A new video has been released, get it here

There was also a recent interview done with the PC developers GRIN, here are some the important parts of that interview:

Differences and similarities
If you’ve played one of the console versions of Ghost Recon, you’ll on the one hand recognize locations and material, but on the other hand you’ll see differences.
The PC version was developed separately from the console versions, but is based on the same image and video material from Mexico City and of course on the same city map. The resulting game is much larger than the console version, resulting in longer missions.
We’ve received emails from worried people with questions regarding the stability of the game. Stability has a high priority at GRIN, because missions can last for several hours and you don’t want to crash just before a checkpoint. Using the official internet forums GRIN will try to stay in contact with the community, especially regarding problems with the game.

Support
This brings us to the patches. Every program contains bugs, even GRAW, something which Bo doesn’t deny. Patches will be released which will contain bugfixes as well as additional content.
Another point of frustration with the community is cheating. GRIN chose to develop their own anti-cheat solution, instead of using third-party tools like Punkbuster. The anti-cheat functionality will be updated with patches as well.

The last item discussed was the availability of modding tools. There will be a map editor available, and other aspects of the game will be changeable using the XML based configuration files.

Bo wanted to stress that GRIN will keep listening to the community after the release and that features might get added or changed based on the response.

Forgotten Hope 2 is a WW2 modification for Battlefield 2 that promises to deliver historical authenticity and more realistic play than the standard BF2 game. I recently spoke with Lobo, Forgotten Hope’s team leader, about what to expect from the upcoming release of FH2.

TR: What nationalities will be included in the intitial release of FH2?

Lobo: Our current plans are to include the British and German armies. We expect to have a reasonably complete and representative sample of the most common and important weapons used by each side in the course of the campaign for North Africa.

TR: The North Africa Theater was a see-saw campaign across a narrow corridor. It seems ripe for league campaigns (i.e., Forgotten Honor). Will FH2 maps provide enough historical material for a North Africa campaign?

Lobo: We have not decided exactly how many maps we are going to include in our very first release, but there are enough in progress for a small campaign. In addition, there should be plenty of materials for fan mappers to make even more.

TR: What gametypes will FH2 offer?

Lobo: Which will be available in the very first release depends partly on which maps get included, but our mappers are interested in what can be done with the new Supply Lines game mode, as well as the push and objective style maps that are familiar from FH 0.7, as well as the more conventional conquest mode.

TR: Besides the graphical improvements of the BF2 engine, what will FH2 offer to fans of the original FH?

Lobo: We are expecting to take advantage of BF2s improved physics, animation and gameplay features to produce a more immersive and satisfying game experience. This will include realistic ironsights, better animations and better ability to make tactical use of map terrain. We are also looking at interesting ways to adapt the BF2 commander and squad system to a Second World War environment in a way that feels historically accurate and rewards intelligent teamplay.

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Tripwire announced the release of a beta patch that must be launched from the command line to run. The beta patch is compatible with all standard clients and servers. In the beta patch release announcement Tripwire also mentioned the release of additional content in the next month. More maps, tanks and guns? Oh my!

Read the full announcement and installation instructions here.

James Hill over at LoadedInc.com wrote a nice preview of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter based on a screening he attended at Ubisoft.

Perhaps the biggest reason for owning the PC version will be the editor which will become available for download post release. This will allow players to create their own levels as well as other gameplay alterations. The most interesting thing about the editor that was mentioned was that levels made in the editor by users are not limited to four player cooperative. Imagine that. User made levels will allows multiple squads to run around and work together, frankly the gameplay possibilities are utterly unlimited by that amount of cooperative play.

Read the full preview here.

Sometimes the best way to describe something is by showing what a thing is not. For example, this in game video from CoD2 is definitely not Tactical Realism. While most of you may not be able to watch more than 20 seconds of this video, I was mesmerized by the “gameplay” and found a sudden and overwhelming appreciation for the TR community.

xTYBALTx over at Tactical Gamer has posted a review of Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45. He criticizes RO on several points for not being on a current generation engine, and overall has some issues with the TR gameplay. While I agree with some of his gameplay issues, I found it particularly interesting that he views BF2 as a better game in terms of TR.

Overall, I’d say Red Orchestra is a fine game, and if Battlefield 2 didn’t exist, it’d be a great game. Alas, Battlefield has been around for neigh a year now, and our community has grown accustomed to a certain level of tactical gameplay which RO has not delivered.

xTYBALTx claims in the beginning of the review that the learning curve is not as high as other players have pointed out, yet in his review he reveals that he hasn’t fully grasped the game’s features:

This is made worse by the fact that there are neither visual nor audio cues catching your attention when the objective begins to be taken.

This is not true (and it took me awhile to figure it out myself). A map icon warning will blink at the bottom of the screen when objectives are being captured or lost.

Looking at the comments posted to xTYBALTx’s review it appears there are a handful of players who are unhappy with how difficult it is to kill the enemy in RO — a point that I would rate extremely high on reasons why I like the RO gameplay. Other

The line between realism and fun is not an objective one, but rather a line that each player draws, and redraws as their experience dictates. The arguments that crop up in gaming forums around the net pitting realism against fun are nothing new, but they seem to be growing as does the popularity of all flavors of realism gaming. Some of the posts and blogs I have read even give me the impression that realism is the new cool - you can easily find younger players wearing realism as if it were identification of being ‘alternative’ in the gaming world.

