Soldats Reviews

Battlefield 1942 Single Player Demo Review

Overview
BF’42 isn’t your ordinary shooter. In BF’42 you’re a part of something big, because this isn’t run ‘n gun type game. You need to use combine fire power and tactics in order to defeat your enemy. This type of game play was already introduced when World War Two Online was released. But unlike WW2OL, in BF’42 your only allowed to have 64 players at one time. In WW2OL, well as much as 10,000 at times. BF’42 is more of WW2OL with less players and units. And it is noticed in the previews. Each country only gets one heavy tank, one light tank, one half truck, one jeep, and self propelled artillery. Now, in the final release you’ll be able to play as German, Russian, Japanese, British, and United States armies. Each will have its own location and equipment. Yeah rite, it says that Japanese since they never produced any assault guns (another name for "self propelled artillery"), they’re going to be using German made Wesp assault gun. In the realism factor, this game misses quite hard compare to WW2OL. The fun factor is a bit higher than in WW2OL, because the maps are smaller, meaning faster engagements between the opposing armies. WW2OL has one problem, 99% time your just searching for some engagement, in which that’s how it is in real wars. You ride to the battle field for about 20 or more minutes and than some how you get shot and its all over. BF’42 you start off from two different bases and you either capture the flags or hold off the enemy from getting those flags by any means possible.

Graphics
BF’42 isn’t the most pretty or most advanced game on the market. Even so this is a demo, they usually show what the game will look like. BF’42 just like WW2OL has to push many units and soldiers onto a big place and let ‘em kill each other. That creates problems for the designers, how to keep low polygon count and still allow players to get high frame rate. In this demo or when the game is released, you won’t see any of those eye candy found in say in the next generation games like Raven Shield and Splinter Cell to name a few. The weapon models are the worst I’ve ever seen. Weapon models in this game should be compared those found in Operation Flashpoint. Small polygon count and bad texturing. Tanks and other vehicles don’t look to impressive either. I mean, if they wanted to designed something. Than should have made the map it self poorly polished, but keep high visuals on tanks and other vehicles. You can still tell the difference between Tiger and Sherman from 500 yards away. In fact the tiger is the most recognizable tank in the demo.

Weapons & Vehicles
BF’42 has classes, meaning each different class has its own weapon. Scout is armed either with Lee Enfield w/ scope or Mauser K98k Z/42 scoped, plus binoculars and a radio to call in artillery strikes. Assault is armed either with BAR or Sturmgewehr ’44. Now, tell me this people, STG’44 wasn’t giving to front line troops until September 1944 and than it was still very rare weapon found only in elite units of Wehrmacht and waffen-ss. Another thing, British soldiers in Tobruk never used BAR, they used Bren LMGs. Tank hunter is either armed with Bazooka M1A1 or Panzershreck. Which also wasn’t giving to tank hunting units until ’43. Again we see historical problem. Medic is either armed with Thompson M1A1 or Machinenpistolen 40, can’t comment on that. Engineer is either armed with Lee Enfield standard or Kar98k. All Axis soldiers have Walter P’38s and steilhandgranate 24 plus a knife. All Allied soldiers have Colt .45 and pine apple grenades plus a knife. So those are the weapons in which you fight in BF’42 during the N. Afrika campaign. Oh, by the way in the demo you fight when the Afrika Korps is trying to take the city of Tobruk from the British.
BF’42 has number of vehicles raging from heavy tanks to assault guns. In the demo, the Germans get Wesp assault gun, panzer IV, Tiger tank and if someone would fix the problem with this leaked demo, may be we would have a half truck. Wesp is a nice addition to the game, but again its historically incorrect, because Wesp assault guns were not deployed until Kursk offensive in ’43. Even than, panzer divisions didn’t have enough of them. Tiger tank, the Afrika Korp might had few of ‘em during the last months of its living in Tunisia. But, not during the battle of Tobruk.
The British get, Priest assault gun, which is based off from Sherman M4 design. Also M4 Sherman tank is present, plus M10 tank destroyer. And those are all the vehicles that the British get in this demo. It is sad how this game surpasses the realism found in some other games. But, what can you do about it.

