Battlegroup-Frontlines Review

Ok, So we cracked this baby open last night.

I have to say I can understand why they took so long, all of the textures and models are beautiful! The maps are for the most part well made and seem to be balanced. There is a nice mix of infantry, and vehicle maps. It has that ooo so good WWII feel, I have missed that alot. Being back to single shot weapons was a nice relief.

All of that being said I had a few issues that could easily be fixed. Most of them relate to a 'realism' but I think it's realism gone too far

Tags: I know everyone loves to say their mod doesn't have tags, typically with the cavalier attitude of 'they don't have big tags over their head in war'. Well this is a video game, you don't have all of your senses, you don't reconize your comrades face, tags or at least uniforms that are consistant and very contrasting is required there were more TKs last night than I have ever seen. I also can't say how many times I saw a guy, looked at my minimap, looked back at the guy determined he must be friendly then had him kill me because he was on the other team. I know the uniforms were green camo and grey for the most part, and maybe it's because I am somewhat colorblind but there were officer uni's that were different and I couldn't tell the difference. In any case I say give us the tags.

Tank Speed: Just too slow. I was able to run alongside our tanks quicker. Now maybe this is the speed reality, but it just made the game less fun.

Map size: in some instance the maps were just too huge. Lessen the size in the middle and some of these maps get to be very fun.

All said and done it was a good initial release. A few changes will take this from a few week diversion to a game that is played by a loyal group for a couple years. Like the Desert Combat of bf42. Good work devs and I encourage you to get your other theatres out asap, even if they are so polished. I reinstalled BF2 soley for this mod.

Bubba,

I agree with you. However, reading the forums, it looks like the Devs are taking the attitude that it's a realism game, our rules, screw you.

http://forum.opkmod.com/thread.php?threadi...er=0&page=1

No Tags Period.
Tanks Work Like They Are Suppose To.
Fences Will Never Allow You To Jump Over Them.

These Guys should have joined the FH2 team.

I had fun playing this mod for the most part and I really enjoyed some of the maps. The key to having continued fun with this mod is going to be picking and choosing the maps in rotation for sure. The last map that I played with the forest in the center was fun, as were several others. There were a few though that were so spread out that it was painful to go from point to point in anything but the fastest vehicles, and it's so easy to outrun tanks that they aren't a huge threat to infantry unless you get pinned in somewhere.

+ Infantry combat was fun and a refreshing change from everyone having automatic weapons.
+ Beautiful maps in all cases

- Everything moves too slow. I know the developers say they are realistic, but screw that, it is just not fun to spend 10 minutes going between two flag points only to get shot once and have to do it all over again. If they are going to keep the speed then they need to shrink the maps - all of them.
- Fences. If we can't go over them then they need more break points were we can go through them. This is supposedly already fixed for the next release and you will be able to crawl under the fences (yay!)

Map ratings (a couple are based on only a few minutes game time)

+++Kursk
+++Uman Pocket
+Borisovka Bahnstation
-- Crossing the Dnjepr 1943
+Day of Barbarossa
++Dnieper River
+Mekensievy-Gory
--On the Road to Stalingrad
++Rostov Industry
++Spartakus Industry
--Strike at Memel River

Overall, tone back the realism a notch or two and a lot of people would really enjoy this mod.

Yeah that sucks, Project reality lost alot of player when they gave the ol screw you to their player complaining that the realism was too much.

forgot to mention the fences in my review, but yeah need a way to get through or over them, glad they are working on it. But tanks should be able to make it through them too... I mean that 6" fence that flipped mine and sarges tank was insane... that isn't realism

yeah, realism would be tanks that drive not only through fences, but through buildings and whatever else is in front of them. The so-called "realism" mods always give into to their rabid hardcore realism side at the expense of more players and fun. It's a given. Each iteration of Project Reality has become more "real" and less "fun", for the most part Forgotten Hope was the same way for BF42. The Insurgency mod has been the only one of that type that I've seen become more accessible.

I fully plan on playing this more, it's just a bit of a disappointment after 2+ years of waiting to see that they cloned Forgotten Hope 🙁

I even went to the BG42 forums to see if anything was going on. The forums are no more and the site hasn't been updated since 2006. 🙁

I think the thing that ircks me is the tags. If anyone could figure out how to server side mod the tags, I bet it would be a bit hit. Maybe we should get a 16 player server and see if we could do it. :-)

NAMETAGS
Code:
createBar
createIcon
setTexture
getCullDistance
setCullDistance
enemyDotLimit
maxCallDistance
vehicleNametagOffset
vehicleNametagOffsetFactor
maxFriendlyDistance
enemyTagDelayTime
enemyTagFadeInTime
enemyTagFadeOutTime
deathFadeOutTime
manDownFadeOutTime
deployableDistance

http://forums.graebtech.org/cgi-bin/forum0...?num=1170995183

CDU has a BGF server and my guess is that they will server side mod it as they have every other game they play 😀

cindy who?

Yeah great game, but with no tags I couldn't tell who was who all night!

What I don't get is...BF2 is SOOOOO popular, why mess with something that obviously works. Tags work great in game for many reasons.
Sometimes I just wanted to know who was next to me...so when I died I would know who sent my last letter home to momma!!! 🔫

Judge_Mental wrote:Yeah great game, but with no tags I couldn't tell who was who all night!

What I don't get is...BF2 is SOOOOO popular, why mess with something that obviously works. Tags work great in game for many reasons.
Sometimes I just wanted to know who was next to me...so when I died I would know who sent my last letter home to momma!!! 🔫

Tags are all well and good but I can take them or leave them, eventually tags are not placed right and it interferes with any sniping or long-distance picks. The vehicles were a bit finicky over some objects and the tanks were overall pathetically slow, then again it kept them away from being a truly dominating force which was nice to see. The maps were a bit large for the speed of the game, though it was enjoyable just it seems the general populous believes its a bit too slow.

Overall though it was the best mod I have seen on a game in many a year. Polished and clean, looking like someone is hoping to get picked up by a major studio.

I read somewhere that the tanks are set to their true to life off-road speed which for something like the Panzer III was around 11-12 MPH. The speed wouldn't be so bad if the distances weren't so far. There are a couple of maps where you don't have to travel so far and tanking becomes more fun and less of a chore.

Also read that they are working on the first patch already although I have no idea of the timeframe.

Bit late to this post after playing online on the first night of release (work+life). I loved it, except for not having tags on friendly units. I like that tanks/airplanes are not over powering.
Some of my main complaints with BF2 are the aircraft kill ratios. With BGF, they have kept it more to an infantry style game. FH also let the tanks rule the battlefield which made it hard to play as infantry. I think the only way for people to really enjoy this mod is to accept it as it is like they did with BF1918 or FH. My only hope is that it continues to develope.