Broken Arrow | Eugen Killer? | Single Malt Strategy | Episode 92 - Single Malt Strategy

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody, It's the Historical Gamer, but you can call
me Matt and welcome back to the Single Malt Strategy podcast.
Today I'm joined with my trustee co host Tortuga Power.
How are you doing today, Tortuga, I'm.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
A little under the weather, so apologize in advance, but
I'm still happy to be here and excited about this
one awesome.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
And we also have with us wolf Pack three four five.
How are you going to doing today? Wolf?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello?

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Hello, doing great? And last, but it's certainly not least.
I don't even know what I'm referring to on the
podcast anymore. Finish Jaeger, I believe.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, yeah, that's still me.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Okay, yeah, today.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
We're fight everything.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
I'm still the same U. And today we're going to
be talking about kind of a little bit of RTS
focused but driven by the fact that Broken Arrow has
come out from Slytherin and it's been pretty popular. So
I think we're going to be talking a little bit
about Broken Arrow. We'll probably be talking a little bit

(01:00):
about the Eugen games, Warno being the most recent as well,
but just sort of this genre of real time tactical lights.
I don't know, well, we can get into it. But
today's episode theme, I suppose this Broken Arrow.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Are these tactical wargame whatever. I don't know how to
call them, but they seem to actually have a real
emphasis on multiplayer as well. Is that like part of
their tagline. It seems to be part of Broken Arrows
tagline and a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Of like competitive stuff too.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah. The only one that kind of tried to break
away from that mold, which was the relatively recent was Regiments. Yeah,
I would say because of Regiments. I wouldn't say it's
a requirement, because Regiments is certainly like a Eugen I
refer to them as Eugen likes. Yeah, that's fair. Eugen
obviously sort of popularized the genre, I think in kind
of the mainstream, and a lot of these games feel

(01:46):
like they're kind of trying to take their their take
on that genre, if you will, because it's it's very unique,
Like I wouldn't call it similar at all to like
Combat Mission or other like more tactical grog Nardi crunchy games.
There's almost like an arcade sort of speed to it,
mixed in with like the you know, the depths that

(02:07):
they try to provide with the games. But I don't
want to get ahead of ourselves. Yeah, so before we
jump into the discussion of the game, do we want
to do, like, what have you been playing? I guess
probably just this, right, I mean I've been playing something different,
but yeah, let's do it was a quick one then. Yeah.
The game I've been recently playing is Warhammer forty thou
Rogue Trader. This is the latest CRPG by Alcat Games,

(02:30):
who did Pathfinder, Brath of the Righteous, and Kingmaker if
I'm remembering correctly. But I'm having a lot of fun
with it. They just had a new DLC. I kind
of started getting into it and I've been playing it
almost NonStop in my free time, So highly recommend it
if you're into CRPGs and forty K nice. I've actually
been playing quite a bit of Civil war games, sort

(02:51):
of tied with the we're you know, we're recording this
on the eleventh of July and sort of tied in
with the Steam War Game sale or whatever that's sale was.
I played sort of Gettysburg The Tide Turns, which is
kind of a failed turn base almost like map playing
Gettysburg game where it's kind of like playing on an
Atlas Scourge of War, which I've played a bunch of

(03:12):
on the Channel in the past. It's probably the most
like detailed tactical simulation of a civil war game. And
then I did some you know, some Sid Meyers Gettysburg,
a little bit of a blast of the past. So
kind of went down the civil war rabbit hole over
the last few weeks and have been playing a lot
of those tactical civil war games.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
I have been. Right off of our Tycoon podcast, I
picked up Two point Hospital, so I've been playing a
little bit of that, and I've also been playing this
Emperor of the Fading Suns. Have we talked about that
on the podcast at all? I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
It sounds familiar, but I don't think we talked about
it in great depth.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
If we did, yeah, okay, Well, it's an enhanced version,
basically a re release from like a nineteen ninety nine game,
which I still considered like the sweet spot of war gaming.
So it's good, it's a lot of fun. It's yeah,
like Shadow Empire, but different. I guess if I was
to give a very brief summary.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
When you say a sweet spot of war gaming, like
that era late nineties.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Or yeah, that era, there was so much good stuff.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Because I mean that manch was with Sid Meyers Gettysburg.
Also like that was ninety eight.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yep, I would consider that as one of them, like
the Imperium Galactica stuff. Wait, no, Master Ryan, I should
say one and two even like Civilization two is around then.
I mean there's a lot of good war games.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Not really a war game, but also Centauri came out
right around them.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Also, No, I mean ZIP two isn't either, but there
was like this you could play it as a war game.
Oh no, we're getting back in that discussion.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Move on quick. Once a war game, Finn. What about you?
What have you been up to.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
I've been playing a game called Wingspan on Steam. It's
basically the like a computer game version of the board game.
It's a game about birds. You play bird cards and stuff.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
It's kind of fun.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
I'm playing a multiplayer. You can also play a single
player on Steam. And then, I guess a couple of
months ago, I was pretty deep into a couple playthroughs
of Drusader Kings three. They have some DLC coming out
later in the year that's doing an expansion to all
of East Asia. So that's kind of just kind of
refamiliarizing myself with the game mechanics because I want to

(05:06):
definitely play you know as like China, Korea, Japan, they're
doing all that area, so that's gonna be a ton
of fun.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
I did not realize that that's awesome.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
Yeah, I think it's like an October November thing. The
four of us should try to play that absolutely well.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Today's topic, as we've already alluded to, recently, a game
called Broken Arrow came out. It is developed and I'm
I'm sorry if I'm butchering the pronunciation, but it's developed
by a company called Steel Balakia, who I believe is
a Russian developer, but it sounds like they've got like
folks kind of all over too. Yeah, they're primarily Russian.

(05:41):
And then it is published by Slytherin, so sort of
the wargame centric sort of, I wouldn't call it. They're
almost like a micro publisher, but they tend to publish
like smaller in terms of audience wise, more more groggy wargames.
It seems like this game is done really well by
Slytherin Stamp, I mean, by anyone's standards, but by Slytherin

(06:01):
standard Thert's for sure, over fourteen thousand reviews on Steam.
I just realized the reviews are mixed, which is interesting. Yeah,
I was gonna say that's caveat success.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
I mean, it's got a lot of sales, for sure.
I think that Slytherin's got their money worth out of this.
But I don't think the reception of the game has
been entirely positive. There's definitely I mean, I'm pretty positive
on it, as we'll see throughout the podcast. But there's
so many there's a lot of low hanging fruit that
you can nitpick at this game. It's got a lot
of quality of life and needs.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
Before we jump into that, you know, does anyone want
to take the stab on like what is I know,
we sort of hinted like eugen like, like what is
Broken Arrow? It's eugen like, I guess, but modern era,
which is so I guess, let's qualify what is eugen
like for someone who doesn't know, uh, real time RTS.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
So usually get your you got your deck builder of
your either your different factions when you play the map,
you have different points that you're trying to compete over.
You have some sort of like unit replenishment system either
that's either like phases or like a ticking clock that
gives you points per minute. All the Usion games have
stuff like that, from Steel Division to The War Game

(07:07):
to Warno, and then Broken Arrow has a similar system
in that. So you have those kind of things that
are across the RTS field with this genre of game.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
And it has both a single player and the multiplayer ability.
I think in my experience with Eugen is the hardcore
folks who play Usien games a lot tend to skew
toward the multiplayer and perhaps even competitive side of things.
Is that true of Broken Arrow as well? Or I
would think so. And I think a lot of the

(07:38):
negative reviews are coming from I think partially that multiplayer crowd.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
I mean, I don't know the Dove's logic here, but
I think you know, you have a game, an RTS
game they want to kind of emulate that multiplayer kind
of competitive scene. Is a ton of games that are like,
we have to promote being competitive scene, right, and I
think that that Broken Arrow is kind of I don't
know if they want to say copying, but they're going

(08:04):
along that trend that you see with games across the genre.
But that's including more no wargame Red Dragon absolutely agree.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
It's interesting and it doesn't shock me if they're having
some growing pains with managing like competitive multiplayer, because I
think that's an often underdiscussed complex thing to do, like
when it comes to matchmaking and all of everything that
goes with with that kind of a scene that I
don't think is as easy as as maybe you would
think in first glance, although certainly not a programmer, so

(08:34):
I'm not going to try to speak to the details
of everything you need to solve for that.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
Well, everyone's going to try to like cheese, or they're
going to try to find some sort of meta I
think back to like you know, wargame Red Dragon. I
think with like the helicopter spam and things like that,
people just trying so many different things to get like
that competitive edge, and some of it, I'm sure as
people were, like they're so obsessed with their their win
rate and their KD, et cetera. But you know, some people,

(09:00):
I think also just want to experiment. And if you're
going to you're creating a game that both has single
player and multiplayer, then you're going to be spending so
much time balancing multiplayer because you have hundreds of thousands
of people potentially right playing playing your multiplayer game and
trying to find so many different ways to win that
you're going to be spending a whole lot of your
I guess, like post release dev time fixing what the

(09:22):
community is kind of like creating and cheesing.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, and I guess that's kind of where I mean.
Part of the problem comes in with these games for
me is they're balanced to you know, adjust for that meta,
and then it makes the games inherently not realistic, I suppose.
I mean, these aren't very realistic games. I guess it
is something we should also mention.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
Well, oh okay, actually.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
I mean I was hit from this perspective. They they
at least give you an armory of a lot of
realistic units, I mean, things that are really out there.
Oh okay, I mean there are some things which are
not realistic as well. You can definitely debate about whether
or not the stats for these units.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Are correct, you know.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
I mean, I think actually one of the things I
enjoy is when I succeed in the game, I realize
I'm doing it in a way which is kind of
mirroring the way success happens in real combat, right Like
when you can pin a unit, flank them. Stuff like this,
When I feel like I'm doing realistic strategies, it gives
me the at least the illusion that the game is
doing something realistic.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
Oh man, I don't see any T seventy two turrets
jumping off the screens. So yeah, I didn't mean to
interrupt your whole thought. That was meant to be a
shirt little quip. Well shoot, I guess that derailed it.
I get I do get what you're saying, but I
do think games like this tend to like the meta chasing.

