1 Response

1. GlaziusF Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Alright, who’s gonna fight doom, who’s gonna fight doom… earth/emp controller’s gonna fight doom.

   On diff 3 for the boss fights.

   With a magnaboosted animated stone.

   GO TIME.

   —

   Okay, briefing gives me freaky reports from an abandoned warehouse. “Loathing” is a good word to use “almost physical” with, “nausea” not so much. Nausea’s pretty physical as it is.

   Hmm. Interesting customs, pretty austere costuming. Something bothers me a little about the description, though. Using phraseology like “the remains of a former human being”, doubling down on decay as it were, makes it sound like the monster was once human, then became something else, then turned into the rotten thing I see before me.

   It’s just odd to see.

   Anyway. Last time I found something like this it was a bunch of Warriors who did the wrong thing and got slaughtered. This time it’s some civilians. End cause - probably not Envoy of Shadows, he’s more with the burning. But there are older and fouler things than Orcs in the dark places of the earth.

   —

   You know, occasionally heavy industry is an accidental acquirer of these ancient spirits of evil. Archaeological digs into ancient forgotten cities, and that kind of thing.

   With MAGI and the like around it’s probably a lot less accidental most times.

   I get ready to stealth past the innocent bystanders and then the patrol starts ranting about death and decay.

   Then I check the descriptions.

   Yeah, not so innocent bystanders. Smash time.

   Apparently there are more of those zombie tablets out there somewhere.

   And a cult leader. DM/invuln? Experiencing custom powersets with my body is not a high priority, I hope you’ll understand.

   And they worship an ancient forgotten god who wants to turn everything into goop. Better not let the ancient forgotten god who wants to hunt everything down and kill it and the ancient forgotten god who wants to eat the world get wind of that, there could be an ancient forgotten dust-up and the latter two are the killin’ sort.

   —

   Um… hang on a second. Why’s Azuria asking me to be gentle with the guards?

   Oh, I see. They’re not clueless law-abiding private security, they’re clueless drug-pushing private security. That makes all the difference.

   Strangely enough none of the boxes I actually have to tag show up in the loading dock at the back. I guess there’s nothing like a boss you could put there or anything, but I’d like to see some “decoy” crates with other illicit goods the Family’s been running, or records of their employment by Crawford, or something.

   —

   Okay, how does Azuria know we missed one? Just by the pricking of her thumbs, or was there actual evidence of it in the warehouse?

   Maybe that’s something to put in mission 3, a Family boss who fesses up to shipping one out to the hospital and doesn’t get what your big deal is.

   A clear-all in the asylum map. …joy.

   That place is hard enough to find my way around. At least there aren’t any patrols or anything getting themselves tucked behind partitions.

   Big U is an AV downgrade, so I burn a Shivan to mow him down. I get lucky with purple triangles and take out his minions with little effort.

   He does chew the scenery admirably, I’ll give him that.

   —

   Storyline - **. I’m not really feeling this one. It feels like an abbreviated version of some of the Banished Pantheon or CoT arcs that are out there, with a different coat of paint slapped on top. I don’t know if it’s the warehouses precisely that got me thinking along those lines, given that a couple notable arcs start out that way, but the Banished Pantheon especially are pretty much exactly a cult of an ancient forgotten god who want to summon it up and wreak havoc on the world. Why make up a new one? Also the missions do a pretty good job of having natural links from one to another, but that breaks for no reason I can work out in the interim between missions 3 and 4.

   Design - ***. A lot of the missions are really sparse. The last one I can’t remember having anything notable in it aside from the boss. While in one sense that’s a help with getting a coherent image of the goals of this new group, in another sense it hurts because they’re exactly the same as the goals of the Banished Pantheon, just swap out a name.

   Gameplay - ****. Generally solid stuff here, though hunting down spawns that got split around the dividers in the asylum was a chore. You could probably get away with just an abandoned office map there, really, and most of the rooms would be much more open.

   Detail - ****. Most of my problem with the story comes in at a higher level. The custom groups and mission details are sparse but pretty true to what they should be.

   Overall - ***. A story that did what it set out to do - unfortunately, from where I see it, what it set out to do was replay a Banished Pantheon arc with different actors.

   Posted on August 31st, 2009 at 8:42 pm