QJ Reviews: Field Commander |
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Reviewing videogames for a living is most certainly not a bad gig, I can think of plenty worse things to do, like being a stick of deodorant, or a toilet brush... or a Jack Thompson. It does suck however if the games are crappy, so it's was a huge relief when I came to the realisation that Field Commander is most certainly not a crappy game, far from it, like a pipin' hot glazed donut on a cold Boston winter day, there's lots to love.
In the game you play a newly promoted Field Commander (hence the title) for ATLAS (the Advanced Tactical Legion for Allied Security), a covert military organisation formed from the combined might of more than 50 allied nations to take on threats too big, or too sensitive for any conventional army. So basically you're like a covert ninja assassin type except you've got a whole army, and apparently some good financial backing too, because you'll get to play with all kinds of cool tech from ghost snipers to helicopter gunships, to battleships and even tank busters. You're charged with repelling attacks from a mysterious group of uber-terrorists known as Shadow Nation (watch for the character named Whisper, I swear he's related to Cobra Commander).
The beauty of Field Commander lies in its simplicity and the way it slowly draws you into the game. I must admit that I was a little apprehensive and somewhat worried that in no time flat I'd be in over my head, Thankfully this wasn't the case, Field Commander opens with a series of simple training missions that introduce you to the main supporting cast and at the same time give you a quick run down on the basics of combat, movement and strategic warfare. These three tutorial missions, one for each mode of combat (air, sea and ground) are dead simple, starting you out with the most basic infantry, air, sea and ground vehicles, and they're also just short enough that it doesn't feel too much like a lesson.
Within no time you're out on your first mission and you get to put all that schoolin' to good use. The first couple of missions are relatively easy but entertaining all the same, new units and strategies are introduced in a manner that dovetails nicely with the games story, and the difficulty slowly begins to ramp up.
The units in Field Commander are all unique and highly purpose built, but therein lies the first tier of strategy. Using the wrong unit for the wrong attack at the wrong time will most certainly spell doom. Think of Field Commander as a game of chess played on a tiled board with land, water, sea and snow draped over it instead of just black and white squares. Each unit is capable of moving a certain number of tiles per turn, this varies depending on the type of terrain being covered, and each unit also has differing attack ranges and varying effectiveness against certain enemy types. You'll also want to maintain a healthy balance of heavy slow moving tanks, half tracks and anti air machine guns and the faster, but weaker scouts and trucks to re-supply your units on the field with ammo and gas.
The second tier of strategy lies in the acquisition and utilisation of map resources. More often than not there'll be a factory, an airport or a seaport on the map, as well as various scattered cities, all of these can offer a serious advantage during a battle. Factories are used to produce ground troops (grunts) and special operations units capable of laying mines and putting down mortar fire. They can also produce ground vehicles like scouts, half-tracks and tanks. Airports can be used to produce utility choppers to fly troops into an area, or helicopter gunships to take out tanks from high above. Seaports manufacture submarines, battleships and sea scouts for combat and recon on the high seas. All this manufacturing requires some serious moolah though, so be sure to capture as many cities as you can on the map as fast as possible, and if need be, take them from the enemy, as cities provide valuable income per turn.
The third and final tier of strategy lies in powerful understanding and knowledge of the terrain and the environment. Hiding in dense forests will offer premium protection for your troops and vehicles but also deter movement. Holding bridges and passes with heavy artillery will help choke the enemy and cut off supply lines, speaking of which, you'll want to create a safe corridor of passage for your trucks, scouts and utility choppers that can carry troops in to capture the enemy headquarters and ensure your victory.
An important aspect of gameplay is the fact that each division has special maneuvers that can be performed whenever they've received and dealt enough damage (think of a Limit Break in Final Fantasy). With each attack dealt and received, the bar raises till you're finally able to unleash your division power. These attacks vary depending on the division you're commanding, from extra movement spaces per turn to increased damage dealt and everything in between, but be careful to use them at the right time as they can quickly turn the tide of battle.
