Enemy Infestation (full game) comments
Carl Sandland
issues about parts of EI. I want to say upfront that
I agree with alot of the criticisms, however I can
also see alot of people really getting into and
enjoying EI, making a game that will please
hardnosed experienced gamers (you must fall
into this category if played the game through in
two days) as well as new gamers is very difficult.
I think the expectations of the experienced gamers
(us) is now so ridiculously high that new games
have to be just about perfect in every area to sell
to both markets.
You can see the trend, games taking more people
more years and more money to sell less units.
(PC market that is). <sigh>
I'm a very jaded gamer, my favourite games are *still*
Paradroid and Elite, yet I found EI fun to play
and enjoyable. I find games like TA tedious to the
extreme, while everyone else loves it. You just
can't please all people at once, unless you are
a true game design genius (read: Starcraft).
The 'useless' range weapon argument is hard
to counter, other than to point out that some
scenarios have this better balanced than others.
The flee, repel and attract all do a moderate amount
of damage *as well* as the effect itself. The repel
can be used when one person has a rocket
launcher and the other a repel.
If you really do play EI through using melee combat
then it would be *very* painful. The weapons are not
*that* useless, and going to the trouble of researching
and improving weapons (you did do that?) will result
in good power. I rarely (if ever) use melee combat
when playing EI.
I'm sorry you found the game as violently
upsetting as you seem to have, it's not meant
to be an XCOM killer, we never said that, as
I have said, it's really Diablo in space, and the
people who would enjoy EI the most are those
who enjoyed going through all of Diablo, once for
each character! (diablo Hell levels are absurdly
repetitive). I'm guessing here you didn't exactly
love Diablo either ?
It takes all types though. For myself, I enjoy the
immediate interaction and feel of control, and
battle intensive strategy of EI & Diablo. I can
also see how EI would really piss people off
if they are expecting XCOM in realtime done
right. (I'm a big fan of XCOM1).
So, I appreciate the detailed criticism, hopefully
we can take all this on board when putting together
an expansion pack for the game. I hope that the
upcoming XCOM game using the Unreal engine
meets your likeing better than our game did.
Sincerely,
Carl Sandland
Clockworks Entertainment,
Microforte.
Liquidated
trying to
beat the swarm mission and it came out remarkably like yours mad. A
quick jab it was to be but I quickly outdid myself and had to resort to
using paragraphs much to my suprise (I didn't know how much I disliked
the game until I summed the points up). The funny thing is that I agree
with
most if not all of what you wrote - even down to the meat cleaver.
I'll include that text here for grins I'd suppose... :)
BTW mad, try and play the swarm mission - its a sick joke that I think
was mentioned as enertaining by another post. It got to the point where
I knew I could beat the mission but suddenly realized that I had
absolutely no desire to. So sad, but I can use the hard drive space
(its not all bad the game is this awful).
oh yeah add ...
5. Formations for your troops is good.
6. Variable game speed for us slower folks still woozy from the lack
of turn based games available..
**************
Enemy Infestation (EI) is a very poorly done game..... this started as a
short note but hell I suddenly have paragraphs so I'll lead in with this
sentence :).
For a game where combat takes centerpiece, EI has a very odd assortment
of weapons. The weapons have either incredibly long recharge times and
few shots. One of the better weapons - the Big Orange Gun- has only 3
shots but actually recharges at a fairly quick pace. Other weapons
require fixed rechargers that take a very long time to reload your
weapons and can't be moved! If a soldier is armed with a weapon that
doesn't recharge on it own, they will only fire under your direct
control. One of the most amazing things I've ever seen in a game was
when the guy with the missile launcher charged the massive alien "queen"
and started punching her - to conserve ammo I think. The cleaver, now
that I think of it is one of the best weapons simply because it doesn't
have ammo or need to recharge.
Another "feature" is that in each mission the weapons have different
effects. The big orange gun might do fairly good damage one mission and
shrink the badly to boot but then the next it might not even scratch
them... you won't actually know until you try it in combat. Some of the
weapons are not exactly what you might consider standard issue. The fire
extinguisher is a devastating area effect weapon, if it does anything at
all, and the remote control is best used in a safe area at the start of
each mission - it has a tendency to make the aliens stronger if it
doesn't hurt them - you can't be sure what it does until you try it. Add
to all this the fact that a character can only carry one item whether
it's a book or a missile launcher so that you can't switch out weapons
or carry "ammo" and you have a bunch of people that couldn't fight their
way out of a wet paper bag.
