Day of Defeat:Source Reflections
James Reynolds | September 18, 2008So last night I finally sat down to play some games on my newly resurrected PC, I tinkered with WoW to see what Frame rates I was getting – As high as 60 in places but a steady 40 was quite a refreshing change up from like 5. I also played about an hour and a half of TF2 with the WS@~ guys, we played on a server of a friend of mine but downgraded because Mark couldn’t handle the 32 man games
I wandered off for a while to play some DoD:S in between friends having dinner and was pretty disappointed. See I have found memories of the original Day of Defeat game, it was the first real attempt at a World War 2 Half Life mod and tackled it all very well. The true spirit was captured in the decimated shells of cities and grandiose athems both of which were produced to extremely high standards, the maps especially. It had a few interesting features as well from a game play perspective:
Several different Objective based modes
Whether you were struggling over and important control point or trying to take out armour convoys, it felt like a true WW2 game where some main stream titles do not.
“Realistic” Weapons
Using it in the loosest possible way the weapons in the original DoD felt more … Genuine. MG42s had recoil which reflected the fact you were effectively holding the leg of chuck norris, Kar98s (and extensions therein) were incredibly powerful bolt action rifles – trading brute force and accuracy for slow firing speed. The list goes on really.
Mounting Weapons
The Machine Gunners could mount their weapons to allow for vastly more accurate firing. I obviously wasn’t in WW2, but if you’re pinned down by an MG42 – This is how it should be. You should be dead or hiding. Absolutely awesome …
The British were in it:
This is a really bizarre thing to cut out … But in original DoD they brought a major patch in which included new maps, the British and a whole other range of weaponry for them … And it fucking rocked. I absolutely adored the British rifle … Which I shamefully can’t name.
Para-Mode
It was only in the game for a short while but a few maps had a so called “Para” mode which played similar to CS in the respect that you didn’t respawn. It was removed later on … But some maps won’t be the same with respawns.
Maps
Ah yes … I remember when they put maps in, that was a fantastic patch! You could throw icons and stuff onto it to highlight where enemies were – Truly a brilliant idea.
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Anyway … I’m dragging this on way too much. My point is that while playing DoD:S I felt like I was playing a second rate mod … Not one professionally produced by Valve’s now in-house team.
The maps, if anything, have less detail on them now and the controls feel dusty and broken. I’m disappointed that it’s only the Americans and the Nazis (a definite step back) and also that so few maps are included in an apparently professional release.
It’s just not the same calibur as Team Fortress 2 … And I have to wonder why. Valve could have made this the definitive World War 2 online game … Instead it’s just a mod. A sub par mod at that.
Regards,
JamesR.
Ach Tung! Ach Tung! Panzerfaust! etc.







