by Maurice Fitzgerald

  The first picture below shows my field of vision before using the 'peek' feature. The second shows my field of vision and fire after I've peeked around the corner, allowing me to fire down the wall while being protected by the wall I'm seeing through.

Not Another Pretty Face

After you’ve been amazed by the pretty sights in the game you’ll soon focus more of your attention on the AI improvements. They are very obvious in the first mission as you take down a museum and rescue hostages from certain death. I headed into the building and scanned and saw a few tangos in various positions around the foyer. We dispatched them quickly and were rewarded by some very nice death animations.

No more just dropping like a sack of potatos, these guys spin and stagger like in an old Jimmy Cagney movie. Just don’t get caught up watching them die too long as their buddies may hand out some payback.

The AI reacts a bit more realisticly this time in most of the missions: fire at them and they may do one of several things. If alone they may run and hide or run to get some help. Or, they may fire back and fire wide allowing for a much more realistic firefight sequence.

Unlike the original where it was almost always dead on accuracy for the AI, RS has more reactions built into the AI. Toss a frag or flashbang into a room and listen to them scream out “grenade!” and try to avoid the detonation. Be quick to follow up a flashbang though, because the tangos are most likely going to head for the hostages, knowing that you’re there with the intent of executing them. If that happens it’s time to do the mission over.

Future Adjustments Needed

This is an area of the game I’d really like to see changed in the future expansions and sequels; the mission should not end because of the loss of one hostage. I don’t mean to sound cold, but things like that have and will happen in real life. The loss of one hostage should not mean the loss of the mission. It gets frustrating at times, especially when you’ve pretty much cleaned house. All it takes is to leave a couple of bad guys for the other teams and on the way out a hostage gets capped while you’re extracting.

Maybe it should be changed to something along the lines of saving hostages and in some missions a VIP that CANNOT be killed. This is more of a personal feeling than anything else but I’ve spoken with several of our readers about this and they heartily agree it would be nice to see this changed.

As I said above the AI is definitely better than in the R6 and the EW expansion. We no longer see the superhuman AI around every corner, where they would just spin and fire off at you giving you little to no chance to return fire. Usually the AI acts according to their level of intensity of beliefs and training. An average ‘Joe Tango’ will have a lower breaking point than a Russian regular, while on the other hand a professional soldier is very deadly and at times a bit superhuman still.

Click to continue

In fact I’ve seen a couple of occasions where I’ve been shot without the enemy bringing up his weapon, not often but I’ve seen it. It gets very frustrating when the AI draws up and hits you with the first burst, meanwhile your team doesn’t hit him the first burst.

The AI is not only more deadly on the higher levels but there are some unexplainable idiosynchrocies that kind of take away from the improvements of the AI. I’ve seen tangos just stand around dumbly while their buddy is lying at their feet with his cranium ventilated, then on the other hand I’ll use a silenced weapon to take out a tango and a buddy of his from a floor above will come running in screaming and shooting. I know that even a silenced weapon is not completely silenced as you’ll hear the action of the bolt but c’mon, there’s some inconsistency here.

On the flip side now to your friendly AI, they’re also much more improved but still suffer from some weird problems as well from time to time. Your teams appear to be much more aware of their surroundings now as they fan out better and cover fields of fire better. They still suffer from slow reaction time in some instances but the biggest improvement by far is their pathfinding. No more getting stuck in a doorway as they stand there looking at you, they easily move out of your way, this is a BIG plus as that was one of the major problems with the friendly AI in R6 and EW.

As I mentioned above your teams move much more realistically now and cover fields of fire better, in the Kosovo map I was leading a trailing element and saw the last man in the lead element turn around and act as rear guard. Wow, I was impressed and it has come in handy as my six has been covered several times by an alert teammate. It now pays to put a good operative in the last spot on a team, they no longer only pay attention to what’s in front of them only.

Speaking of paying attention to what’s in front of them, I can’t understand how my teammates can continually walk into an ambush after it’s been sprung. During the campaign missions and the training missions I’ve seen this happen many times, I’ll toss a frag in a room and go in to mop up and get hosed.

As I’m lying there on the ground I watch as my teammates come waltzing into the room like they have no clue what’s going on in there, only to join me in the great virtual ‘beyond’. Some AI tweaking is needed here, if I go into a room and get hosed my AI guys should pop another frag or flashbang into the room before entering and when they do enter it should be with hostile intent, not looking like they’re window shopping at Macy’s.

I don’t mean to make it sound like the AI is bad in this game because it is far from it, it just still has some problems that can make it frustrating at times for the gamer. The AI goes from flashes of complete brilliance at times, making you think you’re playing with a human teammate to complete stupidity making you wonder how the hell they ever made it into a special forces unit to begin with.

I’ve sat back and watched my guys rush headlong to their own doom in some situations and then in others I’ve seen guys come up from behind me and toss a flashbang into a room and then go clean house, one extreme to the other.

Go to Part IV