The utter stupidity of your forces is also enough to make you pull your
hair out... though you can group soldiers and bind them to number keys,
there are no formation options or anything to keep a bunch of troops in
anything other than a "bunch". At doorways they enter one at a time,
often letting the door close in front of them so that to get 3 ppl
through requires a long time.... too bad if there are a horde of bad
guys in the other room and by the time all of your guys get in the first
one has no shots left and is getting mauled badly. If a mob comes into a
room with your guys waiting they will all fire even if the first alien
in only needs one hit to kill. Remember the fact that you have almost no
firepower to begin with? Well its real nice when all 10 of your troopers
blast the little alien in front 1 time (out of their 3 shots) Then
decide to maybe shoot the really huge nasty one right behind it. On the
same mission you are to protect the base from an alien onslaught yet all
of your troops are unarmed with the weapons outside the base!!!!! Not
only do you have to go get the weapons hampered by a clunky interface
while the first horde comes screaming at you, you have to suit up your
guys 2 at a time so the vacuum outside doesn't kill you! Of course the
process of suiting up (or down) needs another bit of eq you can't move
and takes a long time, another amazing "feature" to add play value no
doubt. Oh and if you wanted to know - you can't unlock doors while in a
suit. Good thing the aliens don't lock doors but I can see this screwing
up multiplayer games if you were fighting each other.
The voice acting while at times is entertaining , is
extremely uneven. Some of the characters are well done with interesting
bits to add (the female biologist saying "I love littte creatures" in a
french
accent for one) but other times they simply grate on your nerves. The
briefing at the start of each mission is extremely irritating as the guy
seems to try and make his voice as loud and annoying as possible - this
crap has to be heard to be believed. I litterally have to alt tab out of
the game to mute the pc via the volume control panel in the system tray
just so I can read the mission description in peace. Oddly the most
apropos bit of voice acting was while in the swarm mission while my
marines (1 each, battle hardened) were fistfighting the aliens - and
getting slaughtered I might add. One of the last men to go down screamed
"We really need bigger guns!!". Amen Brother Jethro, pass the multi-melta
gun.
To add to the misery the interface is flawed. The game has no pause
feature that I could find (outside of alt tab) nor anyway to slow it down
if you find the pace too fast. If you need a break during a mission well
just save it and quit (see below on
the save feature) because the game is not slowing down for you by any
means. One of the most bizarre hot keys I've ever seen in a game is what
the esc key does in this one. If on your way to hitting [1] to get to
group one you accidentally hit [esc], well you get to look at the select
mission screen again. No "do you want to quit?", no warning, no auto
save... just boot city. I found this one out while looking for an
undocumented key to pause the game, imagine my surprise. The save
feature is also weird in that you can tell the game to save and it will
just add another save to the list. You can't overwrite/delete old saves
from in-game nor can you choose where the file goes on the list. You
quickly get a very long list of saved games eating your hard drive
especially if you were taking frequent bathroom breaks from all that
beer- lot of fun to scroll down that list to get to the latest save too.
I really feel sorry for the players that don't understand how to use
file manager as that seems the only way to trim the saves. To cap the
interface problems off, when you complete a mission you cannot save your
progress when you are at the mission select.you have to save at the the
end of each mission so that to restart a mission you have to load the
prior game up. Another "feature" anyone?
Really this was intended as a short quip on the game but once I started
I couldn't very well stop! Had this been a turn based game half of the
problems would be gone I'd suppose. It almost seems that they stuck the
realtime
portion in at the last moment but then that still leaves a game with no
firepower. Man, too bad my xcom disks corrupted - need to get that game
on cd rom to relive the passion.
Cheers!
-Liquidated.
Fred A. Berganio
wrote:
>Ironically I wrote up a quick jab at EI to a friend last night after
>trying to
>beat the swarm mission and it came out remarkably like yours mad. A
>quick jab it was to be but I quickly outdid myself and had to resort to
>using paragraphs much to my suprise (I didn't know how much I disliked
>the game until I summed the points up). The funny thing is that I agree
>with most if not all of what you wrote - even down to the meat cleaver.
>I'll include that text here for grins I'd suppose... :)
It sounds like the game didn't meet either of your expectations, but
I'm not sure if that makes it a bad game, or just bad for you...
>BTW mad, try and play the swarm mission - its a sick joke that I think
>was mentioned as enertaining by another post. It got to the point where
>I knew I could beat the mission but suddenly realized that I had
>absolutely no desire to. So sad, but I can use the hard drive space
>(its not all bad the game is this awful).
I found this mission a little frustrating, but mostly challenging. It
does require several restarts (due to the random weapon effect issue),
but in the end I found satisfaction in the solution.
>oh yeah add ...
>5. Formations for your troops is good.
>6. Variable game speed for us slower folks still woozy from the lack
> of turn based games available..
Therein may lie the problem. I don't find turn-based computer games
very entertaining at all.
