Jump to content

All hands on deck!


Thorondor

Recommended Posts

post-a2953-jutland-dgr-bnk-2-1915-rls-bnr.jpg

Released today, Ship Pack 2: Dogger Bank 1915 is the latest expansion to the World War I naval strategy game Jutland, and Storm Eagle Studios is seemingly not leaving any target unsunk with respect to fulfilling player expectations in content, and improved features:

 

(...) this 2nd Expansion pack delivers loads of user requested warships such as the famed German Armored Cruiser Bl

jutland_dgr_bnk_2_1915_rls_bnr.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmm... Just downloaded the demo and I am tragically, less than impressed... I've only played one scenario so far so I can't comment very fairly on this game either way but I think I'm going to try a few more scenarios and see if it get's better with a little more time given to it.

 

I'm a big fan of the level of realism involved here, it's a proper sim and that's amazing. With visual damage set to the max my vessel became covered in shell-holes, smoke and flame and I even had a funnel askew by the end. The inclusion of specific properties of the vessels which ended up giving my ship a noticeable list is also very commendable.

 

Unfortunately the documentation and gameplay seem to be very out of touch with these brilliant effects. The menu, music and sound are very sub-par (and that won't change no matter how many games I play) and once in the battle itself there is virtually no information provided to the player at all. In fairness I only discovered speed controls at the end of my first game so that will no doubt improve future experiences but the camera controls employed are absolutely abominable and there is no reference to any of the vessels in action anywhere other than the ships themselves. Couple that with a lack of camera shortcuts and a rotation that has it's origin about 10 miles behind the players viewpoint and it becomes very frustrating and almost unuseable. In the end I simply attached the camera to follow my vessel and left it at that...

 

An amazing feature of this game is a 'shellcam' through which I was lucky enough to witness a direct hit of half my 10-gun broadside on a German battleship but there seems to be no way to control how or when this feature activates as it only occurred for me twice during the course of my first game.

 

The means of controlling the vessel are also very complicated and limited, I'm still not sure exactly what the best way is to change course but there seem to be several, none of which were particularly efficient. Also missing is an overhead tactical map for use in plotting long-range manoeuvres, vital in Dreadnought warfare... It was in fact almost impossible to fit both my vessel and that of the enemy on the same screen at all and when I finally did manage this it was impossible to make out even my own heading let alone theirs.

 

There is little to no fire control (or at least not that I understand) with options including 'free fire' and 'fire at leader'. Nowhere is there a list of possible targets or the ability to manually assign individual guns to independent targets. There is also a complete lack of damage control, with the only reference to your ships condition being a window that is displayed when you hover over the vessel in question. Even then it's limited to light, moderate or heavy damage and it gives no information on fires, flooding, injured crews or even which weapons are currently out of action!

 

What really ruined my first experience with this game however was the outcome. I was in an outgunned British Battleship, the Emperor of India, and faced the German Konig Albert. The enemy had superior firepower and armour but due to the configuration of the enemy turrets I was able to spend much of the battle with all 10 of my 13.5" guns in action while only 4 of theirs could lay down any shells at all. Still I somehow took an utter pasting and went from an early light:light damage scenario to a moderate:light and finally a heavy:light with a -1o list on the Emperor.

 

The German battleship was obviously the Light damage half of that equation so I'd kind of resigned myself to a watery grave by this point. I changed course to bring my rear turrets back into action as the conflict was no longer in my favour but doing so was a huge risk and I lost both forward turrets during the manoeuvre, leaving only 4/10 of my main guns firing. So it's over right? I'm outclassed, heavily damaged and listing and fighting a 12 gun battleship with only 4 remaining guns on my own.

 

Then the german ship sunk... But it didn't show me it happening or tell me what had caused it. When my rear turrets began swinging back to the centreline I assumed I'd undergone another unintended course-change but then I realised that the German vessel was no longer visible (though it was still marked) I assumed damage to my vessel was the culprit but back in WWI there was no radar so what's the deal? I soon got flashed up a victory message stating the enemy vessel had been put out of action but there was no indication of how.