(10:41):
For example, you build your deck where you know everything
has aps or whatnot, and infantry seems kind of useless
in this game, So why would I take infantry? I
understand what you're saying, like you use combined arms tactics
in the game to successfully capture an objective, and the
games do do that. But yeah, I was gonna say,

(11:02):
I think I think where these games fall is they
want to appear. And this goes for the whole genre
a lot. Is that fucking are you in Chicago?

Speaker 2 (11:14):
What were that that was right outside my window?

Speaker 1 (11:17):
Was that a fucking gunshot? Is that firework? We're gonna
like a child's scream here that they hear the do
you hear the cars? I saw, yes, I heard the
sirens that I heard a gun show and I was like,
oh my god.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
My windows started to light up from the actual firework
going up, and I'm like, what that?

Speaker 1 (11:36):
So pack uh realism. So I think, you know, the
interesting thing in these games, and this goes for the
whole genre, is they want to sell you on the
notion of a being realistic. You've got all these real
unit types, You've got all this equipment that looks cool,
looks visually, you know, engaging. You know, That's one of

(11:57):
the things I think is worth calling out with these
games is you rare have the time to stop and look.
But they do generally look really good when you when
you do take a moment to like look at your
units and whatnot. But they want you to feel and
think that things are realistic. But it's a veneer. It's
a thin veneer of realism where you know, at the
end of the day, everything is subservient to balance within

(12:18):
the game. It's not based on is this is the
N one a too? Really this good relative to the
you know, to the ten ninety is the ten ninety.
This good relative to the the Bradley or whatever. It's
really whatever serves the game. There are I would agree,
there are moments where it's like it feels like I'm
doing realistic things. I think one of the things I
noticed was, and I don't think a lot of players

(12:39):
are doing this at least early on, is you've got
you've got actual said packages or aircraft with you know,
anti radiation missiles, and so if you're playing on a map,
I mean this is modern warfare, You're going to be
dealing with a lot of SAMs. And if you're trying
to use your aircraft without suppressing those SAMs, aircraft are
gonna get blown out of the sky at a at
a very high rate. So it behooves you to have

(13:01):
someone in your in your and we can talk about
sort of the way that co op works, but it
behooves you to have either in your deck or someone
on your maps deck. Some you know, aircraft is the
ability to destroy enemy sam's, so you can try and
open up the skies a bit for your your ground
attack packages. And in that sense, like conceptually it's realistic,
like real tactics are you know, useful in that sense,

(13:24):
But what I think where the game sort of falls
off for me a bit on the realism side of
things is like, I don't get the sense that any
of these units performance or you know, even the way
that you're using these these units is you you're trying
to tell the audience that this is a realistic looking

(13:45):
and feeling game. But at the end of the day,
everything about performance, everything about tactics is subservient to what
is the right balance for this as sort of a
multiplayer game. At least that's the that's the way most
of these games pay out. I mean, sure, at the
end of the day, it's it's about balance. So I
would never I would never call this like a tactical

(14:05):
combat simulator. It is not realistic in the way that
like combat mission.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
But let's let's hear what Wolf had to say, because
he had an opinion about this. I kind of expressed
the pro realism standpoint. Let's see what Wolf has to
say on the On the opposite.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
Side, I kind of do agree with what thhd is
is really getting at. I mean, I don't know why.
I don't think Broken Arrow is necessarily realistic, and maybe
it is because of because it's an arcade game, and
maybe it is because of the balance. It's like seeing
T fourteen armadas. Yeah, you know, rolling up in mass

(14:38):
It's like, okay, I don't know, it just kind of
takes me out of it. All the T nineties have APS,
all the abrams have aps, like active protection systems. It's
also a pacing thing, for what it's worth, Like these
games are play at an incredibly high tempo that is
probably not realistic. They're really fast paced. It is you

(14:59):
have to stay on top of everything. You don't get
a moment I get and I you know, what do
I know? But there's no moments to really breathe or
set up.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
Yeah, I think that's a little bit different than the
realism thing. But I do agree. Okay, so I agree
with all the points that you guys are making about realism.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
I don't want to I don't want to go too
far into the store too. But I don't know if
i'd agree with that, because I do think when a
game becomes a clickfest that takes away from the realism
that it's trying to sort of sell itself as a
military simulator.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
Well, what I mean is, if you're going to command
an army What actually happens is you give an order
and then a lot of people do something. But in
this game, you're the one doing all those things, so
it has to be a clickfest because you're controlling every unity.
But from the realism standpoint, like, I agree with what
you guys are saying that everything in the game has
to be subservient to balance. That's I agree with that,
and I think that that's the limit of realism for

(15:51):
a game that needs to be a Yeah, it needs
to be competitive in multiplayer unless you sacrifice that well,
if you're willing to, like I don't know, probably even
insult the Rush if you were to revamp them so
they don't have T fourteens because we've already seen like
what are those?

Speaker 1 (16:05):
Right? I agree it is a multiplayer game issue. Like
I think of wars Under. When I think of this stuff,
it's like you have, you know, tigers going up against
lepper ones for example, just to fit in this arbitrary
balance bracket. What are you talking about? Wolf war Thunder
has a simulation mode. Yeah, okay, and I guess in

(16:28):
that mode you I think you do play as the
historical tanks and the historical leaders. Someone will correct me
about it talking about wars ont But.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
The idea is you're nailing the idea. That's the point, right,
is that they these gimes are all making sacrifices to
have a game which is balanced for multiplayer.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
Competitive multiplayer environment. Yeah, absolutely, so.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah, my perspective on realism was just that it makes
me feel kind of realistic when I'm watching the two
armies collide and I'm watching the maneuvers I'm doing. I
like it from that perspective as being realistic. But no,
I you know, I don't think that the actual stats
for these We've seen a lot of complaints about that
on the forums and on the Steam or views, so
I'm sure that those are not balanced.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
And to be fair, it's like we don't know, yeah, exactly,
when you have a game that's set in the present
and potentially slightly in the future, you have all these
vehicles that you have no real data for, so you're
making it up. So then you're balancing with you know,
what someone might think or what open source data is,
which is a lot of the times incorrect, especially with

(17:29):
some of the Russian equipment. And then I don't want
to I guess I didn't want to say, like we
have Russian devs, so they're making Russian equipment like, you know,
slightly better something than what we see fighting in Ukraine
or you know, the T fourteen, which is you know,
potentially not even like a functional military vehicle and stuff
like that. So when you have when you have like
this fog of war of like of technology, you can

(17:51):
balance in a way that's not realistic.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
Well, and to be fair, there are Western units in
the game as well that are not like what was
it that is it the M ten Booker or whatever?
The MP ten Bookers in there?

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was canceled, right, So but the
N ten in the game is garbage, so it's not
like they made some super unit out of it.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Yeah, it's like the T fourteen is actually you know,
a kaream of its top tier and it doesn't really
you know what, there's maybe fourteen of them. I mean
that's the same as like the what the soup fifty
seven or whatever. There's what like ten of them in
the real world. I think they're actually, yeah, maybe there's more.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
It didn't even need to happen with the M ten too,
Like they could have had plenty of realistic tanks to
fill that role. I'm not even sure why it's in
the game.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
But yeah, I mean this game does have a lot
of hypothetical or you know, maybe in ten years.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Probably can jump all over on this. But I've played
a lot of the campaign, and the campaign is kind
of they do have you bring in like future units.
I'm not even sure they're available in the multiplayer stuff,
but you get active access to some really advanced infantry
that have like probably fictational you know, the eighty four,
there's like a future version of that that has a

(18:56):
range of like eight hundred meters and that's like not
at all anyway, So you get access to like advanced
units that don't exist in your life yet, but they're
just like future projections.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
If it's not obvious from the way we're talking, you know.
One of the unique pieces of Broken Arrows that it
is a modern day one of these, whereas like typically
Eugenus played in the near past where they're looking at
like Cold War or World War II stuff regimens was
Cold War also, I believe, right, and then Broken Arrows
sort of like, hey, this is like modern day, like

(19:29):
there's drones even although not I don't think they've got
quad copters. But yeah, you're talking like twenty twenties in
terms of time frame. So was Red Dragon like Sat
in the two thousands? I thought Red Dragon was Cold
War in Asia.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
Yeah, I would say it was more in the eighties. See,
I've seen like a spanned a few decades, not just
a specific point in time. I get the impression that
Broken Arrow is actually focusing on like a specific point
in time, probably around twenty twenty two when they were
first developing the game. I don't always started developing in
twenty twenty one, and that's key, I think only because
they started development before Russia and Bada Ukraine. Again.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah, this game's been in the press for quite a while.
I mean there's been a big marketing cycle for this game.
When was it announced? Even I got that one trailer,
I had a lot of hype behind I think because
it was a modern day Eugen s game. So is
this the only one of the games that has nukes?
I don't think Eugen has nukes. Yeah, and it has nukes.
That's something that's kind of unique about it as supposed to.

