[Micky C]

Here's a bug: The bullet armour is FUCKING USELESS. I'm being shot at and got down to 2% health, yet somehow my armour stayed completely filled the whole time. Is it meant to do anything? Worst implementation of armour I've ever seen in a game.

Not to mention bullet holes don't form on walls 99% of the time.

[Marphy Black]

I just completed the game on Hard difficulty playing at a leisurely pace with a final play time of 9 hours. However, I can guarantee at least 2-3 of those hours were spent needlessly replaying the same sections that I know a handful of manual saves would have spared me. Just a heads up to anyone who hasn't started their game yet: Don't do your first playthrough on Hard difficulty. In fact, don't even do it in Normal. To minimize the inevitable frustrations, go with Easy.

Simply put, everything already said about the inadequacy of the check point system is absolutely true and then some. The check points are either way too far apart, too inconveniently placed, or simply nonexistent as is obvious during the long, multi-stage boss fights. However, not only are the check points poorly placed, they're also completely broken as well. More often than not, they'll simply forget the equipment you had which is essentially the only thing these check points have to remember. Case in point, when I first hit the check point before the battle against NME, I had 21 health, Bullet Proof Armor, Asbestos Armor, a Dark Staff, and a Drunk Missile. After I died and reloaded the check point, I inexplicably lost my Bullet Proof Armor, Asbestos Armor, Dark Staff, and Drunk Missile. However, the game did remember I only had 21 health. NME was not a fun fight.

And if check points being broken wasn't enough, the occasional game-breaking bug does occur once in a while. I only crashed once during my play time, but that happened to be after spending 10 minutes slowly whittling El Oscuro's health down to a sliver. Of course, crashing wasn't enough for Oscuro as he decided to completely bug out in several attempts, forcing additional retries:

http://cloud-2.steam...B859AC82F63974/

Overall, ROTT 2013 was a frustrating experience, but in more ways than one. It was frustrating because of the ill-conceived design and gameplay choices, but also frustrating because it feels as if it's just on the verge of being the retro, old school shooter experience it wants to deliver. Honestly, so many of these issues would instantly be alleviated and many of the bugs made tolerable with the simple addition of manual saving. It really is the crux of the matter, and its inclusion would be a veritable magic bullet in terms of how many issues it would fix. Unfortunately, first impressions are key, and people are getting frustrated right now. For the developer's sake, I hope manual saving can be added in the future, but it may be a missed opportunity by then.

[Micky C]

Well said. All in all it's not a terrible game. But lack of manual saving makes the problems it does have 1000x bigger.

I was playing the first boss, and he seems impossible to defeat (I'm playing on easy). I don't know how people did it...

[Jblade]

Apparently there's a bug that causes armour to not work after you reload a checkpoint. I haven't bought it myself as I can't run it but I'm looking at a variety of places to see what the general impression is.

[DavoX]

This is a very obvious case of the developers gettting way too familiar with the game and thus thinking that the game is too easy and needed less checkpoints in the levels. Did you guys get any beta testers AT ALL?

Still I hope this sells well if you guys really did mortgage your houses and all that to get this done. Maybe another house needs a mortgage to add saves?

[uh . . . .]

Wow, no raw mouse input. Can' hit anyone in multiplayer with bullets due to having to be so precise, but can't because the mouse aiming is garbage. The hit detection is awful with bullets in multiplayer too; it doesn't ever register even when the crosshair is dead on them. Fix this and all of the other multiplayer issues.

[Kathy]

Mikko C, on 31 July 2013 - 09:31 PM, said:

I was playing the first boss, and he seems impossible to defeat (I'm playing on easy). I don't know how people did it...

I was playing on hard and the tactic was simple - sit in a room.

[Micky C]

Kathy, on 01 August 2013 - 04:38 AM, said:

I was playing on hard and the tactic was simple - sit in a room.

Yeah I didn't see those rooms before.

[----]

The first level runs fine for me on ludicrous settings.

I only played a bit, since I have not time yet.

WIll post my deeper impressions on Sunday.

[Kristian Joensen]

The game runs fine for me on ludicrous settings @1080P. I played through the first level, a bit of the second level and some MP(the Interceptor 24h server). All of it was smooth as butter. The bug I had was easy to fix in the end. I am enjoying the game very much so far.

[Kathy]

First episode on Ludicrous graphics was fine, but the second wasn't. The boss fight was unbearable, so I switched to low. And then I switched from hard to easy. )

GF560TI@1080p

[NightFright]

I knew why I haven't started playing it yet, even though the game is unlocked since yesterday. In general, I always wait for the first few patches, hoping to get the major annoyances out of the way.

