TITLE: The corner, the gun, the interrupt and me, or why I just got shot to pieces AUTHOR: Jim9137 DATE: 10/16/2005 08:01:00 ip. ----- BODY:

Long due post. I shall return to talk about turn based games after getting my arse kicked repeatedly in Silent Storm, but I have few news to announce. First of all, I'm baffled at the recent exposure of this small blog to the world in the form of Wired article about Knyghtmare's post which dealt with unfair pricing. I'm going to stop buying games completely if the price hits 60€ per game over here, which is how much a console game costs around this cold part of the world. But whee, exposure! Anyway, the self gloating bit done, I have a slightly worse, and also at the same time, good news. Knives has left Bastard Numbered permanently, and unlikely will come back. He told me he got a job as game reviewer, and thus won't be able to review games for us anymore. Sad to see you go, but it was fun while you were aboard. Knives was also the very first one who joined this blog with me, so a part of history dies with him. And so on, imagine cheesy moments hugging and mancuddling here. And keep your hands off my rear, thankyouverymuch. Without further ado, to the article. --- Silent Storm and its expansion Sentinels, are one of the most biggest turn-based squaddie strategy games to hit the markets since Jagged Alliance 2, which is no wonder because it was and is one of its kind in the more recent games. Despite the Jagged Alliance 3/3D projects going, they're switching titles and games more often than I change my panties, I fear it might be that way for some time. Thankfully, it has one kickass modding tools and community fervently using them, so it's not that bad situation. But, Silent Storm, as do any kind of turn-based game, has it's quirks and kinks. I shall be particularly focus on one certain feature on Silent Storm. Something that has been a source of huge frustrationg and anquish in the recent days, and I know I should be reviewing a ton of roguelikes for another site, but god damn it, that german soldier must die. Oh, um, the feature, yes. The feature I was talking about, is the interruption system. I just hate it honestly. It's sensible solution, soldiers have a chance to react before the enemy shoots their brains off and all in real life, but in Silent Storm it means that if your poor Scout walks behind the corner, no matter how hidden and sneaky s/he is, s/he'll have no brains left when the enemy's done with his/her full-auto. Full-auto, as in 40 bullets from a Suomi SMG in the head, and such. On easier levels the character would just get knocked unconscious, but on harder levels, it means you'll have a dead 10 level character on your hands. Just because you couldn't avoid going around that corner in anyway, and the interruption system seems to work for the enemy ALWAYS. Hand hurts, but bravely I shall carry on. Personally, I think it gives the enemy an unfair advantage. They stand around doing nothing mostly, giving them tons of action points to spent on poor unsuspecting scouts and soldiers a like, who in the worst cases run right into enemy they just couldn't see and run out of action points. But here comes the thing, it's quite rare occassion that a player will have any action points left, due to the high costs of moving around and shooting. So enemy can waltz right into my crosshairs without breaking a sweat. That's the thing. Completely frustrating, and most importantly, reasonable. Reasonable, not only because of the realism, but because game mechanically. The AI would stand no chance against the grenades and endless ammobelts of players, without resorting to such unfair system as that. It's a common feature on turn-based strategies, and especially on the squaddie ones. Even X-Com, as everyone who has played it can attest to, has an interruption system. You run through a field, and next thing you know the whole field has been blown out in the sky because a trigger-happy alien just happened to spot you. But it works quite well in those situations, because you still have some chance to survive. Indoors? You should be gambling at Las Vegas if you managed to survive MG32 in full-auto, aimed right into your head. Damn wrist, hurts more than it should now. I personally think this is quite critical problem which developers and programmes alike should strive to solve, as at the moment it's providing rather unbalanced gameplay. Sure, you could work on throwing grenades around corners or trying to be sneaky and out maneuver the enemy, but at the moment, if the corridor is just two squares wide, will one square in the distance make a huge difference? Not really. And the grenades will eventually run out, not to mention the added fumbling factor. Personally, again, I would strive to discard the whole interruption system althogether. Gasps from the audience, the shock has landed I shall deftly move out of the speaker box with a Luger P08 hidden in my pants before screeching in. Or not. I don't have an alternative to say at this point, so we might as well forget what I said few lines above and I shall offer few solutions. Why can't we peek around corners? That would give us some kind of idea what's ahead of us, and even if the enemy did spot us, we would be offering smaller frame to shoot at. Then again, that could potentially make it more unbalanced. Another possibility would be giving huge accurary penalties to interrupts happening at low range, because when an enemy bops into your crosshairs in random FPS, don't you tend to get a bit startled? That could work. Then again, it probably doesn't make much of a difference if 20 or 30 bullets hit your head from 40, now does it? But, the ball's with the developers and we shall see if they notice this problem at all, which I sincerely hope they do. Turn-based squaddie strategies still hold a lot potential, as Laser Squad Nemesis and Silent Storm itself has shown, but the genre still carries few silly things which should have been solved ages ago, interrupt being one of them. Now, sandwiches.

----- COMMENT: AUTHOR:  Tom Carrick EMAIL: URL: DATE: 01:16 We should play Laser Squad Nemisis sometime.

Oh, and Knives sucks anyway. Cockjockey, eh. ----- --------