>**************
>Enemy Infestation (EI) is a very poorly done game..... this started as a
>short note but hell I suddenly have paragraphs so I'll lead in with this
>sentence :).
I think it's a pretty well done game, very clever in some instances.
I think the problems you've had with it are due to the differences
required between RT vs. TB games.
>
>For a game where combat takes centerpiece, EI has a very odd assortment
>of weapons. The weapons have either incredibly long recharge times and
>few shots. One of the better weapons - the Big Orange Gun- has only 3
>shots but actually recharges at a fairly quick pace.
The BOG is good if you've started a game where its effects are either
strong kill or very strong kill. Of course what kind of gameplay
would there be if you had an all-powerful weapon and unlimited
immediate ammo? Your allotted 3 shots will take down a warrior or
lesser form of alien, or basically, one at a time, and works into the
strategy of rescuing the colonists and/or sanitizing the bases.
>Other weapons
>require fixed rechargers that take a very long time to reload your
>weapons and can't be moved! If a soldier is armed with a weapon that
>doesn't recharge on it own, they will only fire under your direct
>control. One of the most amazing things I've ever seen in a game was
>when the guy with the missile launcher charged the massive alien "queen"
>and started punching her - to conserve ammo I think. The cleaver, now
>that I think of it is one of the best weapons simply because it doesn't
>have ammo or need to recharge.
Rechargeable weapons will often take out one or more alien types with
a single shot, and so are more inconvenient to keep loaded, as a
gameplay issue. Since their use may be key to the mission in
eliminating the aliens, judicious use is necessary, and it's not
desireable to have the colonists fire at will with these types of
weapons. There are different reaction settings for each of the
colonists also: hide will have them fleeing and hiding from the
aliens, guard will have them shoot from range or only if threatened or
specifically directed at a beast, and fight will have them shooting
immediately at everything. The cleaver appears to be the best weapon
for Dexter the bot, who has a high chemical and physical resistance to
the alien attacks, and is the best melee fighter in the group.
>Another "feature" is that in each mission the weapons have different
>effects. The big orange gun might do fairly good damage one mission and
>shrink the badly to boot but then the next it might not even scratch
>them... you won't actually know until you try it in combat. Some of the
>weapons are not exactly what you might consider standard issue. The fire
>extinguisher is a devastating area effect weapon, if it does anything at
>all, and the remote control is best used in a safe area at the start of
>each mission - it has a tendency to make the aliens stronger if it
>doesn't hurt them - you can't be sure what it does until you try it. Add
>to all this the fact that a character can only carry one item whether
>it's a book or a missile launcher so that you can't switch out weapons
>or carry "ammo" and you have a bunch of people that couldn't fight their
>way out of a wet paper bag.
I might point out that said group of people are soley under your
control, so it's not really their problem... :) Seriously, there are
some awkward control issues, particularly in placement or rapid
selection within a small room or among many characters/objects, but
for the most part, a bit of thinking before attempting moves will
yield solutions. One thing is that melee or group fighting is rarely a
good strategy (so far anyway, I'm on mission 9), better a stealthy or
methodical assault by single soldier (relieved in turns by cohorts in
order to maintain fully charged weapons...). I agree with you on the
random effects of the weapons: it's dumb. I would have prefered
varying levels of effectiveness. The varied implements used as
weapons just serves to punctuate the desparate situation these
colonists are in, and yes are undesireable ( I often search for BOGs
as soon as I secure the medbay in a mission...), but it's simply to
fight with whatever you can find...
>The utter stupidity of your forces is also enough to make you pull your
>hair out... though you can group soldiers and bind them to number keys,
>there are no formation options or anything to keep a bunch of troops in
>anything other than a "bunch". At doorways they enter one at a time,
>often letting the door close in front of them so that to get 3 ppl
>through requires a long time.... too bad if there are a horde of bad
>guys in the other room and by the time all of your guys get in the first
>one has no shots left and is getting mauled badly. If a mob comes into a
>room with your guys waiting they will all fire even if the first alien
>in only needs one hit to kill. Remember the fact that you have almost no
>firepower to begin with? Well its real nice when all 10 of your troopers
>blast the little alien in front 1 time (out of their 3 shots) Then
>decide to maybe shoot the really huge nasty one right behind it.
Again, the control interface is a bit awkward, but to grant what you
ask would make for a very boring game where you simply direct your
force to sanitize the base automatically! Your style of play sounds
like your used to online strategy 'rush'-type moves. This game is
more single-person figure-it-out kind of strategy, not just
fuck-it-all-and-send-everybody-and-see-what-happens. As I've exampled
above, the weapons characteristics combine with the movement
restriction to make the solutions to many scenarios a series of
coordinated commands of several colonists. A full room can often be
attacked simultaneously from several sides, by alternating attacks and
retreats to let weapons recharge and prevent any one colonist from
taking too much damage, etc...
