gimpieman
23-03-2006, 05:44 PM
I remember seeing this game at a very early stage in its development (oh they were good times). Back then, I realised it was a winner. Having had a good proper look at it since then, I can now confirm, that it is indeed a winner.
Bet on Soldier is a new whore on the same block, that is, a new take on an old theme; it’s a bit like Counter-Strike in the future with Banzai (if you can fathom such a thing, don’t worry if you can’t…playing the game will solve your complex). Most of the time you’re slinking around with an absurdly powerful arsenal of weapons, sniping off unsuspecting enemies, shooting at that purty barrel of acid behind them (which invariably kills them one way or another) or going a bit psychopathic with a rocket launcher. Every so often though, you come across a rival champion (no idea how that works…when you are the champion already). When this happens, a TV show called Bet On Soldier (no shit) comes along and turns the ensuing carnage into wholes…WHOLESOME family entertainment.
I enjoy that. Shame you can’t duel in battlemechs. Or maybe you can. B.o.S has got several tonnes of clanking metal oblivion andthensome. Everyone else calls it an exoskeleton; of course anything that goes clank clank boom dakkadakkadakka is alright in my big book of what’s alright. Being ZGeek people, I’m fucking sure it’s fine in yours too.
Needless to say you won’t have any parking troubles (or tickets might I add) in this game because all the cars are useful exploding props. I say useful because they go off like a strip joint if you shoot them enough, and anything that happens to be too close at the time will probably lose more than an eardrum.
Things that make B.o.S go BANG include grenades, rockets and tanks. Sadly, you can’t pilot the tanks - the only drivable thing in the game is the exoskeleton (I guess that’s cool) – but the chocolate store of weapons makes up for this. There isn’t just one type of sniper rifle for instance. There are four. Other weapons like the rotoblade (which sounds like a teleshop product) were probably a good idea during development, but who the fuck would use that thing? I’m sure it’s great on Watermelon Tuesdays (because Watermelon Wednesdays is too obvious) but as far as I can tell, the rotoblade is only really useful as a tool of humiliation in multiplayer (so it probably will be used).
B.o.S has super good multiplayer, providing that there’s anyone else actually on the servers. I know it’s still early days, but when I did get on and moving, I daresay that Skippy the bush kangaroo would have had trouble aiming straight. High ping? Drivers? Shit keyboard (again)? None of the above: despite the fact I had a ping of 172 it skipped like the playground of yore. Playable, but only just.
This means, for the moment at least, B.o.S is a LAN game if you want multiplayer to fly. Don’t forget to patch it with Gameshadow, an auto-updater tool that does wonders controlling your mind or locating drivers and whatnot. I messed around with it for a while before heading over to the official site to download the patch for a bit of multiplayer that didn’t work anyway.
I’m not sure if fucking Starforce copy protection is to blame but a lot of the loading times in B.o.S were long. If I can get a game of solitaire in before the game launches, something is definitely wrong. Consequently, I have become quite proficient at the garbage bin and midget throw, a new ancient form of martial arts I made up 7.4 seconds ago. Many of you will be stunned to hear that I haven’t broken anything yet. Except the game of course, it’s a tad unstable. I probably shouldn’t be running solitaire in the background.
On to the graphics: the word of the day is holy shit (if it used hyphens). Gah! Mustn’t get distracted. Here, hide the midget. Some of you might not know this, but Kylotonn spent an epoch (six years in fact) making their very own engine now known as the KT engine. Quite a long feat I’m sure you’ll agree. Rag doll physics courtesy of Novadex and Ageia add extra realism (and comic value: I blew the shit out of an enemy soldier halfway through a door once. It kept closing on his head. LOL.), and the AI is second to none. They know what you’re doing and how to stop you. Finding them is the hardest part. After that, keep shooting at them and admire how nicely rendered all the bullet holes are (especially the one in their heads).
If you’re lucky enough to have a shield, you can duck in behind it using secondary fire. Otherwise you’ll have to find other cover and rely on your armour to do the job. The standard light, medium, heavy situation is found here. Heavy offers the best all-round protection, even from hallucinogenic gas and flames. If you still reckon on needing more, strap on a personal force field you pussy.
Secondary view might slow you down, but it does wonders for your accuracy. Sniper rifles get the biggest bonus from the zoom feature with two levels of zoom to choose from. The sniper rifle is probably the most economical weapon. In B.O.S it’s sometimes easy to forget that everything costs moolah. Killing an enemy with ten dollars worth of bullets means you make 40 or 50 for yourself. Go for headshots whenever you can, they pay better. Yep, you’ll be learning death economics anytime now.
The same applies to bets. A bet is set up before each single player mission where you get to pick out weapons, armour and mercenaries to help out. Fucking awesome feature. Picking the right opponent (because you don’t want to have to try kill anything armed too well) is crucial. As a general rule, getting a lock with your rocket launcher at the start of the match is a must. Except if they’re thinking the same thing. Assuming you win in a timely fashion (profit from bet = victory – time it took to win) a big cash payoff is your reward.
The story behind the single player campaign is a good one. You play a character named Nolan Daneworth who is in all sorts of various shit. To get revenge, you and Nolan have to shoot up a whole heap of UAN clusterfucks in various mission types ranging from holding off UAN assaults on the front line to escort missions where you have to get a live engineer to a comms terminal (he’s a dumbfuck, so take care with this one).
I needn’t go on and tell you what you already know (or will soon find out) about Bet on Soldier. Sufficed to say that this is one for the collection, deftly using its emphasis on character to make it stand out from the crowd. If you’re a patient person who can tolerate long load times (or someone with an AMD 64 processor that’ll make the game go like the clappers…you rich bastard) and get by without any progress bars then B.o.S is for you. Bet on Soldier? Better than any shitty TAB.
