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Review: Day of Defeat beta 1.3
by eggmceye, 2001-07-07 11:52:26. No #760.
Day of Defeat is another realism mod for Half life, in the vein of counter-strike. What sets it apart from CS however is that its set in WW2, and has a number of interesting gameplay features that make it a whole new kettle of fish entirely.
DoD is set in Europe in around 1944 I'd guess. In each around there are 2 teams - the Allies and the Axis. You select a class, in a similar fashion to Team fortress, where the 4 basic classes determine what weapon you have, what health/stamina you have, and your running speed.
Rounds consist of missions such as Obtain the secret documents, or capture checkpoints within the town. If you die, you dont have to wait till the end of the round as in CS, you respawn around 10 seconds later. There are set respawn times like every 15 seconds or something, so you and all yr dead buddies come back to life as Reinforcements. This is an awesome game feature - but there's one drawback - spawn-sniping ( u can guess what that is ) - but that doesn't happen that often - as some maps are designed to minimise spawn sniping.
Time to get down to the nittygritty and dispense with this fluff. Here's the good and the bad in point form. Lets start with the bad.
the bad
- The worst thing of all is the german rifle. It has an unbeliveably slow reload (its a bolt action i think), like 3 seconds or something, while the US marine equivalent has a 0.5 second reload. Hence, the US light infantry always rape the german light infantry, and this makes baby jesus cry.
- I guess it's still beta, but some of the maps have some pretty gay bits to them. They are far off being as polished as the CS maps. They do however look awesome (see the good section).
- It's extremely easy to die, and can get a little frustrating as well. If war was anything like this then I'm sure as hell glad I wasnt in europe during WW2 (or in the middle of any other war).
- The model animations are ordinary (altho the models and skins themselves are very good).
- As with most american interpretations on history, its the US versus everyone else. The Allies shouldnt just have US soldiers, but at least british as well. If I was a brit playing this game I'd feel rorted. Maybe the 4 allied soldiers could be US, canadian, british and australian (ha yeh right) (or maybe russian). I don't even know if australians served in europe. It's hard to spread the axis classes out over countries. If you put japanese in there, that would spoil the european feel to the game. The italians switched sides after musolini was killed, so that rules them out.
The Good
I wanted to get the bad out of the way so I could go on about all the cool stuff.
- The look of the game is really cool. The maps are based on real towns and scenarios, and have a real gritty, 40's euro feel to them. The models look really good, tho the face skins aren't so hot. The uniforms and the weapons are superb. The towns have cool brushmodels in them, such as authentic tanks (see the screen shot of the hetzer above); alto the US tanks look a bit dodgy. The US APC is cool tho. The Tiger tank is outstanding.
- Gameplay is fast and realistic (i guess). The fast respawns keep it the gameplay moving along nicely. The group-timed respawn / reinforcement spawn is cool, because you get the impression of waves of troops coming to get ya.
- Another gameplay feature is player-stamina, which limits your ability to jump (to prevent bunny hopping). You can jump about twice in a row, then you have to kneel for about 3 seconds before you can move again. You can also crawl on your belly, but its a bit buggy at the moment, as you can crawl in walls (ie, have your legs inside a wall or a hill and just have your torso hanging out).
DoD is a large download of like 100mb or something, but I think its a refreshing break from the crisp preciseness of CS. It might even play well at a lan - as it seems suited better to smaller teams (altho it suits large teams just as well). I don't know if there's any bot support tho ( i doubt it).
I hope they make the german rifle a bit quicker on the reload side, or maybe take the carbine away from the marines and give them a .22 or something. I dont think there are any other things in the germans favour to balance this out.
What would be cool is an australian digger model, and a jap model, and some pacific island maps - maybe a new guinee level. Or an desert level, some afrika corps and some british troops, and some rats of tobruk (were they ww2?). Anyway this mod could be expanded a whole lot more - maybe with set models for different maps. It's actually kinda exciting for a part time ww2 buff such as myself. Maybe I could contact the authors and talk about making british/australian/jap/other models and maps.
[ more info here ]
Comment by ASTRO at 2001-07-07 13:37:24
Havent you seen Saving Private Ryan and Pearl harbour? theres no such thing as Australians, Brittish, French, Russians, Cannadians, and New Zealanders. Thats just right wing communist propaganda.
Comment by egg at 2001-07-08 11:05:54
thats right astro. americans are nice ppl, but hollywood always gets its history wrong. I'm sure the creators of this mod know their history a lot better than hollywood. I'm just saying it would be good to have an Us vs the Japs in kokoda or something map.
It's hard to believe in the year 2001 that we were at war with the japs and the germans only 60 years ago. Just goes to show what a pathetic species the homosapian is, and how unevolved we are.
Thread closed.
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