So has anyone picked this game up yet? I picked it up at lunch am sitting here at work just waiting to get home and play it. This was an interesting purchase for me considering I did not like the previous GR games nor did I like the Rainbow 6 games. But I have just heard way too many good things about this game to pass it up. This game seems like it has the ability to be incredible online. Considering I have 0 people on my friends list I might have to get some gamertags for this game. So does anyone that has played the game yet have any impressions?
I picked up my copy yesterday afternoon and have been playing through it slowly, but surely. Graphics are freakin' amazing. Best on the system so far. No drawing in, and the whole city is playable (although you get warned if you wander too far away from the "mission parameters"). The shooting sequences when you're on the helicopter are great as well. Lighting is tremendous. When you walk outside from the shadows you get a quick flare of light just like in real life. Intense firefights cause the colors to go slightly washed out, just like if you focused all your attention on threats, not scenery, in real life as well. Near explosions from grenades and tank shells (yeah, you fight tanks in a few spots) cause everything to slow down and sounds to echo, much like in COD2. The only real drawbacks so far have been: tank and Bradley movement (they're basically on rails and can only take a certain path through the level their on) and your squad AI (they're not great at LEANING and shooting around corners, and they're a bit too dependant on you for direction). All in all though, this game is a great purchase for anyone with a 360. Plus, it gave me an excuse to put down a deposit for ESIV:O Collector's Edition. The 360 is really coming into it's own. Now hopefully Blazing Angels or The Outfit is good enough to spend my Best Buy Reward Zone certificates on.
I put my pre-order in for Oblivion when I picked up the game as well. I guess by the end of the month my wife will hate me.
I only played it for a few hours last night before I crashed, but I am really... really hooked. Easily the most graphically impressive game I've ever played. When you are flying through the chopper overlooking ALL of Mexico city with the music playing, wow... just wow. I'll post some more about it later after I've played it a bit more. I'm more of a "balls to the wall" first person shooter player, so the controls and gameplay are taking me a bit to get used to... longer then I'd like them to take. I can't wait to finish the first person so I can get to the badass online play!
I'm glad that someone started a thread about GRAW. I was wanting to pick up a copy but I was waiting to hear how it turned out first. Is it more of a squad-based game like the ones in the past?
Do you think I need to reserve a copy of Oblivion too? Shouldn't there be enough copies at like Best Buy or whatever if I go in the morning?
It is squad based, but it is a small squad (3 NPC's) to control. The control configuration just takes a bit getting used to for me since I don't play too many squad based shooters. You can do just fine without your squad though, and you can also heal them when they die (don't really die just get injured) which I thought was pretty cool. I usually have my squad in a fixed position while I scout and I also put them in position while I flank. I've only played about an hour and a half so far so I can't give too much information but even for a squad based noob like myself I don't find it too difficult to get used to. I wouldnt' worry about putting money down for it, but I had trouble finding GRAW simply because it was a late shipper... as in by the time it went to gold, went to press and was shipped was a matter of a couple of weeks. Most stores got the game on a 11:00AM-1:00PM shipment on the day of release with the exception of GameStop, they had the game as soon as their doors opened. Oblivion was never really delayed, while GRAW was delayed (supposed to be launch title) so I'm fairly certain that stores will actually have the game days before release rather then the afternoon of release like GRAW. Either way, I don't see a shortage of them since there are still a great shortage of systems to begin with.
There should be copies of the standard edition and maybe even the collector's edition available at Best Buy or wherever is your store of choice. However, I hate getting up early just to get a game and I like the feeling of security in knowing that my copy will be waiting for me when I'm ready for it.
Actually, Oblivion was supposed to be a launch title as well, or at least out by "Christmas 2005" IIRC. Of course, given Bethesda's history, especially with TES games, it wasn't really a surprise to see it delayed. In fact, it kind of made some people happy (less bugs).
Oblivion was never given an official release date, in fact the release date was only reveiled a few weeks ago. Bethesda is a developer that is in the Valve/iD "it will be done when it's done" school of thought. While many people projected that it would be a Christmas release I don't think Bethesda really set a date for that time because that just isn't their style. I think Take 2 probably intentionally "delayed" the game from it's December release to March for financial reasons helping to boost quarter numbers and Bethesda isn't the type of dev group to complain about that since they always try to deliver the best and most polished product they can... but that's just me and my conspiracy theories.
Well, I guess if you want to be strict about "official" dates, it wasn't delayed, but they sure didn't mind giving off some dates prior to that. I have one video where Todd Howard of Bethesda says it will be coming to PC/360 Christmas 2005, and then I have another video of Pete Hines at X05 saying that they were looking to release Oblivion at launch (which was a month later at the time). They do seem like a "when it's done" type developer, but they didn't seem to say that every time. Again, I think that Bethesda just needed some time to iron out the bugs. As i said, this isn't the first time this has happened (probably not the last), and it certainly isn't surprising. I think I even recall a developer mentioning a pretty bad bug in the Radiant AI system prior to the launch of the 360 (and prior to the "delay" news). I suppose TT could have pushed for a delay, but in this case, I think it was just Bethesda needing more time to polish up the game.
To those that have it, can you play co-op with 2 players on the same system (2 controllers hooked in the same 360)? I read it's co-op with System Link or online but I'm just curious about that above. Thanks for any info.
Uh, I haven't tried it out to see how well it's done but according to the instructions the game can be played multiplayer either Live, local (2 or more hooked up to one Box) and system link. However, I don't believe the campaign can be played through with two players.
I'll take an Ubisoft title over an EA title ANY day of the week. Have you played GRAW? If not, then how the hell would you know which is better? Not to mention the fact that BF2 was recently delayed until at least late April who in the hell could you compare them anyway? Battlefield 2 on the PC is far from a great game, it looks amazing but the coding and performance leaves a TON to be desired. I'm hoping EA has learned their leason from the PC version and make up for it with the 360 title... but I never hold my breath with EA. Ghost Recon has all of the multiplayer goodness that we have grown to love. You can play co-op via system link, live or split screen... and you can even play co-op with 16 other players against 16 NPCs via Live. It has just about every multi-player mode you could dream up in a shooter.
To be fair, DICE is developing the game (AFAIK), and I'd trust them more than most of the other EA studios (maybe around the same as Criterion, and BR for the 360 is sitting at 89-90% at Gamerankings...maybe EA Chicago too). That said, it is a bit ridiculous to proclaim BF2>GRAW as you said, and I'd probably prefer GRAW over BF2 personally. However, the clip they showed off BF2 for the 360 on the 1UP show last week did look very nice. IIRC, BF2 for the PC is sitting at around 90% at Gamerankings, compared to 92% for GRAW.
I just get tired of people proclaiming things they know nothing about... I'm far from a GRAW fanboy but throwing out information with nothing to back it up regardless of the topic is ridiculous, especially in topics where people are asking for real feedback. I hope to high hell that BF2 is a great game on the 360, because I love military shooters... but we are nearly two months out from knowing it's fate.
I have this game on pre-order when the 360 is released here in Australia on the 23rd of this month. Can't wait to get my hands on this and FNR3