(20:28):
Broken Arrow was announced in twenty nineteen. Yeah, so it's
been a while as.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Part of a crowd funding wow twenty nineteen. Okay, so
I was off by a couple of years, Sorry about that.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
During a crowdfunding campaign on the Russian crowdfunding platform boom Starter.
That's a name, but yeah, I mean it's it's it's
been you know, in the hopper for a bit.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
Okay, So let me go back to one thing we
were mentioning before, if you don't mind, we talked about
the pace, the like really frenzied pace. You have to
play this game. This is one thing I'd like to
compare with Warno and wargame series. In those games, you
have a replay system, so to a degree, it's okay
if you aren't paying attention, you know, you set off.
Like in this game Broken Arow you can like drop
a nuke, which is obviously a pretty moment that you

(21:08):
don't want to miss. But in like the wargame series,
you could send up your bombing run or whatever it
was and know that it's going to do its job
and you don't really need to see the effect because
that's just aesthetics, right, It's just visual glorification, satisfying, but
it doesn't advance your strategy to watch something like that.
In wargame you'd be like, Okay, I can just watch
it in the replay. Well, Broken Arrow doesn't have a

(21:29):
replay system. So I really feel like this game and
it's very difficult too. I think that we've all played
together some co op vers ai and it really pushes you.
You can't really sit back on your heels. I mean,
on the some of the wargame co op vers ai
games I've played, you can set the game settings low
enough that it's easy enough you can actually watch stuff,
you know, and you can actually smell the roses while

(21:50):
you're playing. But I don't get that impression. In Broken Arrow.
Things are always pretty frantic, and I never have time
to like watch what I want to watch because I
always have to be planning out where my next you know,
supply points can be, or advancing new troops. So that's
one thing I would say is that if Broken Air
wants to be a game like the wargame series, especially
because I think it plays really well into any multiplayer

(22:10):
competitive scene, it's really important to have replays, and they
don't have that right now. It's kind of a question, well,
why did they even launch without that? I'm not sure.
Maybe they just don't have the development resources and they
need the money now. But yeah, what are your thoughts.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
I have seen a lot of complaints about the lack
of replay for multiple reasons, a lot of the reasons
you listed before. But this game does seem to have
an issue with hackers, and that is one of the
reasons the game is sitting at mixed on Steam right
now is there's been a slew of hackers coming in
and kind of ruined a lot of people's experience. And

(22:42):
with a replay system, players are able to verify, oh,
this dude was hacking and send a proper buger or
proper report in, but that functionality is not in the game.
Just to touch on pacing real fast, I have issues
with pacing and pretty much all of these games. I
do think I like broken Arrows pacing the best, especially

(23:06):
when it comes to armor. Armor feels really good in
the game. Somethings like infantry is incredibly squishy, and I
know infantry is squashy, but whenever your infantry's in a building,
you have twenty guys and one BMP just lights the
building up and kills all of them. It's like a skyscraper.
I'm just like, Okay, come on. So it's like some

(23:27):
things I can take my time with, like armor and plan,
and then I look away for a couple of minutes
and my infantry I had in a building is just
annihilated by one small unit. And these games are really
fast paced. So I have issues with pacing in it.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
But I have the same problem actually with my armor.
So I am I guess yeah, yeah, I mean I
have my armor. Like I look away and I look
back and I see the ATGM going at them. I'm like,
oh crap, and then they're bye bye. So I mean
with infantry sometimes because they have a number of guns
in the squad, unless you get like a really high
area effect like a big bomb, you know, a nuke

(24:02):
will do it. But even like attack comes or anything
like that, they usually don't eliminate the whole squad, so
you have a small amount of time. Like when that
PMP is shooting at the building, there's usually a small
amount of time where you can like right click them
out of the building, although they do take like five
seconds to get out, so they might be dead before
that happens. But I mean, what I'm all I'm trying
to say is I think it's a problem for all

(24:23):
my units. My airplanes die fast, my vehicles die fast,
and my Infantruye dies fast. As like you said, So, Yeah,
that pacing is really tough. I mean, it's not a
game you're allowed to really enjoy while you're playing it.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, And it's like these games have beautiful I mean,
we've talked about this. These games have beautiful graphics. They
all look good, and it's just like you'd never have
time to sit back and smell the flowers. You're just
always clicking. You're always zoomed out. If you're not zoomed out,
you're a fool, you know, I mean, you put yourself
out a big disadvantage for you know, admiring the graphics.

(24:55):
Do you want to talk a little bit about the
campaign Tortuga, because I know you mentioned playing it. I
was curious what your thoughts were on it.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
Yeah, before I do, as anybody else played it.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
I have I well larded it. I did the tutorial.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
Okay, Yeah, I've gotten maybe eight or nine missions deep,
probably seven missions or eight missions into the US and
two missions into the Russian one. It's very difficult. It's
kind of has a similar feel to how we've all
played co op for SAI, and I think we've found
it challenging. I'll let us talk about that after this.
But for the single player campaign, there's also another big

(25:26):
feature which is missing, and I think this has been
widely reported on the Actually, the developers even acknowledged this
in their first like release plan what are we going
to do next? For the big patch? They talked about
how there's no save game feature for a single player
and the missions are so long. They're at least an hour,
an hour and a half, sometimes two hours. So what

(25:46):
that means is either you play for two hours straight.
This game, by the way, it's beautiful, as Wolf was mentioning,
it's my to me, it's my favorite like visual game
of this style. I think it has I just everything
about it to me is spot on as far as
the graphics go. It's very enjoyable, very easy on the eyes.
But it pays the price for that in terms of resource,

(26:06):
your computer resource usage. So I don't really want to
like AFK for like four hours if I go, you know,
some do something I have to do while my GPUs
running at one hundred percent at home, Like I don't know,
there's no it's kind of a frustrating thing. Okay, So
let me just put that point aside and just say
the campaign is very difficult, but I found it really engaging.
I found myself like, I have very limited time, and

(26:28):
I find myself like every night I'm like, I'm going
to get another mission into that campaign. So a game
like that which draws me back and like, really, I'm
really excited to play the next mission. Despite how difficult
it is, I would say it's a really good campaign,
So I can actually recommend it if you're able to
finagle around the point that you can't save the game,
that even if you lose a mission, you've got to restart,
and it's kind of a pain. But I still think

(26:51):
despite all that, it's worth it, which means it's really
worth it, right, And if they ever were to get
a save game feature, that would be even better.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
That's my initial thoughts.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
I actually thought you were talking about the voice acting earlier.
I think it's actually relatively well polished, like surprisingly well.
And maybe this is just because the foil for it
is Wargame, which never really invested in that single player
ever since. Like the opening one, I think European Escalation
was that the first wargame.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
I don't know if I would agree with that in
terms of like they've got the so one thing I
like about Warno it kind of started with Steel Division
two where they said, like, we're going to do this
grand sort of dynamic campaign and it wasn't. It wasn't
terribly compelling in Steel Division two. I think because of
the setting it wasn't. Begration is not Operation Begration in
the Eastern Front World War two is not the most

(27:36):
balanced campaign, So from a gameplay point of view, it
was not maybe the most interesting when you have a
myriad of police battalions going up against armored regiments and
stuff like that. But I think one of the things
I really liked about Warno's sort of dynamic campaign is
they give you this big map, this like General Mode
or whatever. They give you this big map with all
these units on it, you know, and you have to

(27:57):
fight across the segment of Germany or whatever, and you know,
as the Soviets are trying to break out or as
the Allies are trying to hold them or counter attack
or whatever. Like. I think that element of the campaign
is really interesting. I don't know that it holds up,
but I rarely play it long enough to have it
break down, but being able to like rush regiments to
different spots on the map and then for those units
to fight against other units, and then the casualties carry

(28:19):
over so that you know now they're weaker next time
they fight. To me that you know, I play that
and I am The internal monologue in me is like
I'm playing you know, Red Storm Rising almost like the
game right, like you kind of see in your head
visions of some of those scenes in that book. The
Broken Arrow campaign, believe, is strictly linear, like they sort

(28:42):
of a bifurcated campaign where they've got like a US
campaign and then a Russian campaign, but it's kind of
told from the same like menu system, which is a
little weird. It's almost like you're playing both sides of
the of the story at the same time. That's kind
of cool. Actually, yeah, I don't have it. I'm not
when I say weird. It's just I guess what I
mean is different.