>On the
>same mission you are to protect the base from an alien onslaught yet all
>of your troops are unarmed with the weapons outside the base!!!!! Not
>only do you have to go get the weapons hampered by a clunky interface
>while the first horde comes screaming at you, you have to suit up your
>guys 2 at a time so the vacuum outside doesn't kill you! Of course the
>process of suiting up (or down) needs another bit of eq you can't move
>and takes a long time, another amazing "feature" to add play value no
>doubt. Oh and if you wanted to know - you can't unlock doors while in a
>suit. Good thing the aliens don't lock doors but I can see this screwing
>up multiplayer games if you were fighting each other.
"The Swarm" is definitely one tough mission, but solveable
nonetheless. You can save time by not having the marines suit up
initially, but you'll have to cycle them through the medbay to full
health before they're effective. Reviving your locksmith ASAP is key
also, as locking the aliens out is the only way to provide enough time
for the research. This is the one mission I've come accross so far
that requires a 'melee' solution for the immediate exterior area
that's saturated with aliens, once the research for more powerful
weapons is completed.
>
>The voice acting while at times is entertaining , is
>extremely uneven. Some of the characters are well done with interesting
>bits to add (the female biologist saying "I love littte creatures" in a
>french
>accent for one) but other times they simply grate on your nerves. The
>briefing at the start of each mission is extremely irritating as the guy
>seems to try and make his voice as loud and annoying as possible - this
>crap has to be heard to be believed. I litterally have to alt tab out of
>the game to mute the pc via the volume control panel in the system tray
>just so I can read the mission description in peace. Oddly the most
>apropos bit of voice acting was while in the swarm mission while my
>marines (1 each, battle hardened) were fistfighting the aliens - and
>getting slaughtered I might add. One of the last men to go down screamed
>"We really need bigger guns!!". Amen Brother Jethro, pass the multi-melta
>gun.
I have to agree 100% with both of you here. The voices suck bigtime,
especially the cutscenes at the beginning of each mission. The ingame
phrases don't bother me too much, but should have a muting feature
just the same. Some phrases are cues that colonists out of viewing
range are being attacked, and so should remain on.
>
>To add to the misery the interface is flawed. The game has no pause
>feature that I could find (outside of alt tab) nor anyway to slow it down
>if you find the pace too fast.
Try the 'pause' key.
>If you need a break during a mission well just save it and quit (see below on
>the save feature) because the game is not slowing down for you by any
>means. One of the most bizarre hot keys I've ever seen in a game is what
>the esc key does in this one. If on your way to hitting [1] to get to
>group one you accidentally hit [esc], well you get to look at the select
>mission screen again. No "do you want to quit?", no warning, no auto
>save... just boot city. I found this one out while looking for an
>undocumented key to pause the game, imagine my surprise.
The esc key toggles in and out of the game while pausing it. It simply
takes you out to the main menu, and back (!!?).
>The save
>feature is also weird in that you can tell the game to save and it will
>just add another save to the list. You can't overwrite/delete old saves
>from in-game nor can you choose where the file goes on the list. You
>quickly get a very long list of saved games eating your hard drive
>especially if you were taking frequent bathroom breaks from all that
>beer- lot of fun to scroll down that list to get to the latest save too.
The save files grow in size, but up to lvl9 they are still less than
100k apiece.
>I really feel sorry for the players that don't understand how to use
>file manager as that seems the only way to trim the saves. To cap the
>interface problems off, when you complete a mission you cannot save your
>progress when you are at the mission select.you have to save at the the
>end of each mission so that to restart a mission you have to load the
>prior game up. Another "feature" anyone?
Huh? Once you finish a mission, it is 'checked off on the mission
selection roster, and you just select the next one. What's so hard
about that? You are also allowed to redo any previously completed
missions besides loading any of the saved spots. The game can be
saved at any point in between.
>
>Really this was intended as a short quip on the game but once I started
>I couldn't very well stop! Had this been a turn based game half of the
>problems would be gone I'd suppose. It almost seems that they stuck the
>realtime portion in at the last moment but then that still leaves a game with no
>firepower. Man, too bad my xcom disks corrupted - need to get that game
>on cd rom to relive the passion.
Sounds like your appetite for turn-based gaming has jaded you to this
one. The 'problems' you speak of are mostly subjective observations
of its gameplay, not issues common to all gamers. I'm having a pretty
good time with it, sorry you didn't. As a disclaimer, I don't usually
gravitate toward this kind of game, so maybe other games of this type
have improvements your talking about. Once you experience a superior
method I know it is hard to settle for less. Not having that
experience, I think this thing is a blast... Cheers.
regards,
===============
fre...@tdl.com
===============
Demian Rose
I've seen a couple of very negative posts about EI and feel I should throw
my counter-point in. Firstly, I'm not a big fan of "typical" RTS games.