 

This highlights another huge flaw in the game which is the poorly displayed and recorded events log. Just like the rest of the interface there is no GUI and it's simply written messages notifying the player of hits, damage, etc. By the time I realised what was going on though all messages had gone and there is apparently no way to review past messages. I'd found this problematic during the game as well since occasionally I would have turrets put out of action without seeing the report. With the inability to check the reports though it was soon impossible to know which turrets were working at all. At the end of the game I was told only 4/10 guns were working but 3 turrets were still operating so I needed to check and I couldn't.

 

Anyway I've written way more here than I intended to but leave it for now and I'll write it up into a proper assessment when I've spent some more time playing. I'm sure they can't be asking $50 for such an incomplete experience so maybe I'm missing something. Alternatively, it may be that Storm Eagle Studios are simply more interested in pushing out additional content than they are improving on the original design of the game. Let's be honest we've seen it in a lot of franchises haven't we? (some VERY close to home!) The multiple positive reviews for the game lead me to believe I'm missing something so I'm going to dive back in as I'd love for this to be a good, manageable game.

 

My hopes are not as high as they have been in the past however so we shall see...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for sharing your early impressions of the game, Veteran.

 

When will people realise that a 'simulation' tag should not be an excuse for poorly documented and unintuitive?

 

If it's hard to figure out how to accomplish simple but fundamental things like manoeuvering, target acquisition and realising who's sinking whom then it's hardly a good pressage.

 

It seems to me, from your description, that you're ending up having to fight the controls instead of fighting the enemy which obviously is anything but fun and not at all what you'd want to be doing. :oh:

 

I suspect, though, that this may derive from two things:

- the developer has been so embroiled with the intricacies of development in this and other similar titles that it has lost sight of arising usability/ease of use concerns, verily due to innate familiarity with their own product

- partly due to the above, they've placed things in stashed away places (like keyboard shortcuts) that "everyone knows about" (read, the grognards that have played their games forever as well)

 

::

 

And, still, you won - so something must be right! Right? :laugh:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I suspect, though, that this may derive from two things:

- the developer has been so embroiled with the intricacies of development in this and other similar titles that it has lost sight of arising usability/ease of use concerns, verily due to innate familiarity with their own product

- partly due to the above, they've placed things in stashed away places (like keyboard shortcuts) that "everyone knows about" (read, the grognards that have played their games forever as well)

 

::

 

And, still, you won - so something must be right! Right? :laugh:

 

Yes and sadly no :oh: I'm glad that I won but there is no reason whatsoever that I should've done... I was too close to the enemy ship for plunging fire (a very serious threat to poorly armoured ammunition stores on early dreadnoughts) so there's no reason whatsoever that I should've been able to turn such a massive disadvantage into a clear victory. The only possibility is lucky torpedo shots but as with the main armament this was simply set to free fire and I recieved no notification of launch or hit so who knows? I'm not the best loser in the world but that doesn't mean I necessarily MUST win every game I play. Especially when we're in sim territory that's just not the norm.

 

Anyway, I'm going to play a few more games today but first I'm going to scrutinise the player manual which actually manifests itself as a seperate shortcut on the desktop after install (maybe as an indication of how important it is to read the thing before playing!!!) As far as your reasons for the compromise go I think both are partly correct but of course the third option is my lack of working knowledge with the title. This game could easily be saved for example if it turns out there IS a tactical map and some better camera control shortcuts.

 

My first game was a 1v1 during which I had a very poor understanding of how best to play the game so today I'll be looking to replay that same mission with a better grasp on the controls and features offered. After that I'll move onto a game in which several vessels are fielded by both sides. If I manage to get my head around it to an adequate degree then I'll play at least one large fleet action before I sit down to write up a fair review but rest assured I will do it in time whetehr my opinion is drastically altered or not!