Speaker 2 (28:59):
But what means by that is just that you can
the mission select is a map you click on, like
the little points are the different places in Europe where
you're going to fight. That battle, and both the Russian
and the American campaigns have their points which expand and
open as you beat the previous missions. They're both popping
up on the same map exactly. It's played sequentially for
the Russians and it's played sequentially for the Americans, but

(29:22):
you can see both the same time.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Are are all the missions taking place at around the
same time, Yes, like the American and the Russian mission.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah, you can tell it's in phases, right, Like you
can tell that these two missions for the Americans, like
the two tutorials correspond to the two tutorials for the Russians,
and then after that happens both advance and you see
that the Americans are doing something which is countering what
the Russians are doing at the same time. So yeah,
it's pretty cool like that.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
It almost reminds me a little bit of how the
menu system works on It's not you don't play both sides,
but in Unity of Command to you have these like
chunks of the campaign that open up, and you might
be able to play like a Battle in the North
for a battle in the side, but like then you
can't go beyond like one or two missions down that timeline.
Until you move to the next phase of the campaign,

(30:07):
which is is kind of I think feels similar to this.
I think the thing that turdly not the most. Maybe
I don't. I'm not saying the voice acting was bad,
but the voice characters, like the characters in the campaign
are so okay. The American general is just, yeah, he's cringe.
He acts like he's ourly army and he's like supposed

(30:27):
to be a general overseeing a multinational force. It's just
he's kind of comical in his in his characterization. Or
the Russians, like there's a there's a Russian sort of
female character and there's like her superior and it's just
like this very stereotypically obnoxious, creepy old man, you know,
slick you know, slicky young woman and like almost straight

(30:48):
out of like half a Cold War fiction. That just
kind of turned me off from just the writing of
these of these of who you're supposed to be interacting
with and sort of the briefings and everything like that
just was I think comically bad. The missions were interesting,
The actual gameplay was fine, I think hard but fine.
I only am like four missions in, so I won't

(31:08):
pretend to know all the detail of it. But I
think that was just something that kind of made me
kind of cringe a few times as I was trying
to trying to make my way through, because also like
there's really long briefings and cut scenes between all this
too that maybe maybe too long, you know, between missions.
And then also just the lack of the save game
mid battle, because the battles get progressively larger and more complex.

(31:28):
Even the tutorial to not have like the ability to
save in the middle middle of it is kind of
it's a long time to commit to something that you
don't necessarily want us play in one sitting, although at
least in the tutorial, I think you can skip that.
You can skip ahead if you want to the end
of the missions.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
I want to say that I think that the difference
between Broken Arrow and the wargame series is exactly kind
of what you were saying, this linear structure. It's very
narrative driven. I played the Warno version, the Grand campaign stuff.
I also played the wargame Red Drag One and it
it was not satisfying. I felt like it was just

(32:06):
like a little snippet of what you would do in
a normal battle. It was kind of very samey, but
objective based and narrative driven missions in Broken Arrow. Look
at it. I mean, I'm not saying I should speak
for everyone. I found that the repetitive nature of Warno.
I found Warno to have a repetitive nature, and I

(32:26):
find this one to be much more interesting, especially when
you have objectives, like, Okay, there's one mission where you
go and capture an HQ where the Green Berets are
there and they're actually looking for this Russian governor guy,
and then you hold that while they're actually going through
a tunnel system, and then they appear in different other
places on the map and then you have to go
and like rescue them. And that's like, to me, that's

(32:49):
really cool, because I mean I can buy into that gameplay,
I can buy into that narrative. But the Warno version
was just like here, take your troops and fight a
normal fight over here, and then, oh, by the way,
go and take whatever troops you want and fight that
on this one and all it did was basically restrict
the units you had to fight a normal map, and
that was not interesting to me. I think the Warno campaign,

(33:12):
you are kind of telling your own story based on
what's happening on the bigger map, and in that sense
it sort of make your own fun. I think Broken Arrow,
to your point, is more well scripted, so there's maybe
more interesting stories to tell from a what is the
game explicitly telling you, although I do wonder about replayability

(33:33):
there because you're not going to get a new story.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
You know, we're in Warno. The map can unfold differently
on the grand map and sort of you can tell
a different story based on but where units are pushing
in the cities that battles are being fought around, whereas
like Broken Arrow is going to be the same exact
story every time. It might be better, but it is
going to be the same exact story every time.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
Can't because they do it they have different like it's
the Collectamol achievements type stuff. They have different achievements, same
kind of way StarCraft does. And a lot of games
do you can replay and there's a little hidden goodies
like did you find the SU fifty seven on the
airplane map? I didn't, Actually I did, but I didn't
capture it in time. So yeah, there's a little things
like that. But no, I think that Warno is boring.
The first time around. That's my problem with it. I

(34:12):
did not enjoy it even the first time. I stopped
after like two hours on the Grand Campaign because it's
just I would rather play co op for SAI and
set up my map and have all my units available
to me, like I can construct my own deck. We
talked about deck building. We should probably talk more about
that too, but like I like constructing my own deck.
The Grand campaign was basically, oh, here's a small like,
here's like ten units you can use for this entire map.

(34:34):
It's very I don't know that's.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
I don't think it was that small, but I generally
it was bad the broad strokes of what you're saying. Yes,
although if I was if I was a narrative you know,
if I was Wolfpack and I was going to create
a narrative story around the gameplay, I think there's more.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
But you would do that with scenarios, not through the
Warno campaign, would you. I mean, the Warno campaign is
very restrictive, is what I'm saying. I think it's restrictive
and it's repetitive. Okay, I've already said it already, but
that's my thoughts. I really don't think the warn O
camp is like compelling, and I think you can't even
finish one version. I mean, did you finish it? Did
you feel compelled to keep going?

Speaker 1 (35:06):
Not because it's boring, but just because it's a I
think it's more of a grind, Like, yeah, grind exactly,
I think. And that's the problem with like the Steel
Division stuff too, as you get into a little bit
of whack a mole where it's like, now there's all
these little units you're racing around trying to sort of
snuff out. But anyway, like broad strokes, yes, I agree

(35:26):
with agree with what you're saying. I might quibble on
the margins, but who cares. Yeah, so that's the campaign.

Speaker 2 (35:32):
Sorry, one last little thing just I didn't want to
say to me. The campaign right now is the highlight
of the game. It's I really liked it.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
Okay, I know Finish played a whole lot of the
first Steel Division. How does that system compare to anything
they've described or you've played since.

Speaker 3 (35:47):
Steal Division one? I think the standout feature, besides obviously
the World War two setting, is that Steel Division one
had the phase systems for units replenishment. So you had
phase one, you had at a number of points, So
it was kind of like set up that your first
phase should be lighter units, more recon units, and then

(36:07):
phase two was kind of some of the heavier units,
and then phase three is kind of this like, this
is where your main battle tanks are coming in, this
is where your tiger tanks, your heavy tanks are moving
onto the battlefield. And I don't really think any other
games have replicated that. I think it was extremely unpopular
because it was unpopular by the people who played Steel

(36:31):
Division one and then had wargame Red Dragon veterans, and
they I think they complained so much that that's why
it never came back, because Steel Division two didn't even
have that. One of my things like knocks against Eugene
is that they I feel like they don't innovate because
the wargame Red Dragon community just gets pissed off. I

(36:51):
feel like the games that we get from them are
just so similar, they're so safe. They're putting out a
safe product.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
I don't think that's always been true of you, Jen.
I definitely think that's where they're at now. Or it's
like to keep the boat afloat, We've got to keep
this core audience appeased and to do that, we've got
to keep making the same game over and over again.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
It made like, what is it They're on their fourth
Cold War RTS game.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
Yeah, But even so, like think about I don't know,
did any of you play Ruse? I tried? Yeah, what
even is that? It's a game by Eugene Systems way
back in the day. I think it was as their original, right,
I don't know. I thought maybe Wargame came out first
and then that was the sequel, But I could be wrong,
but I remember like that game had a very unique
concept where there was this intelligence side of things where

(37:35):
you had like based on there was like almost like
sigand that would give you information about radio chatter or
information happening on the map. That was almost like this
intelligence gathering within the map that played a role. I
didn't play it a ton, and it's been years, so
I don't want to go back into like try and
describe in detail how it worked, but the general concept

(37:57):
was to uncover things you couldn't physically see. There was
this almost like radio chatter side of things that would
kind of help reveal what your enemy was trying to do.
And I think there was ways you could also like
feed false information. I think that's where the name Ruse
comes from.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
Yeah, you would set you would drop paratroopers or whatever,
and the enemy would see them on the map, but
it would be fake, but they would see them as real. Okay,
that's actually pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
It was very innovative, right, Like that's not something they
don't do that anymore. And I think Ruse it had
a major publisher. Was it Activision or was it I
can't remember who, but it was like I mean, it
was like on console as well. It had like a
three D like campaign like that had like you know,
animated characters talking through. It was a very high production
value game for like what we you know this this

(38:44):
sort of genre. I think it failed. I'm guessing it failed.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
No, well that's true.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
I guess at least they didn't. They didn't stay with
the publisher they don't, like Activision doesn't publish them anymore.
And it was one of.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Those games that became successful after it had already gone
to market and kind of like faded, but people realize
it's brilliance like years later. I guess it's like one
of those sleeper movies that people suddenly realized, oh, this
is actually really good.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, Like critically, I think it was well regarded by
a lot of people who I respect, right I financially
I assume it was not. It was not a bonanza
exactly out of curiosity. I mean, how many of those mechanics,
how well do those mesh with a competitive multiplayer crowd?
But I think that was before they became captured by
the competitive multiplayer crowd, you know. I think that was

(39:29):
when they were focused on making an RTS with largely
single player elements. I don't remember if there was multiplayer
or not, but like I said, it was on console too.
I played it on PlayStation three. Question mark. It's just
one of those games I hear come up a lot,
and I would say that was an example of someone
doing a lot of really innovative things, and even like wargame,
I think when it first came out was a pretty

(39:50):
innovative approach and it was very you know successful. It
built this large multiplayer community around it, and obviously a
lot of people continue to try and copy it. So
like they did some thing that resonated with people. But
now I think that you know, now they've kind of
they tried to maybe break away from the Cold War
a little bit with the Steel Division games getting back
to World War Two. I think their general campaign mode

(40:12):
was an attempt to innovate a bit with that like
big map of like units moving around on it and
colliding like that was definitely different than what happened in
Steel Division one, So like that was an attempt I
think to be a little bit different as well, like
I think they.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Do can I also mention about Steel Division one. They
had the frontline system in that, which was new, and
I actually thought it played really well into the ABC
phace thing that Finn was talking about, because you like
your recon units weren't just there to scout things out.
They were actually pushing the front line, and the front
line is how you It was the way you got
your points right. It wasn't about taking specific objectives. They
actually made it frontline based r and I think they

(40:47):
also went back on that for Steel Division two or
did they keep it in and I can't remember.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
I think they got rid of it. I feel like
I generally liked it, and I remember seeing people complaining
because it's like, oh, I want to fight over points
on the map. I was just I remember thinking, like
anything can be a point on the map that you
have to fight over, you know, the whole map is open.
I feel like when I play we played Borno. I
played Borno today and we played Broken Arrow to and

(41:13):
I feel like so much of the map is not
being fought over.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
Yeah, it's just the little boxes that you.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
You're fighting over a third of the map. And I
felt like steal the vision opened up the full map.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
With the front line system.

