Demo Live

[carl_render]

My first impression - I am not impressed.
The graphics are neither natural-looking nor on par with 2011 standards. The rivers look poor and the terrain seems overly 'fussy' to me. Fields are far too bright in sunlight . Tree foliage 'shifts' noticably (far more so than in CMSF) as the LOD kicks in.
Armour and troops are much better IMO, but the environment is the thing you are playing in and looking at 100% of the time, and if that is not up to scratch, the game won't be a pleasure to play.
The voice files - it really is hard to believe these remain unaltered for 11 years!
I am going back to the CMSF Brit campaign in preference to this demo.

 

[Sgt_Kelly]

I played the tutorial scenario three times, twice on 'basic training' and once on 'iron'. The relative spotting didn't bother me as I thought it would.

It takes a bit of getting used to and I'll have to find a way of using hotkeys, because using the GUI is definitely too slow for real time play. All in all it had me pretty enthralled. I love the more realistic MG bursts and having each man represented - as I expected - has made me even more acutely aware that I'm wasting human lives.

I'm not that fussed about the - supposedly - poor graphics. I don't play any other games that have this kind of 3D environment and it's a lot better than CMx1 used to be. That will do for me.

So far I give it two thumbs up. I don't really know how long this game will last on me though. How many scenarios worth of leapfrogging from hedgerow to hedgerow can you do ?

 

[thewood]

As with CMSF, life will be determined by scenario building, although fixing the for-crap QBs is a multiplier.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

So far I give it two thumbs up. I don't really know how long this game will last on me though. How many scenarios worth of leapfrogging from hedgerow to hedgerow can you do ?

You will start to see some of the reasons those of us who waded into CM:SF expressed frustation with regards to the massive abstractions in house-to-house fighting once you tire of rural settings, I think.

Not saying you will agree - you may love the way CM:X2 handles urban combat. I am curious to see what kind of house-clearing drills are in the game. I doubt they are realistic - or for that matter, much changed from CM:SF (and they were not period appropriate for that game, either) - but there was a healthy-sized crowd that pronounced them "fun" or at the least "playable."

Now that surrendering is in, I am eager to see how different this part of it feels.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

As with CMSF, life will be determined by scenario building, although fixing the for-crap QBs is a multiplier.

And, I think it will shine with regards to tank-to-tank combat, as did CM:SF. I trust Bil H and Warren proved that with their AAR.

 

[wengart]

Not saying you will agree - you may love the way CM:X2 handles urban combat. I am curious to see what kind of house-clearing drills are in the game. I doubt they are realistic - or for that matter, much changed from CM:SF (and they were not period appropriate for that game, either) - but there was a healthy-sized crowd that pronounced them "fun" or at the least "playable."

So far the house-clearing drill is exactly the same as CM:SF, walk into the house and see if anybody is home.

But as someone who isn't intimately familiar with proper house-clearing drills (although i've gleaned some information from books and movies/documentaries/games) I would say from my experience so far that they are rather enjoyable in CM:BN. I like them a lot more than in CM:SF too, with the abundance of rifles in CM:BN picking out an assault team with a bunch of MP40s and MP44s, or in the American's case grabbing a fireteam with a Thompson, makes it feel like I'm having more of a tangible effect on whats going on inside the house rather than CM:SFs grab some dudes throw 'em in there. Also picking a good assault team has so far provided tangible benefits which wasn't as present in CM:SF.

The only thing I really would like for house clearing is perhaps a context sensitive assault command or a house clearing command where a couple of grenades would be tossed in and the first guy in would stop at the door and look around.

