No announcement yet.

Theatre of War PC Review

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Theatre of War PC Review

    Please feel free to comment about our story entitled "Theatre of War PC Review"

  • #2
    Re: Theatre of War PC Review

    I bought this game a few days ago and I have rarely been so disappointed.

    Apart from the fact it constantly crashes, and plays at around 6fps on my pretty powerful system (P4 3.2ghz CPU, 6800-Ultra graphics and 2Gb of OCZ RAM), the gameplay is simply atrocious, with so many fundamental flaws that I can't see it ever being fixed.

    The human's AI forces are total morons, while the computer's are god-like.

    LOS/LOF is totally broken, allowing the enemy to spot you, fire at you and kill you, usually with their first shot, at any distance and totally regardless of what cover you are hiding behind. Ambushes are totally impossible to perform.

    Missions cannot be won unless you kill absolutely every single enemy unit. That includes bailed-out tank crew that then go to ground, all over the map, and are impossible to find. I know, I spent over an hour chasing after them with my one remaining Tiger, despite having already captured the target and destroyed all enemy equipment.

    The list goes on and on.

    This game is a total lemon, and I wasted £55 on it.

    Steer well clear guys.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Theatre of War PC Review

      I'm sorry but the "full length" review is pretty terrible. When a review focuses an entire page to the "premise" of the game, its usually becuase the actual implementation is poor, which is why they try to entice you with the premise. So that is kind of a giveaway in itself. The flaws to the game are all over their own forums, even with the massive deleting they do. You describe the game as having 'few flaws' and it does not sound genuine, in fact most of the time the review says, "you would think that with x, y would be bad" which i didnt find helpful as it avoided most of the real issues.
      The deciding point for me was seeing how rude/foul their forum administrators were; totally unprofessional, why should i give those clods money for a bad product? Many games are missing the boat Battlestations Midway is also terrible, in much the same way, great potential but totally squandered with no skirmish mode and inability to get MP games working.

      Another failed game in the Great Depression of video games...

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Theatre of War PC Review

        Siggi - I experienced exactly zero crashes and it played fine on a E6600/2GB/X1900XTX system - luck of the draw maybe? As far as AI, yeah I did touch on that being a negative, individual units are pretty dumb. As for cover, I can't say I found it a problem - I often found myself ambushing units when utilizing hills, and from my experiences poor LOS meant low chance of hit success for the CPU and me. Now that I think about it maybe they were a little eagle eyed but it's not like every shot is 100% accurate - artillery fire in real war isn't always being aimed at something clearly in sight. If I felt uncanny accuracy was an issue with the CPU then I would have mentioned it - perhaps it is relevant to the difficulty? TBH I didn't play a whole lot on hard because I'm not that good. When reviewing I try to stick to middle difficulty settings as that's what I'd expect to be the most wildly used.

        Also, I did experience the "mission isn't complete until every unit is dead" issue once in the Russian campaign but didn't think it was prevalent enough of an issue to mention since it was only once. Every other time I was just given a "Mission success" message. Maybe it was because I killed every unit without delay or maybe it is just a bug in some missions - I can't say because it didn't occur for me much at all.

        Gr8gamingdepression - in the grand scheme of it I feel there only are a few flaws. It's by no means a perfect game and as such, it didn't warrant a perfect score, but the review portrays a game which has positives that outweigh the negatives and I stand by that - it's an ambitious, niche type of RTS that, by its very nature, lends itself to much harder to replicate gameplay than, say, C&C. It's the type of game some will love and others will hate, and I guess I swing closer to the former as it's right up my alley of unique RTS gameplay that actually requires some thought process. If that doesn't tickle your fancy then chances are you probably won't see past the flaws - which is what I was referring to in the last paragraph; it isn't for everyone.

        As for their forums - really not something I typically consider in a review particularly considering before release it seemed like a fine place (and I was conducting the review before the release).

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Theatre of War PC Review

          I appreciate the response, ty.

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Theatre of War PC Review

            I saw these reviews and decided i had to leave a comment on this game. I am the kind of person that loves realistic games, so naturally i went an bought theatre of war to try it out. I have been getting increasingly frustrated by some of the game situations, example: I was on the games second mission with Germany (the battle against French forces ) now here is the situation. I was assalting the last trenchs and the french had a s35 tank (disgusting piece of machinery) the tank had its left side turned to my 2 tanks one Panzer III and onde Panzer IV wich where both facing it with its frontal armor. To my surprise the french tank destroyed both of my tanks... Now where is the realism of this? why is it that AI units have much better skills then player units? Why is it that my anti tank weapons hardly ever hit and i have had many situations where my tanks are hit on the first anti tank battery shot and are either destroyed or immobilized. Please this is ridiculous , fix this now!

            Now as for performance yes i have experienced some performance issues even after some tweaking in the graphics.

            Also i have read that you cant perform ambushes and you units will not stay in cover behind objects, this is not true! I don't know what game you have been playing but that has NEVER hapened to me.

            I think the idea of this game is pretty good, but once again i must say it is very frustrating to play against an enemy that is god-like with crappy troops that never hit.
            Last edited by xedas; 07-22-2007, 01:54 PM.

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Theatre of War PC Review

              Xedas just a few facts.

              The S35 or so called Somua has way way thincker armor than the PZ3 and IV. I will assuming for fighting S35 means its early war so should be the PZ3F and PZIVD which are both 1939 model.

              The Somua armor is as follow:
              <TABLE width="100%" border=0 font face="Arial" size="2"><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top align=right width="50%">Hull Front (Upper) :</TD><TD width="50%">47mm @ 69°</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=right width="50%">Hull Front (Lower) :</TD><TD width="50%">47mm @ Round</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=right width="50%">Hull Sides (Upper) :</TD><TD width="50%">40mm @ 75°</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=right width="50%">Hull Sides (Lower) :</TD><TD width="50%">10mm + 25mm @ 90°</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=right width="50%">Hull Rear :</TD><TD width="50%">35mm @ 90° & 25mm @ 60°</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=right width="50%">Hull Top :</TD><TD width="50%">25mm @ 8° & 0°</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=right width="50%">Hull Bottom :</TD><TD width="50%">20mm @ 0°</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=right width="50%">Turret Front :</TD><TD width="50%">42mm @ 0°</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=right width="50%">Turret Mantlet :</TD><TD width="50%">42mm @ Round</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=right width="50%">Turret Sides :</TD><TD width="50%">42mm @ 67°</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=right width="50%">Turret Rear :</TD><TD width="50%">42mm @ 68°</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=right width="50%">Turret Top :</TD><TD width="50%">30mm @ 0° & 16°</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

              Now the 3F and IVD penetration are pretty anemic. 3F penetration with the standard ammunition they used the PZGR39 has at 100 meter 35mm. That mean you can penetrate the S35 at hull top or bottom to actually penetrate it. The IVD has 41mm penetration of HEAT ammo which can penetrate the side of it but on perfect angle.

              Now the 37mm gun S35 has it can penetrate 46/36mm at 100m. THis is enouph to go througth the 30mm frontal armor of the 3f and IVD has even less.

              So its pretty much realistic. Be happy it was not a Char BIS since no early PZ could penetrate it. Thus why Rommel use their 88s to kill the Matildas and the Chars since their PZS were useless on Matildas who had overall 60+ mm armor and chars almost something like that. Pak36 which the Axis army had availiable at the time would only scratch their paint and thus why he used the 88s to destroy the Allies tanks in Arras.

              Use this side pretty nice information about WW2 equipment
              http://www.tarrif.net/

              Comment

              Working...
              X