Conclusion
I must say this, BF’42 demo was leaked out and don’t expect it to be performing greatly. Lock ups and freezes are common. Still when it works its fun to play it. Driving Wesp across the desert right beside Tiger is a great feeling. I say, that even with these most obvious historical mishaps, the demo can be very enjoyable and fun. But, I wouldn’t buy the full game, because it is being published by Electronics Arts. And that company is known for their lack of customer support. Same thing happened to Medal of Honor Allied Assault, no new patches, no SDKs, no nothing. So beware of this game like hell. Another big factor will be the lag, I mean horrible, like that found in MOHAA during multiplayer. The game will have poor net code, even w/ broadband, people still be having lag problems. Go ahead and download the demo its only 113.00 megabytes, it will worth if you get it to work and not crash every 10 minutes.

Pros

* Fun gameplay, nice looking Tiger tank.

Cons

* Crashes alot, it comes to the point when you start saying "m*ther-f*cker" or "what the f*ck is your problem" at the demo and PC. Not historically accurate weapons & vehicles. Bad graphics, requirments are too high, very dumb & buggy AI.

System Requirements

minimum

800mhz Athlon or Pentium III CPU
256 MB of RAM
700 MB of space another 400 for windows swap file
32 MB graphic accelerator w/ direct x 8.1 support
sound card w/ direct x 8.1 support

recommended

Athlon XP 1600+ or Pentium 4 1600mhz CPU
512 MB of RAM for best results 1024 MB
1Gigabite of space
128 MB graphic accelerator w/ direct x 8.1 support
sound card w/ direct x 8.1 support

Geforce4 MX cards are "not" supported
Geforce2 MX cards are "not" supported
Nvidia based TNT cards are "not" supported
3dfx based voodoo 3 cards are "not" supported
Users may experience problems w/ Voodoo 5500 cards
Users may experience problems w/ Radeon 7500 and 8500
ATI 7000 and down are "not" supported

Medal of Honor Allied Assault Review

MOHAA-Medal of Honor Allied Assault
RTCW-Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Overview
In MOHAA your placed into shoes of Lt. Mike Powell from 2nd Ranger Battalion. You undertake dangerous missions from rescuing British SAS to fighting in the hedgerows of Normandy, France. MOHAA for PC was in my opinion designed for those who never played the original MOH and Underground for Playstation 1. MOHAA lets the PC gamers, experience one of the greatest war shooters of all time. That might not be all true, still the original MOH for Playstation wasn’t too popular. Because, no one knew what it was about. Only after four months of release did everyone find out what a great game it was. Sure, it might not have started revolution like the Wolfenstein 3d did. Still, MOH was the most realistic and authentic game for Playstation to date. Than, EA released MOHAA for PC. And suddenly it took the PC gaming by storm. Everyone was talking about this game, must have been the biggest hit since Half Life came out. It was fun and authentic. I guess that’s what a lot of people are looking for. Yet, MOHAA wasn’t the only game released during X-mas of 2001. Another game, called RTCW was also out. Many people couldn’t decide on what to get. Both games used heavily modified Quake III engines, both were set in WW2, plus were excellent first person shooters with outstanding gameplay. Taking that into consideration, many gamers bought both MOHAA and RTCW. Now, lets examine the game more closely.

Gameplay
It’s your ordinary first person shooter set in WW2 with authentic weaponry and missions. Today designers think that games which are released with out any plot or story line, would keep an average gamer tuned in for long time. Instead of focusing on single player, they focus on multiplayer. Sure, RTCW and MOHAA are great multiplayer games. But, they both require broadband in order to play ‘em. Sure you can try to play it with a dial up, but it won’t worth doing that. Designers need release, until every house hold in US has a broadband connection to the internet, multiplayer games won’t sell as big as those games like Morrowind or Half Life. Although Half Life is an old game, I can remember people buzzing about the single player more than they did about multiplayer. HL had an outstanding net code. I who has 56k dial up on AOL can enjoy mods like Day of Defeat with little playable lag. The problem arises when games like RTCW and MOHAA are released with poor net code.
Basically MOHAA gameplay doesn’t differ from that found in RTCW or Soldier of Fortune. You simply run around and gun everything inside. Sometimes you take on some stealth oriented missions, but those are far between each other and still can be completed by blasting everything in site. Objectives are pretty straight forward, anyone can figure out what to do. There is only certain way you can complete your objectives. You play the game the way the designers want you to play.

