A Review: Advanced Battlegrounds: The Future Of Combat, PC 2003
This game was one of those titles that really pissed me off. Despite the date of completion listed on my notes, I actually played this game years ago, some time around 2018, or so I believe. Yet I decided that I had somehow been too harsh and thought to give it a new playthrough with a fresher perspective. Nope, still a big pile of steaming horse plop.
Developed by a Polish developer, this game was a mostly classical-style FPS with nothing hugely innovative or fresh. The gameplay consists of leading the player character, Bolt Logan, on a series of fairly standard shooter missions. Going through a series of stages and worlds in pursuit of Logan's former partner, Pointer. The game uses its own purposefully built engine, known as Chrome, that would go on to feature in an array of games that Techland would come to develop over the years following Advanced Battlegrounds and was also used by other developers on license.
I can describe this game in three simple words: 'A Let Down'. I'll be fair and say that the plot for this game was okay—rather generic, but it worked. The thing that killed my experience for this game was quite simple gameplay. The AI is incredibly sharp and merciless, being able to spot the player clearly across the map and beam them in the head with ease. This makes the mandatory stealth sections near impossible and had me nearly pulling my hair out in frustration. Player accuracy is terrible, with even the 'best' guns spraying all over the place. Reducing most firefights to blindly running at the computer and using the 'spray and pray' method to get by. Player weapons also have limits in terms of range, but the computer doesn't, being able to hit the player from an unreasonable distance even with a shotgun and through walls at times too. The game engine struggles with high numbers and pathfinding, which has a heavy impact on frame rates and stability. One of the most frustrating things was that the boss fights were stupidly easy in comparison to the normal enemy's, and this just pissed me off. I just remember thinking, “What was the point!?” Victory felt hollowed out for me and left me feeling something close to having been robbed or cheated. Audio breaks are very common, and at times the cutscenes are either way out of time or just impossible to actually hear. Frame rates also crashed during the cutscenes, and the game lagged terribly, down to single figures at some points. This made the briefings and story sections impossible to watch sometimes. There were a string of other issues to boot, with controls having sluggish responses and 'overrunning' being all too common. Sometimes the player didn't even have to input a command to make Logan move. I can only guess that this was a latency issue that never got patched or removed from the game. This angered me no end at the ledge and parkour sections, especially when some were over drops that led to an instant death. Hitboxes were a problem too, with there being problems actually registering hits in some sections of this game. I felt that this made the already hard fights that much harder for no reason. The vehicle sections seemed tacked on at the end, as they served no purpose really apart from to try and force in some breaks in gameplay; at least that was my take on them. There was really no need for them to be in the game at all, as they were far too sensitive to control inputs and were ridiculously fragile when compared to their AI counterparts. The 'hacking' feature was a nice idea in thought but was pointless in the way that it was implemented. It was just a case of playing a digital version of Hidden Pairs; it was insultingly simple, and I thought that it served no real gameplay purpose. The only thing that I can think of is that it allowed Techland to put something fancy-sounding in the game description.
Visually, this game wasn't all that bad, and the system requirements were so low that even a potato could play it. The characters looked alright, though the models and animations looked dated even for a game of the time. The environments were nice; I liked the color palette chosen and thought that the various buildings and interactive structures looked quite nice. Weapon and item usage was nicely done, and I liked the persistent ammo and bodies of the dead enemy's. The switches and buttons were really quite pretty, I thought, and although hollow, I liked the look of the 'hacking' interface. Explosions and fires looked alright, I guess. Not the best, but they were good enough, and I thought that the various particle effects were pretty nice too.
Overall, I found that this game was just a disappointing and poorly put together frustrating mess. I could never understand the praise that this title received at launch, as I personally thought that it was completely unjustified.
3/10 – Played With A Grumpy Face!
Signed Off – Leonardo – PSJ
Developed by a Polish developer, this game was a mostly classical-style FPS with nothing hugely innovative or fresh. The gameplay consists of leading the player character, Bolt Logan, on a series of fairly standard shooter missions. Going through a series of stages and worlds in pursuit of Logan's former partner, Pointer. The game uses its own purposefully built engine, known as Chrome, that would go on to feature in an array of games that Techland would come to develop over the years following Advanced Battlegrounds and was also used by other developers on license.
I can describe this game in three simple words: 'A Let Down'. I'll be fair and say that the plot for this game was okay—rather generic, but it worked. The thing that killed my experience for this game was quite simple gameplay. The AI is incredibly sharp and merciless, being able to spot the player clearly across the map and beam them in the head with ease. This makes the mandatory stealth sections near impossible and had me nearly pulling my hair out in frustration. Player accuracy is terrible, with even the 'best' guns spraying all over the place. Reducing most firefights to blindly running at the computer and using the 'spray and pray' method to get by. Player weapons also have limits in terms of range, but the computer doesn't, being able to hit the player from an unreasonable distance even with a shotgun and through walls at times too. The game engine struggles with high numbers and pathfinding, which has a heavy impact on frame rates and stability. One of the most frustrating things was that the boss fights were stupidly easy in comparison to the normal enemy's, and this just pissed me off. I just remember thinking, “What was the point!?” Victory felt hollowed out for me and left me feeling something close to having been robbed or cheated. Audio breaks are very common, and at times the cutscenes are either way out of time or just impossible to actually hear. Frame rates also crashed during the cutscenes, and the game lagged terribly, down to single figures at some points. This made the briefings and story sections impossible to watch sometimes. There were a string of other issues to boot, with controls having sluggish responses and 'overrunning' being all too common. Sometimes the player didn't even have to input a command to make Logan move. I can only guess that this was a latency issue that never got patched or removed from the game. This angered me no end at the ledge and parkour sections, especially when some were over drops that led to an instant death. Hitboxes were a problem too, with there being problems actually registering hits in some sections of this game. I felt that this made the already hard fights that much harder for no reason. The vehicle sections seemed tacked on at the end, as they served no purpose really apart from to try and force in some breaks in gameplay; at least that was my take on them. There was really no need for them to be in the game at all, as they were far too sensitive to control inputs and were ridiculously fragile when compared to their AI counterparts. The 'hacking' feature was a nice idea in thought but was pointless in the way that it was implemented. It was just a case of playing a digital version of Hidden Pairs; it was insultingly simple, and I thought that it served no real gameplay purpose. The only thing that I can think of is that it allowed Techland to put something fancy-sounding in the game description.
Visually, this game wasn't all that bad, and the system requirements were so low that even a potato could play it. The characters looked alright, though the models and animations looked dated even for a game of the time. The environments were nice; I liked the color palette chosen and thought that the various buildings and interactive structures looked quite nice. Weapon and item usage was nicely done, and I liked the persistent ammo and bodies of the dead enemy's. The switches and buttons were really quite pretty, I thought, and although hollow, I liked the look of the 'hacking' interface. Explosions and fires looked alright, I guess. Not the best, but they were good enough, and I thought that the various particle effects were pretty nice too.
Overall, I found that this game was just a disappointing and poorly put together frustrating mess. I could never understand the praise that this title received at launch, as I personally thought that it was completely unjustified.
3/10 – Played With A Grumpy Face!
Signed Off – Leonardo – PSJ
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