I remember in pre-release videos and pictures seeing a full blown AT-AT (All Terrain Attack Transport) walking around. This thing was HUGE! In the video they had it walking the sands of Tatooine and for a size comparison they stuck a Krayt dragon next to it. It dwarfed the dragon, which if you’ve played Star Wars Galaxies you know how big the dragons are.
In development of the game, I was imagining being able to actually use AT-AT’s and AT-ST’s as vehicles to move around the planets or use them in combat. The AT-ST made it into the game as a pet that you could command around, which was okay I suppose. Not at all the way I envisioned it in production. The AT-AT never made it into the game at all. Apparently there was a problem with it walking on slopes that was just never fixed, so one of the icons of the original Star Wars movies was left out of the Star Wars universe. I haven’t played SWG in a while, but I doubt this ever made it in as post release seems to have introduced relatively very little free content, not counting the expansion sets which you had to pay for.
Most of my game experience has been first person shooters. My first venture into MMORPG’s was Star Wars Galaxies. Needless to say this game was very anticipated from early development. The feature list, screenshots and game play videos released by the dev team were mouth watering. But the game opening was less than stellar. Many features had to be cut from initial release and in fact never made it into post release either. Once the game was out it was fun even without space because it was Star Wars. It was a very exciting feeling for me in the early days exploring Tatooine and was months before I even left the planet to explore others. I’m going to do a mini-series of posts on what I loved about Star Wars Galaxies, what I didn’t like and what I wish they would have done differently. The hope is that one day some developer may catch a glimpse of my views and maybe make the next one better
Well, as I mentioned before, there are many things I love about COD4. Helicopters is not one of those things. The helo in COD4 is my worst nightmare! I swear I think either I have some weird, come shoot me bug or who the helo targets is based off of that players performance. Either theory doesn’t really hold water, but I swear the better I am doing in a round the more likely that when I hear ‘enemy helo incoming’ I know I’m about to die. It seems it comes in to where I am on the map and gets me, damn that thing. When I hear those words I run for the best cover I can find and try to stay there, popping shots out at it when it’s back is to me, because if I shoot at it any other time it will most definitely make short work of me.
I love what we’ve done in the DFL New York public server for COD4 with the helo. We’ve actually turned the health down so far that you could shoot the thing down literally with your pistol. That makes life so much easier and really makes the game fun. The airstrikes on the other hand I actually like. Where it comes down is not entirely up to the player calling it in, well the area to be bombed is picked by the player but the direction the jets come in from can really change things. The jets do a sort of carpet bombing in the area the player chooses. If there are tall buildings or other obstructions in the way they can absorb some or all of the bomb blasts making it ineffective and really making you choose more open areas to bomb even if most of the enemy team is not in that area. Score one for a feature.
Martyrdom. That one word is enough to drive most COD4 players nuts. One reason why DFL’s New York server is so insanely popular is that martyrdom is outlawed there. It’s still possible for someone to come in with it turned on, but also very likely that person will get a swift kick and a temp ban. Be a repeat offender and you are likely to find yourself playing somewhere else. My biggest problem with martyrdom, if friendly fire is off that is, is that when you kill someone with it on typically you have plenty of time to get clear of the nade blast and you usually have warning BUT there always seems to be someone standing behind or beside you blocking your escape and insuring your demise.
Which leads me to my next gripe and I’m not sure there is an easy, realistic fix for this. My number one most hated feature of the game is player models not able to pass around eachother a little easier. In the real world, if you had someone laying prone in a doorway or spawn area, you could just hop over them and go about your merry way. Not so in Call of Duty 4. In this game you are just plain old stuck. You can’t jump over them, you can’t nudge them out of the way. Nothing. They may as well be a brick wall until they die or move on their own free will. In some FPS games you can pass right through other players as if you were a ghost. In others, you can ‘ram’ them and nudge them a bit to move them out of the way, handy when they are blocking a critical choke point or when you are bored and they are sitting precarisely on a ledge. Either way, I think to keep folks from getting to frustrated from general game play, Infinity Ward needs to make a change to the way character models interact with eachother and with certain objects in the game world.
How many times have you been running through the grass only to stop in your tracks because you got hung up on something you didn’t see? You turn to look, or stop to jump only to be just in time to catch that snipers bullet? Ya, me too. That’s the one thing I could see forcing me to make a move to another FPS if a comparable game comes out that has better interaction. Until next time…keep firing.