If there's one area in which Field Commander perhaps falls a little short, its in graphics and visual presentation. The menu's are well laid out and easy enough to read, but they're all a tad pixelated and seem taken from low resolution jpegs blown up to fit the PSP screen. The portrait avatars of the various characters in the game also suffer from the same problem and while this doesn't affect gameplay in any way you have to wonder how that got through QA. Graphically the game looks decent but not great. There's a lot of aliasing and shimmering going on, and the ground and unit textures often appear muddy and blurry. The units themselves are well designed and easily recognisable, with nifty little animations and some of the explosions are satisfyingly meaty, with chunks of debris thrown out of puffy dark clouds. It has to be noted however that the frame rate does seem to hitch occasionally, usually when there's a particularly destructive explosion, or when the camera is shifting over to focus on a new set of tiles, it's nothing major though, and never impacts gameplay.
Sound wise there's not a lot to whoop and holler about, but not a lot to complain about either, explosions sound pretty nice, big, beefy and booming with the headphones on with a touch of rending metal, bullets bounce off metal convincingly and the engine sounds for the various units all sound adequate. It does get a little irritating when every time you highlight a foot soldier he yells "YES SIR!" and "READY SIR!" but hey, at least he's enthusiastic!
Multiplayer is where Field Commander really shines. Consider the single player campaign practice, because once you get online you'll soon discover added layers of depth and cunning that CPU opponents simply can't touch. If there is one reason to get Field Commander it would be because of its robust multiplayer features and gameplay. Apart from the myriad of different modes of play allowing you to take the battle to the net in just about any manner you choose, from "Hot Swapping" the PSP between two players, to a chess like "mail a move" and wait option, to regular Ad-Hoc, you can really have it the way you want it. If there was one thing missing it would have to be some sort of camera attachment so you can see the look on your opponents face when your carefully planned strategic maneuver unfolds before him, laying waste to his defenses as you capture his HQ, check and mate indeed.
The coolest thing about Field Commander is that it's a game built from the ground up, specifically for the PSP, now I know you're
thinking well aren't all PSP games that way? Not so much, you see unlike the majority of games available for Sony's sleek handheld, Field Commander takes full advantage of almost every facet that makes the machine unique, from the simple control setup, to the UMD media format for full voice acting and dialogue, to the systems WiFi abilities in both Ad-Hoc and Infrastructure mode. It's an unfortunately rare occurrence, but a welcome one. Think of Field Commander as chess for the PSP, except with big guns and explosions, if you haven't picked this one up and you're an turn based stratefy fan, go get it now, if you're not an TBS fan, you might be pleasantly surprised, I know I was. As always we'd like to hear from you in the comments section.P.S. I don't think I've ever used the word "unit" more times in a written work.
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Comments [refresh]
Nice review. I'm very pleased this game turned out to be good. I'm really interested in the "mail a move" feature... exactly, how it works?
Are you telling me you can configure a mail account to play that way?
No, that's not the way it works, what happens is that you perform your turn but moving all your units, and then send it over to whoever you're playing against on the net, at his or her leisure (or within a certain time frame if you apply the setting) he or she can retalliate. Next time you pick up your PSP, you'll see your opponents turn play out on screen, then you can respond, send over, etc, etc.
yup, this game is awesome! I picked it up for $40 a few days ago and have been loving it since, though I haven't had a chance to get online to try out multiplayer yet. The single-player campaign is lots of fun in itself!
Hey, if QJ plans to extend this review schtick, I'm open to help *cough* freelance *cough*. . .
I am playing that game for 4 days now. It's worth of every penny. Best game in months.
What firmware is needed to play this game ? thx
Isnt this game just a rip off of advanced wars on the DS, i mean everything is the same, from the turn based play to the power ups gained from inflicting damage.
Will this game work on 1.5? With the new Devhook?
Hmmm, no idea. I upgraded my PSP to 2.7 a while back.
Sure it's a ripoff of Advance Wars but it's on the PSP instead.
I for one am all for it. Must have Field Commander...
> to Jack
Yes it works with DaxZiso 0.62.... but you nead to download save with profile... any will do... then just start new campain :) Great Game...
Isnt this game just a rip off of advanced wars on the DS, i mean everything is the same, from the turn based play to the power ups gained from inflicting damage.
