Stanenbergs Reviews and Recommendations

[bb]

I agree with your review, Stan, but just let me add some "positive criticsm", meaby he reads our arguments here and perhaps he may improve his work:

The maps aren't so bad, clearly they are made using the random map editor, but with a little work is very easy to enhance it. The biggest flaw are the poor scripts and the balancement of forces. The player can win just using aviation and tank rushes. I'd suggest to work more in the testing stage and to change quantity for quality. No more than one release for year.

And he should forget those ugly "new units", it makes the mod worse than original vanilla. He could pay some money to Major Pain heirs and use some of his units.

If he would do this, he could charge like 3 euros for his campaigns. Is a fair price for a regular campaign, since BK is a very old game, and probably the sales would increase a lot. I would be willing to pay a fair price for new BK stuff.

[kaoz]

Mar 18, 2018 19:21:44 GMT 1 bb said:

He could pay some money to Major Pain heirs and use some of his units.

I believe it would be very naïve to think that Brendel would ever do such thing. There's a huge difference between sharing BK stuff and selling other people's stuff. Wasn't this the main reason why once "we" had chosen not to discuss Brendel's stuff on the forum?

[bb]

Well, people can change. Or not. Who cares?

[Stanenberg]

Mission: Barbarossa Addon Review

Everyone knows Mission Kursk, but who actually remembers Mission Barbarossa? Its an addon from the same developer with a very similar approach in gameplay and general concept. Due to various reasons it never got the attention/popularity from the community that Kursk got. There is no doubt that Mission Barbarossa is a great and fun addon, so my main interest in terms of this review is why Mission Barbarossa didnt have the success that Mission Kursk had.

Mission Barbarossa is actually not what the title suggests. Instead of covering the whole Operation Barbarossa, the main campaign of the game follows the attack of Guderians Panzergruppe 2 in the battles of Bialystock/Minsk and Smolensk. The Campaign has 10 historical maps and of course random maps. The addon has kurskish range and gameplay and a variety of quality new units, effects etc.

One of the huge issues with Mission Barbarossa is, that it is almost impossible to play without some patches and modifications. There are some very annoying script errors in some maps. Map #4 (Bobruisk) has a script error that lets the player lose no matter what they do, however this got fixed in Patch 1.1 which i strongly recommend to install if you want to try to play the campaign. I experienced more script errors in Map 7 (infinite attacks/script loop) and Map 9 (another script loop). Had to skip part of these maps with the win cheat. Map 7 actually made my PC lag terribly and when i wondered what the cause was (i have a pretty good pc) i finally turned of the fog of war and discovered a never ending wave of thousands of soviets running towards my positions causing the game to lag lol. 
Some of you may be familiar with the massive range increase in Mission Kursk compared to Vanilla (3.5x more on average)...well in Mission Barbarossa ranges are increased even more than in Kursk! There is a Range Patch which you should get. It brings the Barbarossa ranges on Kursk level. It doesnt affect the map design too much and makes it a lot more playable. Another annoying thing is random maps in the campaign. They are repetitive and most of them have a very inactive AI, making these maps quite boring. The massive artillery ranges make a lot of these random maps really hard because enemy mortars and artillery are all spread across the maps. There is a Patch that removes the random maps you can get or you just skip the random maps by cheat.

Lets talk about the Maps: All maps are massive historical maps with excellent historical research. The design is excellent. Realism and clever gameplay design such as swamps/rivers restricting movement in certain areas in the map and when you actually look up the area on a map you see lots of swamps. I actually got a book about Guderians advance to Smolensk to read along the campaign and was fascinated about the effort that went into making these maps historical but still interesting and entertaining to play. The gameplay can be tricky and difficult at times, but once you grasp how gameplay works with kursk ranges, its shouldnt be difficult to the point it gets frustrating but i can defenitely imgaine new players struggle in some maps. Most if not all maps have surprising elements such as counterattacks and the maps are full of creative ideas and innovations that i would like to see more in BK. Ideas include: losing your command halftrack means no air support, soviet "hidden" bunkers are spawned in the last moment before your infantry reaches them so they are actually "hidden" and cant be just bombed by artillery. The AI is very dynamic and well scripted. 
Its just obvious that a lot of effort was put into those maps and it pays off. They are entertaining to play once you understand the kursk range mechanics. 