 

[British Tommy]

My first impressions (after trying several servers including the German one).
I installed it on my Vista computer and the game installed with no problems. Opening screen was ok as was the music. Keep in mind I only played CMSF for a short while so the controls were mostly new to me. I tried the tutorial first and expected something in the scenario briefing such as a basic plan to use etc but nothing was mentioned. One of the first things I did with the CMx1 games was to turn off the background noise as I find it iritating after awhile. With the CMx1 menu, it was easy to do but for some reason I couldn't find a way of doing it. In the end I played the tutorial without sound. Does any one know how to switch it off??
I used flanking movements while a small force with some of the Sherman's provided support. But it took me a few turns before I realised the mortars had to be set up. Watching the infantry move was comical! They looked as if they crapped in their pants. As others here mentioned, individuals were bumping into each other but I can overlook those minor problems. I do miss the right click menu from CMx1 and find giving orders to take longer (but it could be that I'm quite new to this). The German artillery was deadly and changed direction very quickly (do they have more than one artillery spotter on the map?). The German ATG didn't last long which is slightly worrying. It looked like it was placed with care (behind a hedge) but area fire made sure it didn't do any damage. I played it mostly from a height which makes the map look quite plain. It was only when I wanted to watch a replay that I dropped right down to ground level. Some one here said the terrain was too fussy at ground level, I have to agree. Why go to all that trouble with those flowers?? The Sherman's looked ok but to be honest I have seen better ones made by the mod makers and no doubt they will do the same with this game (I hope!).
Honestly, I have to say it didn't get my juices flowing like the earlier CM games but, putting the nitpicking comments to one side, I think this game could grow on me. Will I now place an order?? No. I will wait until the game comes out and people like MD review the game before I finally decide. Battlefront and the beta testers have done a good job with the next generation WW2 game and I hope it's a success.

 

[Geordie]

I do miss the right click menu from CMx1 and find giving orders to take longer

Select a unit and hit the spacebar......

 

[Michael Dorosh]

My first impressions (after trying several servers including the German one).
I installed it on my Vista computer and the game installed with no problems. Opening screen was ok as was the music. Keep in mind I only played CMSF for a short while so the controls were mostly new to me. I tried the tutorial first and expected something in the scenario briefing such as a basic plan to use etc but nothing was mentioned. One of the first things I did with the CMx1 games was to turn off the background noise as I find it iritating after awhile. With the CMx1 menu, it was easy to do but for some reason I couldn't find a way of doing it. In the end I played the tutorial without sound. Does any one know how to switch it off??
I used flanking movements while a small force with some of the Sherman's provided support. But it took me a few turns before I realised the mortars had to be set up. Watching the infantry move was comical! They looked as if they crapped in their pants. As others here mentioned, individuals were bumping into each other but I can overlook those minor problems. I do miss the right click menu from CMx1 and find giving orders to take longer (but it could be that I'm quite new to this). The German artillery was deadly and changed direction very quickly (do they have more than one artillery spotter on the map?). The German ATG didn't last long which is slightly worrying. It looked like it was placed with care (behind a hedge) but area fire made sure it didn't do any damage. I played it mostly from a height which makes the map look quite plain. It was only when I wanted to watch a replay that I dropped right down to ground level. Some one here said the terrain was too fussy at ground level, I have to agree. Why go to all that trouble with those flowers?? The Sherman's looked ok but to be honest I have seen better ones made by the mod makers and no doubt they will do the same with this game (I hope!).
Honestly, I have to say it didn't get my juices flowing like the earlier CM games but, putting the nitpicking comments to one side, I think this game could grow on me. Will I now place an order?? No. I will wait until the game comes out and people like MD review the game before I finally decide. Battlefront and the beta testers have done a good job with the next generation WW2 game and I hope it's a success.

That's an excellent post. Great review, thanks.

 

[British Tommy]

Select a unit and hit the spacebar......

Cheers Geordie!
Now do you know how to turn off the annoying background sounds?

 

[British Tommy]

And thank you MD

 

[Elvis]

What morons. 100%, tin-plated, pinecone-brained morons.

-dale

So your conclusion is a little baffling, care to explain why they are so thoroughly stupid?

To you? For the thousandth time? Probably.

EVERYTHING about this release needs to be perfect. Anything that's not perfect is BFC's fault, because it's BFC's game. Something wasn't perfect, something that could have and should have been verified as perfect.

Hence my conclusion.

