Game experience by an oldschool UFO Gamer, Will report my impressions as I play the game Options

[Diablo22]

Hi, I was the 'gamer in doubt', but I bought it as I saw ShadoWarrior (and other heroes) were already hard at work modding. As the game experience will change over time, I tought it might be interesting to post my impressions as I work my way trough the game. Initally I'll play unmodded on normal and see how that goes.

Yesterday - game arrived !!! *Rip of plastic* Hmmm...decent artwork...he he, even a little manual

*speedreads manual*

Well, that was competely useless, but hey, I don't even expect manuals with games these days, so I'll consider it a bonus anyway.

*powers up game* Nice, nothing spectacular but fine. *Starts a new game*

...errr...looks bewildered at a billion options and menus...oh well, let's just start. The countless tutorial popups were extremely useful, but it was annoying I had to click each one away, especially as there are a huge amount of them. My previous ALTAR experience was very usefull in figuring out how the hell it basically works. Figuring out the basics of getting my base up and running took a lot of time.

* Ah, so there are scientists and scientist-soldiers. Ditto for technicians *
* Ah, if I want to capture territory I have to put a scientist in the scientist bay and only THEN can I send the little buggy on its way.*
* Ah, if I want to build a mine I have to put a technician in the tecnician bay and only THEN can I I send the little buggy on its way.*
* those buggies are annoyingly hard to find on the map as they look a lot like geodomes *

The people management was the most complex thing to figure out.

* Ah, so if I let a scientist spend some training points on a new skill, he needs to be in the university to actually DO the training *
* Ah, so if I let a technician spend some training points on a new skill, he needs to be in the pyrotechnics to actually DO the training *
* Ah, so nobody needs to be in civil engineering until I actually build a building *
* Took me a lot of time to figure out why I could not train my soldiers - Any military skills requires research and a building *
* On that note, I STILL haven't figured out how I was supposed to determine which resources I needed for a building - Strangely enough the 'military training center' only showed up in the build list when I had the resources required to build it, which is wierd as other buldings I do not have enough resources for ARE listed ? *

Then played a few battles including Cydonia

(* WARNING SPOILERS ! *)












The crawlers were a joke. Total pushover. I can't say I like the graphics for the robots, not impressed at all. On the other hand, everything else is very well done. The maps are still way too small and I already suspect they will resemble each other a lot (* My biggest gripe about AfterShock - how can I play a tactical game on a 4 square feet ? *). At least the enemy didn't spawn right next to you in this game.

Then came the Cydonia mission. Wasted the crawlers and the the stationary mech (* unimpressed again *). Then the Beastmen showed up. Actually managed to get out with two beastmen dead first go. This was quite a chore as my soldiers were still completely untrained as I hadn't even RESEARCHED military training. Turns out that Beastmen can walk faster than you, which made getting away alive problematic. Of course, had to try again with dynamite and killed three on my second attempt while getting away safe. Quite pleased with myself.

Captured a few territories, build a few mines. Made an alliance with the Rets and got two guys from them with some vey-badly needed weapons & ammo. Already I can't keep up production with expediture of ammo. Too much training too little production. Next time I'll keep the workspace fully staffed at all times.

I quit playing as the beastmen attacked the pipeline again and I could just scrape enough guns & ammo together to outfit a squad. I'll play some more next week (bloody SCJP exam). Next time I'll start by actually reading in-game what all the keys shortcuts actually do.

Evaluation up to now (three hours played) :

The Good :
Definite improvement over Aftershock. Praise for ALTAR. I like the graphics, the story and the setting. I am completely in love with the whole people management system, altough it is quite hard to figure out what in blazes you are supposed to be doing. I really liked the small video capture popups, especially the one where I met the reticulans. I like the difference in height levels on the maps. I like the constant helpful advice from your staff. It looks very promising indeed.

The sorta Bad, but also Good : The fact that I can only heal one person at a time does not win prizes, but DOES make the game more interesting as you are sometimes forced to send out a squad filled with rookie scientists and technicians. A lot of people have become extremely annoyed with the endless chatter of your staff, but I kind of like it myself. It gives the base a bit of a lived in experience and some extremely necessary hints when you are as clueless about the interface as I was. You can mod it away by the way.

The Bad :
I am not impressed with the robot graphics, but that's not very important. I am very disappointed that the maps are so tiny (again). I am worried that the maps will become repetative very quickly, but I might be wrong there. Your initial weapon cache is pathetic and it takes way too long for you to build enough ammo and so on. Very annoying that I couldn't train my soldiers right off. I am quite sure that I am still missing a lot of stuff and am doing a lot of stuff wrong, which is also irritating. Difficult to keep track of all your people. Not very impressed with the explosion graphics, but the ragdoll systems is still brilliant.

Gameplay : 9/10 Excellent, but difficult to get the hang of
Graphics : 7/10 Nice, but nothing spectacular (ragdoll system still rules tough)
Sound : 6/10 Lots of nice chatter (love the Ret sounds), but tactical sounds are nothing special. Music
is ok.
Replayability : 9/10 Incredible amount of different ways to play and very good mods available. The maps
might become very repetative though.
Overall : 8/10 Better than Aftermath, a hell of a lot better than Aftershock, with new gameplay concepts
not seen before in any X-Com clone games. Sell your mother for organs and go buy this
game !

To be continued...