A few words on the new units, since Mission Barbarossa is not just a campaign but an addon. All units seem necessary additions and the maps put them to good use. They are of good quality and blend in well with the rest of the units and enhance the gameplay experience significantly (especially talking about the Ju87 and Ju88 and the Pe2 bombers!). 

Overall I would easily give Mission Barbarossa a 4.5/5
Score would be higher if it was wasnt for the script errors and the boring random maps.


But if Mission Barbarossa is such a well done addon, why did it never get the attention that Mission Kursk enjoys untill today?
1st: The general historical scenario is much less appealing. While Barbarossa sounds interesting, the scenario is not as well defined as Kursk. Barbarossa could be anything from the Ukarine to Latvia while Kursk is a scenario that is clear to most people who are intersted in strategy/history. Kursk as the biggest tank battle in history is just very well suited for a game like Blitzkrieg. I mean who doesnt want to shoot up T34s with Wittmans Tiger? Guderians advance on Smolensk? uuum yea...the russians lost, right? Its just a lot less spectacular on first glance!

2nd: Above i have described the issues and glitches with Mission Barbarossa and how to fix them. Well, when the game came out, there was no patches or range mods. The addon had almost 5 times bigger ranges than vanilla and was full of script errors and bugs, which bought a lot of critic from fans. Some of these glitches make the game simply unplayable and it took some time untill some people sat down and actually made the Mission Barbarossa the excellent addon that it is today.

3rd: Another main issue is the amount of content. Compared to Mission Kursk the content of Mission Barbarossa is quite limited. It only has a few new units and new gameplay, while Mission Kursk has tons of new units, objects, infantry skins and adds a completely new color tone to the game. Even rivers look different in the Kursk addon. It was just a lot more content and it invited people to produce more content. The large amount of new objects and units inspired and mappers and modders and led to the creation of the huge Iron Frost project. 

It just looks like if Mission Barbarossa is the "unfinished", early version of Mission Kursk. We see a lot of ideas that make Mission Kursk so great already present in Mission Barbarossa, but just in an a lot less fletched out way. For example the ranges are ridiculously high, which made player hate Mission Barbarossa. The developers realized this and reduced the ranges in Mission Kursk to a less realistic and more playable amount. Mission Kursks success had Mission Barbarossa stand in its shadow and while i think Kursk is the better addon, i still believe that MB deserves to be played by anyone who likes the Kursk ranges and historical big maps! You defenitely miss something!

If you finished the main campaign, there is 2 more SP maps in Barbarossa and mr.frost72 made an ahistorical chapter themed around the battle of Smolensk with a huge 32x32 epic pocket battle map that i can recommend!

Mission Barbarossa can be bought for ridiculous amounts of money on ebay etc or downloaded the easy way on community sites.
Patches and modifications can alse be found on the usual sites such as Legacy of Blitzkrieg

[Quintaxel]

Another great review Stanenberg !! You really took the time and effort to share your thoughts on this game.
My only comment is, if I may, that you should add some screenshots. I know this requires an extra effort but your review deserves it.
Thanks for sharing this review with the community.

[atlas555]

Good bloke and a good modder too

Yes-agreed!

+1

[Stanenberg]

A new review!

I tried the playing the Vanilla chapter Kamenents-Podolsky by GreyDeathPanzer, covering the pocket battle of the same name in 1944. Actually the one map/chapter i found that tried to depict the battle. Given how hard it is to find information on the battle i wonder where GreyDeathPanzer got his information for historical background from...

Anyway. The chapter has 5 Maps and is known for being really difficult, and i have to agree with that. Took me 12 hours to play all 5 maps.
GreyDeathPanzer added a few additional units from the Stalingrad addon, such as the Marder III, some halftracks and a few older Pz III and IV versions. Some units like the Halftracks add some nice flavour but overall the new units dont add much to the maps. 

Every map has solid historical background info which greatly increases the immersiveness of the maps. The maps itself are pretty basic and the lay is only roughly based on the actual terrain features of the area. 
Unfortunately, its sometimes not entirely clear where the enemy attacks will come from which forces a reload from the player (unless you are a super godly pro player...)

Most of the maps rely on the auto-generated fields from the editor, which look alright. Nothing too great here. The village are mapped decently with nice fences, but they lack any flora and objects which makes them look really boring and plain. Adding a few bushes and trees would be a significant improvement to the graphics of the chapter. 


Most Scripts work without any issue. Some objectives work with timed triggers, so you might have to wait a bit untill the objective is completed and the next one starts. 

