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AI
The AI
in Allied Assault seems to vary highly. Sometimes it's great,
sometimes you'd think it was programmed by a refugee from
the Ion Storm Dallas janitorial staff.
The Nazi
AI is pretty good, you'll see enemies duck behind cover, throw
grenades, lean out of doors to shoot, or just stick their
guns around and blind fire. They reload and yell for help.
They also seem to work together if there are more than one
of them. Very cool.
Regrettably
the sometimes smart AI of the Axis isn't mirrored in your
teammates, who tend to be complete retards and constantly
get themselves or you killed. They don't seem to be able to
get under cover, and there's nothing like standing out in
the open firing tracer rounds at an enemy to get you shot
right in the damned face. They also have a bad habit of blocking
you. If you have AI teammates with you, they'll inevitably
be right behind you when you try to back around that corner
to avoid the incoming bullets, or right where you want to
run when those pesky Germans toss a hand grenade at your feet.
They'll often run right up a bunker occupied by an enemy,
and stop beside it to shoot at someone else, thereby getting
capped in the back of the head close range. *sigh* I played
through the game on easy, and team damage seems to be off.
I'm going to play through again on hard just to see if I can
waste these useless idiots at the start of a level and save
myself some time and effort. 99% of the time you end up killing
everyone yourself anyhows. (Especially if the enemy has snipers
out.)
One of
my main problems with the AI other than the fluctuations in
it's capabilities is that it seems to cheat in several ways.
(Yes, even on easy) Enemy troops always seems to know when
you are going to pop around the corner, and can seemingly
seem you through trees and obstacles. There have been several
times when I ran around a corner, and there was a bullet waiting
for me. Many other times I've sniped someone long range, fired
one shot. They whip around (Now, keep in mind here I'm crouched
behind something, barely in visual range of the enemy and
I hit him with a sniper round. He spins around, and quite
frequently hits me right in the face with a submachine gun,
rifle, or hell.. Sometimes even with a pistol. (Uh huh......)
At other times you'll pick a guy off long distance, and his
buddies look around for a shooter.... Then continue on their
way.. Like nothing ever happened. They also seem willing to
pour through a door you have under fire from a fixed machine-gun
emplacement. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr............
This
disparity in the AI I find very frustrating... it's like there's
something broken in there somewhere. Sometimes they're really
good, sometimes it's just like shooting clays. Really stupid
clays.
Weapons
Guns,
guns guns! Wow, do you ever get a wide variety of sweet weapons
in this one.
Tons
of authentic World War II weapons, from the German MP40 and
American Tommy Gun to the M1 Garand battle rifle, and Browning
Automatic Rifle (BAR). You also get grenades, (German and
Yank.) Several pistols, rocket launchers and of course everyone's
favorite: Sniper Rifles. Remember Enemy at the Gates? You
get to run around with the lovely rifle that Her Major was
using, a Mauser 98 Sniper.
You
also have to control throughout the game various mounted gun
emplacements and vehicle guns as well. In one of the more
interesting scenes you are racing down an airbase runway,
blowing up planes and unwitting Nazi guards with a jeep mounted
.30 cal machine gun. In another you're booting thought occupied
France at the wheel (and guns) of a hijacked German Ubertank.
Long and short: You get lots of cool, historical toys to play
with.
The only
thing that annoyed me (other than the models) was the fact
that all rifles take "rifle" ammo despite the fact that the
American's used .30-06 at this time, and the Germans used
8mm Mauser. The pistols and submachine guns also use the same
ammo...... In real life the American's used .45cal ACP, and
the Nazis used 9mm. Now Pappy would likely tell me that I'm
being a picky little bitch here, but these sorts of things
tend to bother me quite a bit. Ah who cares. Guns good. Nazi's
bad. Shoot Nazis. In multiplayer it's interesting to note
that each team gets guns unique to their side.
Multiplayer
Pretty
much the same as the single player, feel wise. The only major
difference I've seen is that you can "lean out"
(Yes, we know you;ve been able to do this in Rainbow 6 even
since Rogue Spear came out.)
The maps
in MP are completely insane. Imagine storming up Omaha beach,
just like in the single player. Oh my god. It has to be experienced
to understand the greatness that is MOHAA. Some of the MP
maps are towns.... Where you can go into almost every house.
Little narrow twisting streets. One of the maps is a snow
covered forest, with visibility cut down to virtually nothing.
So tense.
As I
mentioned earlier once you patch the ingame browser works
for internet games. Thank god, stupid Gamespy arcade. There
are a variety of game types, including deathmatch, team deathmatch,
round based and objective based.
My personal
favorite is the objective maps. In this game type, one team
defends an objective and the other team attempts to blow the
hell out of it. For instance, in one map the allies defend
a bridge and the nazis attempt to bomb it. In another, the
Axis are defending AAA guns at the top of the Omaha beach
map, and the Americans are trying to blow 'em up real good.
Very cool, and it's so nice not to play stupid deathmatch
all the time. :)
Regretably,
the multiplayer does tend to be a little laggy, I'm not sure
why. Lack of high speed servers? (T1+)
Manual
Eh, it's
a shooter. Who the hell needs a manual? Took a quick look
at it, not bad, all the details you need to get playing. Or
you could just run the training missions, and get more detail
and experience than the manual will ever give you.
Controls
Standard
shooter controls, easily remapped. Personally I didn't bother,
because the controls are exactly how I usually remap all my
controls to anyhows. Obviously the dev team used some common
sense. Thanks guys!
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