Dissapointed with Myth II - by Obelix          I was one of the first to buy Myth:TFL when it came out back in November 1997. I remember eagerly opening my mailbox everyday and disappointed by its emptiness wondered if the box would fit in it. When it finally came I thought it was the best game. Revolutionary and excellent mix of tactical issues where appropriate use of the ground was just as important as the unit mix. Truly in the spirit of the creatoers of Warcraft II, Harpoon, Strategic Conquest, Risk, Ancient art of War at Sea and a whole slew of other strategy games I have encountered on my computers.        Since my current computer (an Apple Powerbook 5300ce, running at 117 MHz, no L2 cache and 32 MB of RAM) would occasionally choke on Myth:TFL, I did not want to buy the full game if I could not play it without frustration. So I patiently downloaded the demo version overnight and eagerly set to decode and uncompress install and all that fun stuff.        From a few minor glitches (on my display, the introductory screen would not be centered but rather placed in the upper left corner) I believe that with the proper equipment, Myth:SB is truly eye-candy. But during the tutorial, when I had my five units run amok the idyllic farm, I was disappointed with what Bungie was offering us, especially after all the hyperbole that was floating around the net (and some of it from Bungie).        I had several times suggested on this newsgroup that enemy units displayed basis should be only in the line of sight, not distance. I can all too often see units on the other side of a wall which makes ambushes impossible. Just think of Creep on the Borderlands: did you ever think you could surprise the attackers with a force of 20 thrall at the gaps in the wall? (If the enemy rushed through in a disorganized fashion, that is a completely different mattaer). And yet the algorithms for line of site problem are somewhere in the Myth's code, because thrall and wight under water can not be seen. The fact that water is transparent and units under water should be seen by enemy units close by has never been brought up (as far as I know).        Bungie in its description of Myth:SB has somewhere said that now everything in the game would take damage and cause damage. In the tutorial I placed about 15 satchel charges close to the mortar shells by the houses and set them off. I had an explosion which must have been quite spectacular in 3Dfx, but the house stood there unscathed. Its walls were not even blackened.I expected at least the windows to have been shattered! (But to Bungie's credit, the animal pen, with the pigs, was sent to the lake in small easy installments). Clearly not all objects in Myth SB take damage. What is strangest is when a unit dies close to one of the houses, the blood seems to splatter on the ground underneath the house, not on the house walls. I do not think that these houses are as real as the ground they are built upon.        How would tactics change if instead of facing the enemy horde you could blast your way through a wall or burn a forest to the ground? Or you could destroy that last bridge with your enemies on top of it and watch them fall and shatter at the bottom of a bottomless pit? Or even destroy the battlements of your castle and have them fall on your enemy down below? In WarCraft II ( a much more primitive game) you could destroy some of the environment. (Those dwarves were truly suicidal!). The few object that I have seen destroyed, chickens and candelabras, are inconsequential to the battle field. Again, to Bungies credit, destroying a fence is VERY important, but a wall even more important.        Unit path finding was an improvement touted by Bungie, but even there I see that it can be quite bad. When playing "The Baron's Keep" I saw several units take a straight line to their destination, even if it meant going through a wall. Of course they did not make it there. Or I would see some of my warriors, rush to a corner trying to reach the baron who was fleeing on the other side of the walls! If proper line-of-sight enemy sighting had been implemented, my units would not have reacted to his proximity and become ridiculosly jammed in the corner. Unfortunately units still must be micromanaged when they need to be moved and not trusted to their own devices.        It is unfortunate that Myth:SB does not take care of these issues.The path-finding can be devilishly hard, limited to our current thoeries of artificial intelligence. But line-of-sight and alterable or dynamic environments are a matter of just doing it. The biggest drawback of Myth:SB is its lack of new features, which does not mean new units or maps. I was picturing doing battles in a new element, that is naval warfare. Immagine ships that are shooting cannon or mortar shells, where the smoke reduces visibility. And as the ships move closer, the achers start firing, maybe incendiary arrowrs and grapples are thrown. The ships are boarded and you are limited to fight on the small surface of a deck, where a single mortare grenade can sink the ship with all hands. This alas has not been implemented, even though it seems a small stretch of work.        Myth:SB does a very good job at improving on the good stuff (visual effects, stroryline, units control etc), but does nothing to address the weaker points. No new elements are being used that would have made this game as revolutionary as Myth:TFL, but rather it is merely an evolution. To use an expression I read a few months ago on the now defunct Voracious Rabbits site, we are getting Myth too, not Myth 2.        Will I buy Myth SB? Maybe not, unless I am convinced it's evolution is enough to guarantee a lack of revolution.          BACK TO MAIN ARTICLES PAGE