However, I am not sure if they will add manual saving, as it seems game design is really based on preventing backtracking. What they could do however is to increase the amount of checkpoints per level - about 50-100% more possibly.

I see the discussion coming: Is this too hard or frustrating now, or have "modern" players turned into pussies who just can't take it any more? Personally, I think you actually can't fully go back to the old times. However, the checkpoint system is one of the worst abominations of the new "era", and I hate it as much as I possibly can hate a feature which takes away game control from the player. Either you do it completely retro, then you throw auto-regenerating HP, linear leveldesign and checkpoints into the trash, or you don't have ANY of these things. You can still try mixing it ofc, but then you gotta do it right.

One suggestion would be to have more checkpoints in the lower difficulties while reducing them in the higher ones (or just keep the current amount there, without any changes).

Still, I wouldn't ask for the dev's heads now already. Give them some time and let them react to community feedback. I am sure they will come up with something once they realize there is demand for it.

[Kathy]

It's not about pussies or old school. The gameplay simply doesn't work with lots of secrets, deathtraps and yet sparse checkpoints.

Implementing manual saving might have been a chore, but they could have at least made more checkpoints and/or "save rooms". I can't believe they thought checkpoint-only system wouldn't be a problem. Add to that the game's supposedly old school vibe and you've got checkpoint as game's biggest problem.

[Lunick]

I don't think there is really room for more checkpoints because they all represent a different part of the level so you would have to start making up more names for places. Not that I don't want a better solution or anything.

[Kristian Joensen]

I am enjoying the game immensely however the checkpoints are way too sparse for me receiving my optimal enjoyment from this.

[Kathy]

Lunick, on 01 August 2013 - 06:16 AM, said:

I don't think there is really room for more checkpoints because they all represent a different part of the level so you would have to start making up more names for places.

Now why would I give two shits about their naming? Checkpoint 355 part 2.

[Lunick]

Kathy, on 01 August 2013 - 06:24 AM, said:

Now why would I give two shits about their naming? Checkpoint 355 part 2.

Because they sometimes try to be funny with their naming?

[Kristian Joensen]

Kathy, on 01 August 2013 - 06:24 AM, said:

Now why would I give two shits about their naming? Checkpoint 355 part 2.

Agreed. When I have been playing Shadow Warrior Classic Deluxe I have been tending to save before opening every door. The ROTT checkpoint system isn't even close to that level.

[Hool]

I haven't got the game yet because I would rather much have the game fixed and playable with little to no hiccups than have that.



Someone posted a screencap of one of the most odd glitches I've ever seen, it isn't mine though but just look.

[Lunick]

That video

[Radar]

Did you read the comments? The guy was using console commands to make it look glitchier.

[NightFright]

Cheaters gonna cheat. But I would be interested in watching the guy finish the game like that.

Anyway, I hope more productive things can be done with the console besides this (only mildly amusing) attempt to fool the community.

[Striker]

I posted a lot of my issues with the game here: http://www.intercept...&p=18736#p18736

[Tetsuo]

That arm thing... during developement those where known as "combat arms" and they (Frederik himself IIRC) assured me on the interceptor forums that they would be fixed in the shipping version. I've never seen them during normal play though as noted there they used console commands to achieve it.

My beef with the game personally speaking is the performance problems with my ivy bridge 3.4Ghz and GTX680 2GB no matter the resolution or settings and the infuriating jumping puzzles in areas like "the room" (Bouncy Castle... grr...) and level bugs that remain in the levels. What made those levels worse was the fact that one could get caught on various things jutting from the walls and completely miss jumps. Frankly, I hate the jumping puzzles especially combined with the performance issues.

Items in general where a foil in a lot of situations as many of them are completely indestructible and it seems like not even the splash damage can go through. This allows stuff like railing or whatever is around to protect the baddies. The original game had this too to a degree (the traps such as spinning blades) but more of the items there where destructible... you can shoot out light sources in the original but you can seem to do that in the remake. They could fix this problem by even just making certain things like railing noclip to projectiles or certain things in the background. So the player can't get caught on them.

Also is it just me or are the spinning blades moving around too fast? Even playing as the fastest character I had issues getting through the "blade runner" parts... especially when one gets caught and gets tossed around like a ping pong ball. Getting around those traps in the original was more satisfying to me.

