HermanHum

Very addictive and what Diablo 3 should have been. This does everything right and has more depth than Diablo 3. Very good value and the best RPG around.

The Good, the Bad, and the Downright Ugly The Good 1. Many of the game functions and commands are compatible and synchronized with Harpoon3. H3 veterans will easily grasp the basic game concepts and controls and be playing within an hour. 2. A physics package makes most units observe the Laws of Physics. This means there are no more instantaneous turns, acceleration, dives, or missiles fired 'over-the-shoulder' at a pursuer. 3. Sensor detection and weapons resolution reports are very detailed resolution through comprehensive messages that show the various modifiers and variables. Control over these messages is excellent so that they can be disabled if they turn out to be too much information. 4. A Scenario Editor allows for scenario writing meaning that players are not limited to the 39 official scenarios included with the game. 5. Third-party modifications to images, sounds, and icons are easy to add. 6. Color-coded messages make for ease of reference by the player. Hostile action reports appear in Red, while other administrative reports appear in white, green, or yellow. The Bad 7. No multiple player capability whatsoever exists. The only opponent is the AI, which can be easily tricked once it is understood. 8. The Event Engine produces strange results from teleportation (yes, you there is "teleportation" in this wargame about naval warfare) of units instead of the more recognized deployment from aircraft or ships. 9. The crude Formation Editor feature means that the solitary map is unnecessarily cluttered with icons and symbols. Confusion is quick to ensue when aircraft assigned to protect the carrier group cannot easily be distinguished from those assigned to expeditionary missions. Most other games have independent window displays to control formations so that units can function as organized groups. The Downright Ugly 10. No database editing capability exists. The database is locked. The current items, equipment, and systems can be shuffled, re-arranged, or re-combined, but nothing new can be added nor can the performance of any current system be modified. Players are forced to accept false perceptions of reality when the majority of aircraft are arbitrarily and artificially limited to 950 knots on afterburner even though these same aircraft exceed 1200 knots in real life. 11. The UI is severely overloaded, cluttered, and user-unfriendly. The dependence upon a single map to display all the units and functions means that the number of icons and other data displayed is extreme. Coupled with the inability to turn off some information, this means that the player is easily overwhelmed by the data, much of which he probably did not want to see in the first place. 12. Direct player control is difficult to exercise due primarily to the single map display. The inability to differentiate between units at a distance or high altitude means that the user must constantly zoom in and out to locate units for his orders and targets. This awkwardness triples the time and effort necessary for the most simple and basic orders and truly makes the game a chore to play instead of a pleasure. In Conclusion This game is theoretically functional, but could easily have used twelve additional months for optimization and polish. As it currently stands, MNO is a hodge-podge of ideas haphazardly thrown together. It is good that MNO replicates many functions from NWAC and Harpoon3. It is too bad that many bad ones are also duplicated while helpful ones were forgotten. Features such as the Formation Editor and Event Engine are prime examples of good ideas for functions that were poorly implemented and badly integrated. The awkwardness of the UI makes the game a chore to play instead of a pleasure. A thorough re-examination of the overall design phase might be prudent, especially considering how some features generally considered "standard" within the naval wargame genre are conspicuously missing. This is version 1.05 and, hopefully, improvements will come in the form of game Patches instead of "paid patches" (a.k.a. download content or DLC). Should this game be meaningfully patched in an expeditious manner, an update of this review is certainly possible. Modern Naval Ops Review (Steam v1.05) www[dot]youtube[dot]com/watch?v=LFQ2nitU5ow

The Good, the Bad, and the downright Ugly. The v1.09 release has incorporated no significant changes or improvements since the v1.05 Steam release, Sept 26, 2014, which, in turn, had only superficial changes from the original release Sept 24, 2013. The Good 1. Many game functions and commands are compatible with Harpoon3. H3 veterans will easily grasp the basic game concepts and controls and be playing within an hour. 2. A physics package will ensure that most units will observe the Laws of Physics. This means no more instantaneous acceleration, turns, dives, or missiles fired 'over-the-shoulder' at a pursuer. Unfortunately, the game engine only applies the universal Laws of Physics in specific situations. 3. Sensors and weapons report very detailed resolution through comprehensive messages that show the various modifiers and variables. These messages can be disabled if they turn out to be too much information. 4. Third-party modifications to images, sounds, and icons are easy to add. Many images for the aircraft, ships, and submarines have already been added by the user community as well as a speech and ambient sound module. 5. Color-coded messages make for ease of reference by the player. Hostile action reports appear in Red, while other administrative reports appear in white, green, or yellow. The colours quickly catch the player's eye and help him categorize those reports that require immediate attention. The Bad 6. No multiple player capability exists. The only opponent is the AI, which can be easily tricked once it is understood. This is easily seen from the video AAR for a scenario classified by the developers as Maximum Difficulty and Complexity: www