My thoughts on Sentinels

[DoomMunky]

So I just got S3 a day or so ago, and I've just started playing it. Here are my impressions of Sentinels as I play it. I'll keep updating this if anyone is interested and if it's fun. So far, it is! Also, this is without having read the manual that comes with the game, so I might be puzzling over stuff that's explained in the manual. Oh well! I sure am enjoying figuring out this stuff, rather than having someone tell me!

 

3/16/05

4:25 pm

 

1)Well first of all, it's very similar, of course. There are a few little graphical changes, like moving curtains in big windows, and little doo-dah's and decorative touches in the homes, but other than that everything is just about identical to S2. A couple graphical changes in the menus, and one thing that is different: on the inventory screen at the end of a level, you can no longer double-click to transfer an item to your inventory, you have to click, drag, click or Shift-click to transfer it. Double clicking makes it disappear! Phooey!

 

2) A big initial change is the 'Custom Difficulty' screen, which has a lot of different options for configuring the relative difficulty of the game from Enemy VPs (health) to enemy level (vs. you) to when you can save to when you heal. There's a bunch of good options there; all the stuff you want to tweak in the original game. At the bottom of the screen is a numerical value that tells the overall difficulty, but because there's no stated upper limit, it means relatively little. If it said, "Base normal difficulty is 0.00, Max difficulty is 10.00, you are at 2.35..." it would be more helpful, but I guess you can figure out what the max is by maxing everything out! Duh!

Anyway, it's a helpful screen, and a welcome addition.

 

3) Enemies do interesting things... I shot at some guys that were clustered on a corner, shot at them from inside a building, through a window. I thought it would be cool to duck around the side of the window and be safe... They quickly got in front of the window to where they could see me no matter where I hid (there was very little room to hide in) and so I ran into the adjoining room to wait for them to come around and pick them off through the windows in that room. But this game treats the real-time/turn-based switching differently than the first one! If you can't see the enemy and don't engage for two turns, the game switches into real-time mode.

 

So what happened was I ran into the other room, taking two turns to do so, and the game went into real-time mode and one enemy ran past the window without me seeing him somehow, ran into the room, spotted me, and opened fire before I could engage him first! Shoot! Then, as I ducked back behind the bar in that room and returned fire, the other two enemies, unknown to me, went PAST the entrance the first one had used and entered the room through another window entirely! They were trying to flank me!

Ain't never seen THAT in the original game!

4) Maybe it's the difficulty I'm playing on (2.33~ish) but every movement takes 2 more APs than in S2, and your character starts with the same amount of APs... So now running to an adjacent square costs 4 AP, not 2, and crouch-walking takes 8, not 6. Pose change costs are still the same.

 

5) One big new thing is that, with the damage floats over enemies' heads, you also get status changes! So for example, if you shoot them and do 17 points of damage and cause deafness, you'll get floats for 17 dmg and "deafness" coming from them! Good to know, if not very realistic.

6) There are also little additions to the enemy icons. The icon has a little cigarette in its mouth sometimes, and at other times there's a question mark. Sometimes it's normal, just the enemy head, but when you shoot them the little mouth on the head falls open, like they're surprised! I think the cigarette means they are unaware of you and relaxed. Status normal. Then, when something alerts them, the question mark shows up, and it gets to be just a head when they are engaging you...I think...

5:35 pm

7) There's also little footstep sounds now, more than in S2. They're particularly noticeable when crouch-walking. Not sure if they represent your ability to hide from enemy.

 

8)There's also lots of exploding heads! I don't know why this happens so often, but every fourth kill results in someone's head exploding like a rotten grapefruit with an M-80 in it and their headless corpse collapsing bonelessly to the ground! What the F?

 

More later, if anybody is interested, as I play more. And feel free to comment on anything in here. Maybe I'm getting something wrong...nah. Heh! This game is freakin' awesome!

[Slaughter]

Looking good! Keep us posted.

[FryWalker]

But this game treats the real-time/turn-based switching differently than the first one! If you can't see the enemy and don't engage for two turns, the game switches into real-time mode.

I find it does that quite often too. Slightly off putting at first if your not prepared for it when you click 'End Turn'. Useful for the save feature when playing on the default HARD setting (or any custom setting harder) as you can't save during combat.

