AAR

[trw2264]

First day. I will say that I have been waiting a long time for this game to come out. Operating under the assumption that this demo is bare bones (i.e. the allies are there to take a beating and as the French we are learning to just march, the various formations, menu usage, etc), I can't wait for the full game to be released.

Anyway down to business and back to the first day. In the beginning I was frustrated with getting the tutorial to load. The game loads fine, but I crash on loading any type of tutorial/scenario. I made sure that my Windows 7 64 ran the game as administrator and I manually went in and changed the game resolution as suggested here on the forum. Did not work for me, so at this point I am saddled with 1 to 6 tries in getting a new tutorial to start running, but once I get past the initial crash(es) I do not have a problem loading any of the tutorials while in the game. Does the same thing on my Vista 32 laptop.

The next issue I had was that the game would minimize to the desktop (not a crash to desktop) at random times, which was annoying because when a random minimization took place the game would warp forward in time. This was very frustrating and many times I would not be able to finish the tutorials because the warp forward in time would finish the scenario for me. So I updated my video card drivers and updated Direct X and crossed my fingers. Well after the two updates I was able to play a couple of tutorials, back-to-back, without any minimization to the desktop for about 3 straight hours. It appears that one or both of the updates did the trick to solve this particular issue.

Because I speak and read English and the game was developed, mainly in French, I do understand and I have reserved myself to trying to translate and/or getting the idea about what is being said. I consider this to be a neutral area because I knew upfront that the game was being made by a French developer.

Because this is a demo I am sure that JMM needed to do some major dumming down, so keeping that in mind I am optimistic about the overall game being playable in the solo mode and should be very playable via PBEMl. But one area that I am a little nervous about is online, multi player games. I think that this game has a great potential to shine in that area and would be great fun!

I overlooked some of the small things like units facing the wrong direction, the corps commanders not moving around too much and cavalry being very aggressive because these things could be a result of the game being dummed down for demo purposes.

Overall, I am pleased with the demo and I can't wait for the full game to come out. In the mean time I will try and satisfy myself with beating up on the brain-dead allies. Perhaps one suggestion, if it is not too much work, would be to allow for PBEM play before the full release, so that we can have a bit of fun against an opponent that is more of a challenge.

Regards,
Thomas