The Operation Flashpoint and ArmA series have always been fertile ground for modders. Fans of digging into the innards of the game didn’t experiment with anything - they redrawn special effects, redrawn the balance, added new equipment. But for some, this was not enough. So, for example, the events of the DayZ global mod for ArmA 2: Combined Operation take place in a world that has survived the apocalypse. You need to survive and fight off hordes of bloodthirsty zombies and ordinary marauders who are tempted by cartridges or a powerful cannon. All this is generously flavored with realism and the signature hardcore of a typical military simulator. Another amateur development, Liberation 1941-45, dedicated to World War II, was so liked by Deep Silver that they decided to turn it into a full-fledged commercial product. To help our compatriots from Awar Deep Silver, they sent the German studio X1 Software, known for the additions to Silent Hunter 3 and IL-2 Sturmovik.
War never changes
The partial name change did not affect the scenery and surroundings in any way - the game takes place in 1944, a year before the end of the Great Patriotic War. Events Iron Front dedicated to the battles on the Vistula bridgehead. City after city, Soviet troops are recapturing the territories captured by the henchmen of the Third Reich and pushing the Germans further and further. The USSR is preparing for the Lvov-Sandomierz operation, the purpose of which is the occupation of South-Eastern Poland.
A surreal picture: a miserable pistol against a powerful tank.
The game features two campaigns, each will take approximately 8-10 hours to complete. The authors took a rather bold step, allowing the player to decide whether to try on the uniform of a Red Army soldier or put on a fascist tunic. Remarkably, there are no cranberries and deliberate embellishment of reality in the game - both Soviet and German soldiers are shown equally truthfully; the joint cooperation of developers from both countries participating in the conflict affected.
After Battlefield 3, flying in Iron Front evokes absolutely no emotion.
The mechanics of Iron Front, with minor differences, is the same as in Arma. It's still a very hardcore, unimaginably realistic shooter in which it's perfectly normal to drop dead from a single bullet and thrash around in the back of a truck for ten minutes, enjoying the raw soldier's humor. With detail and naturalism, two of the most important components of a military simulator, neither Operation Flashpoint nor ArmA have ever had problems. Studio Bohemia Interactive always tried her best and spared no effort to show the life of ordinary soldiers in all its glory. Successors in the person of Awar and their foreign colleagues also did not disappoint. The jokes in the back have not disappeared, as well as small sketches on the theme of everyday life of fighters: in the camp, soldiers train in shooting, do push-ups and carefully observe the surroundings from the towers. There is no escape from the mandatory drill either - before the start of each campaign, you will first be asked to run an obstacle course.
Compared to ArmA 2, the game has worked out all sorts of little things in more detail. Now the special parameters of different parts of the tank are taken into account. So, from a well-aimed shot at the tracks, some T-34 will sag and tilt to one side, and with an accurate salvo you can even demolish its turret. It is worth considering such important features as the angle of impact, skin thickness, caliber and type of projectile. It depends on whether you break through the armor or not. But the authors did not touch the aircraft control - iron birds still easily write out unthinkable barrels and pirouettes, as if wind resistance does not exist.
Discipline is the mother of victory
Iron Front is a game for those who like to sit in the bushes for fifteen minutes and plan an attack for a long time. Fortunately, there are so many approaches to the enemy that no one Sniper Elite V2 and did not dream. In this sense, Liberation 1944 is much more like chess. It is not rough methods of warfare that decide here (although they sometimes work), but careful consideration of the attack, analysis of the forces and weapons of the enemy, instant issuance of orders to colleagues. Fights usually take place at long distances. Attempts to get closer often end not in your favor: armored tanks and infantry do not sleep and ram the insolent people into the damp earth with lead. It is much more effective not to immediately climb into the heat, but to hide in the thick grass and shoot the enemies from the hill. However, it all depends on the landscape. In the forest or in the city, you can play hide and seek with your enemies and start shooting them one by one. The main thing is to constantly move and use the technique correctly. The game has a huge number of real-life tanks and aircraft that can be controlled.
The game has minimal destructibility - you can only knock down a fence and demolish a house with a tank shell.
Let the local battles not be Hollywood at all, as in call of duty or Battlefield, where a platoon or two of trained soldiers die at the hands of the protagonist in a minute, but in no other shooter will you get so much pleasure from destroying a tank. Until you hit the right place with a grenade, you curse a hundred times out of habit. And emotional one-on-one duels, when you have only a couple of rounds left, is something.
Sometimes Iron Front generates such impressive pictures of military operations that at least take a video and send it to Mr. Steven Spielberg: tank shells bite into the ground with a roar, a plane flying by machine-gun lines lines the sky, after the chirping of an enemy machine gun, a brother in arms falls dead with a broken head; all this against the backdrop of almost utopian rye fields, birds singing and the bright sun beating into the eyes. And this is not a parade of scripted scenes a la Call of Duty, but pure improvisation.