Also the magazine sticking out the side of the MP40 is an eyesore to me and I wish it just matched the pickup model and looked like a classic MP40... especially since the reload animation is just superflous. I wouldn't mind if someone made a mod for that.

Also I don't know if it's just me but I felt that some of the humor was a bit too puerile compared to the original such as the homoerotic poster in one of the areas in episode 1.

Speaking of episode 1 I thought it ended up looking rather bland because they went a bit too far with the nazi base style and didn't add in enough culty trappings such as ororboros doors and other snake themed decorations. Even the castle episodes don't have much in the way of that.... they mostly focused on using the triad symbol as decoration but the original game had so much more than that. I voiced my opinion about this at the intercepter forums early on after they released the first trailers but they chose to ignore it.

This game could have used more work.... perhaps even a years more work to iron out the glitches and add more pizzaz to the levels. Personally I'm not a member of the "older is always better" crowd but this game has issues.

[The Commander]

Ms. Radar, on 01 August 2013 - 07:23 AM, said:

Did you read the comments? The guy was using console commands to make it look glitchier.

I did and saw this,

Quote

Interceptor Entertainment 3 hours ago

GOD DAMN THIS GAME LOOKS GOOD!

lol

[Kathy]

Tetsuo, on 01 August 2013 - 08:23 AM, said:

This allows stuff like railing or whatever is around to protect the baddies.

This. Sometimes it's just better to stick to mp40(?).

[Tetsuo]

I also have a problem with the melee the way it works. It seems to lock onto and move the player to the nearest target but I don't want that. Doing that I've ended up going where I don't want to. I see they wanted to make the knife for example as fast as possible while still having animation to please certain people who want instant knife hits. But I thought the melee was better in for example L4D2 than in ROTT. I can't see this melee locking on mechanic making multiplayer fun.

Also as a followup to my performance issues I mentioned eariler. It seems some levels are OK but others such as Robotricks(? the level with the rotating GAD hallway), the Darian fight, and a few others I forgot have abysmal performance.

BTW, about the armory system. I miss the button the original game had to toggle between the last equipped bullet weapon and the current equipped rocket launcher. I used to have that on a right click.

Also I don't like how they combined alt-fire and iron sights. I usually bind the latter to a keyboard key (such as V) and have melee on right click. My only recourse was to bind alt-fire to a key so that I can bind melee to right click so sights works as I expect but of course with those weapons that have alt-fire I have to hit the key. That's a minor complaint compared to the rest but it's still something.

Since they insisted on having alt-fire modes be on a separate button (It was on the same button in the original and holding down the button activated the alt-fire rather than tapping). I would have settled for having alt-fire be on the right and melee on the middle mouse button and sights on a keyboard key rather than how they did it. When firing a weapon that does not have alt-fire I would have settled for both buttons doing the same thing... or like in Unreal 1 where alt-fire on a pistol is shooting it gangsta style.

Also, considering dual pistols pretty much replaces single I thought they could have combined the two into one slot like hittting 1 toggles between dual and single like hitting 3 toggled between super and regular shotgun in Doom II.

Otherwise I was OK with the armory system as it was mostly patterned after the original game.

[OpenMaw]

Lunick, on 01 August 2013 - 06:28 AM, said:

Because they sometimes try to be funny with their naming?

Which only serves to annoy the player when the game is ruining their phone by being a cheap whore about killing them.

[Engel220]

I'm enjoying the game so far. I have a few performance issues with framerate drops at certain points on levels, as well as an odd glitch where after a few seconds of going back to the main menu my game freezes for a few seconds (runs fine after it's done), but on the whole I've found the game to be fun.

I have to agree with the checkpoint save system being flawed, a manual save option would be the ultimate addition to the game in terms of improving it, but more frequent checkpoints would at least be a step in the right direction. Surely if a manual save option is not possible to implement right now (or ever) then adding more save points into the checkpoint system to avoid jumping back too far would be a suitable remedy.

With Interceptor being a pretty small development team who are working as a mostly 'virtual' company (in the sense that their staff aren't all in one place), some patience is necessary. I'm certain that they're listening to what's being said regarding the issues brought forward and are working on patches to fix any common issues and improve on what is, in my mind, a very solid product, but at least give them a chance to roll out some patches before writing the game off completely.

[Ronin]

Yeah there is a lot to like here, I might just hold off playing the rest until they sort out some of the issues even though a part of me enjoys how hard it is at the moment, makes it quite rewarding to last a while without getting killed.