-dale

Please forgive me for speculating but if the incentive for having EVERYTHING perfect is that dalem will not call them "100%, tin-plated, pinecone-brained morons" then that is probably not a strong motivator to attempt to achieve perfection. I could be wrong and they could be reeling right now for failing to be perfect and having to have been called morons by dalem. Perhaps Steve will make a post regarding this set back to their CMBN roll out plans.

 

[Elvis]

I'm not that fussed about the - supposedly - poor graphics. I don't play any other games that have this kind of 3D environment and it's a lot better than CMx1 used to be. That will do for me.

I am a little surprised to see comments like this here. Because of the graphics I have lost all patience for CMx1 and almost immediately bailed on PC:O. I wonder what system some of these guys have and what graphics settings they have the game set for. I use the best quality settings. I don't play very many other games so perhaps it is like you allude to, a matter of playing other games with better graphics. But compared to CMx1 and PC:O it isn't even in the same ball park. I don't mean that as a cut.... it's just the way it is for me....

 

[Elvis]

I downloaded it from the German site. Much faster.

I played the tutorial for about 20 minutes so far.

The Shermans would not go through, what I surmise are hedgerows. That's no surprise as they did not appear to have equipped with the rams for dealing with the hedgerows.
Much more frustrating was the refusal of infantry elements such as HQ and mortar teams to go through a smallish hedge. They chose instead to go around and seek some invisible "gate" to get through. This exposed them to enemy fire. There was no indicator that this would happen prior to clicking continue. If terrain is impassible to a waypoint the waypoint indicator should warn you of that so you can make alternate plans.

DAMN!!!! I had written you a nice long and helpful post about this but before hitting "post" helped my kids with their homework and when I came back and tried to post it it had logged me out.

Short version.....

There are a few ways to distinquish low bocage from regular hedges. The bocage has irregular foliage on top, it has the earth mounds and it is wider.

There can be small gaps in bocage that infantry can pass through. These are designer created and look like very small breaks in the bocage.

Slecting a movement command and holding the cursor over a spot will show if it is passable or not. That reminds me of another one that you need to watch out for. Vehicles can travel through woods but cannot travel through woods with heavy undergrowth. It is fairly easy to see the difference when looking at the areas but if you have a question use the cursor to double check. Nothing worse than ordering your Sherman into the woods and then watching it drive around the woods.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

I'm running the second demo scenario on my laptop now; seems to work okay. Not a bad little scenario. Another question:

Why is the water in the stream running sideways in the stream bed, instead of along it? This seems unusual.

EDIT - and as I typed this, my laptop automatically restarted due to WINDOWS doing an automatic update.

Restarting the third (tutorial) demo, I see both scenario 2 and 3 are attributed to Chris Nelson. They're nice scenarios. A minor blip in the tutorial - he refers to a 795th "Ostfront" Battalion. No such thing, again. They were Ostbataillonen ("East Battalions"), made up of so-called volunteers from the Soviet Union, or "eastern territories" (from the perspective of the Germans). "Ostfront" means "Eastern Front". Normandy was most decidedly the western front for Germany, referred to as Westfront, or West Wall.

Trivia aside, another question - is anyone having trouble alt-tabbing out? I thought it was my crappy desktop but even on my laptop, when I alt-tab out, when I go back in, the picture never shows up again. I think this is an issue with CM:BN. Is anyone else experiencing it?

 

[Mad Russian]

I am a little surprised to see comments like this here. Because of the graphics I have lost all patience for CMx1 and almost immediately bailed on PC:O. I wonder what system some of these guys have and what graphics settings they have the game set for. I use the best quality settings. I don't play very many other games so perhaps it is like you allude to, a matter of playing other games with better graphics. But compared to CMx1 and PC:O it isn't even in the same ball park. I don't mean that as a cut.... it's just the way it is for me....

That's funny because I feel the same way when I look at CMBN. I much prefer the PCO graphics.

With that in mind and our associations with the two games I think it must very much be what we're used to seeing and have been playing.

Although I'm not that worried about the graphics as I am game play I thought " Wow, after all this time this is how CM looks. It's not noticeably different than CMAK." But I've not been with the system the whole way to see the changes and probably appreciate them like you do.