I played AOE (Warcraft with better graphics, basically) for a while, but
others such as DR, TA and even didn't really grab me. But I find myself
liking Enemy Infestation a lot. It's pretty clever, and while I have some
definite issues with gameplay and style (see below), I feel it was a
worthwhile purchase (and yes, Swarm can be done and is rather satisfying
when everything falls into place).
PROS
-pretty nice graphics with cool map design
-nice variety of scenarions (well, so far...I'm on #7)
-easy to learn mouse-click interface
-variable colonists with different skills for different situations
-real time which doesn't move too fast
-fairly good atmosphere
-cool co-op mulitplay options (HEAT doesn't have EI yet, so I'm mostly
guessing, but it sounds like it'd be damn fun)
CONS
-doors should stay open longer unless you actively close them
-you should be able to assign someone with a limited ammo weapon to
"always fire". I HATE when I forget to double-click and some guy with a
super kill weapon tries to go pimp slap an alien
-there should be some ability to prioritize threats, so that a screen of
little aliens doesn't waste your ammo for the hunters following right
behind
-horrible voice acting
-horrible voice acting
-horrible voice acting
my two p,
Demian
__________________________________________________________________________
"It appeared that even in Barcelona there were hardly any bullfights
nowadays; for some reason all the best matadors were Fascists."
George Orwell, "Homage to Catalonia"
Simon Hayes
Liquidated wrote in message <363E7BB0...@juno.com>...
<some negative comments about the gameplay, and many factual
errors I want to correct>
<things Liquidated would like to see>
>5. Formations for your troops is good.
We looked at this but decided it wouldn't work with the type of terrain we
have. Its too tight most of the time for formations to be useful. I usually
lead with the strongest characters by selective grouping (using the
ctrl-1-9).
>6. Variable game speed for us slower folks still woozy from the lack
> of turn based games available..
Use the pause key (strangely enuf, 'Pause', right next to ScrollLock on my
keyboard).
>Another "feature" is that in each mission the weapons have different
>effects. The big orange gun might do fairly good damage one mission and
>shrink the badly to boot but then the next it might not even scratch
>them... you won't actually know until you try it in combat.
Actually, I like this.
>Some of the
>weapons are not exactly what you might consider standard issue. The fire
>extinguisher is a devastating area effect weapon, if it does anything at
>all, and the remote control is best used in a safe area at the start of
>each mission - it has a tendency to make the aliens stronger if it
>doesn't hurt them - you can't be sure what it does until you try it. Add
>to all this the fact that a character can only carry one item whether
>it's a book or a missile launcher so that you can't switch out weapons
>or carry "ammo" and you have a bunch of people that couldn't fight their
>way out of a wet paper bag.
Yep. Its not C&C. Can't just group select everyone and charge into combat.
>The utter stupidity of your forces is also enough to make you pull your
>hair out... though you can group soldiers and bind them to number keys,
>there are no formation options or anything to keep a bunch of troops in
>anything other than a "bunch". At doorways they enter one at a time,
>often letting the door close in front of them so that to get 3 ppl
>through requires a long time.... too bad if there are a horde of bad
>guys in the other room and by the time all of your guys get in the first
>one has no shots left and is getting mauled badly. If a mob comes into a
>room with your guys waiting they will all fire even if the first alien
>in only needs one hit to kill. Remember the fact that you have almost no
>firepower to begin with? Well its real nice when all 10 of your troopers
>blast the little alien in front 1 time (out of their 3 shots) Then
>decide to maybe shoot the really huge nasty one right behind it.
I agree this is a bummer. I rarely take on a whole room at once (certainly
not with single effect weapons). Either find yourself an area effect weapon
(fire extinguisher, etc), or lead with less characters at once. The best
strategy isn't always to lead with everyone at once.
>On the
>same mission you are to protect the base from an alien onslaught yet all
>of your troops are unarmed with the weapons outside the base!!!!! Not
>only do you have to go get the weapons hampered by a clunky interface
>while the first horde comes screaming at you, you have to suit up your
>guys 2 at a time so the vacuum outside doesn't kill you! Of course the
>process of suiting up (or down) needs another bit of eq you can't move
>and takes a long time, another amazing "feature" to add play value no
>doubt. Oh and if you wanted to know - you can't unlock doors while in a
>suit. Good thing the aliens don't lock doors but I can see this screwing
>up multiplayer games if you were fighting each other.
