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[PC] Infantry Zone

Moderator: JC Denton

[PC] Infantry Zone

Unread postby mees » 02 May 2009 05:54

Infantry, less commonly called by its proper title, Infantry Zone, has got to be one of the toughest games to review. I don't say this as a slobbering fan, or an IGN editor, quaking with confused reverence. Infantry can be compared to, perhaps, Half-Life or Unreal, and the entire host of mods that stem from those games. The sheer breadth of the game modes, or "zones" as they are called, ensures that few players have any hope of offering insight on the whole game.

To begin with, though, there needs to be some discussion of the mechanics that persist between all zones. And even before that, since Infantry is hardly a well-known game, I ought to say a few things about its general structure. There is no "standard" game mode in Infantry, except perhaps if you make your criteria popularity. Each zone is a different game, with different rules, and considering Fleet! (a large scale space battle with RTS-trappings) alongside Sniper School (ten guys hiding in bushes after everyone else has logged off), you might think some zones hardly even belong under the same banner at all.

Even disregarding disparities between zones, the passage of a few weeks or months may even render a familiar zone nigh unrecognizable. Skirmish: Trench changed from being "the skirmish map no one played" to "realistic-weapons settings paradise" one night, and no one ever looked back. The point is, the zones were always undergoing evolution (and still are, in some respect) as the designers at Harmless Games and SOE continually tweaked the rules of the game. And just when everyone seemed to be gravitating back to the perennially popular Twin Peaks, new zones, mod-controlled special games, and beta zones kept the fire going. Even the rogue servers have introduced some interesting changes, resuscitating long-forgotten zones and giving them a fresh coat of paint.

Now, the fundamentals of the game:

Infantry resembles other isometric shooters like Army Men, Crusader: No Regret, ARC, or the Unreal mod, Alien Swarm. The graphical assets (which were probably created over the course of five or ten years) vary wildly in quality and theme, and overall look like something 3DO might have cooked up for a Sci-Fi game using their Army Men engine. It is worth noting that Infantry animates much more smoothly than any of these games, and its sound effects, while nothing special, have been absolutely seared into my mind after over 1000 hours of play, to no ill-effect.

I have a certain half-criticism of the game, which is related to the graphics. Increasing the resolution allows players to see more of the map, and so people with larger, higher-res displays have an advantage, especially in zones that encourage long-distance fighting. If the player chooses to use mouse-and-keyboard control, the screen is conspicuously locked in its default position, which places the player model roughly in the middle. Since keyboard only users are not bound to this limitation, and can set player model near the edge of the screen, thus seeing further in front of them, they have a significant advantage in zones like Hardcorps, where an unseen foe can spell death in an instant. It may seem tedious to go on about this distinction, but an important consequence emerges from this: players using mouse control have an easier time aiming, at least initially, while players who take the time to master keyboard aiming will eventually have an advantage in the long run. This adds to the complexity of the aiming system, although it is somewhat frustrating. Had the developers allowed the same screen-manipulation setting for mouse players, there would be no reason to use the keyboard-only option, and everyone would be spared the extra work of learning to aim with arrow keys, as the mouse option be superior in every way. True, as it stands, there is some added complexity to the game because of this quirk, but it nevertheless leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Anyway, had the game been designed with more modern hardware in mind, zooming would undoubtedly be smoothly mapped to the mouse wheel, allowing for larger scale firefights and sniping, and the increase in average distance between opponents would absolutely necessitating mouse control. Oh well.

On a related note, Infantry doesn't always run as well as it should on newer hardware, and the netcode is a mysterious beast indeed. It stands as the only game I've ever had better luck running on 56K than broadband.

Ultimately, Infantry's aiming system is good, and its movement system is even better. While simplistic, choppy movement cripples Crusader and Army Men, Infantry throws strafing, variable movement speeds, and teleportation into the mix. Strafing alone allows for elaborate high-intensity duels, and the option to sprint (at the expense of shield-sustaining energy points) adds even more complexity, giving skilled and crafty players the ability to escape against incredible odds, and truly great players the ability to overcome them. Dance around long enough, and you're sure to receive back-up as teammates teleport in to your location; or, store up your energy and teleport out of there! Throw in zones that feature hoverboards, jetpacks, space ships, APCs, tanks, walking mechs, hoverbikes, and even zones where you ARE a spaceship, and the movement options go through the roof. Many zones also feature vastly different speed settings, which can change everything (In Team Deathmatch, where the players run at nearly double the speed of ordinary zones, a one-on-one duel can last more than ten minutes, as players exchange blows all across the map).

The weapon and health systems in Infantry, again, are exceptional. Years before Halo made everyone fall in love with rechargeable shields, Infantry did it much, much better. A health meter is present in every zone, and works as in every other shooter. In addition, however, is the energy meter, and armor items. Generally, armor subtracts a certain number of damage points from every attack and provides a certain percentage protection level against various types of attack as well. Often, these two deductions are enough to render an attack null. However, the percentage deduction (which does the bulk of the work) requires energy to take effect, and each hit sustained drains a player's energy. A player's energy recharges at a certain rate, determined by class, equipment, and weapon/ability usage (some weapons shoot ammunition, some merely require energy). So, in summary, a wise player needs to balance equipment, weapon usage, armor type, and keep an eye on their energy level at all times. Choosing two different equipment/armor loadouts can completely change the way a class is played. People simply don't know what to do when they see a pack of un-cloaked, shock-armored infiltrators screaming through the streets of EOL, leveling hapless heavies, biochem troopers, medics and even jump troopers with combat axes and energy drainers. And the best part of all: dodge well enough and you may never take damage. As I said before, a truly great player can defeat an entire team of mediocre players if he can just keep his energy up, dodging and shooting at all the right times. In almost every zone, it is possible to become a god. Seriously: Ent3ri_3, I{illa, Cadiz, messy... these players were real legends, routinely performing mind-blowing feats of dexterity and racking up insane kill/death ratios... messy once went ~450:10 in a day playing Hardcorps, where death comes as swiftly as in Counterstrike!

