Meanwhile over in EA/DICE land, the developers have been fighting a losing battle trying to shoe horn single player campaigns (yes, the dread term) into Battlefield 3 then 4. The dreaded words “ bots“, “ sp” and “ ai” have been changed to “Practice Mode” with bots clearly coded to actually teach people to play better online with human players. Meanwhile New World Interactive have produced their extremely focused product Day of Infamy. So what are we to make of this mysterious situation ? Well Tripwire removed the dreaded bot support in the their latest release Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, I suspect because of the same raging insanity aimed at any mention of the dreaded term “ bot” (for example see here, and here).
“Coop” is, but that does not specify if you can play solo, as many games often force you to wait for at least one more player. Those are all Rising Storm (the expansion for Red Orchestra 2) … wait for it (block you ears now, rude word) … BOTS ! They are split into squads and can all be commanded as long as you are the commander class.īut in the places you would check first, such the Day of Infamy Steam page, no where is this mentioned. “Commando” mode is much more difficult, emulating, I can only surmise, how online play is with human players with fast reactions (I don’t play online so can only guess). They were long games with highly talented bots who pause at corners of buildings to take cover, flank you and generally act like you’d expect a trained enemy soldier to act. I know, I just played about 4 maps in succession. Similarly Day of Infamy does not mention that it’s possible to play as a solo player entirely against and with bots in a way that basically emulates a single player campaign (but without any cut scenes). Rising Storm 2/Rising Storm does not mention anywhere on it’s page that the game can be played entirely with bots, alone, complete with bot commands and other features. Even their Steam pages do not list the fact that they have a de facto single player mode.
No wonder solo players have not been able to find these games. In a (brilliant really if you think about it) move to out manoeuvre these tantrum ridden trolls, games began to drop the terms “ bot“, “ AI“, “ SP” (and/or “ Single Player“). We were overcome by legions of fun hating internet trolls ! Paroxysms of hate and rage about games almost clogged the channels to choking point (the famous Hitler rage video about Infinity Ward cancelling dedicated servers comes to mind). But it’s not all the game developers fault. Well, as I’ve found out, Day of Infamy epitomises the problems surrounding bad game design decisions post Battlefield 2. You may wonder why my next article is about yet another game that is not Battlefield 2. Commenter PAD242 on Why I Still Love Bots in Games article. I think devs realize this and therefore try to find ways to put Bots in a game but without calling them Bots.
However what I’ve found as I’ve spent the years lobbying in game forums on the subject is that people tend to get offended when I would ask the developers to include a Bot option. I’ve been a huge proponent of Bots in games ever since Perfect Dark just like the article writer. A rather violent moment at Battlefield-Classic as I fight off legions of raging internet trolls ranting inanities about “bots! bots!” (Day of Infamy).