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Post by Ex on Mar 4, 2020 0:31:10 GMT -5
Well I finished 5 of the 7 missions in the Commander RT scenario. Commander mode is pretty cool. You control a squad of HOUNDs using a topography map, issuing commands in real time. It's basically like an RTS. You also have your own HOUND, but since it houses an array of communication equipment, your weapon loadout is meager. Basically you just sit tight and tell everybody else what to do. Chromehounds certainly has a lot of variety in its HOUND unit types. But I'm starting to come to a close on this one. Won't be able to play tomorrow though, I've got a road trip for work.
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Post by Xeogred on Mar 4, 2020 21:39:15 GMT -5
Well I put another hour in tonight, but no battle this time. The shop has opened! The Upgrade system seems neat too. I sunk all my money on some stuff for everyone, but I'll still need to play some more to get a lock on the mechanics and what's best for this game. Weight management seems a bit trickier than FM DS. As in, I can't load up these units with ~3 weapons each right away haha. But maybe that's part of FM3 being a bit simpler and I'll just have a crew that hyper focuses on a few key areas. I need to keep unlocking some more skills too to see how they help out with specific weapons and setups.
If there's one thing I hope FM4 and FM5 improve upon, it's menu management and navigation. It's not hard navigating this in FM3 or anything but it feels like it's missing some crucial ideas, like a simple main status page that shows the entire mecha unit with all the stats next to it, things like that. There's a lot of clicking through menus and lists to get through to more lists and parts per specific limb, etc. Luckily it's fast when you know where to go, but I imagine this will be more time consuming than it was on FM DS.
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Post by Ex on Mar 5, 2020 0:45:37 GMT -5
XeogredFrom what I remember, the menu systems and shopping are more streamlined in FM4/5. Though you'll be outfitting a LOT more wanzers in those games than you do in FM3. It'll be interesting to see how quickly you blast through FM3. I recall spending a hair over 40 hours on Emma's campaign (no walkthrough) when I finished it back in 2008. I probably left the battle animations on though. HLTB shows Alisa's campaign around 35 hours on average. I certainly DO plan to replay FM3 and do Alisa's campaign sooner rather than later. I've got the PSN version of it loaded on one of my PSPs. Hopefully Alisa's campaign proves more difficult than Emma's cakewalk.
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Post by Xeogred on Mar 5, 2020 7:43:28 GMT -5
I dunno man, so far it's been freaking easy haha. I'm just like, if THIS is the harder campaign of FM3, I can't even imagine Emma's campaign. I've lost a unit in a few battles, but still don't see any repercussions so it's like no issue at all. So far one of the trickiest parts in one of the last battles I did, was this annoying helicopter that was hard to reach and shooting rockets at me from afar. For some reason Alisa (missiler herself) kept missing him despite the %80+ chance, so I had to move around buildings and such to get closer. You can't melee them either so that's interesting (and believable). I've been wondering if you can steal a helicopter now or if they ever get surrendered, since sometimes the pilot ejects those as well, but so far they've hopped right back in when their turn kicks in. I did turn the walking animation to Fast right away. But I can probably leave battle animations on. It's cool to watch and luckily there's not any painful loading mid battle. Is there an arena in this one eventually? I kind of exploited the one in FM DS for some easy money haha...
And is it necessary to "hack" into some of these websites? lol, I've gotten a password or two in some emails and such telling me to explore some sites. I've poked around the fake web and it's cool, but have been too lazy to actually go that deep into them yet. If it's just extra context for story/factions, I'm not sure how much time I'll spend on it. But it's been fun to poke around initially.
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Post by Ex on Mar 5, 2020 12:20:31 GMT -5
IIRC you can specifically target and kill enemy pilots when ejected onto the ground. That can stop them from getting back in their wanzer obviously.
I don't recall if FM3 has an arena, as I never mess with that arena stuff, not even in the DS FM. (Strangely though, I love the arenas in the AC games.) FM5 has something cool, it's basically a roguelike dungeon crawl mode, where you clear rooms of enemy wanzers. You can win some great upgrades doing that.
I did not spend much time with the internet in FM3. I have read you can access special missions using the internet, and also obtain unique wanzer parts. I will get into using the internet next time I play FM3 for Alisa's campaign.
I hope the game grows some teeth on you soon! You definitely get penalized for losing wanzers in FM4 and FM5. I'm really looking forward to the days you play those two entries. It will be super fun vicariously replaying them.
