Men of War: Condemned Heroes

[spectre]

Just played Condemned Heroes for a bit.
At first, I thought I won't like it, because I have an aversion to WW2 ruskies, but I played the first two missions and it's fun.
I dig the mission design so far. You control less than 20 guys at a time, which seems to be the sweet spot for MoW (at least in my opinion). You get few vehicles and have to scrounge heavily for stuff which is nice.
Even though the missions start with the same old assault the trenches shtick but, they seem to develop in interesting directions as you progress.
Usually you spearhead a large scale operation, desperately trying to make the most with the limited supplies you have, sneaking and coordinating strikes at the critical points. It goes nicely forced with the main theme of the game.

What turned me off was that it's essentially the same men of war, but with added missions. Any improvements, if any don't stand out too much.
Not that it bothers me that much, I think the game's fundamentals are solid, but I hate to see a good series spin its wheels like that.
Also, predictably, voice actors are horrbie, but that's minor annoyance.
Haven't tried skirmish yet, will finish the campaign first.

 

[Random Word]

What turned me off was that it's essentially the same men of war, but with added missions. Any improvements, if any don't stand out too much. Not that it bothers me that much, I think the game's fundamentals are solid, but I hate to see a good series spin its wheels like that. Also, predictably, voice actors are horrbie, but that's minor annoyance. Haven't tried skirmish yet, will finish the campaign first.

Do remember that there are two companies working on this latest entry in the series - one made Men of War and Assault Squad, which are heavily multiplayer focused and are big on mechanics, and the other made Red Tide, Vietnam, and Condemned Heroes, which are exclusively singleplayer focused and only include missions and singleplayer only units and rarely touch the mechanics or the engine.

 

[moraes]

So what is the optimal starting point in the series for someone looking exclusively at single-player? I liked Company of Heroes and the Commandos series. I also like squad tactics games like X-Com, JA2, Silent Storm, etc.

 

[spectre]

The first game, Heroes, Soldiers of WW2 is closest to being a Commandos clone. However, I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone.
I'd say, go for Faces of War first, then try the original Men of War to see if the change of scale bothers you in any way.

 

[Berekän]

Avoid Assault Squad since it's mostly multiplayer, the rest are free to go, I would personally start from the beginning, play first the original Men of War and Red Tide later for starters, but since they're all standalone you can pick up whichever seems more interesting to you.

 

[Haba]

Faces of War -> MoW -> Red Tide =>

Then go for MoW:AS and proceed to get raped repeatedly.

 

[Running Fox]

Are you people insane?
Feces of War special feature are big, awesomebutton, shackycam battels that are roflles scripted and it also spawns unlimited allied reinforcements while you sit back. What?!
MoW > Soldier > Feces

 

[Haba]

Why'd you want to save the worst for the last?

In other news, god damn. It is such great "fun" playing MoW:AS online. 3 majors and 2 captains v.s. me and a bunch of b00ns. 5 v.s. 6 and the still wiped us out in 20 minutes. While I was busy microing a sniper and few infantry squads (sniper had like 40 kills before they managed to smoke him out, r00fles), my "allies" were busy buying tanks... only to watch in horror as a single M8 breeze past their sparse defences, flank the tanks and destroy them all out in the field. I think he even made it back safely.

 

[Erzherzog]

That's the Hellcat for ya. God I love that tank. Had a guy rush one on my side, and I hit it with a bazooka. Fix it up at the end of the match. Dude had a Pershing left and that was it, and my Hellcat was all I had. Played the most ridiculous game of chicken ever, literally had to circle the Pershing twice just trying to avoid that cannon, pulled off the shot and won.

Moments like that feel exclusive to men of war in all of gaming.

As far as which to play, play Faces of War first if you must, but it doesn't make sense to play a shitty game just to start the series just because you won't like it when you play the far, far, far superior others. It's like someone telling you to play Fallout 3 first. Fuck it. Just skip faces. I fucking hated that shit.You probably will too, as most have.

And the more I play Assault Squad the less I like it. Playing vanilla MoW can be punishing but I fucking hate any randomness in a game, unless it makes a bit of sense and is properly balanced. (Like a character based on random crits or some shit.) This is a wargame, and I NEED consistency for proper planning.

 

[GarfunkeL]

M8 Greyhound is an armored car.

M18 Hellcat is a tank destroyer.

