m4ik's Journal: Meanwhile, on the virtual battlefield

This should be exciting times for a gamer, but they are not. Unreal II came out, and because Unreal I was my first gaming experience with a 3D card, I was awaiting this. Well, like the first part, its more about beautiful sights than a story or gameplay, but what do you expect? It's a shooter so I want to run around and shoot stuff. Ok, forget about the running, its more slendering this time. Anyway, the game left a bad impression, its over quick and there really isn't any point replaying those 8 hours. But, to give it some credits, its the best looking game ever to date. That makes the buy worth it for me.

Also, EA Games released Road to Rome, the first Add-On for battlefield 1942 which isn't as good as expected. On release, they published a patch for the game that introduced a cheat, among other useless stuff. LOL. Now you dont need any extra programms, just fire up a console command and your enemies position are shown to you. And, because this is EA, they didnt pull the patch or released another one quickly afterwards. Instead they signed a deal with DICE, the developer, for making more games in the Battlefield franchise, collectively patting each others back.
They also cut down the copy protection with the patch - it doesnt check for the CD on map change now... wow, great. But they shot themselves in the foot this time, stupid #@$&s. You will just need an installed copy of the game and the CD of the add-on to play and you still can play on all servers. Thats 10-15 bucks for a full working game. Still, we check the CD-drive to see if its an original 10 $ CD. Some things just make me want to bang my head on the table.

Besides the rant, it's a hell of a game, beats even Wolfenstein in multiplayer, tho I like the close way you have to work as a team in Wolfenstein. In Battlefield, you may or may not have some strategic teamwork, but you don't really need the other guys.
There's also some educational in it, at least it got me into researching the real battles that were fought then. Sometimes its scaringly close to reality, I just saw a photo of Monte Cassino and it really looke like in the game. I also gained some more respect to the Allied Army that liberated Europe .. without them, Germany wouldn't be free like it is today. This country never had the urge of personal freedom and independence until the American showed them. I'm thankful for that.