To be honest your not missing anything, I bought and tried the golden gun and then went back to the normal guns, as you can't fit all the attachments to the golden gun.
Hmm. So basically forget about enemies first and foremost, just plot fast routes straight through the rooms and then angle your guys to try and make sure they can see all hiding spots during their movement. That doesn't seem anywhere near as tactical as I'd hoped. I tend to go off games that basically reward you for speedruns. Its why I didn't play Mos Speedrun for longer than half an hour...
Well, it makes sense for speed and efficiency to be a major benchmark for this type of thing. You're dealing with the unknown and you can't really afford to meander, desktop tactics while effective just don't rate you so high, which I think is fair.
I think it's another hangover of them trying to be "authentic", where speed is everything, I imagine in real life. That said, hiding behind "authenticity" when justifying no pistols / SMG's yet slapping a Golden M4 in the game is a bit of a stretch...
Hmmm yeah I kind of get that feeling, of more speed and less tactics and kind of wish the stars were based on damage alone and not time. While I'm still loving the game and understand the speed in clearing the rooms point, I still think this game mechanic/engine makes such a good game that I enjoy watching the firefights when both people are in cover and exchanging fire. I can see them using this game as a blueprint to make a full mission based war game like "full spectrum warrior" or "brothers in arms" style, that would be fantastic.
Game Impressions While what I've seen of the game so far seems very polished and sophisticated, to a level uncommon for iOS devices, Breach & Clear is not a very pleasant experience on my (newly restarted, non-jailbroken) iPhone 4. While the animations seem fine, camera control and both menu and in-game interaction is very laggy. The non-predicitive camera adds its share of annoyance (while it zooms in on breaches, normal movement and combat can happen outside the currently selected view, which becomes a bit bothersome on a device where panning and zooming is hindered by very low framerates and the movement and fighting often is over when I've acquired a good view of my soldiers). So, I'll be putting this off until I get my hands on the next iPhone iteration (and boy, is that backlog starting to pile up. Not in numbers, but in quality. Bastion, XCOM, Deus Ex, possibly Iesabel... If Firefly is added to that list, I'm grabbing an iPhone 5, should that mythical iPhone delay finally occur ). Also, devs: I have seen few titles in the history of iOS more ideal for asynchronous online play. Just sayin'...
A tip for iPhone users. There is a 3-D box in the lower left corner. Tap it to get a top-down view. Much easier to see and accurately tap where u want your squad members to go. Regarding speed and scoring, perhaps augment the scoring to include things like stealth kills (enemies taken out from behind or without enemy's firing a shot or 'proximity kill' get behind enemy at half speed and take out without using a gun) and maybe giving higher weight to avoiding damage. The coming soon mission types offer additional ideas for scoring - no hostages killed, etc (you probably already planned on this). I have no military background so for these type of squads I don't know what the real priorities are - speed vs getting someone hurt.
Now that I'm replaying levels on higher difficulties, something I think would be useful would be being able to change the difficulty when you replay mission (after the After Action Report). Maybe when you tap Replay Mission you can get a second menu asking whether you want to maintain difficulty or change it. That would be a lot easier than going back to the mission select and all those other menus, IMO You can do melee kills? You can sneak up on enemies at half speed? And yes, while speedruns are nice, I think star ratings should be rewarded for better skills not just speed like this poster suggested
I feel as if timing would be more reasonable as a scoring statistic during Bomb Defuse mode. Maybe you have a time limit or maybe u just have to defuse as fast as possible. Seems more likely to me
I'll try my hardest to figure this out, I've been testing the game since last December on my iPad Mini and the only time I can cause a crash is when I spend too much time on the menu (flipping through the market, equipping gear, etc.). If I just jump straight into a mission, everything seems to work fine. It could be an issue with the UAV (as I rarely use those) - do you know if you're using the UAV? If not, I'll try to figure out how to replicate what's happening. In any case, we're already working on optimizing the menu - though it will be a gradual process over the course of the next few updates.
I've logged the volume issue in our bug database, we'll see about fixing it soon. Should be very easy! Multi-tasking is inherent to all apps on iOS (I think), but if the app uses too much memory, it will be autokilled in the background by other apps when they need memory.
For those worried about having to pay for the Gold M4 with in-game currency, the reason for this is so you can buy as many as you want down the road. Having the first version of the game unlocks the gun as a marketplace option, which others won't have.. It will still be buyable for you after updates. As for the new device concern, we may do the free IAP solution in the next update.
The speed thing was less about authenticity, and more about trying to figure out the ideal way to quantify player skill. I think we're going to have to rework it and make it more about not taking damage than time. Time would still play a factor, it just wouldn't have as big of an influence as it does now. I think in it's current state, if you don't take damage at all - you should be guaranteed three stars regardless of speed.
Try the top down view and see if that makes the experience a little better. To activate it, tap the cube icon in the bottom left of the screen. iPhone 4 was actually a device we thought the game wouldn't work on - it's more luck than anything that it is running well on it. We're going to do our best to optimize the game for it down the road.
It's kind of hard to gauge because breaching and clearing a room happens insanely fast in real life. Every operator is responsible for an angle and they literally have a fraction of a second to process any given action they need to perform. I like your suggestion of awarding players for different actions performed during the mission. We had some thoughts on this a few weeks ago, but didn't have the resources to get anything in before launch. We'll see about including something like that in the future.
Yes, except for some lag in the menus, the game works surprisingly well on iPhone 4. I felt kind of left out without XCom or FS on my device, but B&C has been an excellent addition to my IOS library. The only real issue is not being able to see an A and B group at the same time on the smaller screen. I and others have suggested that some kind of PIP or split screen feature could fix that issue
I just want to say that I hope speed does continue to play a part.. I find it incredibly satisfying to bust into a room and take everyone down as quickly and efficiently as possible. I love spending 10 or 15 minutes on a mission and at the end it says it was actually like 12 seconds long. Super badass.
