Is The Red Odyssey a big disappointment?

[Avatar]

I remember that mission, and like many of the sniping ones the trick is to wait for the enemy to get into range.  I sat on the hill figuring they were coming from all over and sniped what I could, then glided down to hide behind some building or other to get the rest.  You can also pulse the Power Supplies to death to take out the GT's, if you don't mind spending a year on that mission.

The key is to remember that every single unit on the map is tasked with killing you, specifically.  That means you have to kill everything, you can't just cruise by them and watch them wander off like many of the original BZ1 mission AI do.  In this case just keep crouching and searching for sniper dots, which you can see through terrain and from a lot further away than the visible form of a pilot...

One trick in that mission when you get to the crate part is that a Health Powerup works on pilots in TRO...  you can walk into it and get your health back.  The other is to find a sheer cliff that the enemy can't get up on foot, sit on top of it, and snipe the crates from there.  After that you can glide down over the enemy pilots but the sadistic SOB I mentioned earlier thought of removing your 'bunny hop' pilot transportation, so you may have to turn and snipe them. 

If I remember right, the final few Flankers that chase you are NOT snipeable, either...  very mean and sadistic...

-Av-

[Grendel]

I don't know about the rest of you, but my TRO constantly switches from windowed to full screen mode when I'm going through menus, and it always changes my windows mouse cursor to the one from it's menu... It gets really frustrating!
Also, the programmers didn't bother to put the scroll down arrow in the briefing screen - in one mission there's the situation, mission objectives, and all you can see from the engineering report is the sub heading!!
Without disrespect to anybody, but these guys butchered the original Bz.

[Nielk1]

I have NONE of those issues at all.

[bigbadbogie]

I did every mission without cheats up until the last one, which I couldn't beat even with cheats.

Those damn snipers.

[General BlackDragon]

The shell switching thing is caused by XP not "loving" the avi files that play in the menu. Either do what I do and ignore it or remove/rename the avi folder in the red odyssey folder.

[Grendel]

BUT WHY did they develop it in such a short time?
Either make it good, or don't make it at all!

[Avatar]

You have to understand that it's usually not the Game Developer that calls the shots, it's the Publisher.  As with many parts of life, it's the money that's in charge.

In TRO's case the expansion was a last minute idea, probably when some bean counter realized that more copies of BZ were given away with 3D cards than were sold, making a pretty decent market for a quick and cheap expansion pack.

SO, the publisher comes forward, says "you have three months to get this on the shelves", and Evolve stepped up to do it.

And one final thing to be clear on, the Publisher in question wasn't Activision.  MacMillan did both TRO and Battlegrounds, and I believe it was the market performance of Battlegrounds that led them to make TRO.  They recruited their level designers, Mick Brown and Toni Chafin, from the Battlegrounds testers, who were Mod makers before that.  If it had been up to Activision BZ would have died a very quiet death, since they don't feel innovation is more important than money...

Again, I think they did a good job given the time and resources they had.  I say that not because I'm Toni's friend, but because I've done a comparable amount of mod work and understand both the learning curve and the pressures involved.

-Av-

[Grendel]

Are you saying that Bz as a whole would have ceased to exist? Bz 2 would have never been created?
If there's truth in that, it would have been very, very sad...

[bigbadbogie]

BZ2 was a fluke.

The luckiest fluke in human history.

[Grendel]

Clarify...

[bigbadbogie]

Nobody thought it was going to be made. But then it was.

[Grendel]

Bigbadbogie,
Maybe... But it was complete! It was a new Bz game! Unlike TRO. Although I think Bz 1 is a much greater accomplishment than Bz 2, I still like the sequel!

[bigbadbogie]

BZ2 is rubbish compared to BZ1.

BZ2s various mods are about 100x better than BZ2 itself.

Forgotten Enemies, Fleshstorm, QF, and about 20 others all dwarf what BZ2 was originally capable of.

[Grendel]

I haven't played Forgotten Enemies, but it sounds like another TRO - an attempt to take money for a hastily slapped together project... 

[Warfreak]

ACTUALLY, it was the first (and only?) Mod made by the majority of the community here back in 2001 or so.

It DOES have a bit of a rushed feel to it though.  (IE: inconsistancies in established ideas)