Yeah, it's easily in my top 5 games of all time.

You were right ox, they did release an update.

They re-opened the beta with a new Soviet coop mission which I played last night.

Awesome fun as always. I played with another 3 peeps and we completed it in about 2-3 hours. Same deal, 9 capture points, granting different levels of reinforcements, in 3 lines of 3 in a narrow map.

End stats were pretty typical. My kills were about 170 and casualties about 30.

1 other guy had 250 kills 70 casualties.

The other 2 had 100 kills and 50 casualties.

I tend to commit very few men but very effectively (low casualties, high kill rate).

Hey this game is out on the 25th and is available from pre-order now.

I preordered it, because I good a good deal (12 €) and because I dig the sessiosn I've had with Derf so far. We actually played tonight and went OCD on the final survivors and repaired all broken vehicles. Good fun.

Are you getting your copy by post Ox?

My weekend is gonna be packed with the assaulting of men. Kinda convenient that i've fucked my knee ligament and can't train

I got a digital download from Getgames, at 50% off as you may recall. So yeah I should have it this weekend, but I'll be really busy so it may not be before Sunday evening that I really get to play it. I kind of assumed you already got extra supplies of beer and snacks for the looong weekend.

So yeah. It's 8:44 am and i'm at work. A few weeks back I asked for time off (all Fridays until end of March). My manager says ok, but not the 25th Feb. I roll in today and she hadn't acknowledged that she said "no" to the 25th. I came into work for nothing today.

Stupid fucking bitch mother fucking whore cow fucking fucker fuck fuck cunt bitch whore cunt.

You don't get everything in writing? I do. Email is fine. That way I can throw it in their faces when they do something retarded.

I probably would've just gone home at the half day mark.

I immediately forwarded this retard the email that said:



Reply over the desk was, "Thanks".

Thanks? You fucking dipship. I've not done you a favour. I've outlined that you fucking wasted a day of my life. How about sorry?

Lol. I hate stupid people. They make my life harder than it already is. My job would be so much more enjoyable if all the stupid people I worked with all happened to die. Oh yes... it would be wonderful.

Tell me about it. If a zombie apocalypse happened, i'd SOOOOO inadvertently cause the death of a few colleagues. Lead them into ambushes or not open the door to let them into a safe room when being chased, etc. Fuckers.

Heck if you're gonna wish for them to die, you may aswell be imagining it in an entertaining way.

Either that, or stick a Gladius in their belly as they're walking down a dark alley alone at night.

Apparently one guy that I don't think is all that bright thinks I hate him. He was talking with one of my coworkers that does the same job as mine and said how expected to be walking down the hall and I'd pop out of nowhere and take his head off with a sword or something. Pretty funny. I don't actually hate the guy, though, I just get annoyed by stupidity.

Lt. Rinox, I need an after-action report from you. Your platoon did rather well on that left. I was a bit pinned by artillery on that right and had to progress slowly, so I was surprised to glance over the left and often see you had made very good progress. In fact, I think you broke-through the final line long before the decisive Banzai charge for the last flag.

Anyway good funz. Playing as the Japs, I didn't feel too attached to my men, so I probably lost a few more than I normally would. There are a few PITA points about that map, or maybe the game in general:

- The stuttering. Kinda intermittent but very annoying. I don't know if it's bandwidth or CPU related.
- Pathfinding is sometimes retarded. Like, a man will run around an entire sandbag emplacement instead of jumping over it. Trucks, cars and tanks will also sometimes get stuck.
- Robotic enemy tanks. They don't really move and attack like real tanks would. Far from it. They act more like robots furiously buzzing around and detecting (and killing) infantry far too easily.