Speaker 3 (41:24):
It wasn't I don't know if it was perfect, but
I thought it was a good step in the right
direction to make a full, like a full kind of
map usage.

Speaker 2 (41:34):
And I also think and it was just different too.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
It is different, and I do think that like you
think about historically, you think about World War Two having
a like a big front line and stuff like that,
it felt a little bit more realistic, even though it's
kind of this arcade, you know, abstracted. You have a
line on the map, et cetera. You did kind of
have a front line. And when I played Broken Arrow
or Warno and stuff like that, you do have a

(41:57):
lot of units clumped up in a singular area and
the rest of the map is kind of ignored.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
No, I was just gonna say, I haven't played the
games with the front lines, But I feel like with
that sort of mechanic, the points that you would be
fighting over, like a town or a village or whatever,
would just happen organically exactly if there would be contested
you know, trench lines or whatever, that would be at
your point ABC or D traditionally.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yes, but yeah, but that's what happened. But I like
both systems. I think they each have their place. But
you can see the counterpoint to having a generic front
line was if somebody has like all these strategically important
objectives and somebody else is controlling like a forest, there
should be a little bit more reward. Maybe they needed
to have like a not completely evenly holding this territory

(42:42):
that if this is part of your front lines, it's
worth a little more than holding like forests. But that
wasn't the case, right, If you held this empty field,
it was the same as holding this city. That's where
people were complaining about it.

Speaker 3 (42:51):
Yeah, it could have been interesting to have a hybrid
of you have the front line and conquering more territory
gives you more of the points, but then you also
a fight over fixed points on the map, you know,
point A. Yeah, and it's in the town. But then
when you're flanking, you're making a little flanking maneuver or whatever,
you're capturing frontline territory could have been interesting.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
And like what happens if you happen to completely encircle
one of those points, you know, I mean, you could
have mechanics with that. I'm surprised no one's done a
hybrid system now that we're talking about it. I'm sure
there's issues that we haven't thought of, but well, there's
a big issue, right The first and foremost is when
you're conquering territory, it's revealed on the map, so there's
no such thing as a sneak attack.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
Now that's not entirely true. There are units like recon
units that don't capture territory, or maybe you can turn
it off. I don't remember exactly, but I just remember
that a lot of the your unit's movement was spoiled
by the fact that, yes, you're suddenly getting me is
aware that the frontline is moving in that direction. So
obviously you have a unit there.

Speaker 1 (43:46):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
I guess I don't know. We don't have to get
a workshop system, so.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah, I think where my head is just as I
would push back on the notion that Eugene doesn't do
innovative stuff because I think we've talked about they've done
a lot of differ from things. But I but I
think where they're at at this point is I don't
want to go too far into the company politics. But
Eugen had a rough couple of years internally. They had
labor issues. They had reports that they were paying developers

(44:13):
like borderline, you know, impoverishment wages, like yeah, there was
a strike. I think actually that's where the Broken Arrow
so like we mentioned Broken Arrow being run by a
Russian company, but I think the lead like designer is
actually from France, right like, and he's he was with
Eugen back in the day for for Broken Arrow, like

(44:34):
that that's where he am I wrong on this.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
I don't know. I don't know if he's from Oigan.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
There's I know there's a there's a central figure from
from on Broken Arrow that was working with Eugen back
in the day.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yeah, there's one French. There's one man French guy on
the team. So it checks out.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
He's like the lead designer or something like that that
I don't know, you know, they they had a huge
number of issues, and I wonder if maybe Eugene has
just fallen back on Hey. To survive as a company,
we need to make games that this large multiplayer community
that we have sort of crafted will buy and like.
And so now we're just gonna make another cold war

(45:09):
game that's the exact same as the mechanics we've used
for years now. Yeah, I think it's exactly what Finn
was saying. It's that every time they made innovations which
are really cool and creative, everyone just, well not everyone,
but the vocal minority complained that they wanted it more
like wargame. And so the perfect example of this, the
culmination of all their innovation is warn Oh right, I

(45:32):
mean this is the latest game. It was their release
after many years of not having a game out, and
Warno is basically take all the war games, roll them
up into one entity, and that's warn O. They basically
just give it a great soundtrack and I definitely like
that soundtrack, but they basically made it like this is
wargame on steroids. Yeah, they took some stuff from a

(45:52):
Steel Division to be fair, like the general campaign mode
had not been I don't believe in any of the
previous war games, and that is in the so like.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
No, no, they did have so they did have campaigns previously, right,
they had they.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
Had campaigns, but not the general mode, like not that
big open campaign. Well yeah, fine, that's you think that's
a just a downgrade whatever, they should stop innovating.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
That true, Okay, it's true.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
But but anyway, so like it does seem like this
that they've become a bit captured by the multiplayer community,
which is interesting because you know, Regiments, which was another
game like this said we're gonna go and just do
the single player focus of this game, and you know,
they did not meet with a ton of success. Regiments
was published by Micropos. Then maybe they got maybe they

(46:40):
got their money back, but like they didn't. As far
as I can tell based on Steam reviews, Regiments is
a much smaller player base. Now maybe maybe that's fine,
but they have about twenty five hundred reviews on Steam
for Regiments, notably very positive, but but twenty five hundred,
whereas Broken Arrow, which has gone the multiplayer route, as
over fourteen thousand reviews and is mixed and some of

(47:03):
the reports have seen suggest like they've sold hundreds of
thousands of units already of Broken Arrow, which but.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
Isn't that because they pegged it as a multiplayer game?
They came this was supposed to be the war game killer.
I mean, that's how Slytherin was really pitching it.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm agreeing. I'm just saying that, like
in terms of folks, I guess like that clearly the
focus being multiplayer seems to drive a big chunk of
the sales in a way that maybe the single player doesn't.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
I agree. I mean, unfortunately that's not me, but I
understand that this game is not meant to appeal for me,
and the way I typically have to enjoy it is
through co op vers AI.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
And that is the way I enjoy this the most too.
Like I think co op being able to like log
into a game like this and play with your friends
is you know, it's just such a great hang out
with friends and play a game together on the same
side without too much stress, Like that's a this is
a great game for that.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
Well, Warno excels of that. I would not say that
Broken Arrow excels at the low stress part. It's like
extremely stressful for me at least.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
Why don't you talk about that. Why why don't we
started talking about that a bit.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
Well, let's finish, let's finish talk about it. He just
helped me defeat the enemies in our most recent skirmish,
which was a ton of fun.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Well, I don't really know what to think about this.
I was thinking about because we were talking about innovation
and there's you know, I wanted to segue into two
things I really like about Broken Arrow that I don't
feel like I've seen anywhere else, and I feel like
this is where they've innovated. And the first one is
the unit kit customization where you can spend more points

(48:29):
to have like add on active protection system and upgraded
engine and upgraded gun. I don't remember seeing that anywhere else,
and I think that's a cool feature when we were
doing the deck building stuff. And then the second thing
is is kind of minor, but I did like how
buildings in the game you can have multiple units in
the building. The building has kind of like a number

(48:50):
on there, so you can have like sixty units in
a factory or something in a warehouse, and you can
go into like airplanes and ships and stuff like that.
I thought that was kind of cool.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
I think to what Wolf was talking about.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
How infantry and Broken Arrow is so squishy, and I
agree one hundred percent, Like you put you can put
a ton of units in these buildings and then just
kind of get wiped out really easily. Maybe that maybe
having a ton of units in the building is their
way to kind of like fix that problem. You should
have fixed it a different way. But anyway, I do
like that having you can put a ton of units
in a building, and I don't remember seeing that any

(49:21):
other in the other game. So innovation wise, I think
Broken Arrow has gone with some interesting features that I
do like.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
I still kind of disagree about that infantry thing because
I guess that that's the way I felt at first,
But then I started to realize that your infantry, I
would prioritize infantry that has you know, anti tank weapons,
and you can have them just weight and ambush enemies,
like if you put them in the right buildings that
have limited line up site the opposite of what you'd
normally do, but you put them in kind of like

(49:48):
choke points, a little surprise ambush areas. They'll hit the tanks,
and I mean, even if you lose one or two infantry,
the points for those guys is like sixty seventy, and
the points for a tank is like two hundre three hundred,
So you can afford to lose a few infantry to
take out one tank.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
Yeah, that's probably It's probably a skill issue on my
own tier. Right.

