Codex Review Silent Storm Review

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Nival Interactive; Silent Storm

Our review of Silent Storm. Basically, it's cool. I liked it. That didn't stop me from making a few complaints, though! Here's one of them:

Additionally, you can blow up walls and structures with mines and grenades. You can plant explosive traps in windows, doors, and other devices you can directly interact with in order to bring the house down. Of course, this tends to kill anyone in the building, so it's an expensive way of wiping out a nest of snipers sitting in an attic loft rather than risking other methods of direct confrontation. The only major problem with this is that you can't plant explosives directly on walls themselves. You have to plant them in the doors, windows, and so on or on the ground. It would have been nice to be able to blow up a support column by slapping a charge directly on the column itself and running.​

I hate limits on my ability to blow stuff up!

 

[Azael]

Me too, I think timed explosions and/or explosives with remote detonation are high on people's wishlists for the expansion.

 

[triCritical]

Believe it or not, one of my favorite things to blow up is trees and this IMO has been one of the most amazing aspects of the game. For instance you will have 4-5 enemy soldiers using bushes and trees for cover, but after a couple of grenades you will just have 2-3 hurt soldier's ready to be picked off with no cover.

I agree that it indeed difficult to get emotionally involved with the NPC's, but playing the Axis mission, I must say that Reggie earned some major prop's from me. Not to mention he would say some pretty funny stuff.

The biggest dissapointment for me, however, has been not being able to save during combat for a difficulty setting other then easy. I have essentially been forced to play easy, because to play this game the way I want, which normally has me going into TB mode immediately up starting the mission, I will not be able to start and stop when I want. While saving the game frequently can be used to cheat, I don't think it makes the game easier, its just faulty logic. Does anyone know of any cracks, or if the developers plan to let you save during combat for the non-easy campaigns. This for me can be a showstopper.

 

[Transcendent One]

Hmmm... I am a huge fan of environmental interaction, so I guess I'll be giving this one a try.

 

[triCritical]

Hmmm... I am a huge fan of environmental interaction, so I guess I'll be giving this one a try.

Hows this for interaction, my heavy machine gunner makes his own doors! :shock:

No door in the back up the building, no problem.

 

[Jed]

There's been a hell of a lot of World War II themed games lately, in nearly every genre. Seems like nearly everyone has a game set in that war coming out.

Yeah, SimFurher and Concentration Camp Tycoon look set to rake in the awards at E3 this year...

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

SimFuhrer pwns you. And Concentration Camp Tycoon? Pure genius. I love the ability to have my pre-rolled dictator visit his camps, and tantalize the people there (specially Jews). The floating text for the insults we can use is great. I keep typing "I own jew!!" at them.

 

[Azael]

The biggest dissapointment for me, however, has been not being able to save during combat for a difficulty setting other then easy. I have essentially been forced to play easy, because to play this game the way I want, which normally has me going into TB mode immediately up starting the mission, I will not be able to start and stop when I want. While saving the game frequently can be used to cheat, I don't think it makes the game easier, its just faulty logic. Does anyone know of any cracks, or if the developers plan to let you save during combat for the non-easy campaigns. This for me can be a showstopper.

http://www.s2hq.com/download.php?lng=en

The Save Mod should be what you're looking for.

 

[Jed]

SimFuhrer pwns you. And Concentration Camp Tycoon? Pure genius. I love the ability to have my pre-rolled dictator visit his camps, and tantalize the people there (specially Jews). The floating text for the insults we can use is great. I keep typing "I own jew!!" at them.

Role-Player makes the Baby Moses cry!

 

[triCritical]

http://www.s2hq.com/download.php?lng=en

The Save Mod should be what you're looking for.

Thanks!

 

[Greenskin13]

What do you guys think of moving vehicles in the expansion? Feasable? Bad idea? Frankly, I thought it to be a bit awkward that I could use the machine gun from a motorcycle, but couldn't move it to a better location.

 

[triCritical]

What do you guys think of moving vehicles in the expansion? Feasable? Bad idea? Frankly, I thought it to be a bit awkward that I could use the machine gun from a motorcycle, but couldn't move it to a better location.

Need a key.

I think moving vehicles would be nice. It would be very nice to drive a truck right into a building knocking down a wall!

 

[Sol Invictus]

No. Vehicles would ruin it. The game is about tactics, not running vehicles into buildings. Panzerkleins are bad enough - we don't need more of that, and we don't need a repeat of FOT.

 

[triCritical]

No. Vehicles would ruin it. The game is about tactics, not running vehicles into buildings. Panzerkleins are bad enough - we don't need more of that, and we don't need a repeat of FOT.

Yeah, vehicles did not play an important role in Germany's tactics in WW2, did they? Hell they conquered most of Europe because of them! I guess you can argue that Germany's blitzkrieg and use of panzer's was more strategic, but I am sure there was a lot of tactics as the belgium line fell...

Anyhow FOT sucked for a lot of reason, not because it had vehicles, while vehicles would be very difficult to balance for an expansion pack, I still would not mind seeing a mod or at least some experimentation with vehicles, maybe just not an official Nivel product.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Vehicles are a huge reason of FOT's suckage. I'd prefer not to see vehicles take over the role of soldiers in the Silent Storm games and keep them as squad-based tactical games rather than having 1 big jeep rolling around the place with 6 guys firing out of it.

 

[headache]

http://www.s2hq.com/download.php?lng=en

The Save Mod should be what you're looking for.

Take a look at the whole s2hq site. They have config file changes that allow you to open the console (which allows you to save without the mod) and change the camera movement limits, among other things. There's also a useful change for making the game switch to turns automatically when your squad sees an enemy, instead of when the enemy sees you and starts fighting.

Sorry for the lack of detail; I played the import version a few months ago and didn't want to go hunting now. The game is great, except the balance is thrown off in the later game by the... well, I won't spoil it if you don't know... and I didn't finish it, but I rarely do. Now I'm playing JA2 for the first time which is just uber.

 

[Azael]

Yep, the page has a lot of useful tweaks. I've had it bookmarked since the demo.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Unfortunately, that site appears to be dead, though. It's a pity considering there's been a glut of news about Silent Storm lately.

 

[Azael]

Yeah, no updates in a long while. I haven't been able to find any other page with as much info on it yet though. It seems like the game will do good in the States though, so maybe there will be more. I only hope it gets a mod community half as active as the one for Jagged Alliance 2.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

SimFuhrer pwns you. And Concentration Camp Tycoon? Pure genius. I love the ability to have my pre-rolled dictator visit his camps, and tantalize the people there (specially Jews). The floating text for the insults we can use is great. I keep typing "I own jew!!" at them.

Role-Player makes the Baby Moses cry!

Always ready to entertain!

 

[Megatron]

I reckon vechiles would be a little silly in a turn-based game, espeacially since the battle-field is usually full of crap.

Being able to carry round the stationary weapons and deploy them would be nice though.

Not being able to set charges everywhere was a little annoying, but most of the larger grenades could take down most of a house anyway.

I'd have liked to be able to customize my whole squads appearance instead of having a bunch of random-looking soldiers. It'd have been nice to keep the trenchcoat and fedora style for my team, oh well. I kept my team throughout the game as I didn't know the soldiers at the base levelled up.

There's also a map editor with the game, but it doesn't have any documentation. There was one or two maps made for it though.

I'd have liked to see some different weapons (like the bazooka causing more damage to a building than a sniper rifle round, or mabye a flamethrower) but otherwise they were pretty good. I found myself just using the rifles at the end though with the large grenades.

Looking forward to the expansion pack.

edit: I saw silent storm on amazon for £9? I don't know much about amazon but it seems a decent price.