Red Tide player Review

[OVO]

I am a "FACEs of WAR" and "MEN of WAR" veteran.

I have been playing RED TIDE since mid-November.
I have just finished the 1st mission in 1944 where at the end you have to make a defensive perimeter around the building with mines from boxes, etc.
Conclusion so far is they have put a great amount of thought and work into this game apparently based on true battles of the Russian Black Coats!
I like it very much.
It gives me a lot of entertainment.

The only 1 exception that I did not like were some crappy sounds for some light hand-held guns/machine guns.
Luckily I was able to fix this right from the beginning by using the "Men of War - Ultimate Sound Pack".
http://www.digitalmindsoft.eu/forums...hp?f=15&t=3744
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[wilson419]

Before I offer any criticism of Red Tide (…for what it is worth), I must give props to the dev team and 1c. SHOWWII, FOW, MOW, and various other titles from these guys have kept me entertained for years; they most definitely have the WWII RTS genre on lock! I have been blown away with practically every new game that comes along from them, and every expansion/sequel keeps improving on the previous title, for the most part anyways.

With that said, my opinion is that Red Tide, although fun, is probably my least favorite of the franchise thus far. Not that it isn’t worth playing or anything, because it is, and if your diehard into the series like me you naturally have to play it, but it just seams to disappoint in many areas where the games previously have kept me really excited.

For example, I love the set-piece defense mission (a few posters have already mentioned this qualm), and I am baffled that it isn’t included much in RT. Now I understand that there needs to be assault/sabotage/recon/rescue missions in the game as well to keep it flowing smoothly and for variety sake, however, RT is almost all offensive in nature. Furthermore, the “few” defensive maps are nowhere near as customize-ably interesting as they have been in the past, most times a defensive action pops up in an otherwise offensive mission, and it is far too hasty in tempo to be thoroughly enjoyed (usually I am defending by the seat of my pants in these scenarios).

The lack of things like medium-heavy armor and large assortments of weaponry to name a few gets somewhat dreary after a while as well. The game principally revolves around earlier conflicts in the war, with a very specific organization within the WWII era Russian military, so I guess I understand this to some extent, but maybe that lack of scope is what I miss. It just gets repetitive and stale to run around with virtually the same 7 men, using the same cross-section of weapons, doing basically very similar missions (with a few different details thrown in here and there). Variety is the spice of life or something like that, and this franchise rarely disappointed in this arena in the past.

“Glitches-a-plenty” seam to hinder finer points of the game play, for me at least. Granted, there have always been a fair number of excusable wonky technicalities to these games, which I have accepted given the elaborate degree of micromanagement offered to the player, but I have become exceedingly frustrated with these “bugs” in RT. Scripting, triggers, idiotic AI behavior, weird enviro/map elements, etc spring forth all too often to be totally excusable. Perhaps the relatively rapid turn-around on this expansion explains some of that, but I really wish it were a lot cleaner.

Like I said, props to the team, they tried something a little different with RT and maybe some people will love it, but I think it is the weakest link thus far. It is my opinion that they have found an engine/concept/style that works really really well, so why mess with a good thing!? All they principally need continue to do is improve features, graphics, keep the scenarios flowing, and leave everything else the same and they will continue to have a winner for years to come. Red Tide seams like it could have been thrown into MOW in pieces, but not as a standalone expansion, maybe it was marketing, or maybe the Devs felt compelled to pay special homage to the Russians, or whatever it was, but it could have been better imo…