COD2 First impressions

Public EGF
1

Yesterday I went downtown to purchase my copy.

I have to say its really nice. But there are some “buts” as well for me.

When I tested it online, I was very frustrated first, because it was unplayable for me. Stutters and more stutters. P4 2.4 and GeforceFX 5600, 1GB of Ram here. Smooth gameplay was only possible with a resolution of 640 by 480 and all features that make the game looking nice switched off.
Then I began to fiddle around a bit and eventually changed from render type directx 9 to 7 in the options screen in the game itself.
Yahoo everything was changed for the extremely better immediately. Resolution now 1280 by 1024. Some features to finetune graphics within the graphics options vanished though, but everything was nice now and smooth.

In COD2 the running feature has gone. No more sprints now.

The unmistakable sound of the Kar98 has gone. (Edit: the SR still has it)

You can hold your breath now when you look over the gunsight, to keep the weapon stable.

In COD1 I think to change weapon the mouswheel was assigned automatically. Now U have to assign this feature manually in 2 steps. 1st wheel up then wheel down.

I coudn’t reach the Smoke Grenade and the Kartoffelstampfer or the Eier Handgranade with the wheel. Keys have to be assigned.

The hole game got a slightly (Edit: now after playing it longer its definately more then slightly and I would say its considerable better now) tuned graphics appearance. Actually this was nice before as well.

I started to play the singleplayer campaign. This campaign is of course done very exiting again.

I didn’t play the game online correctly yet. I have to say UO was already very very very good and I’m not quite sure yet whether COD2 is so much better. It is different and a bit more difficult to play because of some extra actions you have to observe to be successfull.

There can be no doubt that it is nicely done and the high performance and quality level of COD UO was kept of course. Lots of new maps me thinks. Graphically its a step forward for sure. But it demands alot more hardwarewise to profit from these new features.

Final result for me: Excellent but COD UO was excellent as well and still is. My PC is obviously not up to date anymore to appreciate the improvements correctly.

Edit: the Game Sound is really really good., Im on EAX3 here.

BTW Mas and Wasp: does your Swedish server already support the game? couldnt find the server online.

2

Thanks Hiawatha

It is very very good in SP (Stalingrad - wow) and in MP

Yes please tell us of any servers that we can all come to Hiawatha and we will come, it is beautiful in there even in public servers. The maps are familiar but very diffferent too. Heat-haze and the light can be blinding in North Africa. And the ingame voice works fine too - but little children speaking :slight_smile:

Can we sign on as EFG_Ming and so on for this one? The server browser works fine

It is what I dreamt of I think :slight_smile:

Ming

3

Hi Hiaw :slight_smile:

yes you have to assign some of the buttons in CoD2 and i have a new mouse now that working great in the game. Logitech MX510 with many options to assign what you need.

Yes i hope Swe-force will start up a new server for CoD2 soon.

4

I went and bought a copy as well, and what can I say: I’m blown away. The first few missions with the Soviets are simply amazing.

So what’s all this with EGF? Where do I volunteer as cannon fodder and what’s the server?

ratatatata/slush

5

Damn this is tempting, maybe I can overlook some of the bad parts after all, in the end I know most will be fun, if frustrating at times…

6

Bad parts? Hmmm … I haven’t found any, I’ll make sure to let you know if I do. :slight_smile:

Come on, you know you want it! When do the stores close in Sweden on Saturdays? :smiley:

S!/slush

7

C’mon guys, post up some server details. I’ve finished the SP campaigns, really looking forward to some MP mayhem :slight_smile:

8

Addendum to my first impressions:

The singleplayer part of the game is fantastic.

When I tested the game first online last week I did it primarily to configure everything correctly.
Yesterday evening I played COD2 for the first time online for a long time. I went into a search and destroy game (my favourite gametype). It was fantastic as well. The graphics , the sounds, the action, the vastness of the terrain. And of course there were already alot of super experts in that game as well, so that the chances of survival were slim for me. But anyway it was big fun and the people on the server were nice as well.
My ping in online playing is a bit higher then it was with COD1. The gameplay was nevertheless smooth and fine with 1 exception: heavy smoke of smoke grenades reduced performance a bit.
The ping prob of the new game was confirmed by most of the other players, who were in my team. This maybe gets fixed with a patch commin in the months ahead.

Final results for me now: it is excellent + better than that.

Btw if you want to have a coloured nick within multiplayer games:

  1. create a nick in the game.

  2. a directory will be created with that nick within the game directory where you installed COD2.

  3. go there and search the: config_mp.cfg

  4. open it with the Wordpad and search your Nick entry, which will be in
    “----”

  5. Now use ^Letter+Number^ to make your nick coloured: click the name to see how its done correctly:

[b]E[/b][b]G[/b][b]F[/b][b]*[/b][b]HIAW[/b]

The coloured Nick of above is the result of this entry:

“^4E^3G^4F^3*^2HIAW” in the config_mp.cfg . If you test your colours with the help of the above linked page: leave away the “…” .