And maybe a couple more criticisms:

- Too much "horde-spam"? It's fun, but perhaps sometimes a bit excessive. I can finish a mission with 30 of my own men KIA, but I get 450 enemy KIA. Perhaps this is in place due to a lack of truly sophisticated AI.
- Not enough variation in game-modes. I noticed that actually the variation between skirmish maps isn't that huge. There are always 3 lines of 3 flags, and the format remains the same. Ie, 1st line is lightly defended but you have only infantry to deal with it. 2nd line has AT guns and you really need to defend alot against enemy counterattacks (tanks). 3rd line is heavily defended but by this point you can bombard it with long range artillery, so it's not too hard. Perhaps they should add like a coop frontlines mod. Or some option to disable / limit reinforcements. That kind of stuff should be relatively simple to code but adds 2 whole new dimensions to coop skirmishes.

Haha, yeah I was doing quite ok on the left, without too much support. It was down to a few factors that were not all related to awesome tactical skills though, the most important one being that the left flank was a series of small islands and swamps and thus hard/impossible to manoeuvre for enemy tanks. Of course, that goes both ways, so I was completely dependent on infantry and a mortar. The AT tank gun I got a little later did its job well but was having a hard time getting moved around the swamp as you can imagine.

First flag was easy - some mortar shells, some assistance from another guy and captured it. Second flag was harder, since it was

a) on a little island (water to cross for infantry slowing them down, no cover)
b) had an AT gun
c) apart from sandbag defense also had a small house allowing for cover

I first tried to have 4-5 guys crawl into the reeds and start opening fire on the position while 4 other guys went around the left bank to crawl into the plants there, and then would try to rush the AT gun and destroy it with some grenades. This, however, failed miserably. The left flankers were shot to shit by the AT gun who spotted them, and the guys providing diversion in the reeds were mostly gunned down as they tried to retreat.

Next I tried to wear them out with mortar fire and a MG behind the reeds on the river bank to cover the flag from any infantry moving out of cover. This allowed 4 guys to get to the house and stay in cover behind the wall. The mortar/MG had picked off most infantry by then, so it was easy to peek around the corner and pick them off one by one with my infantry. Finally, I rushed the AT with what infantry I had (with support from a teammate).

From then on I had a great position...the little house had windows facing the central battlefield, giving me great cover. I moved the MG to the central battlefield as well, picking off incoming infantry at the centre, and had the mortar shell the central flag on the second line.

Third flag was much like the second one, only a little harder. AT gun, long stretch of swamp to get there, 3 MG guns, lots of infantry. But I had access to much better equipment then so...I called in an AT gun (not necessarily for tanks, needed the range), some infantry and a sniper. I hid the AT gun in the trees on the little island. It couldn't really hit much (trees in the way) on the enemy defenses, but it did pick off a few jeeps and anti-infantry armors that made its way to me on the left bank (an area I couldn't reach myself, you know 'greyed out'). Also used some HE shells to rip apart infantry groups that made their way to me.

I handled the sniper personally. I had him crawl to the farthest point of the island and started picking off one guy after the other. They need about two shots to kill one guy, but their range is insane. The AT gun tried to shell him but he was behind a big rock and I don't think they actually SAW him anyway. After decimating their men, I moved the mortar back to the left and shelled the guys until the AT (the MG gunners had been sniped) gunners were killed or throw off the gun, then rushed it with the infantry I had. I think another guy helped me, but I can't remember. I captured the flag AND 3 MG's that were all facing the enemy lines. The AT gun was shot to shit however.

After that I got rushed mostly by huge groups of infantry supported by small armors, but what went for me of course also goes for them: wide open swamp areas, making it impossible for them to get to me with 3 MG's, infantry and an AT gun covering the area. At this point I got a little stuck, with two things holding me back: first there were the enormous artillery barrages, that were (it seems) not focusing on me initially, but after a while started to shell my 3rd flag and the MG's, which was a pain for my defense. Second, however, was an AT gun on top of a steep hill, with trenches and an MG, covering the entire area between my swamp and the central 3rd flag. Spent ages trying to get that hill. I almost got it with my flamethrower infantry rush as you may recall, but the pathfinding fucked it up. In the end me and some other guy rushed the hill with banzai, and provided covering fire from the hill trenches left of the central flag. THE END.

Did you use direct control mode for your sniper, that way it's 1 shot 1 kill.