Fun for all

Multiplayer is of course one of the biggest aspects of DF2 and as with the original there are many varying types of play and a few new ones bolted firmly on-top. From traditional DM to a Tribes style Capture and Hold that truly is quite enthralling. The only problem is that it's very hard to play as a team, everybody goes their own way and you can't pair or group up as easily as in Tribes or Counter-Strike for HL. The Voice over Net technology is good but you won't find a lot of people using it because they prefer their privacy and to be honest listening to a bunch of guys shout and moan was just plain annoying.

As for the new 32Bit Voxel Space, it's really not that good. Grass only appears just in front of you and you can see miles but you can't play the miles you see because they are so ugly and degraded. On-top of that it runs deadly slow and to be honest a game like Halo or Tribes does a lot better job. To create grass in a polygon engine there is also a well-known trick with bitmaps so Novalogics comments about why Voxels are better than Polygons doesn't hold up at all. Still looks good and smooth but it's no polygon beater until somebody supports Voxels in hardware.

Sound wise and DF2 is a little unrealistic in the lack of ambient sound, no birds or water and not even the sound of wind as you climb a high peak. However guns, people and vehicles do sound spot on and have their own sound sources for Quad Speaker support or even stereo with 3D Sound. Music only appears in the menus but that's probably best as it would distract in a game where sound is everything. There is also a fairly tense intro movie that looks lovely and that's about it.

Next >>

<< Previous