I Hope so, AW is one of my fav games.
I didn't think the play-by-mail feature would be something I'd be interested in, but frankly it's turned out to be my favorite way to play online. It's like Chris said - you start a game online with the PSP, then make your move. You can go offline and wait, then login with the PSP to find out if your opponant has moved yet, and if so make your next move. Using the online website from your PC you can also check to see if your opponant has moved, so you don't always have to use the PSP. Logging in by PSP is pretty quick, so it's not that much of a pain.
The great thing about the play-by-mail feature is that you can have a number of games running at the same time. I don't know if there's a limit, but I've had three games running on and off at the same time.
"The coolest thing about Field Commander is that it's a game built from the ground up,..."
What!?!? It's a completly built off of Advance Wars! And every other TBS. And a bad rip off ta boot. Also, Chris should learn the difference between RTS and TBS. Field Commander is Turn Based, not Real Time.
The review was more of a summary than a review.
With the power of the PSP, why can't I pan the camera around the battle field like Dai Senryaku VII (which is on the PSP in Japanese)? The camera pans down on the attack screen. Why Can't I control the Camera? So sad.
The tutorials were bad. Second tut, they said you're on your own to figure it out. Mmmm ok?
The CPU AI is hidious. The CPU will use a 10hp tank to attack a 3hp grunt sitting in my city rather than attack a 3hp tank sitting on a road. The CPU will attack grunts before it attacks my long rang units.
They forgot a one unit icon is a representation of sub units. This is important in TBS's. They also forgot to list the complete terrain info anywhere. They only mention terrain defence, not the movement cost. I need to be reminded somewhere of terrain movement cost. Only indicator is clicking movement range on each unit.
When I want to buy a unit, I have only words to choose from. Blech. I'd like to know what I'm buying. I don't have all the units committed to memory. Whats the movement cost of a half track over the plains? How good is it against the grunts Compared to a Helo? I dunno till I build it. And don't forget, the different Divisions change unit atributes.
I need more info about my army, the units, The sub units, the terrain, and my enemy.
With my hours of Advance wars play, Field Commander single player was not a challenge at all. It was a sad dissapointment. At least give me difficulty settings.
It's not a bad game on it's own. But when compared to Advancewars and Dai Senryaku VII, It's unfinished. AW was polished to portable perfection. FC is a bad copy.
If you've never played TBS's, but want to try one, definatly get this game. If you're a TBS fan, don't buy the hype, and be prepared for a let down.
I look forward to FC2. FC feels rushed
I don't want to upgrade to 2.7, simply because I have the GTA homebrew going. Is there a way to play with 2.6?
It's AWESOME. The whole game is awesome.
This game is awesome, but you might check the RTS bit, RTS = real time strategy, something this game certainly is not. This game is considered TBS (Turn based strategy).
Though maybe a little harsher than I would have put it, the review did neglect a bit. There IS a SIGNIFICANT difference between real-time and turn-based strategy games and the repeated misuse of the RTS label did a lot to discredit the review. Also, the reviewer admittedly was unfamiliar with the genre and had little to compare his experience to. Perhaps that was not the best match for reviewing a highly anticipated game.
Field Commander's gameplay is quite close to nintendo's Advance Wars at it's core, though the interface feels significantly more clunky. Where Advance Wars would tell you everything you needed to know, simply and concisely, FC makes you go into menus to do a little research. In some cases, as noted in comment 14, the information needed isn't there at all. Little nagging control issues got on my nerves as well. When moving a unit you have to press a button to have your movement range shown on screen, and again for attack range, and this must be done each turn for each unit. Also, when cancelling a move you must hit the 'back' button several times before the unit is fully deselected. And while none of these, or the many others that go unmentioned, is a MAJOR issue that keeps the game from being playable, the nagging counter-intuitive set-up is irritating. If I'm going to shell out 40 and 50 bucks for games they better have more polish than FC.
Promising, but overall disappointing. Save yourself some cash and play Advance Wars on the PSP with a GBA emulator. It'll be infinitely more rewarding.