 

I think there is an option to fix the game on turn-based mode (so that it never switches to real time), but I guess that would become a bit tedious towards the end of a level.

 

The AI does seem to be a lot more cunning in this game

 

Maybe it's the difficulty I'm playing on (2.33~ish) but every movement takes 2 more APs than in S2, and your character starts with the same amount of APs... So now running to an adjacent square costs 4 AP, not 2, and crouch-walking takes 8, not 6. Pose change costs are still the same.

Yep - looks like they've increased APs for all movement - even on the most basic terrain.

 

On the subject of AP increases, I've noticed it also takes 4 APs to transfer an item from a characters inventory to either of his/her quick slots and vice-a-versa.

 

This can be a bit of a pain when you suddenly realise you can't throw the grenade you just pulled out cos you're just short of the required APs. But it does mean it is a bit more realistic and adds strategy to the preparation and use of the quick slots.

 

 

Another quite notable difference I believe is the increased accuracy and throwing range of grenades (even for low level characters). Grenadiers are still the best grenade users. I found this improvement most welcome as the throw range in S^2 was a bit lame.

 

One feature I was initially caught out by was the new weapon degradation. Having ventured upon the first few missions with my main hero only I was using the same gun quite frequently. It started jamming and misfiring, so I thought - no worries, I'll have it repaired when I get back to base...

 

Then it 'broke' (turned red).. it was at that point I noticed the durability level was

very low indeed, and when I eventually got back to base I had to buy a shiny new replacement... dang!

 

Needless to say I have been repairing my inventories religiously ever since (which is refreshingly cheap as it happens).

 

Great game!

Challenging in a good way

[DoomMunky]

Hi there, FryWalker! Welcome!

 

My jury is still out on the repair/breakage thing, and probably will be for a while. It can seem, gameplay-wise, to be another arbitrary money-sink (a money-sink that's pretty cheap, like you said...yes!), but it also offers more interesting tactical situations. Last night I jumped around a corner and opened fire on three guys at the other end of the building. They came running and gunning for me, and I jumped back, protected by the corner. The third time I jumped out to pick them off as they worked their way toward me, my weapon jammed after the first shot! Suddenly I had enough APs to duck back and unjam it, or unjam and fire...I ducked back because I'd already been killed by those enemies probably 10 times, and I was getting sick of it...

 

The real-time switching is great for those of you who want to be able to save more often, but if you have the animation speed up, you really have to hop on that button before the enemy runs into your face and opens fire (and your head explodes, of course). Now I sorta wish I hadn't chose 'save anywhere'. I feel like a wimp.

 

And the AP for inventory switching is a good thing in my book, too. It's more realistic, and it makes me really feel the drama of the situation: "Zanzibar fumbled frantically for the TT pistol in his backpack as the Hammer soldier reeled from his last shot. As his hands grasped the cold steel, the enemy opposite Zanzibar shook himself and raised his weapon; he realized he had no time at all, and leaped back behind the bureau as the .38 caliber bullets began to fly through the air he had so recently occupied. Wait for his weapon to jam. A new thing in this war, jamming weapons had saved Zanzibar's bacon a number of times. Wait for it, wait for it..."

 

This game is the shizzat.

[Jacques]

Very hard start.

Not easy to made a team.

Mission Impossible?

[DoomMunky]

Yes, it is a very hard start! That will be number 9)

 

Friday, March 18th, 11:38am

 

9) It is very hard in the beginning! I'm trying to rescue the scientist for my first full mission, and I've already reloaded four times! I realized that as soon as I found him I could have left the map, but where's the fun in that? That would only be cool if I could go back later and finish off the enemies there and explore the map...Can you do that? This game seems much less forgiving than the first. Sound tactical thinking is needed. It's much easier to get killed, much easier to bleed (it seems like every other time I get hit I start bleeding) but also easier to save and reload... You need money to recruit guys, but if you try and do a random encounter, you'll probably get wounded, and getting healed from that will probably take all the money that you made from the weapons and items you picked off the dead! Though I did find that you can run into a map, kill a couple guys, and then run out, away from the others, get to the edge of the screen and exit, and still get the "Loot" screen....I think my sniper, Zanzibar, is going to become a master of the hit-and-run...

