Re: Iron Front Liberation 1944 Bad Serial Number Given In Setup
Velva Non
What we have here is an all-encompassing World War II sim, that does more for Eastern Front battle antics than a couple of years of wargame releases. That's not to say this comes without problems, and further opportunities for criticism. But we'll get to that.
Let's look at those two campaigns for a moment. They're set in 1944, with the Nazis tryign to hold off the Red Army attacks. You can play from the Nazi perspective, or from the Red Army perspective, and the situations that face you ramp up from small scale infantry engagements, to full-blown battlefields with aircraft and angry houses. Arma 2 handles this range of situations marvellously, but the experience is one that seems constantly hampered by the lack of vision from the designers. The trick to making campaigns work in an open-ended world like this one, is to stage your set pieces in situations where the player really gets to feel a part of action. Hell, even if the AI completes the objective, try and get the player in a position where he can see some of what is going on. Iron Front doesn't often make that possible.
Reload. Reload. Reload. The excruciating grind of this campaign reminds us of why the Arma campaigns never really work. For reasons of persistence and so forth, multiplayer games do not seem to face this precisely problem. The extreme lethality of the world, particularly here, make being booted back to a save point into an agonising experience.
And, fucking hell, I know I am a nerd for maps and huge open game environments, but this is almost worth buying for the big slices of Eastern Europe it portrays. I had a poke about in one of the Polish towns, and every building could be explored. The potential for urban warfare is enormous. ENORMOUS. I sat on a hill and watched Red Army and Wehrmacht do murder on each other.
All this, however, brings us to the final, critical volley. There's another group of critics that Iron Front is also exposed to, and they are the Arma players who point out that the game already has extensive World War II modifications, brimming with additional assets, so why would anyone need to buy this, a commercial version? That's a tough question, and one that I don't have answer for. The game's developers and publishers will point to the wealth of additional planes and artillery piece, the maps, and the campaigns, and so on. But that doesn't really seem like enough when the Arma 2 community has already produced so much of that for free. And the many rough edges are not going to convince any casual players, either.
No, Arma II is not short of World War II modifications, and this simply complicates matters. I can't honestly recommend Iron Front to anyone, precisely because it reminded of the things about Arma which irritate me, and precisely because so much of what it does is already supported by the community. But I also recognise that certain players will get a kick out of this game: a great big Panzerkick. There's no denying that this is a big release, that does try to justify its price tag. It delivers World War II scenarios with aplomb, and when used right, it will be impressive. I just wish it had done more, and tried harder, particularly in the single-player campaigns. Make the opening mission a situation in which you get to watch a tank battle through binoculars or something. What's actually here is so by-the-numbers, so underwhelming, that my interest vaporises in the warm summer sun.
That one other particular modification is showing off what can really be done with the Arma 2 engine - and capturing so many imaginations in the process - seems a little embarrassing for a full-blown project like this one.
To be honest, I don't think there are any. In most cases, the war in video games is nothing but a big advertisement for the U.S. Army, where the player plays "the good guys" and kills "the bad guys". Sometimes he accomplishes his duties with compromises, doing reprehensible things. But, still, it's always a fight between good and evil.
One thing that you can't see, though, is war conducted by real people. And, if we're talking about soldiers, there aren't good and bad guys but only winners and losers. Iron Front - Liberation 1944 puts me in the guise of a German soldier during World War II, reversing the usual perspective. Suddenly, I realize that I'm not one of the bad guys: I'm just a soldier. A soldier who follows orders.
I must say I was incredibly surprised by this game. This is what we might call a tactical FPS, but with a strong simulative component. You may die with a single shot, your ammunitions are low, guns have recoil, it's not easy to identify the enemy and it is even harder to hit them.
And yet, we can exploit the resources of the battlefield: we drive, use heavy artillery, anti-aircraft cannons, tanks. Fill the role of driver, passenger, gunner. Receive orders from superiors and give orders to subordinates. In a word: war.
The campaign follows the story of a German soldier named Neumann on the Eastern front. The enemy is attacking, and the Germans are gradually retreating. Unfortunately, our superior is a bastard field marshal, willing to unnecessarily sacrifice dozens of people. This is not a particularly original story, but enough to entertain us.