Good Hunting.

MR

 

[Jeph]

" Wow, after all this time this is how CM looks. It's not noticeably different than CMAK."

I can understand someone not liking the graphics or prefering CMx1's style, but I really don't get that its "not noticeably different than CMAK".

 

[Michael Dorosh]

[video=youtube;kyKqy2O6dQg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyKqy2O6dQg[/video]

A couple of things I noticed.

The first thing (in the video) - nice sound effects on the destructible terrain, and I like that the fences disappear when you crash through them (they didn't in CMX1). Good feature.

The second - I haven't fooled around with this enough, but - do the tanks really not drive through bocage at all? Not even the light stuff? Because they did in the real deal. In the demo, as it shows in the video, if you order them to drive through bocage, they just turn around, expose their backsides to the bocage, and get penetrated from behind while trying to find gaps to the flank.

This is bad. Very bad.

In real life, they drove over the bocage - it exposed them to underbelly hits, yes - but they drove over and through the hedges. There are game systems with whole rules devoted to these kinds of movements and vulnerabilities.

I would expect this all to be modelled. We talked in past threads about how BFC would be the first computer sim to seriously depict this.

If tanks can't even drive through a hedge, much less be vulnerable to underbelly hits, they have totally missed the boat.

I hope I'm simply missing something here. But in the tutorial, I tried to get the Sherman to cross what looked like both light and heavy bocage, and it just drove in circles around the fields, looking for gaps in the hedges. In the video above, I was trying to get it to drive into the field to the right; it turned 180 degrees and got nailed from behind.

 

[Elvis]

[video=youtube;kyKqy2O6dQg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyKqy2O6dQg[/video]

What kind of rig are you playing this on? It looks horrible. That bocage that looks like green walls is something I haven't seen before. Have you tried to adjust the settings to improve the graphics or is it already maxing out your system? It doesn't appear to be a FRAPs thing.

There is no "light and heavy bocage" in this game. There is "regular" (or high) and low bocage. Non-rino vehicles cannot drive through either. Tanks can drive through hedges though. They will often take a little damage to their tracks when doing so. I don't remember if in CMBO tanks without rinos could drive through bocage. My (swiss cheese-like) memory tells me you couldn't. When I began playing CMBN I did not expect to see non-rino tanks driving through bocage and I saw what I expected.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

What kind of rig are you playing this on? It looks horrible.

Laptop...not expecting much out of my backup machine.

That bocage that looks like green walls is something I haven't seen before. Have you tried to adjust the settings to improve the graphics or is it already maxing out your system? It doesn't appear to be a FRAPs thing.

There is no "light and heavy bocage" in this game. There is "regular" (or high) and low bocage. Non-rino vehicles cannot drive through either. Tanks can drive through hedges though. They will often take a little damage to their tracks when doing so. I don't remember if in CMBO tanks without rinos could drive through bocage. My (swiss cheese-like) memory tells me you couldn't. When I began playing CMBN I did not expect to see non-rino tanks driving through bocage and I saw what I expected.

In CMBO, non-Rhino tanks could not drive through bocage, you are correct.

ASL has one type of bocage, and tanks can pass through it, at great cost, but their underbellies are exposed. (I'm not saying ASL is the bible, just using it as an example of how another well established system has modelled it.) The rationale is that the tank is climbing over the mound of rocks, dirt and roots, then ripping through the hedges. A couple of third party publishers - Lone Canuck and Bounding Fire, IIRC - have produced rules for "light bocage" and "heavy bocage" that may or may not be similar to the low and high bocage of CMBN, not compoletely sure off the top of my head what the intent is. But regardless, in the other treatments, tanks can pass all types of bocage. The advantage of the rhino is not in making an impassable obstacle passable, but in making it less susceptible to underbelly hits. In other words, the Germans could always pass through the bocage as well.

Not saying CMBN is "wrong", but the pathfinding does seem a bit - well, quirky to say the least. My Sherman wasn't passing over low bocage either for some reason but perhaps something else was going on I wasn't paying enough attention to. I'll give it another try.

Thanks for the detailed reply.