Command queueing takes the pain out of time delayed actions. Click
on the colonist, click on the ESPO, shift click on the weapon to pickup,
shift click destination (necessary beginning moves in Swarm).
Multiplayer games are coop, not competative.
>...
>
>To add to the misery the interface is flawed. The game has no pause
>feature that I could find (outside of alt tab) nor anyway to slow it down
>if you find the pace too fast. If you need a break during a mission well
>just save it and quit (see below on
>the save feature) because the game is not slowing down for you by any
>means.
How about pause, via the Pause key. You can pause for as long as you
like.
>One of the most bizarre hot keys I've ever seen in a game is what
>the esc key does in this one. If on your way to hitting [1] to get to
>group one you accidentally hit [esc], well you get to look at the select
>mission screen again. No "do you want to quit?", no warning, no auto
>save... just boot city. I found this one out while looking for an
>undocumented key to pause the game, imagine my surprise.
Imagine mine... you seem to be playing a different game here. Pressing
Esc only selects the menu tab (unless the control panel is completely
hidden (via Tab). There is now a hotkey 'Q' for Quit. Under no
circumstances
will the game just quit.
Undocumented? Try reading the manual, or if that fails, pressing F1 (or
clicking the 'Help' button on the menu tab). The ingame documentation
will show you these keys and more (F2/F3 quick save/load, F5-F8 change
reaction of selected colonist, etc).
>The save
>feature is also weird in that you can tell the game to save and it will
>just add another save to the list. You can't overwrite/delete old saves
>from in-game nor can you choose where the file goes on the list. You
>quickly get a very long list of saved games eating your hard drive
>especially if you were taking frequent bathroom breaks from all that
>beer- lot of fun to scroll down that list to get to the latest save too.
* The loadgame dialog has a button "Delete". Click on a savegame then
click the "Delete" button. All from within the game.
* Games are always sorted in order of when they were saved (we do this
specifically).
* on my HD I have 67 saved games from playing. Average size 54k
(they vary from 25k to 101k). Games take about 1/4 of a second to save
on my machine (this is great, makes F2 auto save very painless).
* as for scrolling down the list, try the scrollbar: its fully functional
(ie you
can grab the thumb and drag it straight to the bottom).
>I really feel sorry for the players that don't understand how to use
>file manager as that seems the only way to trim the saves.
Well, feel free (we do show the DOS name in the dialog),
but there is no need.
>To cap the
>interface problems off, when you complete a mission you cannot save your
>progress when you are at the mission select.you have to save at the the
>end of each mission so that to restart a mission you have to load the
>prior game up. Another "feature" anyone?
To make this really simple, you *don't* need to save anything. Nothing.
OK?
After sucessfully completing each mission they are ticked off in the
mission select menu.
Automatically.
You can always see what missions you have completed, and what is
left to complete.
What could be simpler?
You DO NOT have to load a prior save game to start the next mission!
Just select the mission from the mission select screen. In fact, you don't
even really need savegame at all... The game automatically saves the
missions completed data in another file (another 2k of your precious HD).
>Really this was intended as a short quip on the game but once I started
>I couldn't very well stop! Had this been a turn based game half of the
>problems would be gone I'd suppose. It almost seems that they stuck the
>realtime
>portion in at the last moment but then that still leaves a game with no
>firepower.
It could have been turnbased, and yes it would have been a different game.
We wanted something more immediate, with a faster pace. Maybe that
would have appealed more to you, but it would have less appeal to many
others.
>Man, too bad my xcom disks corrupted - need to get that game
>on cd rom to relive the passion.
>
>
>Cheers!
>-Liquidated.
Please try to keep on track with your comments. The many factual
errors make it too easy to dismiss every else you've said.
cheers,
::bigsimon
Carl Sandland
I can understand your frustrations with EI, but
if we changed the game to appeal to you, many
others would like it alot less. The fact is that
hard-core strategy games don't appeal to
everyone. Reviewing EI as a strategy title is
a bit misleading. RTS yes, TBS (ala XCOM)
no.
Complaining it's not an X-COM replacement
is spurious, as that was never our intention with
EI.
Are you claiming that the PC games market
isn't a heavily fragmented one ? Witness Myst
and Deer Hunter. Stereotypes are bad though,
so point taken.
The comparisons of EI to other games was to
provide an *analogy* to people curious about EI
to give them an idea what it's feel is. It is a hard
game to explain the feel of, so analogies are
appropriate. Diablo just happens to be one of
my favourite games, so I can see many similar
aspects of the two. I am not claiming that our
game is as good as Diablo, just that, to *me* they
feel the same.
Thanks to the happy customers who have bought
EI, enjoyed it and are sticking up for us on the net.
Thanks for the feedback, positive and negative,
we are recording all of this and discussing it at
length for future EI projects.