 

Personally I hope it is as the amount of hard work these guys have put into realism deserves better gameplay and interface than I've seen so far. As a sim, it's sensible to assume the player will need some heavy reading before being able to really enjoy the game so I'm hoping that's the case here! Let's go and find out shall we...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

hahahahaha this is funny. I just played ther same scenario as yesterday but as the Germans. So this time I have the better ship, bigger guns, thicker armour and so on... I immediately entered a position where all 10 of the main guns were firing and then I had my rudder jammed... I've since then been sat playing at x20 speed with 4 of my secondary armament damaged and 6 of my main armament destroyed, taking hit after hit from the retreating British ship. None of my broadsides are hitting the target anymore but almost every single one of theirs is. My crew just told me they fixed an AA mount but they aren't bothering with the rudder apparently as I'm still completely unable to redirect the vessel... Interesting that my men have sucjh strange priorities really. A battleship v battleship clash with no airbases anywhere nearby at a time when air power was no serious threat anyway and they'd rather fix the anti-air than the rudder. The jammed rudder which is allowing our ONLY enemy to escape us...

 

This is made all the more frustrating by the fact that I've just read through 40 pages of manual and discovered a full-screen tactical map and detailed ship information screens. That said, the fullscreen map is simply the normal map but bigger so it's completely useless. It also takes pressing the same button 4 times and then obscures all view of the battlescreen whilst not permitting you to actually use it to give any orders... The ship information screen is very good and in retrospect I think the german ship in yesterday's game was far more heavily damaged at sinking than I realised. It seems we can't tell what sort of condition the enemy ship is in from distance so beyond being 'lightly' damaged we really can't tell. The full information screen shows main armament orientation and while I am positioned to the ships stern one of the aft turrets is trained to port so I imagine that's out of action but I'm not told that from the reports.

 

So I HAVE made a few more discoveries today but this time my game has been ruined for a different reason... I'm well aware of the fact that a damaged rudder ultimately spelt doom for the Bismarck almost 40 years in the future so I can understand how a pre-war dreadnought could fare badly from the same affliction but it essentially means game over for me as the enemy can now escape while I have no means to force my now idle crew to repair the mission-failing damage rather than the useless AA mountings.

 

Bloody Germans... Going to try aagin and see what goes wrong this time. We'll get there in time I'm sure, it is showing potential though with these new features uncovered. Still seriously sub-par as far as interface goes though. There are 45 command shortcuts on the keyboard alone and almost 30 controls for the camera...

 

EDIT : More information becomes available... The evaluation copy I'm playing has a limited time of play so it's possible that that was the issue yesterday though based on the fact Iwas told the enemy ship had sunk I don't belive so. My money is still on a traditional sinking with very limited damage reports on enemy ships.

 

In addition I just loaded up a different scenario for the first time to find a touch over 60 ships from Britain and Germany ready to engage off Great Yarmouth! It's a complete failure at large-scale fleet action... The vessels begin so far apart and in such varying formations that any chance of overall control is long gone thanks to the absence of a proper tactical map. With no overview there is no way a battle on this scale can be effectively coordinated. The poor levels of zoom (out that is) and lack of discernable vessel identification, division and heading from any but the closest distance also makes it impossible to even view the whole fleet on screen at any one time.

 

Each and every time I load up this game I'm being disappointed in a new way. So much so in fact that I don't even feel the desire to continue testing or reviewing it but I know there's a lot more I need to try out before I can send this one to the recycle bin. I will warn you again however that I have very little to say about this game that is positive right now. In fact my earlier comment 'It's Fighting Steel Mk.2!' could more believably be rephrased as 'It's Fighting Steel Mk.0!' From what I've seen so far, Jutland is inferior in every way to a game which is probably 10 years it's predecessor. Graphics may be ever so slightly better but the interface, gameplay and even the menu are an absolute disgrace given how recently this title has been released.

 

Be prepared for a less than glowing review in coming days...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are 45 command shortcuts on the keyboard alone and almost 30 controls for the camera...

Well, well, who could've told? :laugh:

 

But I see you have several other misgivings of varying degrees of severity to report, so it increasingly looks like a "miss" rather than a "hit".

 

However, noting your remarks regarding the poverty of fleet control I in turn find it puzzling to see the following feature list topics when checking out the product page for Jutland Professional Edition (required to play Dogger Bank 1915):

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well the review is up now but as with the Dungeons Demo I've posted it as a TRIAL due to lacking the full game... I'll still work through the above list thoug has of course I don't want to leave things in there if I know they're different in the full game!

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
  • Create New...