Secret Weapons

[Paladin]

Is anyone going to be getting the Secret Weapons expansion?

I'm thinking I will, but I'm going to wait to see if I can find it on sale in the Sunday ads. MSRP is $29.99, which isn't nearly as attractive as the Road to Rome expansion (it was $19.99, wasn't it?).

[SoBeiT]

Hmmm..with so many new games to be launched soon, not sure about buying it.

If the server runs it then yes, I will be buying it :D

[Inkswitch]

All Secret Weapons is gonna do is fracture the already fractured BF'42 community and drive more people to play DC. That's fine with me.

No, I won't be paying for super-germans who can dogfight planes with their rocket packs. :smirk:

[|Robot|Bender]

Agreed Inkyface.

Thats just dumb....

[Armerius]

i'll probably pick it up this weekend to tinker around with... ICQ me if you get it, Pal

[Paladin]

I got it.

Played two or three of the maps. The objective game is a mess. Objective mode, for those who don't know, is based around the idea of one side having to attack, and the orther side having to defend, specific targets on the map. The defenders lose tickets if the targets are damaged and the attackers lose points slowly but continuously. First to run out loses. One map I played, the targets were 4 V-2 rocket launchers. On another, it was 3 airshafts the attackers had to drop explosives into to damage (Dirty Dozen, anyone?). But it seems entirely too easy for the attackers and entirely too hard for the defenders. I know that probably sounds weird since the attackers lose tickets no matter what they do and the defenders only lose it the objectives take damage. But trust me, the objectives are entirely too easy to get to and damage, and generally there isn't a lot of stuff handy for the defenders to use...they either have to spawn close and defend with whatever equipment they spawned with, or spawn somewhere further away to get better vehicles and hope they can get back in time to defend. The maps are bigger and definitely favor air power moreso than the original game or RtR did.

The maps are interesting, with large snowy map called Hellendorn and a nighttime map at Kbley Airfield. A total of 8 new maps. I saw some new buildings and Hellendorn has all the buildings and terrain reskinned with snow. I can see some of this being incorporated into DC....Kbley especially with it's nighttime setting is the perfect place to roll out the F-117. Skinners will also have a field day with winter camo troops, M1's and Apaches. Winter Iraqi's may be interesting. I suspect they'll have on 6 fur coats and had a dozen or so hot water bottles tied to their bodies at various points.

The vehicles are less impressive. If all you play is normal Battlefield 1942, they're probably really neat. Playing DC, however, you've seen all the "wow" items already. There's a cargo plane that acts as a flying spawn point, for which we already have the AC-130. There's a Flakpanzer, which mounts an AA turret on a tank chassis (we have them too). There's the Schwimmwagen, which is a jeep that can also cross water, and the LVT-2 Water Buffalo (land/water landing craft). Both of these are pretty much covered by a couple of Iraqi vehicles with land/water capability. Both sides get a jet or two. Interesting, but not much faster than the prop planes. Most of them have rocket pods, which are just like the rocket pods on the helos. And there's a first-person view guided missile.

Like I said, we've pretty much seen it before...newer and better. It's almost like Dice looked at the DC and EoD mods, saw how they coded the vehicles and such, and then got WWII-era equipment (except the rocket pack) to match and dropped it in. The maps, however, are built so the new equipment doesn't unbalance things (the rocketpack would make Berlin completely unwinnable for the Allies and would give the Germans a huge advantage on Operation Baytown).

Speaking of which: the rocket pack, which everyone laughs at as being wildly improbably, is actually pretty neat. Picking it up equips you as a medic, but w/o the medkit. It allows for some interesting tactics. Fortunately it's only available on these new maps. On something like Berlin, it would let people access rooftops in much the same way the Superman cheat does. It's pretty easy to control too, but shooting from in the air is a bit tricky, and you can't do anything to steady your aim. Not an item I would like to see incorporated into DC, but I can see it dropping into the GI Joe mod quite nicely. Granted, it does look and feel like it's straight out of The Rocketeer.

So, should you get it? If you just play DC, no. If you build maps, probably. If you play un-modded BF1942 a fair amount, yes. It's not a great improvement, but the new maps are a nice addition.

[{RA}SKYFURNACE]

about how many servers are running SW?

i notice that this xapn was not in the top 25 weekly PC game sales last week.....

just curious how its doing.

[radio667]

about how many servers are running SW?

i notice that this xapn was not in the top 25 weekly PC game sales last week.....

just curious how its doing.
Today i played some SW..there were only 6 SW servers UP :(..BF42 was a perfect game , but , in a month span they have released a so-so DC patch , and now if you want to play RTR , SW or regular old bf42 - you need to juggle around 3 discs - instead of one