-carl
Liquidated
for a friend but it almost perfectly matched the sentiments of mad sci that I
gave in to temptation :) I'm weak :)
My apologies
Cheers!
-Liquidated
nick
> ask would make for a very boring game where you simply direct your
> force to sanitize the base automatically! Your style of play sounds
> like your used to online strategy 'rush'-type moves. This game is
> more single-person figure-it-out kind of strategy, not just
> fuck-it-all-and-send-everybody-and-see-what-happens. As I've exampled
> above, the weapons characteristics combine with the movement
> restriction to make the solutions to many scenarios a series of
> coordinated commands of several colonists. A full room can often be
> attacked simultaneously from several sides, by alternating attacks and
> retreats to let weapons recharge and prevent any one colonist from
> taking too much damage, etc...
>
I think you've hit on a key reason for the 'polarised' game play experiences. The
problem is that the game lets you get away with playing with a
fuck-it-all-and-send-everybody-and-see-what-happens approach, and if you do play like
this you end up with lots of dead guys and lots of long waits at the medical bay...
(Just to make a quick comparison - right from the start in Commandos it was clear
that a click-drag-select click-on-target-to-kill approach was NOT the way to play. In
Enemy Infestation you CAN play like that, but if you do it is not an enjoyable
experience :(, but once I realised that it made a hell of a difference :).
I like the way you can develop different tactics to approach some situations. Some
things I have tried are:
For a room with lots of aliens, send the robot in first to the other side of the
room. As the aliens try to tear him apart, you can safely jump your guys in with the
fire power, saving up cloud type weapons is perfect for this.
Using the technician to lock off areas for a more systematic approach - sometimes the
aliens seem to want to go after you no matter what (the hunter types follow you
everywhere), and you can send them the long way round this way!
The tricky thing I found about the control interface was getting the reactions set
the way you like them. In general my approach was to set guys with weapons to guard,
that way they wouldn't go rushing in when their weapons ran out of charges, but would
quite happily defend themselves against wandering strays. Grouping also helped. I
tended to keep the rocket launcher guy in a group of his own, with either no default
reaction or a hide reaction, so he would go blowing up his mates with his over
zealous use.
>
>
> "The Swarm" is definitely one tough mission, but solveable
> nonetheless. You can save time by not having the marines suit up
> initially, but you'll have to cycle them through the medbay to full
> health before they're effective. Reviving your locksmith ASAP is key
> also, as locking the aliens out is the only way to provide enough time
> for the research. This is the one mission I've come accross so far
> that requires a 'melee' solution for the immediate exterior area
> that's saturated with aliens, once the research for more powerful
> weapons is completed.
You can send one or two guys out as human bait to lure the swarm away from the main
guys and give them time to kit up. Also, once you find that defense turret you can
lure them into its path. Its easier to coordinate with 2 players, although again I
found that because you can chain many commands together, you can get them to do the
run around on the aliens by shift-clicking one destination after another, which gives
you time to go back and deal with the main force. Still, its pretty hard for an
early level.
This mission is really good fun multiplayer (I played 2 player IPX over a lan). I
haven't seen this mentioned so I'll put in my 2 bits about multi-player. It works
co-op. You start with all the guys belonging to no-one, you click on them to 'grab'
control of them - so you really want to play with a friend or you might end up with
no-one :). You do get an extra action (button) that will 'release' a guy back to
being uncontrolled. Then someone else can grab him. When we played swarm, we would
kind of re-distribute the live guys after each wave of aliens so we both had some
(and the control panel shows you which player is controlling which guys). Some of the
control issues (trying to control all your guys to do the most effective thing at
once) are definately lessened simply by having less people to focus on, and so tight
battles work out to be very staisfying: You have more time to focus on the number of
shots they have left, who you want to target, when you want to run off and let your
weapons recharge... etc. Another main difference that I noticed was the fact that you
can't save the game in multi-player. The down side was the obvious stuff up and
restart one. Strangely enough, the up-side was that rescuing guys, or even trying to
stop them from being dragged off was more exciting. In single player, if I lost any
guys (certainly if I lost a few) and they got dragged off, I would tend to revert to
a saved game. Because you didn't have that option in multi-player, you would end up
doing tactics like trying to 'harass' aliens who were about to drag someone off. You
just lost a battle, so you couln't finish them off, but you could follow them into
the next area, they'd drop their quarry and go for you - then you'd jump out of the
room, or fire a shot and then jump out.
> I have to agree 100% with both of you here. The voices suck bigtime,
> especially the cutscenes at the beginning of each mission. The ingame
> phrases don't bother me too much, but should have a muting feature
> just the same. Some phrases are cues that colonists out of viewing
> range are being attacked, and so should remain on.
