I go back and forth between being intrigued and laughing at the concept.  Now I see it's only $10 on Steam.  While I'm not huge on FPS anymore I figured it might be worth a $10 if there are any favorable opinions.

While it looks like it has potential, I understand it is extremely unpolished.  For instance, there is presently no ability to rebind controls.  The one-man developer has acknowledged this and has stated that this will be addressed in the first of many future patches.

Turtledove would roll over in his grave if he had to bear witness to this upcoming disater!

Poor Harry.

He died? Oh, crap.

Edit: I can't find anything online about him dying.

Azzurri:

Methinks you killed poor Harry off a bit prematurely.  I've only read a few of his novels, but liked what I did read.  Perhaps I should delve more deeply.

Dammit!

Are you people always so thorough???

Of course that bastardo is alive-let's just hope he never visits Steam!

Harry Turtledove = one of my very favorite authors.

He's on the list. As in, the one page list of about a dozen authors that I'm collecting books from. I've probably had it for going on 15 years now. As I get the books on the list they come off, and once in a while new ones go on. Turtledove is one of the few authors that have been on it the whole time.

Opened up my Steam client and took a look.  The game is an intriguing, if not weird combo... an RTS/FPS hybrid?  It does hold a certain uniqueness in the visuals & concept... very "steam-punkish" is what comes to mind.   Still, I'm thinking... nnnnaaaaahhh.... maybe would try a demo first.

The game is not finished, which may not surprise most people considering Paradox and their third-party titles of late (Sword of the Stars 2, *cough* *cough*).

Good news: you can purchase units and order them around like an RTS and take direct control of them like a  third-person shooter. And it's $10.

Bad news: the game mode you can do both RTS and TPS in, army skirmish, is not available on any of the online servers and you can't host your own game (so you have to play against AI bots). Instead, you have to do deathmatch online, where units that you can't manually purchase move on their own around the map and you can choose one of them to directly control. So the only way you can play it online is basically like a third-person shooter, essentially removing half of the game.

The interface is the greatest sin of the game. The mouse wheel adjusts height instead of zooming to the cursor. You can't click on the minimap to issue orders. The minimap consists of tiny uninformative squares. Units sometimes ignore orders after a couple of seconds. Double-clicking a unit in the unit list does not center the camera on it. Number keys don't select unit groups (even though the manual says it does). Placing the mouse at the bottom or top of the screen does not move the camera. Friend/foe triangles sometimes don't show up, The game doesn't show objective locations if they are blocked by the terrain. You can't reconfigure the controls.

Infantry units can only carry one weapon, which is insane: an assault rifle OR an RPG OR a knife OR a mine OR a grenade. There are three weapon slots for each unit; why aren't they used?

Setting a point limit for an army skirmish game does nothing, as you can recruit units beyond the limit.

No campaign (just an offline practice mode)

Animations are stiff and disappear sometimes.

The animation for firing an RPG is completely misssing.

Units clips through each other and other objects.

So, there you go. Are most of these things fixable. Yes. Should they have been in a released product? Certainly not.

Thanks for the heads up James. It sounded like an interesting idea, but as we grew closer and closer to release all I'd seen made me think this is going to be a road crash from the start.

We need more FPS/TPS/RTS hybrids that actually work. Like Savage I & II. And Iron Grip Warlord. 

This sounded promising, but looks like its been undercooked and understaffed. Maybe it will grow into some sort of cult community style thing? 

Originally Posted By spelk (28 MAR 2012 5:21am)

This sounded promising, but looks like its been undercooked and understaffed. Maybe it will grow into some sort of cult community style thing? 

I'd like to see where the game is at in about six months. It certainly has promise if the rough edges I outlined are fixed up.

JaguarUSF - thanks for the heads up on this one.

After the debacle  that was SOTS2 I'm amazed that Paradox let this be released in the reported state (no matter what its price - which seems to be one of the developers defense of its release state).

Not only would you expect them to have learned from past mistakes they also came out and said that subsequent to SOTS2 their quality checks would ensure that all there future releases would be fully functional and release worthy. The hope that it will be patched in an ongoing process and that it is relativly cheap is absolutly no defense for a major publisher, particularaly one that may be trying to redeem itself.

Tis a shame, I'm also not eager to pay for beta-testing.  I feel bad for the guy doing all the work but this is a business, not a charity.  I'm getting a bit tired of Paradox's fund the development release strategy these days.  Guess will see what happens in a few months.

Originally Posted By Joram (27 MAR 2012 4:04pm)

I go back and forth between being intrigued and laughing at the concept.

I begin and end with ...

I posted a video of the game in action

My review is up:

http://www.outofeight.info/2012/03/gettysburg-armored-warfare-review.html

Yuck!, I think I'd rather light my cigar with $10 than buy this. Why did the southern guys, who brought back the advanced weapons, give them to the Yankees also?