Speaker 3 (50:06):
Well, I'm just gonna basically repeat what wolf had said earlier.
I think you have units in a building and a
Bradley rolls up or a BMP rolls up, and they
all just start getting killed. Like they're all just standing
at the window, you know, like they're not hanging out. Yeah,
are these guy hiding or something like? Come on, you know,
why are you getting shot at all? Getting killed? So
I feel like infantry and I don't know, you look

(50:28):
at some real world examples right now in Ukraine, even
even if you say the game has been developed in
twenty nineteen, you look at some of the fighting in
Ukraine in like whatever at twenty sixteen, it was these
infantry units there can hold out against you know, pretty
extreme odds. I don't feel like like Broken Air or
really a lot of RTS games are accurate in that sense.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
I agree, And.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
Maybe that's balancing because a multiplayer or something like that
for all I know, you know, I don't know why
they've done it this way, but we think about real.
Something seem real, and maybe it's the illusion of things
being real that makes us, you know, have fun. But
maybe when you nitpick, you see things that why did
they do.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
It this way? I just don't like seeing my guy
like I deployed my guys. I you know, I'm a
horrible commander clearly, and then the BMP rolls up into
slaughters twenty men and uh in a high rise and
I'm like, well, not feel bad now, Well now everyone
here is the is TG the butcher Yeah, sends his
guys to his doom every single game, like I try

(51:30):
to keep my guys alive, and I think I think
I usually lose the No, that's not true. I always
lose the most to kill the most.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
Maybe you drop a nuke.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
I think Tartuga is saying, like, your your units seem
to die so quickly in a lot of these games,
and you're constantly replenishing, and maybe that's why there's always
a focus by some of these new titles about how
do we have unit replenishment in a different way because
your units aren't staying on the map. Maybe it's long
because maybe there's some sort of rock paper scissor system

(51:59):
where tank is checked by aircraft, aircraft is checked by
patriots system, et cetera, and things just constantly keep being destroyed.
Your front line is like just a constant replacement of units,
even though it's you know, relatively staying the same on
the map.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
My thought on this is that the more I played,
the more I respect the place where the balance is currently. Like,
originally I was losing troops a lot, but I mean
I put now probably with just the single player stuff.
I haven't played any multiplayer, so I'm just totally inexperienced
with that, and so take what I say with a
grain of salt. It's only based on single player interactions

(52:33):
against the AI and co op, just to be clear, Yeah,
sure right, Yeah, a lot of co op as well,
But I think I've developed a lot different. First of all,
I would say that this game has a very steep
initial learning curve. A lot of things you need to learn.
You need to learn that double tapping you gets your
units out of whatever thing they're loaded up in. You
need to learn that infantry will sprint when you press

(52:54):
see and that will remove their suppressed or shocked attribute.
These things are critical to like it's the make it
or break it types, little hot keys that you just
have to know about, and just the development of all
those little things that I didn't think that they were
critical in Warno. I still think that Warno is a
lot easier to get into, and I think it's it
could be better for a more casual arcade experience. It's

(53:16):
probably more enjoyable if you want a lower stressed thing.
But I find that the more I play this game,
I see how if you put your like it's what
I was just saying, how if you can find you know,
you hold all to get where the vision is, like
what is the vision from the particular point your mouse
is at on the map, and you look for a
building which is perfect for like my recon unit. I
want that in a building. I don't want them firing.

(53:38):
I turn off there, I have them return fire only,
and then I have them camp in a really good
observation building versus like my AT unit. I'll put them
in a building which is actually protected, it's kind of
obscured by other buildings, so that the tank is really
close to penetration. For these things, goes up with the
unit being the enemy unit being closer, or if it
grounds a corner and its side is exposed. I've learned

(54:00):
how to do those things, and I've seen them pay
off a lot better. So I feel like I was
a little bit miffed by the game at first because
it was so difficult but really struggling and it's painfully
beating my head against it. I feel like I've come
to respect the system the way it is. It's not
my way of trying to say get good.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
No, I mean that's that's a really good way of
saying get good, and I get I'm I respect that actually.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
So unfortunately none of us here is actually good. Probably Wolf,
you might be the best or maybe finished. You've actually
just saved my bacon and AI versus co op, so
none of us have like the high level experience. We
don't know what the competitive game is like. I haven't
even watched competitive games, so I'm not sure what the
what that looks like.

Speaker 3 (54:38):
I feel like when I when I think about Warno
and Broken Arrow, I've found the Warno AI to be
a lot easier than Broken Arrow. Broken Arrows like some
of the multiplayers the co op games of the four
of us have done. Sometimes Broken Arrow seems to have
like the sixth sense, like you guys are getting sniped
by their missiles or something. At the start of the game,
you know or obviously the AI is going to be

(54:59):
able to can control all the units while you're only
looking at like two. You're running into those kind of issues,
and I don't know where you know where the AI
is nerved and buff based on these things, but I don't.
I don't feel like the AI is really that difficult
in either game, but I felt like Warno's AI was easier.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
Oh, I can see that. I feel like the Broken
Arrow AI is kind of difficult. I mean I did.
I put it on hard one time because I was like,
we're a bunch of real human beings. I guess an
AI and the Hard AI rolled us. Yeah, we learned
real quick. We're actually m PCs. Yeah we again. It
was like our second game we were bad and uh
TORTIOA finished. We're carrying pretty hard. But I will say

(55:42):
that the AI does surprise me, like in how aggressive
the AI and Broken Arrow can be sometimes, like you'll
you'll start a game and maybe it's cheating, maybe it
knows what road you're coming up. And it's not just guessing,
because you could certainly guess this, but like multiple times,
depending on the deck you choose, the A I will
just drop a nuke on your in your ingress route
to the map and like take out a big chunk

(56:04):
of your starting units, and that really copied. By surprise,
the first couple times, I was they did they really
just spend a thousand points or whatever to like to
do this, But oh my god, it worked, and now
we're fucked for a while.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
When I think about playing that game on hard AI,
I just remember it was a lot of like wave
tactics by the AI. I don't know if because of
them being hard they had more points or you know,
there's some buffs to their units in some way, but
I just remember, you know, trying to hold on to
certain points and then they just kept coming. It was

(56:38):
like it felt, you know, your your numbers. It felt unfair,
and it didn't feel like I was getting beaten because
of my like my skill at the game. I was
being beaten because you know, they're sending wave tactics of
tanks and infantry at me.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
When we played together several times, we always played as
the Americans and we were dealing with the right doing that,
and you know, stereotypical Russians are going to send wave tactics.
Did you, guys or finish, did you experience that playing
as the Russians against the Americans or have you not
done that?

Speaker 3 (57:12):
Did I experience that as the Russians playing against the Americans?

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Like did the Americans use the same kind of wave
of tactics against you? Have you experienced that?

Speaker 3 (57:19):
I think to some extent, because I think that's just
baked into the AI, and we've seen, you know, they
do kind of they kind of clump up in areas,
and I think Warno is exceptionally bad at that. The
game that I played today, the AI gets really bunched
up on the points, and I don't know if that's
just like an AI programming thing, and I didn't remember

(57:40):
that happening in Broken Arrow.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
Yeah, I mean there have been a couple of times
where I dropped in Nuke and been shocked at the
number of skulls I saw come up. So there's definitely
times where the AI will bunch up and Broken Arrow,
but I think you don't always have the visibility to
see it either. In broken arrow I think.

Speaker 3 (57:57):
Yeah, I think I would say, I guess they do
bunch up, but I think I remember seeing it more
prevalent in Warnow.

Speaker 2 (58:04):
But I don't know.

Speaker 3 (58:05):
We're probably nippicking random crap.

Speaker 1 (58:07):
So one of the things I appreciate about broken arrows,
I think line of sight is pretty restrictive. I often
have a difficult time understanding where things are, where we
need to push, where there's opportunity, and I think it
does do a good job of like really incentivizing you
to use drones or other sort of recon vehicles to

(58:27):
like actually see where things are in the map. If
you don't do that, you are going to have a
real tough time playing the game, in my opinion, And
so that really does incentivize like recon type units that
give you that information. Yeah, Recon's pretty fun in the game.
I like using I like using artillery and all these
games kind of figuring out where the enemy's fixed positions

(58:49):
are and hitting them with you know, pigh mars or
whatever is scanders. I enjoy doing that, and maybe it's
just because it's slower paced than my simple brain can
handle it. It's nice too, because in my experience using
artillery and I actually survives long enough to resupply. Maybe
that's part of the reason I like it. Yeah, that's
that's definitely true. I mean I like the resupply mechanics.

(59:12):
I like bringing in cargo with like chinooks and stuff like.
I find that enjoyable. Yeah. Maybe I'm just a logistics
player at heart. You know.

Speaker 3 (59:20):
Was it expert study logistics, amateur study tactics or something?