PS: oh and I was on this server:

it belongs to this Clan

www.bmc4u.de.vu

9

:roflmao: I totally forgot to go to the store to buy it, got sucked into buing a Victorinox SwissTool X and some clothes, plus new cooling for my 6800GT instead. Totally forgot about CoT2. :roll:

Bad parts of CoD? Well, lack of trajectories and time to target sucks. Enemy that keep coming from nowhere is another (not totally sure how this is in 2). I still much prefer OFP over CoD, but CoD can be really fun despite this. Small maps (limited) is also part of this, but not as bad. Ah well, we’ll see, perhaps I’ll get it, perhaps I will not, time will tell. :tongue2:

10

Enemy that keep coming from nowhere

I found this strange at first, but I think I understand it now. You need to suppress the enemy, cause casualties then advance and capture the location. If you sit back cautiously sniping at long range, the AI moves more troops in to replace the losses. It looks odd because on a limited map area they do indeed seem to “appear from nowhere”, but it reflects the dangers in real life of allowing your attack to lose momentum and becoming pinned down in front of the enemy.

11

if you have a problem with low performance turn setting with directx 7 not auto as default.this increase your performance of 100%!

12

Downloaded the demo and decidd to buy it on Saturday:

The Stalingrad levels are pretty amazing - graphics are far better than the first one, maps are bigger and as a consequence there are usually several ways from one bit to the next. It’s not completely open, but in Stalingrad you can go around different sides of buildings and so forth to flank the opposition.

The sound is also improved; I recommend playing it with headphones on and cranking it up (though it gives you a headache after a while). When someone yells ‘MG42!’ you can distinguish the distinctive ‘Ziiiiip!’ sound above shouts in Russian and German, grenades, background fire etc. All very immersive and brilliant fun. Some of the levels, particualry the last Russian level, is a bit of a re-run of ‘Pavlov’s House’ from the first game but it’s not a huge complaint as you still get wrapped up in the action.

With regard to what PeeGee and Mikke were saying; at some places the computer will resupply firepoints to a seemingly endless degree because the script says you have to go in and fight at short range. At othe points you are rewarded for moving slowly by reducing the level of resistence. This seems like a fair compromise; I’m playin it on level 3 out of 4 (one below ‘very hard’), and it’s by no means too difficult like this.

I can see why they chose the ‘health regeneration’ approach. It does make the game easier, but on the other hand there is no quick-save funtion (I can’t find it, anyway) so you cannot save before each corner and reload if things go wrong. Being forced to push on like this but being able to duck down and recover is a fair balance. Often you find if you wait for a bit some comrades will turn up to help. Biggest cause of death by far is grenades.

Single most annoying point is that if you accidentally (they stand up in front of you) kill someone on your side the game goes back to the last save position. Given the universal AI habit of wandering into lines of fire, this can be a right pain. However, it’s a small thing and I can see why it’s there.

Overall I think it’s better than the first one, and am looking forward to replaying the Russian levels on the hardest setting. The atmosphere is brilliant and your nerves end up quite taut after a while as you edge forward, searching for the tell-tale sign of someone’s breath condensing in the freezing air :slight_smile:

13

Just boght it yesterday and I play it until finish the Russian campagnain…, I donno how the CoD1 was but this game really rocks.

Anybody play it online??? I must try this game online.

S!

14

Just I finished it yesterday. I was playing only single player mission. As for me COD1 is much better than COD2. COD2 is bloody game without good idea.

15

Been grounded by comms probs - first hardware, then a chest cold with a cough so bad I can’t finish a sentence :rolleyes: So I took the opportunity to spend some time trying out CoD2 online.

First the good news - it really is a good fun knockabout romp, fast and furious, lots of noise and action.

But you guessed this was coming, the bad news. Infinity Ward for some reason decided to release CoD2 with no anti-cheat whatsoever. Now, I know that whenever someone gets a high score or stares at a wall or makes a lucky guess where the enemy is, everyone shouts “cheater”, so at first I was skeptical. But from all the complaints on the chat line, and some of the things I saw, I decided to do a little investigation. And I’m afraid the truth is that CoD2 has been absolutely hacked left, right and centre. All the old aimbots, wallhacks and the rest have been dusted off and recoded. I doubt you’ll find a public server now that hasn’t got a few saddos looking through the walls and getting automatic headshots. Then of course boasting loudly about their scores.

There has been an understandable uproar from the honest side of the community, and there is talk of anti-cheat being added at a later stage. At the moment, however, your only real choices are (a) find a strictly adminned clan server or (b) play it purely for laughs on a public server.

16

While you’ve been doing that PeeGee I’ve been trying to pass the timed assault course in AAO :eek:

Because BF2 can’t connect now I’ve updated it to the SF addon. It’s got PB ok but I can’t get in there to use it :slight_smile:

I’m smashing the place up on sheer frustration I can’t jump up two feet and swing over a fricking 10ft high net - and this trainer guy is getting on my nerves with the do it again soldier. Not sure I’m cut out for it to be honest fancy a game of Risk? The Urals :slight_smile:

Ming