Thanks for the correction SqMonkey, I've adjusted the article accordingly.
I can't speak to the comparisons to AW, but I personally liked finding things out for myself in the game, and liked the more organic revelation of new tactics and units as opposed to a front heavy info-dump.
To SqMonkey87: Make sure you have your own legal copy of Advance Wars at home first . . . ;)
To Chris C.: Your review was good for the casual player, yet, as Sq stated, the heavy use of RTS will make those unfamiliar to Field Commander think it follows the line of Red Alert 2 (or any other Westwood game).
EDIT: it appears Chris has changed the copious use of RTS accordingly. Well done, good fellow!
This game is just like Advance Wars, bt with better graphics and more units. Now before you say ANYTHING, that's a compliment. In my opinion, Advance Wars 2 is the second best game ever, right after Field Commander. If you loved Advance Wars, buy it now. And don't think of it as a rip-off. It's an improvement.
If you love Advance Wars, DON'T buy Field Commander unless you're a real enthusiast incapable of feeling disappointment.
I agree with #14 (the "reality check" review above) about the pointless camera rotation and the lack of useful tactical info. Also, there's no way to cancel special powers (think CO-powers from AW), the gameplay is constantly interrupted by unskippable cutscenes (even though I set "skipping mode" to "SKIP!!!" it still plays the Control Center scenes, which drives me insane) and the AI is just plain dumb. Add to that the units are extremely difficult to tell apart (and that the two sides have different-looking units, which feels completely pointless from a tactical perspective - they're the same goddamn unit!)
You can tell that this team hasn't made a very darn lot of tactical games earlier, since it's all flashy and cool but lacks the sense of experience you usually get from a Sony title. The game feels very much like a beta - while mostly bug-free, it still feels rushed and very unfinished.
Having said all that, I really look forward to FC2. Now that the engine and the (very rough) unit balancing is over and done with, perhaps they can start refining and innovating, giving us some worth for our money. Until then, I'm glad I didn't sell my DS.
if it wasn't for the turn based part of this game, it would be a great game
not bad, not great
works on 1.5
last mission was a 13itch
the biggest problem with the game is the ai
it is absolutly moronic
it also manages economy very badly
is there any way to run it on 2.0?
runUMD or anything?
As said above- theres WAYYYY Too much ripped from advance wars... Better graphics, maybe- but better game? no way! *I actually prefer the 2D Advance wars gfx- but thats 2d vs 3d, a different argument*
1) The AI , is AWFUL... Found this on the 2nd mission- the lil spec ops of the enemies forces were attacking my spec ops using them goddawful anti tank things.... taking 0 damage every time (the one off time, 1)
2) as said before, the menus are not simple at all.,.. took loads of looking through crap to find stuff- advance wars was just BOSH- a simple, yet awesome table.
The original AW game blew my socks off, simple graphics but AMAZING gameplay- had me hooked from the start, but this was too slow- silly- ... no offence but everyone who reviewed this game- have they actually played AW? Nothing new has come from this game- if anything- they should pay the original makers of AW royalties for totally ripping it off!
I can say that after I first purchased it, I was scared to play it for awhile (I was checking out the GameFAQs boards and everybody was b*tching and complaining).
When I finally picked it up, it was actually lots of fun to play!
The AI is a little too stupid for my tastes... In some missions they'd drive a tank right up to one of my half-tracks and just wait so I could get my Spec Ops into postion to destroy them...
Because it is mostly a "ripoff" doesnt mean it sux. personally I liked this game, it was a game you where back playing, and didnt get tired on. Too bad it was pretty short, but the good thing it is support online playing.
Advance Wars has the more silly manga cartoons characters which maybe everyone not appreciate, while this has more realistic design, which I did like better than Advance Wars.
and yes, AW doesnt exist on PSP, so shut up with that good damn AW.
Hey, I like AW, but I think games that doesnt exist on same console/machine, shouldnt be comparable.