Weapons vary greatly from zone to zone, and are primarily differentiated by bullet speed. On one hand, you have the lightning fast bullets of Hardcorps, which turn Infantry into a sort of 2d Counterstrike, and on the other you'll find Team Deathmatch, where rocket launcher rounds can come out with almost negative momentum. CTF zones feature weapons that encourage medium-to-close range encounters; any projectile more than half a screen away hardly has any hope of finding its target. Skirmish zones combine slightly higher bullet speeds with slightly decreased movement speed (and no armor) so that no one really has much chance of drastically outperforming his enemy, forcing the sort of large-scale teamwork that such zones were designed for. While most of the zones take one of these two approaches, there are many others with strange settings, like Ambush! or Fleet!, where absurdly high movement speeds substantially affect the bullets' momentum, creating a whole new skill set to master.

In addition to numerous variations in bullet speed, the number of weapons in Infantry is staggering. Assault rifles, mines, knives, rocket launchers, sniper rifles, grenades, shotguns, energy drainers, flamethrowers, stun weapons, poison, pistols, mortars, repulsion fields, medical equipment, base building items, vehicle construction kits... the list goes on, and in the end, there is no online shooting game with greater variety. The myriad weapons afford huge complexity: players are continually finding new and strange ways to round out their inventory, allowing an unbelievable number of play styles. For example, shotgun-wielding infantry have a huge advantage over the more lightly armored classes, but against carapace-suited members of their own rank, a shotgun is less useful--it CANNOT damage them in the slightest (not a problem if you only use shotguns for the purpose of energy depletion, another unusual but viable tactic). Similarly, while the carapace affords invincibility against light arms and the highest protection against devastating sniper particle accelerators, autocannons, and recoilless rifles, it quickly runs out of steam against the sustained attacks of an assault rifle, making the lighter CMP6 armor a good choice for many infantry. Another predicament: does the biochem trooper use tranquilizer rounds and the otherwise near-useless needler, at the expense of a few precious kilograms (weight limitations apply to all classes in CTF, and exceeding them is penalized with decreased movement speed), allowing them to rack up some safe and easy kills with the gas projector? Or do they stick to the trees and choose their targets with practiced patience? Maybe they choose to perform medical duties, only participating in the offense as a last ditch effort? The level of character customization afforded by the equipment roster in Infantry makes the efforts of games like Call of Duty 4 look downright laughable.

Unfortunately, the glory days of Infantry have long since passed. There were always those who moaned about Sony ruining everything the second they took control of the game from Harmless Games, and while this is mostly untrue, there can be no doubt that the introduction of the Pay-to-Play model did irrevocable harm to the game. Since a $6.95/month fee was instituted in 2002, the player base dwindled steadily, and although Infantry is now once more free to play, there is likely no going back. Along with the demise of the original, massive player-base, came a decline in new developments, and today Infantry is basically dead. Few are likely to download a game with such a dated presentation, and gamerankings doesn't display even a single review from a mainstream publication. EOL is no longer a site of glorious, violent revelry, but an absolute disaster of an "RPG" (read: stat-grind). Twin Peaks is business as usual, albeit with a drastically reduced player count. Besides that, a couple other zones barely straggle on; Hardcorps has a rag-tag following and just enough players to support a full game for a couple of hours per day.

For my money, Infantry was at its best when Twin Peaks and the EOL beta duked it out for top honors, each sometimes hosting over a thousand players a piece, a full suite of skirmish modes thrived, furious firefights raged 24/7 in Hardcorps, and even underrated zones like Team Deathmatch could hold onto a decent following. Sure, in those days we never had the near-mythical, pre-Sony zones like War Zone Alpha (a much inferior version of EOL, in my opinion, although I only ever played it on the free servers), Chambert's moon (a much better version of king of the hill than Kleist's Ridge), and The Arena (LOL), but so what? We had Bug Hunt, Gravball AND the weird Foosball knock-off for the sports freaks, CTFX (which gave us the thrill of standing alongside a ten man team against, literally, 150 other players, all the while trying to secure MVP status for huge rewards), and other oddball zones like Small Unit Tactics to round things out.

Whether it was trying to defend a base in CTFX without an engineer (gas mines, a teleportation-inhibiting sentry, and prayers kept our flags safe for about twenty minutes); going 30-1 in Hardcorps while sneaking around, dodging blind volleys and retaliating from an unexpected corridor of trees; gaining the almighty 30,000 bounty ranking in EOL, watching as friends and foes alike swarmed around your presence in hopes of enormous experience spikes; or scurrying around the pipe work of a derelict spaceship as a little alien, gobbling up the hearts of your victims just as fast as possible, ducking bullets from every side, Infantry never ceased to excite. I haven't even gone into the scoring and ranking systems, which had profound impact on at least a couple of the zones, or the state-of-the-art chat interface, which, at the time, offered unparalleled flow of information, the league play (unfortunately I only ever played a handful of league matches), the thrill of 200+ player matches (predating Planetside and MAG by years), or any number of other subjects which are, unfortunately, of little relevance today.

There is truly no other game like Infantry, and it's a shame that the community has died off, leaving us with just the husk of what was once a peerless online game.
mees
 
Joined: 30 Sep 2008 02:51

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