Gamespot Review for CoD - Score: 4.0

[Hunden]

Idiots

[Fltlt_HardBall]

Originally Posted by Russkly

Fair review.

Love it or hate it (and I could grow to love it and will stick with it, incidentally), CoD was released in a parlous state.

Maybe we'll find out why sometime...

R

Absolutely. I get a strong feeling that there is or was a whole lot of chaos going on behind the scenes there. I would be interested to find out just how it all went down. I'm sorry that Oleg is no longer there- his departure takes with it a lot of the goodwill that was earned... at least with me.

I, too will stick with CoD and I am confident it will evolve into a polished product in due course. Let's just hope they generate enough revenue to keep the patches coming...

[Flanker35M]

S!

I read the review with my flight simming tinted goggles removed. The review is quite good and points out very well the things that are more or less bugged or unfinished in CoD now. Most of us here have been tinkering along with IL-2 since beginning so we surely get over the features/bugs/whatever. But the average gamer that wants to get into Battle Of Britain will be baffled for sure.

Why? Some reasons to follow..The GUI is too complicated and cluttered. Compare to IL-2 where it was a breeze to setup everything. From sounds, graphics to controls and multiplayer. CoD has a lot more functions but the development team has the experience from IL-2 so it feels strange that why not just adjust what was already good to fit in CoD? Making new does not require you to break what already is working.

Performance issues. These will scare away many. Not all are ready to wait for patches or to tinker with settings so they can get acceptable performance. Not all have hours to play, but want to jump in the cockpit and have spin..a smooth one! CoD lacks a lot in this case. For example SSAO was on by default and without Kegetys propably would be still. Now we got an option to turn off this feature in GUI. Better off would be to have a good GUI from the start, where you could adjust settings to your liking. And good documentation of what each setting affects.

Same goes with the houses causing stutter. In original IL-2 the houses/towns/cities were a FPS killer and same applies to CoD. So one can ask why did devs not wrestle this from the start as the experience from IL-2 was there. Add to this the texture sizes noted by Kegetys and no wonder we struggle to get CoD to run acceptably. IMHO flight sim graphics do not need to be like in FPS games. They need to be functional. You do not watch door knobs when zooming past 300mph..you get the pic.

The bugs in game. What were the so called beta testers doing? How can errors in texts, lack of features etc. slip past? When testing your job is to find those bugs in GUI, texts, features..whatever there is. Do things, strain the game to make the bugs appear. Then repeat and file a report to the devs so they can fix it if needed. Devs grant you this opportunity to help them find the lurking bugs, it is not easy for devs to see it all or think of everything thus beta test is needed. As a tester you look at the game as an outsider, not as a fan of the sim or game genre(whatever you are testing). In this case I would give the "chosen ones" a whack in the face, job not so well done as so many easily seen bugs are there. Beta testing is hard work, not an opportunity to just get into an "inner circle".

Some of the critics go to devs as well. 6 years of development time. That is a lot and they had all the experience from IL-2 with them. Oleg mentioned 4 years of development to IL-2 before release. They started CoD development some 4 years after IL-2 was released so basically 8 years of experience! The foundation where start building the next milestone. Sure the team is not big and lacks resources, but this calls for the leadership to plan and prioritize accordingly. Some things have to be left out or to be added later. The priority is to build a CORE on which you can add more later, not to offer it all right away if your resources simply do not allow it. IMO something did not go quite right in the planning and execution of the CoD roadmap. And it all adds up..team has now to work almost 24/7 to fix things that could have been avoided with better planning. It all depends on planning and how you manage the resources. Well planned is half done!

I do not want to sound like attacking devs. Not at all, just expressing my thoughts. We have the sim in our hands with a lot of potential buried in it, but the release was not as smooth as we hoped for. I wish CoD will get good lift after some patches addressing the most critical issues. But really in it's current state can not recommend it to a casual propellor head, more likely to the hard core simmers who are used to with tinkering.

My .02€

[Chips86]

To be honest, I thought it was a perfectly frank review. The devs screwed up, of course people are going to review it badly. Although i think, in fairness, they should review it again six months down the line, like has been mentioned.

[utu]

I like to see things from my point of view, and Gamespot is painting a bad picture only. From the first moments I thought that the game was unfinished if this is the result of 7 years of hard work. But looking the thinks deeply, I see planes modeled accurately both the exterior and the interior, you can see the internal structure and it is doing part of the damage model. Following this logic every plane required an incredible amount of time because the research, the modeling, etc. In my opinion the simulator is finished but rough, it needs to be "tuned". And it can tune everything there, from what I can see seeing the first patches. For sure, Ubisoft has almost killed this simulator with a crazy policy: anti epileptic filter, probable forcing the dev's team to finish in advance their work. I know this because Ubisoft has killed another sim: Silent Hunter 5, a potential good work from a beautiful romanian team, totally bugged, unfinished and with no more than 2 small patches. Killed. In the perspective of the future, I hope that COD and the team will survive to this bad trend, I see a lot of enthusiasts here and on SIMHQ (never seen 700-800 users in a forum before), and we support the future development of COD.
Henry Ford was a master about negative trends, I think that COD should follow his way.

ps
sorry for my english

[Feathered_IV]

Though it pains me too, the review is a fair call on the current game. Even without the obvious issues with the game engine, there is precious little content to simulate the Battle of Britain in real depth.