The first one should not be capable of destroying tanks, unless they are PzI's or similar, early-war tanks. The second one should be pretty good at taking out tanks.

 

[Haba]

Well, M8's 37mm gun is more than enough to kill all light tanks, most of the mediums and even pose danger to some of the heavies. It is fast and the gunner loads fast as well, meaning that you can pretty easily score several hits before the enemy tank even has a chance to return fire.

Just did a quick practice round on GEM RB, if I remembered to load APCR rounds, the thing was brutal. Of course it is a whole lot harder when facing an enemy that is shooting back...

 

[GarfunkeL]

Fast, yes. Accurate, nope. Good penetration? Not with the AP rounds but sure, if you have APCR, then I can believe it being a danger to even late model PzIIIs and early model PzIVs. Apparently Yanks managed to even mission kill a Tiger with that cannon once, from behind, but I'm somewhat skeptical.

 

[Haba]

Yeah, it shouldn't happen in normal situations. But for an unprepared enemy who starts panicking... I.e. have a hole in your flank, tanks facing wrong direction, miss your first shot.

I actually have much better track record with light/wheeled vehicles, since the mobility to gives a lot more options and faster rate of fire is more forgiving.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Is shoot-and-scoot an actual option in these games? Ie, you park your tank in a bush or some kind so it's somewhat obscured&camouflaged, wait for enemy to get into range, take one shot, then scoot away into the next firing position? Along with zipper-overwatch method, it's still the most classic tank tactic. Though with gyroscopes and stabilizers becoming so good in modern tanks, not that necessary. And in that vein, does overwatch work well? Can I use one tank to watch over the other, then sort of leapfrog forward (also known as zipper because the tanks move like the individual links in a zipper when it's closed).

 

[Haba]

Infantry has extremely effective quest compass for spotting tanks, so hiding them takes some iron nerves. You can utilize those tactics, but you have to have control on the battlefield to ensure that enemy doesn't spot your hidden tank and counter it (i.e. eliminate enemy infantry or pin them down with artillery).

Tanks take a whole lot of micro or a co-ordinated team to make most of them imho. Turning them to return fire mode and direct controlling every shot means that you won't be able to manage your infantry with the same degree of efficiency. I think the worst rape I ever experienced was against a team of three where two microed tanks and one took care of the infantry cover for them. In a small map with lots of small hills it meant that the overwatching tanks could cover each other and dominate the majority of the field so we couldn't deploy anything larger than a car without risking instant vaporization.

AI controlled tanks don't use HE against infantry, but a human on the other hand... The enemy didn't even have to buy any artillery.

Personally, I prefer to use AT cannons AT crews hidden in tactical locations with automatic firing turned off. They may be wiped after taking their shots, but people tend to be overly confident in their expensive heavy tanks. By concentrating my focus on infantry tactics I can ensure that the tanks have blind spots that make them miss the ambush and enter the killzone.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Nice. Definitely sounds like I should try it out at some point. Well, probably after I get a proper desktop, this shitty spare laptop won't run it, most likely.

 

[Erzherzog]

Is shoot-and-scoot an actual option in these games? Ie, you park your tank in a bush or some kind so it's somewhat obscured&camouflaged, wait for enemy to get into range, take one shot, then scoot away into the next firing position? Along with zipper-overwatch method, it's still the most classic tank tactic. Though with gyroscopes and stabilizers becoming so good in modern tanks, not that necessary. And in that vein, does overwatch work well? Can I use one tank to watch over the other, then sort of leapfrog forward (also known as zipper because the tanks move like the individual links in a zipper when it's closed).

That stuff is fairly standard for MoW to be honest. It's typical either that or an early game rush followed by fast raids to specifically prevent your opponent from setting up that kind of defense.

 

[Haba]

Just played a game hosted by DMS to test the new 16 player mod (8 v.s. 8). Was pretty sweet, shows that even the dated MoW engine can still be pushed forward. Naturally we did lose two players to crashes, but still...

The match also kinda shows how German the devs are. After we lost two players from our side, Instict proceeded to rape us with absolutely no mercy at all, until the very last minute. One guy you definitely don't want to play against.

 

[Haba]

The new patch was accidentally released on Steam already. Didn't have time for many games, at least the russkie 100mm AT gun is as to be expected - slow and cumbersome, but as scary as it looks like



Totally not worth the 5 hero point cost though, as usual...