Unfortunately, along with the advantages, Iron Front adopted all the disadvantages of its eminent ancestor. Like in "Arma", Liberation 1944 has very inconvenient controls, the buttons are scattered very far from each other. Sitting at the keyboard, you feel like a pianist playing the most complex works of Franz Liszt - your fingers flutter from key to key. Bots sometimes do stupid things and just freeze in place, and there is no life at all from more serious bugs like crashes to the desktop. The graphics make you remember the hits of 2006 with a kind word: the angular models of fighters and jerky animation look extremely ridiculous today. And there is nothing to stutter about directing a few cut-scenes.
Iron Front: Liberation 1944
Iron Front: Liberation 1944Mini Video Review of the upcoming game
Iron Front: Liberation 1944
Iron Front: Liberation 1944
Iron Front: Liberation 1944
Iron Front: Liberation 1944
Iron Front: Liberation 1944
Iron Front: Liberation 1944
Russian video:
Series 1
Series 2
Iron Front–Liberation is a tactical simulator developed on the ArmA 2 game engine by X1 Software. The events unfold during the Second World War, when Soviet troops began the liberation of Poland.A short video on the game's graphics:
1) Comparison of the 2nd World War and the game - infantry + tanks.
2) Comparison of the 2nd World War and the game - aviation.
Description:
On the eve of the Great Victory Day on May 9, which marked the end Great Patriotic War, "Deep Silver" announces a game for PC: "Iron Front - Liberation". The plot of the game was recreated according to the combat reports of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht. The game is dedicated to historical battles on the Vistula bridgehead in Southwestern Poland. The player will be able to take part in the offensive operations of the Red Army, playing as a Soviet intelligence officer and a tanker, breaking through the armor of heavy German tanks on his IS-2 near Staszow. And also, to use the power of German weapons, holding back the onslaught of the Red Army in the German campaign. The player will have the opportunity - to control the aircraft, repel tank attacks, rush into large-scale counterattacks and capture enemy strongholds - all this will be felt while fighting on the fields
"Iron Front".
At your disposal are various types of small arms of those times, armored vehicles, including the famous "Royal Tiger" and Russian IS-2, as well as Focke-Wulf Fw 190, Junkers Ju-87 "Shtuka", Pe-2 and others.
The multiplayer game will be represented by a co-op mode, where we will have the opportunity to complete single missions with friends, as well as classic modes such as "Capture the Flag" and "Attack and Defense". In addition, the kit will include a friendly map editor that will allow everyone to create their own battlefields.
The Vistula bridgehead is waiting for its liberators. Who, if not you, will be able, picking up a machine gun, to recapture South-Eastern Poland from the fascist invader? Or maybe you have always dreamed of driving an IS-2 tank or a "Royal Tiger"? Sit in the cockpit of a Pe-2 fighter, Junkers Ju-87 or Focke-Wulf? Then this game is for you. Iron Front: Liberation offers a complete ammunition package: a co-op campaign mode, a lot of single player maps, classic multiplayer modes and traditional for this adult and serious genre fights to the bitter end.
In my opinion, the graphics of the game will be decent, and a lot of subtleties can be learned from Second World War, the technique is adequately drawn, and quite good physics, I'm waiting for its release and I want to play it.
Annoying errors and crashes, non-working scripts, inconvenient controls - the training mission honestly reveals the features Iron Front. This is not "hardcore" and, of course, not a "soldier simulator", but an ordinary hack, multiplied by one hundred percent certainty that the fans Arma tolerate any bullying. Outsiders are not allowed to enter!
bloody bigos
What Iron Front grew from a modification to, too noticeably. Tortured scripted scenes, shameful voice acting (the Russian-speaking announcer pauses at random and misrepresents names) and general “dampness” are forgivable for amateurs, but you expect at least minimal respect from professionals who take money for the game.IN Arma I preferred the "out of sight" mode - Iron Front immediately offered to switch to the pop form "from the third person." It is worth taking hold of the handles of the Maxim, and a steel shield appears in front of the nose (the aiming mode includes the “0” key on the numeric keypad, while the guns react to the usual RMB). And in order to fit the truck back to the cannon, you need to hold Alt and turn your head to the right - there is a small window behind the driver. The obligatory “tutorial” tells how to walk WASD, but keeps really useful information with it.