The gameplay:
The chapter is known for being hard and I find it frustratingly hard. This is mainly due to two reasons.

The first reason is the T34/85. I dont know what Nival thought when they created this units xml file, but its really broken. Every unit in BK has a value in its xml that is called "aiming time". Lets say a T34/85 spots a Tiger tank.
Now the T34/85 will drive up to the Tiger tank untill its in range and then it will stop and fire at the Tiger. The "aiming time" value defines the time from halting inside range of the enemy untill the shot. Shorter aiming time = getting first hit and with the T34/85s penetration values, the first hit often decides the engagement. 

Now some aiming time values for you (this is vanilla, completely unmodded):
Tiger & Panther: 0.55
Pz IV: 0.48
75mm Pak40: 0.5
88mm Flak: 0.5

The T34/85 has a value of 0.17 ...
Together with the ridiculous amount of damage and penetration (easily one-shots entrenched Panthers from the front), the T34/85 fucks up your heavy tanks like nothing. I dont know what went wrong with the values here, but once you fight greater numbers of T34/85 it becomes really annoying. 
This however, is of course not the fault of the Maps anyway.

What is however problematic is the way that enemy attacks work on these maps. 
Enemy attacks are usually the same wave that repeats a bunch of times. Sometimes 5 times, sometimes 10 times. It is really boring frustrating to fight the same wave over and over again. It becomes boring, predictable and repetitive. Furthermore it breaks any sort of historical immersion in the maps when the same tanks and infantry attack at the same spot over and over again. It can not be that hard to mix up the attack waves composition and attack spots a little bit. 

Overall I would recommend this Chapter only for players who like hard defensive maps or for those who are interested in the Kamenents-Podolsk pocket battle.  

Here is the download link: Download
Just goes into run/data (blitzkrieg/data on steam version)

One might try the remake from bb for GZM 7.
www.mediafire.com/file/95n66daqq7q3nbx/%255Bgzm%255DKamenents-Poldosky.pak/file

[atlas555]

The bb version appears to work with the latest version of GZM. Took a while to load, but it popped up. Totally different looking to start. After I finish the mission I am on-I will give it a go. bb makes some fine maps and scripts.

[freeman17]

Dear Mr. Stanenberg

Thank you for the reviews.

A lot of time has passed since the release of the "Red Star" La Plata Bonus Campaign. I can say it now: the 3rd Mission was made by Mr.Frost.
I had tested the Mission (all bugs were eliminated) and it was a pleasure to see it runs well since then.

[Stanenberg]

Review to "Wacht am Rhein" (watch on the rhine) by mr.frost72

Wacht am Rhein is a 6 Map Chapter based on a standalone mod for Rolling Thunder. It is not to be confused with the Chapter of the same name by tj27 or with mr.frosts later works on the ardennes offensive.

The chapter follows the advance of Peipers Group through the ardennes and i more or less losely based on historical events, which gives a nice touch to the maps. Its just more immersive to capture Stoumont instead of some nameless village. 

All maps are fairly small (around 10x10) except the 5th map which is a big bigger and is used again for the 6th map. Mapping looks very nice, combining custom made, detailed villages and cities with automatic generated fields around them.  Mr.frost expanded the availability of buildings in RT by combining several house models to new buildings complexes, which is a nice trick to avoid repetitive looking villages:


Most Maps have a very clever design, so the player is more or less forced to fight on the entire map, which is great, given the small size of the maps. Mr.frost is very clever at placing AI units, so the maps are fairly difficult without an overwhelming superiority in numbers or quality for the AI. Some maps have some kind of surprise gameplay element that makes the mission for exiting, but in general, slow and careful approach is rewarded. 
Unfortunately, after 3 or 4 maps the map design gets a bit repetitive. In all maps you fight for a small village, fighting for gardens and buildings. The AI units are well placed, but the AI is passive and doesnt really counterattack. This is probably the greatest weakness of the chapter.

I can defenitely recommend the chapter, but if you really want to play mr.frost maps in the ardennes, play the "Ardennenoffensive" chapter for the Hagelsturm V2 Mod. It uses the exact same scenario, but makes great use of the new units in the mod (Stug, Jagdpanzer IV, Halftracks, Waffen-SS Infantry), has a far more active AI and bigger, more epic maps. If you like fighting for small villages in vanilla gameplay, go for this "Wacht am Rhein" chapter!