Weapons
Since the game is set in WW2, you can expect your usual load out of American and German weapons. The game doesn’t allow you to pick your weapons for the mission, so your stuck with the guns that the designers gave you. I wish you could pick your weapons like in Deadly Dozen or Rogue Spear. But we must remember that this is a WW2 first person shooter and not tactical squad sim. Lets take a good look at the weapons with which you’ll be taking with you in this game. First everyone’s favorite M1 Garand, as it tells you in the briefing you can’t reload it in the middle of a clip. Which sometimes is frustrating when you have to fire off two rounds just so you can reload. It wastes ammo, guess that’s how it was in real life or not? Anyone feel free to correct me. The next is MP40, which is a fast firing SMG that is portable and useful in CQB type battles. After that is our beloved Mauser K98k sniper rifle. Fitted with a scope, that can deliver death with one shot. Our next stop is BAR, powerful just like the Sturmgewehr 44. Except BAR lacks one thing, its 20 round magazine is to small for sustain automatic fire. Thompson could be used the same way as MP40. Pistols are something special, your get to take one on every mission. .45 Colt is the standard pistol for those missions that don’t require any stealth, ie you’ll find it in almost every mission. Next is Hi Fi silence pistol, now this pistol can shoot through two human flesh. I remember in the first MOH, you had to get ‘em in the head, other wise your just wasting your time trying to be silent. And those are all the weapons you’ll be using in this game, apart from grenades and panzershrecks. Plus a almost forgot, that in order to kill some one with shotgun in this game, make sure you stand two inches away, other wise you’ll be shooting the walls.

Conclusion
I personally enjoyed this game very much. I mean I love it, just like I love RTCW. The only thing that MOHAA misses is blood and gore that is found in RTCW. Other than that, this game is good for those who want know more about history, without watching the history channel. Simply best 9/10 just like RTCW. Both are great and truly amazing games! When playing this game, many words come to mind, like "valor, leadership, duty, and sacrifice". This game is dedicated to all those men and women who fought and died on both sides of the WW2.

Graphics
MOHAA is a very nice looking game. Just like RTCW, MOHAA has some good looking uniform and weapons. All done well, with textures smooth. If you can use Quincunx Antialising, that will smooth out some glitchy textures. The ground visuals aren't to impressive, Ghost Recon has better grass than that. But, the inside house and walls look like they were made back than in the '30 and '40s. You can also tell if its an MG42, by its barrel.
Sound
Nothing special, hear German soldiers scream in agony as they get shot. Also the voice acting is pretty well done, but sometimes gets annoying. With words like "there they are" or "watch it". American soldiers on Omaha say things that you might have heard in Saving Privat Ryan movie. Music is the best. From action, to mystery or suspence. Music tell how ti will end for you. The grenades exploding sound is pretty well done. And those angry looking scary dogs. That attack you, they're more dangerous than bullets. Overall good sound, I just wish I had a good sound card, all I got is integrated sound into my motherboard :(

System requirements

Minimum

Windows XP, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows 98, or Windows 95 (Windows NT is not supported)
450 MHz Intel Pentium II or 500 MHz AMD Athlon processor
128 MB RAM
8x CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive
1.2 GB free hard disk space plus space for saved games (additional space required for Windows swap-file and DirectX 8.0 installation) 16 MB OpenGL capable video card using an NVIDIA GeForce3, NVIDIA GeForce2, NVIDIA GeForce 256, NVIDIA Riva TNT2, NVIDIA Riva TNT, ATI Radeon, ATI Rage 128 Pro, ATI Rage 128, PowerVR3 Kyro II, or PowerVR Kyro chipset with OpenGL and DirectX 8.0 compatible driver
DirectX 8.0 compatible sound card
Keyboard
Mouse

Recommended

700 MHz or faster Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon processor
32 MB or greater supported OpenGL capable video card with OpenGL
DirectX 8.0 compatible driver

My recommended

Athlon T-bird 1400mhz or Pentium 4 1500mhz L2 512k
384MB RAM, might want 512MB for that Omaha place
1.8GB space for all those quick saves you’ll be doing
good sound card capable of 44hertz (SB live!)
Geforce 2 TI, Ultra, Pro, or Geforce 3 and up
Windows 2000 or XP

How I ran it
852mhz Duron
384MB PC133
Geforce 3 TI 200
windows 98SE
· I had some random crashes, which is most likely related to Win 98SE. MOHAA was run at 800x600 32bit, all settings turned on high and Quincunx Antialising. I got around 50 or less frames per second. On Omaha beach, 15 to 20 and 28 at max.

Karl Von Steiner