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Post by Ex on Mar 6, 2020 0:57:24 GMT -5
Chromehounds is an Xbox 360 exclusive mech battle simulator, developed by FromSoftware, and published by SEGA in 2006. Chromehounds was released in Japan, USA, and UK. This game's biggest claim to fame was its online mode, allowing large amounts of players to battle each other in huge war theaters. Unfortunately, Chromehounds went offline in 2010. So now it is no longer possible to play this game online at all. But that doesn't mean Chromehounds is without further merit. Because Chromehounds does have an offline Story mode. This Story mode is a single player campaign spanning 44 missions total. And I'll be writing about the single player offline Story mode, since the online mode is sadly lost to us all forever. Chromehounds at its core is a mech combat sim. Although in this game, mechs are called HOUNDs. I have no idea what HOUND stands for (if you do please contact me). Players are able to configure their HOUND using a vast array of parts, generally towards the pursuit of a specific RT. RT stands for Role Type, meaning the combat role that the HOUND is intended to fulfill. Due to the importance of coordinating RT types effectively on the battlefield, the single player mode is designed to educate the player on the use of every RT type; Soldier, Sniper, Defender, Scout, Heavy Gunner, and Commander. For every RT type, the Story mode presents a Scenario of seven missions. This gives the single player 42 Scenario missions total, plus an initial tutorial mission, and lastly a final combat mission to cap off the story itself. Now, if the majority of internet opinions were to be believed, one would think the Story mode is a vapid hollow waste of time. I honestly believe anyone who said that, likely did not finish the Story mode. They probably played the first two tutorial missions, thought "this is boring" and never came back. The truth is, the Story mode does indeed tell a story. This is done through animated cutscenes, voice overs, real time mission dialogue, war room planning, and (very detailed) historic records. The offline Story mode portrays the events that lead up to the big war that the online game portrays. This war is fought by three nations, which represent by symbolism the UK, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. There is a fourth agitating party, which is clearly supposed to represent the CIA. As the player plays through the scenarios, they take on the role of various mercenaries working for each nation. This clever strategy allows the player to not only learn how to control each RT type, but also understand the impetus of each nation involved in the war. And by the way, when the Story mode is finished, there is a credit scroll, that tells the fate of every character involved. I should also mention, the very first option in the game's menu is Story mode, not the online battle mode. I think that right there indicates that FromSoftware cared about the Story mode, it was clearly not just an afterthought.
Learning to use every RT type effectively, and understanding Chromehounds plot is one thing, but it wouldn't matter if the gameplay itself was boring. Well for this player, the gameplay was very exciting. Chromehounds has impressive graphics for its time, bringing the environments and explosive mecha action convincingly to life. It's hard to feel nonplussed when trying to aim a missile launcher, only to have a nearby explosion rock your viewpoint, as damage alarms start blaring indicating your HOUND is about to become fiery confetti. Missions designs do have a lot of variety, and locales portray all manner of natural environments. Chasing down and destroying enemy HOUNDs, or sniping enemy convoys, or simply capturing COMBAs (radio towers) is all plenty of fun. But my favorite RT type was the Commander, which lets the player direct a squad of HOUNDs in real-time on a battlemap, while the player also moves and fights in real-time. It reminded me of Battlezone (1998 PC).
While it is forever unfortunate that Chromehounds can no longer be played online, the notion that the offline portion is boring and hollow... nah. Don't agree with that. Not for me it wasn't. Marauding war torn fields of destruction as a huge HOUND, taking down the opposing forces with extreme prejudice - that all still exists in the offline Story mode. And Story mode has a LOT of content, plus it ranks every mission performance. If the player wanted to replay all the missions until they had S rank for each one, that's possible. FromSoftware has made quite a few mech games, namely the Armored Core series. But Chromehounds plays and feels different than those. Chromehounds is a pure distillation of the idea of big heavy death machines blowing everything in sight to smithereens. If that sounds like something you'd enjoy, don't hesitate to play this game's Story mode. Chromehounds is about as hardcore as mech fighting gets, without spending a bunch of money on a very expensive Xbox controller anyway. +Big mechs making big booms.
+Story mode has a lot of content.
+Impressive graphics still look nice 14 years later. +Huge variety in HOUND builds.
+Challenging single player gameplay.
-Pressing R3 to zoom the reticle gets old quick.
-The OST is bland "Hollywood war music" stuff.
-Single player's great, but I wish this game was still online.
Ex's time to beat: 11 hours 19 minutes Ex's rating: 8/10
- I'll be hitting up this next:
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Post by Sarge on Mar 6, 2020 21:55:51 GMT -5
anayo: Glad you really enjoyed MW2. I'd also forgotten you were playing on period-appropriate hardware. Definitely adds a level of authenticity to the proceedings. I was using DOSBox, which mostly worked well, although it was definitely straining my PC a bit when things got hot and heavy. I threw the max cycles I could to it to make sure it kept running well at 1024x768. I feel like group fire and probably using the zoom feature would get me further. Also, I read somewhere that the Jade Falcon campaign is a bit simpler, and it was probably even easier as you said it was because of the experience you got on the Wolf Clan side.
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Post by Ex on Mar 7, 2020 3:07:18 GMT -5
I put two hours into Chou Soujuu Mecha MG on DS tonight. It's crazy fun thus far, this is some of the most JAPANESE gaming I've done in a long time. Also a good reminder of why I still love the DS' control interface.
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Post by anayo on Mar 7, 2020 7:09:11 GMT -5
I beat Mechwarrior 2 Ghost Bear's Legacy, but my VGA to RCA video adapter broke 20% into my playthrough. I didn't realize this and just kept recording static. I had even installed and moved onto Heavy Gear and begun "recording" that.
I don't want to complete these without recording myself playing and uploading them to youtube, so I ordered another adapter. Until they arrive I'm beginning the Warcraft II Tides of Darkness orc campaign, since those are very lengthy and I only record the very last stage to document beating it.
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Post by anayo on Mar 7, 2020 7:50:58 GMT -5
I beat Mechwarrior 2 Ghost Bear's Legacy, but my VGA to RCA video adapter broke 20% into my playthrough. I didn't realize this and just kept recording static. I had even installed and moved onto Heavy Gear and begun "recording" that. I don't want to complete these without recording myself playing and uploading them to youtube, so I ordered another adapter. Until they arrive I'm beginning the Warcraft II Tides of Darkness orc campaign, since those are very lengthy and I only record the very last stage to document beating it. Nope, not broken. I had just unplugged the USB power for something else. Guess I'm playing it again.
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