Then, there's a Russian campaign, that puts us in the shoes of an army that is winning a war. This is a nice reversal of perspective, which enables us to try some of the most enjoyable weapons in the game: tanks.
As mentioned, however, the war is not easy. We don't fight face to face with the enemy, as in the usual first person shooters. The enemy is often far away, hidden, and we find ourselves stuck in the same position for several minutes, waiting for the enemy to withdraw or die.
In these moments you realize how interesting the tactical aspect of this game is, which should not be confused with an action title: every movement, every shot must be carefully evaluated. Consider, for example, that it is possible to adjust the sights on our own rifle, according to the distance of the enemy. We must therefore consider many aspects before we pull the trigger, and if you are injured it becomes almost impossible to aim, because our hands are trembling.
The developers have done an excellent job in trying to recreate weapons, vehicles and uniforms of the armies at war. Each weapon is faithfully reproduced, and its physical characteristics (size, charge time, accuracy) are designed to perfection. The same can be said of vehicles, especially tanks. The driving model is certainly not that of a racing game, but it does its duty.
The game, however, is not perfect. First, there's some problems with artificial intelligence. It's very nice to see an enemy down on the ground when a bullet whistles past his ears, but it's much less pleasant to see him standing in the street, waiting to be hit with all the stiffness of a shooting gallery duck. Our companions, when not following our orders, tend to stand still in the same position and/or to expose themselves to danger for no apparent reason. Overall, the AI doesn't totally ruin the experience, but in a so-precise simulative environment, we'd have expected something better.
Some problems, in addition, are found with the user interface. Giving orders to our teammates is very complex. In some cases, telling a comrade "walk from here to there" makes you press a sequence of four buttons, following complex menus.
The real problem with Iron Front - Liberation 1944, however, is merely technical. We have to admit that this game was virtually unplayable until the release of the first patch, which was certainly not miraculous in terms of stability improvements. In Windows 7 64-bit the title crashes every 5 minutes, a problem that we solved by turning on the infamous Windows XP compatibility mode.
Also, although it uses Arma II's engine, the game suffers from huge gaps in terms of visuals. Certainly, from a game like this we didn't expect the graphics of Call of Duty, but at least we would like not to see the head of our character sinking into a wall, or watching some textures appearing and disappearing after a few seconds. Not to mention the frame drops we experienced all the time.
From the soundtrack point of view, the music acts only in some crucial moments, and it's quite pleasant. The dialogs (you can choose to play with the English voices, but also with the original languages of the soldiers: German or Russian) doesn't represent a masterpiece of acting, and the entries are not synchronized with the lips of the characters.
I'm torn. In some ways, Iron Front - Liberation 1944 is a masterpiece. I don't think I've ever seen a game able to put World War II on stage in a so realistic way. It manages to capture certain emotions that I didn't see since Saving Private Ryan. But, in this case, the film appears to have been directed by Uwe Boll and realized with a low budget. That is: if Iron Front had a higher budget, it would've been a giant. A true heavyweight. Unfortunately for us, it's just a beautiful game gone wrong.
The year started with accelerated attacks againstGerman positions across a wide front. Even the staunchest supporters of the Nazis nowunderstood that the end could not be far off. The mood in Hungary changed drastically. TheJews became secretly jubilant and were more confident of an early end to their suffering.Some, such as my Grandmother Mali (Pikkel), were still pessimistic. She used to say to me,'Tibale (as she used to call me), they will not rest until there are no longer any Jewsaround. I hope I am wrong, but I have the feeling of a great catastrophe." Althoughshe was a religious and God-fearing woman, I did not think that she had any powers ofprophecy. Even now, I wonder whether hers was just a gloom-and-doom mentality or if shehad the gift of foretelling the future. In any event, it turned out that her predictioncame true in a way even more dramatic than she could have suspected.
The mood among the Hungarians also changed,favoring a more moderate approach towards the Jewish population. With every Russianadvance, Hungarian anxiety grew, especially among the igenyl, those who hadrequisitioned Jewish stores and enterprises. Their nervousness was such that some closedtheir businesses and returned to their old homes in Hungary proper. Others stayed packedand ready to move out on short notice.
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