jump into a game with no hackers ruining the experience and with fairly low pings? I only have the demo, you are lucky to join in with more than 3 people. I hope DR will be simply more popular! greg

i still have not bought arma 2. I am waiting for the demo or super good reviews of OPF2-DR before making my purchase decision. I dont care much about all these little details ie the style of the reticule etc. I want the game to be fun. I want to be able to find an online server right away, without waiting in the lobby for 15 minutes. I dont want 2500 ms latency. I want the game to be user friendly and easy to control. will see this week who gets my $50!

i would love to play that, Frontier was such a good game! however, I am afraid I would get hooked on it like all these WOW guys

hmmm, interesting. Still, with all the CPU supposedly going to the AI, I was quite disappointed yesterday - I finally managed to set up the demo so it does not crash after 2 minutes. I set up a mission when I attacked 12 foot soldiers and I was driving a tank (I know, not quite fair...) So, I drive that tank right to the group and what they do? Not a thing... They just look at me, waiting to be shot. You may want to call it realistic, I call it dumb like an oyster.

well, actually right, you just set up your scope so the net effect is that on a short distance the bullet seem to be going up.

interesting, it seems like the most cost effective upgrade you can make is to buy a normal resolution, 19" monitor! You would most probably get at least 30% more FPS.

I am waiting for couple more patches and 50% off STEAM weekend sale :) ---------- Post added at 05:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:15 PM ---------- you forgot about the insane number of hackers that were ruining almost every online game for the first 8-12 months. I think the funniest one was the tower of tanks reaching the sky :)

Lured1, sorry to be direct: - stop abusing the ".......", it looks like you were dying or something - get yourself better computer, it is too old

you probably never used steam. Recently, I dont even buy a game if it is not on steam. the convenience factor is huge. I cant stand messing with DVDs