[rollnloop]

What were the so called beta testers doing?

I know two of them, here's what they told me after release: dozens of bugs were reported, and not fixed before release. Most are still not fixed today.

[Redroach]

Originally Posted by Chips86

Although i think, in fairness, they should review it again six months down the line, like has been mentioned.

I don't think so. Games are generally reviewed on release - that's where the big show (more or less) takes place and the studios advertise how awesome their new game is. I don't see why it should be different for CoD.
The only chance to remedy this is to fix things asap (and I think the current weekly patches are still a slow pace; I know the devs are working hard, but the game's state makes fixing it not really humanly possible in a satisfying way) and maybe to release an addon that is nothing short of fabulous.

[addman]

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

S!

I read the review with my flight simming tinted goggles removed. The review is quite good and points out very well the things that are more or less bugged or unfinished in CoD now. Most of us here have been tinkering along with IL-2 since beginning so we surely get over the features/bugs/whatever. But the average gamer that wants to get into Battle Of Britain will be baffled for sure.

Why? Some reasons to follow..The GUI is too complicated and cluttered. Compare to IL-2 where it was a breeze to setup everything. From sounds, graphics to controls and multiplayer. CoD has a lot more functions but the development team has the experience from IL-2 so it feels strange that why not just adjust what was already good to fit in CoD? Making new does not require you to break what already is working.

Performance issues. These will scare away many. Not all are ready to wait for patches or to tinker with settings so they can get acceptable performance. Not all have hours to play, but want to jump in the cockpit and have spin..a smooth one! CoD lacks a lot in this case. For example SSAO was on by default and without Kegetys propably would be still. Now we got an option to turn off this feature in GUI. Better off would be to have a good GUI from the start, where you could adjust settings to your liking. And good documentation of what each setting affects.

Same goes with the houses causing stutter. In original IL-2 the houses/towns/cities were a FPS killer and same applies to CoD. So one can ask why did devs not wrestle this from the start as the experience from IL-2 was there. Add to this the texture sizes noted by Kegetys and no wonder we struggle to get CoD to run acceptably. IMHO flight sim graphics do not need to be like in FPS games. They need to be functional. You do not watch door knobs when zooming past 300mph..you get the pic.

The bugs in game. What were the so called beta testers doing? How can errors in texts, lack of features etc. slip past? When testing your job is to find those bugs in GUI, texts, features..whatever there is. Do things, strain the game to make the bugs appear. Then repeat and file a report to the devs so they can fix it if needed. Devs grant you this opportunity to help them find the lurking bugs, it is not easy for devs to see it all or think of everything thus beta test is needed. As a tester you look at the game as an outsider, not as a fan of the sim or game genre(whatever you are testing). In this case I would give the "chosen ones" a whack in the face, job not so well done as so many easily seen bugs are there. Beta testing is hard work, not an opportunity to just get into an "inner circle".

Some of the critics go to devs as well. 6 years of development time. That is a lot and they had all the experience from IL-2 with them. Oleg mentioned 4 years of development to IL-2 before release. They started CoD development some 4 years after IL-2 was released so basically 8 years of experience! The foundation where start building the next milestone. Sure the team is not big and lacks resources, but this calls for the leadership to plan and prioritize accordingly. Some things have to be left out or to be added later. The priority is to build a CORE on which you can add more later, not to offer it all right away if your resources simply do not allow it. IMO something did not go quite right in the planning and execution of the CoD roadmap. And it all adds up..team has now to work almost 24/7 to fix things that could have been avoided with better planning. It all depends on planning and how you manage the resources. Well planned is half done!

I do not want to sound like attacking devs. Not at all, just expressing my thoughts. We have the sim in our hands with a lot of potential buried in it, but the release was not as smooth as we hoped for. I wish CoD will get good lift after some patches addressing the most critical issues. But really in it's current state can not recommend it to a casual propellor head, more likely to the hard core simmers who are used to with tinkering.

My .02€

Fully agree! Lack of prioritizing and just...weird planning must be the main reason for the end product. It's easy to see in-game i.e vehicles, plenty of detailed vehicles but not a single destroyer, cruiser, battleship, sub. Super detailed gorgeous cockpits but a partly broken partly horrible sound engine. If this game was a sandwich, one half would be buried in butter and the other half dry as a piece of cardboard.

[utu]

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

Some of the critics go to devs as well. 6 years of development time. That is a lot and they had all the experience from IL-2 with them. Oleg mentioned 4 years of development to IL-2 before release. They started CoD development some 4 years after IL-2 was released so basically 8 years of experience!



My .02€

How do you know that 6 years are "a lot" for developing Cod? I don't understand why the people is criticizing the devs so hard, when we know that a so complex flight simulator requires "a lot" of developing time, especially. Maybe some people here wants to play with birds of prey, it required "a lot" less developing time.