In general, it is easier to look at the world “from the outside”. The great-grandfather of Marcus Fenix famously mows down the villains with a machine gun, jumps between shelters (rolls are an indispensable technique) and almost with his bare hands tears off the caterpillars of tanks. The operation to liberate Poland is in full swing - the Red Army is advancing, the Germans are draping. Toothless apolitical plot reminded the series " Behind enemy lines”, which always bypassed sharp corners. If a good soldier follows bad orders, he's still a good soldier, right? Karl Neumann is a devoted defender of the Reich, ready, in the words of the game, to "lie to his death." Just yesterday he was scrubbing the floors in the "training school", and today people's lives depend on him. During the retreat, the command left the laggards to their fate. Go to Ivan? Not an option. It is necessary to break through the ring or die, covering yourself with glory.
On the other side of the barricades, that is, in the Soviet campaign, there are their own heroes. Perhaps a bullet with the name of a brave Nazi is already in the backpack of Sergei Klimakov, a scout who returned to the front from the hospital. The meeting with Alexander Bykov will also not go without consequences - there are a lot of mutilated corpses behind the back of a young tanker ... Perhaps I agree with those who say that for a tactical shooter there are too many names and badly written dialogues "for life". Moreover, the main task of the “single” is not to entertain or make you empathize with bucket-headed mannequin friends, but to introduce you to weapons, equipment and other details. After a "tense" (save-load-save-load ...) carnage in the narrow European streets, it's nice to ride along the spacious tank track or look for frogs in the surrounding swamps. Iron Front willingly sacrifices the coherence of the narrative for the sake of variety, but it's still boring to play. Linear gameplay in the spirit call of duty scares worse than shelling.
And despite all my efforts, I still couldn't believe what was happening. Every time something so wild and incredible happened that all that remained was to grunt in surprise. Imagine: a detachment of Germans is guarding a checkpoint on the road. Suddenly, a T-34 appears and ... drives past. We grab the Panzershrek, the score is 1:0. The second tank turned out to be smarter and immediately opened rapid machine-gun fire on the defenders. Ignoring the vile chirping, we approach the ammo box, fight with the text interface for a couple of minutes, finally, reload the "pipe", shoot (higher), shoot (lower), shoot ... "2:0"! The third guest is IS-2. We occupy an ownerless cannon and hollow out the damned piece of iron, dutifully substituting its sides. "3:0" ... What is this? subtle mockery of Polish shooters?
Impenetrably stupid and passive AI buries the game alive. X1 Software should have made a project about zombies (like Day Z, which raised Combined Operations to the top of the Steam chart) - from the indifference with which the enemies meet death, it becomes uncomfortable. Sometimes quite infernal notes slip through. Having killed a group of rotozei dozing in the open back of a truck, I wanted to continue my journey in comfort. He climbed into the cockpit and called his fighters, who resignedly sat on the benches - side by side with the dead frozen in the pose of a “tired system administrator”.
wall to wall
In multiplayer, everything is just as sad. "Koop" as if deliberately absorbed the shortcomings of network FPS, from purely technical ("lags" and unexpected disconnections) to gaming ones, when the team circles around another dilapidated village for an hour in search of the "last Fritz" (until someone slams him, attack next object is not allowed). The traditional fight for the flags is a little more interesting. Confronting a flesh-and-blood enemy isn't easy, but I wasn't particularly thrilled. Victory or defeat - decides a handful of "tops", the rest of the participants in the match simply do not know where to stick.
Sometimes humanism flares up in developers. Realizing that not everyone is ready to make a tedious forced march to the front line, they added airborne landing. Five minutes - and we are at the epicenter of events. However, for some, the process is more important than the result. There is where to turn around: 256 km 2 - more than in! Picturesque groves and swaying fields, cozy towns and ascetic military bases... You can enter any building, but usually there is not even furniture inside, and it is precisely from such "nonsense" that the atmosphere of the game consists. Guns hovering a few meters above the ground, and amusingly tumbling tanks also do not contribute to immersion in the virtual world.
With physics in general a pipe. It seems that there is both destructibility and a complex model of damage to equipment, but in reality it is a uniform circus. The Lend-Lease Studebaker, driving through the forest, leaves behind a wide clearing, the heavy Tiger is not able to demolish a wooden bench or a toilet ... It is almost impossible to predict how effective the shelter is. Who would have thought that a translucent wattle fence would hold 7.92 mm bullets?
Or was it a brick wall? Iron Front not in a hurry to dispel doubts. High-resolution textures are loaded slowly, and periodically the true face of war flashes before our eyes - an angular gray-brown mass. What about animation? Everyone is used to abstract passes symbolizing this or that action, but when a fighter approaches the car and “teleports” to the right place, this is too much. The absurdity of the situation is emphasized by the astronomical system requirements. Do not believe what is written on the page on Steam. I can hardly imagine what hardware will pull the maximum settings.
Poor optimization is a signature feature Arma. Scolding the old-fashioned command menu is just as pointless, it has been with us since