Bet on Soldier is a new whore on the same block, that is, a new take on an old theme; it’s a bit like Counter-Strike in the future with Banzai (if you can fathom such a thing, don’t worry if you can’t…playing the game will solve your complex). Most of the time you’re slinking around with an absurdly powerful arsenal of weapons, sniping off unsuspecting enemies, shooting at that purty barrel of acid behind them (which invariably kills them one way or another) or going a bit psychopathic with a rocket launcher. Every so often though, you come across a rival champion (no idea how that works…when you are the champion already). When this happens, a TV show called Bet On Soldier (no shit) comes along and turns the ensuing carnage into wholes…WHOLESOME family entertainment.
I enjoy that. Shame you can’t duel in battlemechs. Or maybe you can. B.o.S has got several tonnes of clanking metal oblivion andthensome. Everyone else calls it an exoskeleton; of course anything that goes clank clank boom dakkadakkadakka is alright in my big book of what’s alright. Being ZGeek people, I’m fucking sure it’s fine in yours too.
Needless to say you won’t have any parking troubles (or tickets might I add) in this game because all the cars are useful exploding props. I say useful because they go off like a strip joint if you shoot them enough, and anything that happens to be too close at the time will probably lose more than an eardrum.
Things that make B.o.S go BANG include grenades, rockets and tanks. Sadly, you can’t pilot the tanks - the only drivable thing in the game is the exoskeleton (I guess that’s cool) – but the chocolate store of weapons makes up for this. There isn’t just one type of sniper rifle for instance. There are four. Other weapons like the rotoblade (which sounds like a teleshop product) were probably a good idea during development, but who the fuck would use that thing? I’m sure it’s great on Watermelon Tuesdays (because Watermelon Wednesdays is too obvious) but as far as I can tell, the rotoblade is only really useful as a tool of humiliation in multiplayer (so it probably will be used).
B.o.S has super good multiplayer, providing that there’s anyone else actually on the servers. I know it’s still early days, but when I did get on and moving, I daresay that Skippy the bush kangaroo would have had trouble aiming straight. High ping? Drivers? Shit keyboard (again)? None of the above: despite the fact I had a ping of 172 it skipped like the playground of yore. Playable, but only just.
This means, for the moment at least, B.o.S is a LAN game if you want multiplayer to fly. Don’t forget to patch it with Gameshadow, an auto-updater tool that does wonders controlling your mind or locating drivers and whatnot. I messed around with it for a while before heading over to the official site to download the patch for a bit of multiplayer that didn’t work anyway.
I’m not sure if fucking Starforce copy protection is to blame but a lot of the loading times in B.o.S were long. If I can get a game of solitaire in before the game launches, something is definitely wrong. Consequently, I have become quite proficient at the garbage bin and midget throw, a new ancient form of martial arts I made up 7.4 seconds ago. Many of you will be stunned to hear that I haven’t broken anything yet. Except the game of course, it’s a tad unstable. I probably shouldn’t be running solitaire in the background.
On to the graphics: the word of the day is holy shit (if it used hyphens). Gah! Mustn’t get distracted. Here, hide the midget. Some of you might not know this, but Kylotonn spent an epoch (six years in fact) making their very own engine now known as the KT engine. Quite a long feat I’m sure you’ll agree. Rag doll physics courtesy of Novadex and Ageia add extra realism (and comic value: I blew the shit out of an enemy soldier halfway through a door once. It kept closing on his head. LOL.), and the AI is second to none. They know what you’re doing and how to stop you. Finding them is the hardest part. After that, keep shooting at them and admire how nicely rendered all the bullet holes are (especially the one in their heads).
If you’re lucky enough to have a shield, you can duck in behind it using secondary fire. Otherwise you’ll have to find other cover and rely on your armour to do the job. The standard light, medium, heavy situation is found here. Heavy offers the best all-round protection, even from hallucinogenic gas and flames. If you still reckon on needing more, strap on a personal force field you pussy.
Secondary view might slow you down, but it does wonders for your accuracy. Sniper rifles get the biggest bonus from the zoom feature with two levels of zoom to choose from. The sniper rifle is probably the most economical weapon. In B.O.S it’s sometimes easy to forget that everything costs moolah. Killing an enemy with ten dollars worth of bullets means you make 40 or 50 for yourself. Go for headshots whenever you can, they pay better. Yep, you’ll be learning death economics anytime now.
The same applies to bets. A bet is set up before each single player mission where you get to pick out weapons, armour and mercenaries to help out. Fucking awesome feature. Picking the right opponent (because you don’t want to have to try kill anything armed too well) is crucial. As a general rule, getting a lock with your rocket launcher at the start of the match is a must. Except if they’re thinking the same thing. Assuming you win in a timely fashion (profit from bet = victory – time it took to win) a big cash payoff is your reward.
The story behind the single player campaign is a good one. You play a character named Nolan Daneworth who is in all sorts of various shit. To get revenge, you and Nolan have to shoot up a whole heap of UAN clusterfucks in various mission types ranging from holding off UAN assaults on the front line to escort missions where you have to get a live engineer to a comms terminal (he’s a dumbfuck, so take care with this one).
I needn’t go on and tell you what you already know (or will soon find out) about Bet on Soldier. Sufficed to say that this is one for the collection, deftly using its emphasis on character to make it stand out from the crowd. If you’re a patient person who can tolerate long load times (or someone with an AMD 64 processor that’ll make the game go like the clappers…you rich bastard) and get by without any progress bars then B.o.S is for you. Bet on Soldier? Better than any shitty TAB.