>
My sentiments too: that intro voice makes my skin crawl... the in game ones I don't
mind either, but it would be good to be able to separate 'important' ones somehow:
like if your guys are being attacked off screen, a cry for help is useful. Sometimes
it gets a bit too cluttered.
Nick
Thomas Pastor
it yet, but I think it's pretty good. The issues brought up by others about
recharging weapons are also a pet peave of mine, but my main complaint is the
timed nature of many missions, such as rescuing key colonists before their
life force reaches zero, or complete the mission before orbital bombardment
commenses. I feel like I have to carelessy rush through some of these
missions instead of carefully advancing to unexplored portions of the map and
moving members of my team into key positions for critical strikes. Overall,
I enjoy the game and find the in game voices very entertaining.
--
--Thomas J. Pastor--
tjpa...@post.its.mcw.edu
Fred A. Berganio
>I like the way you can develop different tactics to approach some situations. Some
>things I have tried are:
>For a room with lots of aliens, send the robot in first to the other side of the
>room. As the aliens try to tear him apart, you can safely jump your guys in with the
>fire power, saving up cloud type weapons is perfect for this.
Yeah, I've used the cleaning bot much for this type of task. I prefer
to send Dexter against single opponents if possible, and with the
cleaver as his best weapon.
>Using the technician to lock off areas for a more systematic approach - sometimes the
>aliens seem to want to go after you no matter what (the hunter types follow you
>everywhere), and you can send them the long way round this way!
I've done this too, a few times, but end up having to lock and unlock
the door, paying more attention to this task than I would like. Good
option and possibilities in some cases, though.
>The tricky thing I found about the control interface was getting the reactions set
>the way you like them. In general my approach was to set guys with weapons to guard,
>that way they wouldn't go rushing in when their weapons ran out of charges, but would
>quite happily defend themselves against wandering strays. Grouping also helped. I
>tended to keep the rocket launcher guy in a group of his own, with either no default
>reaction or a hide reaction, so he would go blowing up his mates with his over
>zealous use.
Yes. Rocket launchers and BOGs w/ strong/very strong kill are the
best weapons. The area weapons will ultimately hurt allies when fired
in group battles. The remotes and other weapons will typically have a
wacky effect when the BOGs are strong kill. The ray guns are
frustrating, as they are usually weak kill and recharge so slowly! I
also set my troops to guard, and segregate them in groups of weapons
as you say. For example, after the big spray-party in "Swarm" that
killed the majority of aliens, I sent out a group of 3 BOG-troops
backed up by a pair of R.L troops to sanitize the immediate exterior
in preparation to assault the Queen's den. When enemies approached,
if they were few and/or spaced apart I would break off a single
BOG-troop at a time to take them out individually and to save ammo for
critical spots - it's a nuisance when all three empty their weapons
on a single beast! If you're careful in your attacks, at least one
troop will have all three shots most of the time. If the BOG-guys get
overwhelmed, I would bring in the R.L.guys to take out excess aliens;
using them singly maximizes the rockets since recharges are usually
finite and typically far away (-relatively). This worked pretty well,
and a concerted attack of the Queen by all 3 BOGs simultaneously
finished her off fairly quickly with minimum casualties...
>You can send one or two guys out as human bait to lure the swarm away from the main
>guys and give them time to kit up. Also, once you find that defense turret you can
>lure them into its path. Its easier to coordinate with 2 players, although again I
>found that because you can chain many commands together, you can get them to do the
>run around on the aliens by shift-clicking one destination after another, which gives
>you time to go back and deal with the main force. Still, its pretty hard for an
>early level.
Those are all pretty good ideas. What DEFENSE TURRET?? - never found
it! (Dammit, Jim!)
>This mission is really good fun multiplayer (I played 2 player IPX over a lan). I
>haven't seen this mentioned so I'll put in my 2 bits about multi-player.
<snip>
Haven't had the opportunity to play MP yet as I am trying to convince
a few friends that this one is worth trying. The possibilities do
sound great though, especially co-op, which I prefer.
>My sentiments too: that intro voice makes my skin crawl... the in game ones I don't
>mind either, but it would be good to be able to separate 'important' ones somehow:
>like if your guys are being attacked off screen, a cry for help is useful. Sometimes
>it gets a bit too cluttered.
Heh! The intro voices are so bad they're funny, which unfortunately
loses the atmosphere of the game. The soundbytes within the game can
get cluttered, but yes, it's good to have individual 'threat cues' for
each of the characters (each character utters a distinctive phrase
when confronted by an alien threat) as you generally get quite busy
trying to stay one step ahead of those insidious aliens! Cheers.
regards,
===============
fre...@tdl.com
===============