| AAR- 1.29, The Tutorial |
| Written by Stu |
| Friday, 24 October 2008 15:44 |
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An After Action Report about a tutorial? Seems a bit strange I know. This was my first look at the 1.29 beta and Battleground Europe’s first ever tutorial. Like any self-respecting beta test, there are still bugs to be ironed out. Maps are still a bit quirky, certain towns have excessive lag, and even within the first two minutes I spotted an improperly modeled character. But compared to my last time playing a WWII Online Beta in March 2001, things are much better… when chars flew as well as spits and anti-tank guns rubberbanded back into trucks killing friendly infantry along the way. But back to the tutorial; I joined in entry level tutorial on basic movement. It’s worth noting that unlike most games, this tutorial takes place on the online server so you can see other soldiers taking the various training courses around you. The first course was fairly succinct and probably unnecessary for anyone who’s played a FPS before as it is simply explaining basic mouse and WASD controls. It’s followed up by half a dozen other courses on map use and the HUD among others. 1.29 itself is looking to be a big improvement too. I've been playing the game on "best possible settings" which unfortunately for me, are still the lowest settings. I was even worried 1.29 might introduce things that I couldn't handle. Quite the opposite, graphic quality improved for me with no discernible change in frame rate. I took the rifle training and stepped up to the firing range where other players were already firing at targets down range, or taking part in grenade training. As with the other tutorials, the instructions were presented in short text bubbles on screen and either followed up with a test of what was just explained or the space bar to move on. After explaining the difference between firing from the hip and aimed fire it told me to hit 3 paper targets down range. I fired 3 times and was even given confirmation messages in the chat window of which target I hit, something else I haven’t seen from BE before. For the first true tutorial for the game in more than 7 years it turned out well. Although restricted to only half a dozen topics so far I’m hoping we’ll see new tutorials in the future about the other weapons and aspects of the game. |