Ok, I dont want to moan and moan, but a company that took everything from AW / Famicom wars, then just changed the graphics, and made it a slight bit different. (really bad ai- lol)
Yeah sure- it may be a good game- but why try and copy the same game over? If someone cant see the solid gameplay through the simple graphics of AW fair dos, yer missing out! *note - Im talkin about the first AW here, not DS or 2*
Note- I dont own a DS - Im not a (flahladidar) system fanboy- I just like good games. Ive seen posts like this in other forums- saying that games have been copied in the past- which is completely true- but not if you compare these two games! - this is just AW with OTT advertising, different graphics (note- not BETTER- 3d is different to 2d), and worse ai ... oh and better online play ... thats about it
26: Of course the AI is gonna be at its worst on the second mission! This isn't supposed to be absolute strategic slaughter from mission one!
The game tends to get harder as you go along. Sure, it doesn't calculate the dumb repercussions to its own actions to its fullest extent on many occasions (like driving a tank halfway into a swamp as a shortcut but turning back after seeing one of my own on the other side as well as 2 special-ops that I had been using to riddle the area with mines) but it has some excellentls challenging scenarios to make up for it. It's not badly written but also not fully explained. (In one mission you're told reinforcements are coming but a few turns later you find out one is surrounded by enemies and the other pinned down by snipers.) The thing that really bugged me was the lack of a full-fledged map editor. You get a mission editor where you can set up your own scenarios, rules, cities, factories, units, and restrictions, but it forces you to build your map on one of three-hundred-something pre-made terrains. Even though this probable includes every terrain situation you can probably imagine, it feels much more restricted in that you have to dig to find the perfect map and work around the problems and imperfections. The grid-based system seems likely capable of having terrain buildable in the same way as Advance wars does it (River, ocean, beach, land, mountain, teton tiles) but it might have been a choice to save on the memory each map takes on memory cards. I personally don't care since I have a 1GB stick but I'm sure anyone stuck with 32MB or something understands the potential for quick filling of memory. After you're done and have saved it you can upload it to the web and download other people's maps; it's a cool addition, but I haven't had a chance to try it so I can't speak out of experience on the quality of maps available. And no, I haven't been rampantly and rabidly playing it (I.E., I haven't beaten it), as I got 3 different PSP games for my birthday as well as a PS2 with Guitar Hero, so I'm being kept... busy, to say the least.
In my opinion, this gives you a better sense of militaristic battle gameplay than Advance Wars (I happen to own AW2), from the gunshot sounds and ricocheting of bullets, to the powerful explosions (and resulting blackened craters) of destroyed vehicles and aircraft. Advance Wars takes a slightly more cartoony appearance, and is sort of stylized in that way. The 3D units in Field Commander have fairly simple geometry, but not much detail is required for the size at which they are displayed. (actually they're sort of hard to distinguish sometimes) Basically if you've played AW, though, all this brings is lots of new maps, a few different units, and a more realistic style (IMO). However, if you're a big enough fan, that ought to be enough to have you buy this. However if you really liked AW's Map creation this might disappoint slightly in that area due to lack of terrain modification.
-A Nintendo fan, current DS owner, future Wii owner (and not ashamed of either)
FC is similar to AW on many points. AW is a "ripoff" of many other older turnbased strategy games, the difference is that AW has "cuter" graphics.
FC has more realistic graphics and its 3d and there's also some differeces in rules and gameplay.
So if you consider FC to be a ripoff then AC is as much of a ripoff also.
Sorry the last line in my previous post should read,
So if you consider FC to be a ripoff then AW is as much of a ripoff also.
Name one game that was the same as Famicon Wars when it was released.
There wasn't a game that was EXACTLY like Famicom Wars back then but other TBS games with similar gameplay were if I remember correct,
Rebelstar
Nectaris (Military Madness in US) , could have been released in 1989 though...
Laser Squad and War in Middle Earth may also have been somewhat similar.
And there are more I think, but I can't remember them now.
None of them were as similar as Advance Wars is to Field Commender though ;)
Yeah, thats true but a lot of people make it sound like AW created the turn based strategy game genre.
But AW like games has been played a long time.
And before consloles and computers similar games were played with pen and paper or as a board game.
YES! I pawned my GameBoy Advance w/ advance wars... now I gotz an online version w/ better graphics.
*****a PLZ.