Day of Defeat: Source, My Review

So, a friend gave me DoD as a gift. Here's my opinions on it. Just to kinda make sure I don't neglect the blog. Also, most of this is from what was originally two messages that I sent to someone on YouTube.

How is DoD good? I found the bad balance between different aspects of realism hurt the gameplay a lot. First off, the recoil while more realistic than most games is greatly exaggerated. Realistic recoil would be acceptable given that it only takes 2-3 shots to kill someone with most automatic weapons. I remember one time I found a guy laying down on a table when I walked into a house. I shot him three times with my BAR as he lay there, but he survived, and the recoil prevented me from hitting him again. He then killed me soon after. Such bullshit I found is a frequent occurrence. True I should have taken my finger off the trigger and then take aim again rather than just holding down the trigger until empty, but either way, he should have been dead.

Oh and the muzzle climb for the heavy MGs when not on a bipod is absolutely ridiculous in this game. How could the recoil possibly be powerful enough that it would bring such a big heavy gun over your head? I felt at first that I was being knit picky, but these problems are too severe. It's even worse than MW3, because in MW3 at least your guns don't go out of control, and enemies go down in a few shots. 
 
I feel kinda bad a friend gave DoD to me as a gift, I was thinking, "Hey more stuff for Gmod, and it looks like it'll be a WW2 version of Counter-Strike, me want". Now Counter-Strike is a good game because it's simple and it doesn't try to be very realistic. It's gunplay and mechanics are simple, fast paced and awesome (one thing that pisses me off about CS:S is how OP the flashbangs are though). This is also the reason why CoD4 was so awesome, it's gunplay and controls were so easy to learn, so simple, but yet they allowed you to do so many complex sophisticated maneuvers. In comparison to other games of the time, CoD 4's playability and gunplay were both golden, even if the recoil for full automatic weapons were really dumbed down in CoD 4. That's why everyone loved it.

So, yes it is good that they tried something different from Counter-Strike. But couldn't they have at least played it themselves to see how well the game plays? If they had such tight deadlines and budget, they shouldn't have even tried the realism and they should have just made it a WW2 CS:S clone and it would have been great and they would have a lot less wasted effort.

And the reason why I am pissed about MW3 and DoD is that my expectations for them were not even that high. For MW3 I thought that it would be a MW2 clone and all, but what they had before was good, so if they get rid of OP guns and quick scoping and focus more on gunplay and game modes, rather than vehicles and killstreaks, then they have themselves a great game. But despite my low expectations, it still went way below what I expected. And for what was once the best game series ever, they should have had better standards.

As for DoD, again same thing. I thought, this is going to be a CS:S clone, there's nothing that could be wrong with that. You didn't have to pay for it, chillax have the fun that your friend would have wanted. Even if it's not going to be the same as CS:S, it was Valve who made it. They made such a variety of games that play so differently on the same engine, but yet they are all good in their own way. Nothing to worry about. Let's go! DoD time!

Nope.avi

So in DoD, if other players have to play with these bad shooting mechanics too, how come they are able to just completely make me their bitch? Why is it not like in MW3 where no matter how good or bad you play, the game just sometimes lets you win and sometimes lets you lose? My theory? It's because the other people who played it are veterans at the game. So they know how to play with these bad shooting mechanics. So in this sense, it is better than MW3 because skill actually does something for you. But the learning curve that it has is too much when everyone there is pro at the game. Yeah there's kind of a learning curve to Counter-Strike too, not so much in gunplay and controls, in fact both are incredibly easy to learn. It's more in how you should enter a building with bad guys, and how to "stick together team". And you have to adjust your skill level to compete with the CS veterans, most of which are now playing CS:GO, now us noobs are now either playing CS:GO on console, or playing CS:S still. The adaptability for noobs in what is still a very merciless and unforgiving game, that's what made CS:S good. That's why I like it.