People like Red Storm’s Christian Allen, Lead Multiplayer Designer for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter for the Xbox 360, recognizes that players are gravitating towards more authentic experiences on the consoles even. Still, I would argue that fans of realism are a niche community when compared to the hordes of players enjoying the arcade experiences that most FPS games deliver. Realism mods are still largely viewed as a freakish aberration of the FPS gaming community - and this only reinforces the alternative identity that some realism fans associate with the genre.

For the most part realism features are perceived as a threat to fun. I found one gamer poking fun at realism by commenting that pretty soon we’ll see realism mods where you need to click ‘b’ repeatedly to keep your character breathing. Another conversation I read involved a gamer trying to explain a new type of gaming he was getting into called “tactical realism”, and the reply back was, “sounds like a lot of camping”, followed by several “lol” replies. I admit, I laughed too, but for a different reason. I should also point out the guy claiming that Red Orchestra’s exciting gameplay owes no credit to its realism features.

On the forums dedicated to realism mods you can even find realism fans giving passionate arguments against the implementation of further realism oriented features. Their point almost always boils down to fun vs. realism. Again, a difference in where that line is drawn.

What I found interesting was trying to determine where I would draw my own line between fun and realism in an FPS. Ignoring absurd features like pressing ‘b’ to stay alive, I could not find the line for me. I think realism features; properly implemented with a goal to immerse the players in an authentic experience, mean fun to me. And I think as the genre matures it realism will equate to fun for more and more FPS players.

Ubisoft released the first PC trailer for Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter today. Pretty short but you get a glimpse of entering a mission via fast roping as well as the interface for coordinating your mission (I assume this is all single player footage).

Get it here.

Lately I have been appalled at some of the things I have seen going on during play on some TR unit servers in the community. As mentioned before, every unit in this community is diverse. However we share a common bond, that bond is teamwork. No matter how different one unit is from the other, most units encourage teamwork to the fullest extent.

Recently I have seen a few units who will remain unnamed pop up in this community and completely disrespect fellow units and ignore teamwork. Rather than working for a team victory, they care only about personal scores.  You will see these players rush to the enemy spawn as soon as the round starts to see if they can catch people off guard and get a few quick kills before they are killed. When asked to slow down and play tactically or to follow certain rules, these are the players you will see arguing with Server Admins.

When a member of the community called one of these new units out about teamwork, the response given was “We dont care whether we win or lose. We only care about owning and having high scores.” This is not the attitude of a Tactical Realism unit, these players clearly Do Not care about this community or any of the well respected long time units in it: they merely use spawn rush tactics to try to get the best score on the server.

Dont get me wrong, there are days when the only thing I want to do is pop on the server and Destroy the Opposition but, even in that mindset I still focus on working with my team, combining my skill with the rest of the team to achieve victory. Im very proud of this community and I keep good relations with everyone in it so, when I see new units that pop up and give TR a bad name, I speak out about it. This is a warning to all potential newcomers to TR who may be looking into joining one of the community’s many great units: don’t be fooled by score whores of the community who care not about teamwork but personal achievement.

When I am not day-dreaming of being a successful squad leader for an allied unit in WW2, I’m day-dreaming about space ships and colonizing/invading alien planets. Did I just say that out loud?

What this means is that while I will never grow old of TR gaming in the WW2 environment, I would also like to branch out into my second favorite genre - space combat. The problem is that FPS games with a sci-fi theme are never candidates for TR gameplay. Badge of Blood looks to change that. It is a mod for HL2 that promises to deliver TR in space. Check out the feature list:

GRAVITY & BALLISTICS

· Badge of Blood maps will feature a gravity entity that will alter the affects of the acceleration of gravity on a given body. So, if you’re fighting on Mars, the force of gravity will be roughly 0.36 Gs. If you’re fighting on a space station, or in the asteroid belt, the affects of gravity will be negligable.

· Because of this, Badge of Blood will feature a zero G combat system that will take into account the various forces acting on a player while fighting in a weightless environment.

· All bullets fire will be tracked through space… meaning that there will be no instant point-click kills with ballistic weapons. Players will have to account for bullet drop and time to target when they fire their weapons, especially at long ranges.

REAL-WORLD ADVANCED WEAPONRY

· We intend to use science FACT to support our fiction. You won’t see “phasers”, “energy shields”, or “plasma rifles” in this game.

· Almost all of the weapon systems in Badge of Blood will be designed around real-world technologies that are in development today. We’ve done extensive research into projects revolving around high energy heat lasers, gauss rifles, rail-guns, and assorted other plausable technologies that are likely to see extensive use in the coming century. If you want disrupter rays, you’ve come to the wrong place.

In addition to building in realism, Badge of Blood promises a campaign mode where the results on one map are carried over to the next. There is also an RPG element to the game, where player stats, skills and customized appearance data are saved client side to an xml file. The combat in Badge of Blood will follow a story line involving a war of independence as the Martian colony fights to free themselves from Earth dominion.

Throw in a server enforcing TR rules and it sounds like a lot of fun. A single map demo should be coming out soon.