 

10) Where is the version number display? It's not on the startup/main screen....How do I check my version number? I dl'ed and installed the 1.1 UK patch from this site, but it still doesn't say what version it is...hmmm....

 

11) Familar old problem: The sound cuts out every now and then. Sometimes a whole mission will go by and all is well, but other times I haven't been playing 5 minutes when the music and environmental sounds (e.g. rainfall) will cut out, and my soldiers won't "speak" about their wounds or misfires or anything. Their heads turn, and their lips move, but no sound! Most gunfire and other sounds are still there, but everything feels a little flat with no environmental sounds, and none of the awesome music. Quitting to Windows and restarting the game helps fine, and takes about 30 seconds, but still.

[DoomMunky]

2pm, later that day

 

12) I highly recommend using the camera tweak found over at S2HQ Camera and Interface guide. I use them in both of my games and it makes for much more awesome camera angles, in my humble opinion. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it's well worth it.

 

Basically all you do (for either game) is go into your Silent Storm\cfg folder, find the autoexec.cfg file, back it up, open it with notepad, find this:

 

mission_camera_limits 35 10 65 -1.35 -0.75

mission_camera_softlimits 35 18 50 -1.4 -0.7

 

put some slashes in front of them (like the other lines, this is so you can reactivate them later if you don't like the changes), and add these lines:

 

mission_camera_limits 30 1 90 -1.8 -0.05

mission_camera_softlimits 30 2 88 -1.75 -0.0

 

This makes everything much more awesome. Poke around on the S2HQ website for a bunch of awesome stuff, too!

 

13) It seems that the enemy is better at shooting, too, dangit! Though I just realized this could be because I have the relative level of the enemies at +2 to me... Making it hard for myself! I also feel like I'm earning every success I have...

[DoomMunky]

Monday, March 21st, 2005 3:39 pm

 

13) Man, this game is freakin' tough!! I'm down in the sewers, getting ready to go defend a big building from getting blown up (half-spoiler, sorry) and I'm just getting chewed to pieces by the baddies. So I reload back to the base and find that I can't heal my squad all the way up because I don't have enough money! Two of my guys have about 75 VP each, but only 25 of that is natural VP; the rest is that tan-bandaged color. They would EACH cost $3089 to fully heal! I have about $1400, and so the game says "Not enough money" and doesn't heal them at ALL! Damn. Damn damn damn. Where's the Hippocratic Oath, you greedy doctors? Grr. This is upsetting. I guess I have to just let the chips fall where they may and fail a couple of missions if I have to... This game is a lot harder than the first...

[Slaughter]

The mission in England is more or less impossible. I got stuck there, and chances are I'll cheat to finish it. It's hard to get past the guys in the sever, but the real trouble start when you find the explosives...

[DoomMunky]

Yeah, I've heard about that latter part. I'm freakin' stuck on the dang guys down below! I can't WAIT to get to that harder part later!

 

 

Hmmm. Is there any way to drop difficulty mid-campaign? Or raise it?

[Slaughter]

That was asked in another thread as well, and I have no idea. Maybe one of the modders know...

[DoomMunky]

April 5th, 2005, 1:47 am

 

 

14) This is great! But god, it's so freakin' hard. I started a new game (twice!) because I'd made it just too damn hard. I was playing on custom diff. 2.31 and 2.29. Too much. The new one is a more manageable 1.89. I'm really tired right now, but all I have to say is that it's really good to have more maps to explore the Silent Storm Goodness in!

 

I just did a random encounter to beef up my new kids and it was great to battle around a totally new environment. I was really getting used to the same old maps in S2 (and there are a lot!), so it's nice to have new playgrounds to play in. I have played through the first three missions three different times now (and getting whacked as much as I do that means I'm playing through the same section five or more times) and I've made a conscious effort to go through them a different way each time. The thing is, you can! That's what I love about these games; you can go through them however you want, and the game doesn't punish you for it. It sets up the rules and the enemy starting positions, and then it goes away. (Except for certain scripted missions that try to make your butt hurt and your eyes bleed) Great stuff, and tons of fun. And the new maps in Sentinels are a joy, too. New places to blow things up!