Speaker 2 (59:25):
That's right. That's right, that's right, man's an expert. That's me.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
Theame is the famous expert.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
I really like the way air is done in this
game as well. It's it's better and much better, I
would say, than how it's done in Warno. Your eight
ten is on the map for a really long time,
making this straight for runs, and you can actually get
a B fifty two that sits in the back and
just lobs it's a cruise missiles stuff. It's so cool.
I just feel like it's much better developed than what
I saw in Warno. And maybe that's partly just because

(59:55):
they didn't have like cruise missiles and stuff like that.
Maybe the A tens were not as advanced back in
the Warno era. I mean the era that it's it's
playing as but I just think that the air stuff
has done better, and I like the Patriot missiles, and
then the seed that tissue was mentioning at the beginning,
I think agreed.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
I think I think it ends. I think Broken Era
does a better job than Warno in incentivizing intelligent play
and thoughtful play around what units am I bringing to
the fight. Now I'm not a Warno expert, so maybe
I'm speaking out of ignorance, but it felt to me.
It's it has felt so far to me much more like, oh, okay,
that makes sense. This would counter that issue that I'm having.

(01:00:33):
And if I play that way, Like the first time
I brought said to a to a fight, I didn't
do it the first few times, and then I brought it,
I was like, wow, okay, so I can now use
the airspace like this is a game changer. But I've
got to make sure to do it. And suddenly, like
now the S three hundreds aren't shooting down everything of
mining the minute I, you know, approach the enemy, it's
still something you've got to be aware of. You got
to continually cycle in said strikes. You've got to make

(01:00:55):
sure you've got fighters to provide top cover for those
for those sixes or whatever you're using for said, to
make sure they don't get shot down by animey air.
But like it really incentivizes intelligent play in air in
a way that I kind of didn't really feel like
WARNO does. And maybe, again to your point, it's just
because some weapons systems are more advanced and there's more

(01:01:16):
variety to air units in twenty twenty five than there
was in nineteen eighty. But it's enjoyable. Yeah, I mean
maybe it's I get what you guys are saying about
the air stuff, and I agree when it comes to
the close air support, the helicopters, the A tens, the
frog VOTs, et cetera. But with the cruise missiles, I

(01:01:37):
don't like it. The game is still too the maps
are too small to have TU ninety fives lobbying KG
one oh one's at what fifty kilometers away? It's just
and that gets into the realism thing. And maybe I'm
just that platform should not be anywhere near a patriot. Yeah,

(01:01:58):
you're right, it shouldn't, but it's fun to see as
when you see an enemy cruise missile coming, especially when
it's oh there's only one of those. It's coming in slow,
it's lumb that's a nuke. Oh fuck, Like as it's
coming in it is cool, Like that's a fun experience
to have. The nukes are fun. I do like nuking.
My first nuke experience was my favorite. I dropped it

(01:02:20):
on where I was pretty confident the enemy was gonna
be and then a steam popped up an achievement for
dropping a nuke on absolutely nothing, that's right.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
It was sending a message.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
Yeah, yeah, exactly with this.

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
Unit kind of stuff. Warno or Not bornhum Broken Arrow
does seem to have like this kind of weapon range
NERF with a lot of things, except for some of
the missiles. Wasn't there a game where someone was flying
around with their B fifty two at the back of
the map just lobbing missiles. But when you think about,
like me, the range of your your tanks and some

(01:02:52):
of these other units and like the helicopter missiles and things,
they seem they seem NERF. They seem so short.

Speaker 1 (01:02:59):
So you have this they're engaging at like just one
hundred meters away. It seems like a lot of.

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
This, Yeah, you have this weird this dichotomy of range distance.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
I did find that it was frustrating.

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):
I think this goes back to when we were talking
about realism at the beginning of the episode and how
everything is subservient to balance. I think a big part
of that is just, well, we can't have these things
so far off the map that you could never shoot
it down. So if we make the map smaller, we
compress it. Yes, you've got these strategic air assets that
everybody wants to see, but they're also like the maps
are small. Out of that, if you're not paying real

(01:03:28):
close attention to where your B fifty two is, you're
not one hundred and eighty kilometers out launching these things.
You're twenty kilometers out and you're ten seconds away from
getting yourself shot down because you just wandered too close
to an enemy sam pat or.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
You feel like the map size is too small from
the perspective that you're you have to micromanage. I've gotten
better at this, but many, many times, might be fifty
two's have flown over, like right over the combat where
they never would want to be if they're launching cruise
missiles from far away right. So yeah, and what you
kind of paining the butt. You have to like right
click them back and forth at the very bottom of
the map like on a mini map. That's my trick

(01:04:02):
to it it. That is so I almost wonder if
it would be better if these were off map entities,
because that's what they should be.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
Yeah, I would prefer it. You want to see it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
We solve their problem.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
I mean, you can shoot down cruise missiles, so maybe
that would work. But I think part of that is folks,
you know, they want the counter they want all right,
so you've got this asset, but now it's off map
and I can't kill it, so you know, I think
I think that poses a different set of design challenges.
But I will also agree, like in terms of map size. Also,
these big aircraft have wide turning radiuses, so you may

(01:04:34):
think you're in the back of the map and you
order your guy to turn around, and he may swoop
halfway across the map and you're just like, no, no,
turn around. I don't want you going that way, And
got to be you gotta be careful with that. I
can't wait for all the comments just to say you
guys suck. Get good, Get good. I had a friend
who was interviewing someone at his job and like they're asking,
you know, how they how they responded to certain types

(01:04:56):
of challenges or whatever and at the workplace, and the
person's responses basically like work harder sick.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
Okay, there you go.

Speaker 3 (01:05:04):
The last thing that I think I want to talk
about is another comparison, mostly about differences in with RTS games,
and it's definitely it's gonna be called The Arms Gates
of hell Os Front.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Okay. I was thinking about this game too this whole time.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
Yeah, Like, I'm not going to bring it up, but up,
I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
So I'm just thinking.

Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
So it's another another RTS game, and what makes it
kind of stand out from what we played it, and
that's gonna be you have infantry units that can access
guns and AMMO, and they have like a inventory on
for every infantry unit, so that's unique. You don't have that.
It's definitely not a big battlefield game like Broken Arrow

(01:05:46):
or Warno. It's it's a tactical, more tactical RTS and
that's the kind of arts games that I like. So
I have bias in favor of Call the Arms more
than these other two games. But anyway, Infantry with inventory
makes it unique. And then the first person viewpoints with anything, infantry, tanks, ships,
in one of the Wolf's recent videos driving around in

(01:06:08):
a ship shooting things. So I think those two things
make Call the Arms Gates of Hell stand out compared
to other RTS games.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
Yeah, and that game does an interesting thing where there
are off screen call in collins. You have your heavy
artillery in the back line, and in this case, your
heavy artillery for Broken Arrow or a game like Broken
Arrow could be cruise missiles coming in. You have aircraft
collins that you don't really control. You're like, I want

(01:06:37):
you to come in and drop a bomb here, and
they do that. I don't know. The games just it
fits my style of play a lot more than really
any of these modern rts's. I'd say modern I meaning
you know rifles, and it's like relatively slow paced as well,
Like you you can position, you can dig in, Your

(01:06:58):
infantry is survivable, you know, not just going to get
annihilated once a tiger rolls up, they can fight back.

Speaker 3 (01:07:03):
I think it's definitely tactical. The user has to be
has to be smart, They have to kind of think ahead.
They got to think about your movements and even those games,
the map is still a pretty good size. The missions
that we played, the maps are pretty big, and like
on some of them, the map gets bigger the longer
you play the mission, because it's kind of kind of
the scripted way of things. I mean, you have all

(01:07:23):
these tactical options to kep your objectives, and I like
thinking about that and doing rts's in that way instead
of this massive you know, you're in charge of a
battalion or whatever sort of size that they've abstracted, broken
arrow and more, no units to being at, and they're
always looking from this you know, semi satellite view.

Speaker 1 (01:07:46):
When it just comes to gameplay, I feel like Gates
of Hell is a lot more grounded. I've played Steel
Division maybe once once or twice, and I had this.
It was two that I played, and I had the
same issues with Steel Division two that I have with
a lot of these games that I don't have with

(01:08:06):
something like Call the Arms, And maybe it's just the scale,
Like maybe I personally just respond to better to the
more tactical. You control four squads a couple of vehicles
instead of you know, entire army groups. It feels like
at times and some of these games, because like you

(01:08:27):
were saying, and Broken Arrow you can fit like one
hundred dudes in a single building. I've never done that,
but if you wanted to, you could just spam hundreds
of infantry and then they can all die and get
mowed down pretty quick. But Gates of Hell are called arms, whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):
Called arms, Gates of hell Os, Front to Easter, the
whole matter, etc.

Speaker 1 (01:08:51):
We're sorry, sorry with respect on that name. It is
definitely an RTS. But Red Jumen's Broken Arrow, Steel Division
slash war game like those are all obviously the Eugen
games are, But like Eugen likes, I don't know that

(01:09:12):
i'd call Caled Arms a Eugen like nook. To me,
it's more of a tactical wargame like it's very it
very much stands on its own without reference to the
Eugen games. And so I think maybe that's why, because
I would agree, like I think called Arms is a
especially like Ostrount, it's especially a great game. But I
also think it's it's very much doing its own thing,

(01:09:34):
and I think that's you know, it's easier to sort
of see how something stands out and respected on its
own terms when it's not a game designed in reference
to another idea.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
Wait a second, but I always kind of got the
impression that that game is a lot like Company of Heroes.

Speaker 3 (01:09:49):
That's that's exactly I was going to say Company Heroes
and of War.

Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
Well, so I never played Company of Heroes, to be clear,
So maybe I'm speaking out of ignorance here in terms
of it's.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
A it's a good game, but I mean, I wouldn't
call it original.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
It uses the same engine as Mini War Assault Squad.
So we played Mental War two once.

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
Yeah, we did remember that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
So I guess what we're trying to say is that
there's kind of two different types of arts games. You
have your usual war game type RTS games, big big
battlefield and you have your kind of Man of War
called Arms, Company of Heroes, small tactical arts game.

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
But I do agree that that Gates of Hell called Arms.
I'm saying the name of the Wrong Order again, is
a great game, and it is something that every time
we talk about it, I think, you guys, clearly it's
a game I think people should if they haven't already
checked out check out. I've been playing it recently. Actually,
they had a new DLC. I'm having a lot of

(01:10:48):
fun with the unique missions, but they're looking at adding
the British. He didn't even mention and is what have
you been playing lately? So can we even trust that
he's been playing it? Or I've been playing that. I've
been uploading a my YouTube channel.

Speaker 2 (01:11:01):
So you know, which we all know because we've been
watching those videos religiously.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
Yeah, I stopped watching that. My checks stopped coming, so
I stopped watching. All Kay, well we'll sort that out
and hit the pennies flowing your way. They stopped printing pennies,
so I've I've had the stop sending on. I don't
know that I have anything else to talk about on
Broken Aarrow. I don't know if anybody else wants to
like bring anything else up or you know, closing thoughts. No,

(01:11:30):
the game's interesting. It's probably the most fun I've had
despite all the issue And this is what we do.
We spend a lot of time ragging on games in
this on this podcast. Maybe it's a lack of booze
we've been consuming. Speak for yourself, buddy, Okay, but I've
had a lot of fun with Broken Arrow actually, heck yeah.
Overall it's one of these Euguene sque games that I've been,

(01:11:53):
you know, I was like, hey, this is this is
pretty good. This is fun. I like dropping nukes, I
like managing artillery. And maybe it's because i've been I've
played more of these games recently, Like I played some
Warner with you guys and stuff that I opted into
Broken Arrow and kind of knew what was what. I
like deck building, which we barely even talked about. Do

(01:12:14):
you want to talk about that? Actually, let's dive into that,
because there's a lot of customization, especially in the air units. Like,
there's so much customization in the deck building that it
kind of blew me away. I think deck building, I
mean I'm not good at it, so, but I think
deck building might be my favorite aspect of the game. Agreed, Like,
I find that pretty fun and the way they do it,

(01:12:35):
like managing your little points. You can have certain amount
of points in different groups like you know, armor, Scouts, aircraft.
I'm sure all these other games do this too. But
I also like the UI quite a bit. Uh, the
UI sleek. The deck building UI is pretty clean, so agreed.

Speaker 2 (01:12:51):
And also we talked about bringing up what Finish mentioned
earlier that you can really customize your units in this one,
you can choose different load outs inside of it particular unit. Previously,
I think warn Oh did that just by having different
units for different variants, But this one has a lot
more options, Like you can customize your toetoos to be
top down attacks versus the straight attack if you just

(01:13:11):
spend a few extra points, all those kind of things.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
Yeah, I love the the prep.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
I love theory crafting, And if you're a person who
loves theory crafting, you're gonna love deck building. I mean,
that's just that simple, because deck building is basically theory crafting.
It's building your deck and then you can go into
the game and you could suck just like me, but
at least you have a fun deck to play with
while you do it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
Yeah. I agree on the UI especially too, because, like
I do not, you do a lot of these deck
in wargame. I think I can count on one hand
the number of times I actually modified my deck. But
it was incredibly intuitive to just go in and be like,
all right, I want my BEE fifty two to was
it my B fifty two or my B two? Like
I wanted to have a nuke, I don't want it
to have it in a nuke. I want it to be,
you know, a carpet bomb load out. I wanted to

(01:13:54):
be a cruise missile load out. Like you know, it's
pretty cool, especially on the aircraft side of things. Well
not even just that, Like you can change how many
missile reloads your Patriot battery has. Now all these changes
can influence how many points. It sort of goes against
your deck for so you can have a Patriot three
battery with I think like sixteen missiles, but it costs

(01:14:16):
fifteen percent more than if you if you have fewer missiles,
and maybe you want to have fewer missiles so you
can have more batteries on the map as opposed to
you know, do you wanna do you want one you
want to put all your eggs in one basket, all
your all your Patriots in one item, or do you
want to be able to sort of have multiple units

(01:14:37):
because you saved those points up and like how that
all interacts. There's a lot of customization options there that
I think are very well done.

Speaker 2 (01:14:44):
And that's probably where us not playing the competitive scene,
like I think the customization is Also it's a double
edged sword, right, so I'm sure this is what Wolf
was talking about where all the competitive scene everyone's equipping
their tanks with the protective systems active protectives systems, So
you know that it does also lend itself to a
real challenge in balancing unless. I mean, because basically what

(01:15:07):
I'm sure everyone is doing right now is although there
are all these options, everyone's just cramming into the same
options because those are considered the meta.

Speaker 1 (01:15:15):
You know, the optimal.

Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
So good luck to them. I mean, I like that
they've provided us as option. But I followed StarCraft and
especially StarCraft two for a very long time at the
competitive scene, and the care Blizzard went into to tweak
any little thing not to ruin the competitive balance was
very intense. I mean, they really had to theory everything out.

(01:15:39):
I feel like this is a game which is very
raw on that aspect, and maybe that's lending itself a
little bit to the poor reviews. I think maybe the
hackers more so. But you know, I mean, this is
as a balancing hell to give yourself this many options,
because every one of those has to be balanced.

Speaker 1 (01:15:54):
It's funny you say about you mentioned the cheating because
I was looking at their Steam page and like their
second to most recent update is literally titled on the
matter of cheating in bands. I think, okay, yeah, that's
obviously an issue if they're addressing it that openly in
their discussions. But yeah, I agree. I think any tell
me of this amount of variability and deck building, you're

(01:16:16):
going to create a real nightmare to try and balance,
and probably every update they're going to do for quite
a while, it's going to create a new item that's
op I don't know that that's unique to this game.
I think that's very common in competitive multiplayer games, where
a new update breaks one sort of exploit and maybe
another another item becomes sort of the meta of what

(01:16:36):
everybody picks. But I do think, you know, it's still fun,
it's fun to tinker. I don't think i'd want to
play competitively against other people, though personally I'm a coward. Yeah,
I'll just get curb stomp.

Speaker 2 (01:16:46):
So the other thing I wanted to bring back up,
I'm not sure if we like showed enough appreciation for
us is probably going back to Wolfe's point that we,
you know, we talked about critical aspects of the game.
I guess the way I would phrase that, or I
would spin that that were like assuming that there's a
positive spin on the game to begin with going in
and then we're trying to say, hey, by the way,
the game isn't as perfect as you think, but yeah

(01:17:08):
we should start probably from the aspect of saying the
game is good, they call for s AI is a
lot of fun. I think that despite the fact that
we have some challenges with it. Part of that was
when we didn't realize setting up five AI actually meant
they got five times the points instead of didn't we
realize that at some point that when you actually played

(01:17:29):
against two AI, it was only it was only like
two x difficulty. But if you put five AI, they
don't seem to split the points. They all seem to
get all the same points. I'm not sure if that's true,
but like anecdotally that seems to be true, which is
just insane. So just a caution for everyone out there
playing AI versus co op. Don't I'm sorry call verse AI.

(01:17:49):
Don't give the AI that many units because they're just
going to bring in a lot more points. And another
interesting thing is that AI actually aggressively nuking people at
the start. That's not a strategy. I mean, I think
it betrays to the fact that the AI probably has
a points benefit, because I don't think you start with
enough points to buy a nuke at the game start.

(01:18:10):
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
Maybe as the Russians, Yeah, I don't know. If the
Russian yeah, I mean I kind of doubt it. I
don't think that that's and if it is the case,
I don't think it should be the case people just knuke. Oh.
I mean, I guess if it was actually the case,
you spent all your points on a nuke and it
doesn't hit, and I guess you're screwed. But sorry, the long,
long story short, I'm having a lot of fun with AI.

(01:18:31):
With called first AI, I'm hoping that, in fact, to
play more of it because we haven't really played that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
Much of it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:36):
Now that I've been playing the single player campaign, like
maybe getting better. Even though Finish saved me in our
last game, Thanks Finish, I still I'm really enjoying the
It's to me, it's like the closest thing I have.
It kind of reminds me of like when Seapower came out.
It was fun to play Seapower because you could put
yourself in these like somewhat realistic scenarios in the modern era,

(01:18:58):
and I like to do that same kind of thing,
but obviously with land based combat in this game, Broken Arrow, that's.

Speaker 1 (01:19:05):
All you have to say, all right, that was beautiful.

Speaker 4 (01:19:07):
A lot of things to say too, okay, okay, okay,
all right, Well.

Speaker 1 (01:19:19):
I think that's gonna do it for our look at
you know, Broken Arrow and similar games in the RTS genre.
I want to thank Wolf, Finn and Tortuga for coming
on here and talking today and until next time. This
is the historical gamer. But you can call me Matt
for the single Malt Strategy podcast and we're out.

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Broken Arrow | Eugen Killer? | Single Malt Strategy | Episode 92

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Broken Arrow | Eugen Killer? | Single Malt Strategy | Episode 92