[DoomMunky]

April 7th, 2005 11:30 am, PST (-8 GMT)

 

15) Just a quick note while I play, before I forget: It seems like if the selected character is using a bandage on themselves, working busily away, and I hit the "End Of Turn" button, they stop healing. I know I'm not accidentally hitting the "Stop Current Action" button, so what gives? What I do to avoid this is switch to someone who is NOT healing and then hit "End Of Turn".

 

Anybody else experience this and can confirm?

[KoMik]

About healings: I think in S3 the changes to failures are randomly higher and only medics are very good healers... but I'm not sure.

 

Turnbased vs Realtime: If you keep your finger near enter button when pressing End Of Turn and don't see enemy you got change to get 'extra-turn" (to reload, hide or heal). But if you want to play in turnbased mode just open console during that mission and write:

 

WantTurnBased( true )

 

and in end of mission when you try to find that last enemy write:

 

WantTurnBased( false )

 

(I don't think that is cheating...and good posts you have wrote here DoomerMonkeyDude )

[DoomMunky]

KoMik, thanks for the console commands! You modder-types always know all the cool shortcuts... As a regular gamer-type, I know that you can also turn off the real-time switch so it's always in turn-based mode by going into the options and selecting "Always Turn-Based".

 

April 9, 2005 1:39pm PST (-800 GMT)

 

16) So now I'm feeling like I need to RAISE the difficulty a bit. I'm playing on something around 1.89 and it's just enough easier than 2.33 (!) that I'm feeling like a bit of a wuss. I feel like I should be tough enough to take on the burlier enemies, like maybe if I raised the relative enemy level from +1 to +2, it would be a little better... Oh well. I'm still having fun, and I'm still having a hard time with the missions. I guess maybe I shouldn't hold myself up to the tough standards this game sets. Impossible expectations: enough!

 

Random encounters are much more necessary in this game, as they provide your team with the money, materiel, and experience that they need to be victorious in the missions. The same map loads fairly frequently in each zone, so you get pretty familiar with them, but it stays fresh if you take the enemies on in a different way each time. The AI behavior in this game is truly different in this game, and you WILL be suprised by the AI actions if you are at all familiar with the first game, and it also ensures that new things will happen on the same map if you approach it from a different angle or try a new tactic.

 

17) One last thing is that the AI comes running to investigate noises from much further away! Having a skirmish will bring guards from all over the map, making stealth that much more important. In the first game, you could take guys out with un-silenced guns, and enemies that should have come running would stay put. Now, however, they will climb down your throat if you're not using silent take-down methods... I'm really looking forward to having a well-trained Scout for just this reason: it's a lot more important in this game, and, therefore, a lot more fun!

[pie]

for good stealth buy toki. find the money on the mine level when u get to pick out of 4 levels. destory EVERY TNT crate u see and at the loot screen there'l be very expensive paintings. plus in the most south western random encounter in germany theres a bank. go into the basement and open the safeand......

HOLY CHRISMAS FISHER! Youre richer than bill gates. but theres lots of bad guys fighting each other there use the hit 'n' run tactic

[DoomMunky]

Sweet tip, pie! Thanks! I think I might reload an older save and go back to get that money...

 

Is there a good way to gain experience outside of the missions? I'm playing at enemy level +1, and random encounters are really easy and don't provide much xp. All my kids are in level 5 or so now, and the enemies in random encounters still just have pistols and the occasional rifle.

 

In the missions, now, that's a different story...

[pie]

Really, my random encounters have badguys with mp41s and some rifles I hadn't already unlocked through the missions. And thats when I played it on 0.28 difficulty for a joke!

 

Oh and on that robbery mission drop EVERITHING that you cant buy back and stuff ur inventory with all things shiny or green.

[DoomMunky]

What? That's ridiculous that you're getting that kind of loot! I can't get crap!

[KoMik]

Yeppy...That bankrobbing 1timer random encounter is nice. You can get all those money items without 1single shot: Blow a hole to floor over the safes and drop your squad to 'vault' and get stuffs and run hell out of there (there is lots of civilans and I usually try to avoid shooting them).

 

Random encounters loots are strange. Those enemies should be on same level than your squad best member... but it is not always like that... well... maybe that's why those are RANDOMS

 

Yours Random Hero

[DoomMunky]

SHOULD the enemies be on par with my guys? Because they're not. Not even close. Unless I'm doing really well for my level, the guys I'm facing on Randoms are just pathetic.

 

Phooey.