3 Responses

1. Perceptor II Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   I found that the story got off to a very slow start. In fact, the villain group seemed to have no motivation behind it (and yes, I did read everything). They were also rather bland to look at: too much of the same color over the entire character. There is also a curious case of a certain boss that you can fight twice, but isn’t required and it’s never really clear why he’s there.

   I was also a little put off when the arc referred to Mender Tesseract as “Meg”. While this is technically correct, Tesseract strikes me as someone I just shouldn’t have this level of familiarity with.

   With all that said, it does get better as the arc draws to a close. You start retracing your steps, going back to missions you’ve been at previously, checking out what’s changed, correcting mistakes made and resetting the time stream. At this point the story actually does get interesting.

   Posted on May 14th, 2009 at 10:45 am

2. theHedoren Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   I’m not exactly a rocket scientist; I like to think that I’m at — or even slightly above — average intelligence. In any case, one of the more challenging concepts I’ve attempted involved time-travel and… well, let’s just say that it didn’t go very well. There are so many ways to lose track of time streams or misplace entire causalities, and hundreds more methods of confounding readers.

   By the end of “Other Secret”, I was thoroughly in the dark. The amount of twists, time-loops, sudden revelations and alternate characters is overwhelming at times, and I’m still not sure exactly what happened.

   It begins when I’m contacted by Mender Tesseract for a specific task — one that only I can complete, due to my involvement in future events. It seems some ne’er-do-well is mucking about in the time stream and causing all kinds of corruption; the Menders are all locked out and unable to intervene. Which is where I come in. After fighting against an assault from a sort of anti-Ouroboros group (“Time-lock”), I find out that my ultimate fate directly allows Time-lock to break into Ouroboros.

   Upon my return, Tesseract is quite upset with my failure to stop the corruption. She once again sends me into the future, but this time slightly before the Time-lock assault. I’m not sure if I foiled the attack or not, but I discovered that some outside force is providing Time-lock with the temporal virus. After some more snooping in a 5th Column base, I find the source of the mysterious messages: a small drive hidden in the Column’s email server. (I think the word “drive” may be a mis-use; a drive is normally a data storage device, which doesn’t seem to match its appearance in this arc.) I remove the drive and Tesseract declares the time stream to be fixed.

   But just to be sure, she sends me through time again to check on Time-lock’s raid. This time, things are different. Many notable Menders are already dead of mysterious causes, and Time-lock itself is a group of refugee Menders cast out of Ouroboros by some traitorous comrades. When I return to Tesseract, she’s figured a few things out. Firstly, *she* is the one who created the mystery drive (or rather, her future-self did). She will discover the traitor Menders and stop the corruption of the time stream, but will lock herself out as well. So one last time I defy laws of spacetime, this time to return the drive I removed from the 5th Column’s base. And finally, all is well.

   But it turns out that writing all this down didn’t help my comprehension of the finer points. For starters, much of the plot hinges on the presence of “corruption” of the time-stream. Setting aside that this is a vague and oft-repeated term, I never understood who started the distortions to begin with. Was it Time-lock, in an effort to beat down the Menders of Ouroboros? Or was it Tesseract trying to stop Time-lock? Or was it my future self?

   And what is the purpose of Tesseract’s drive? Does it create these time-malfunctions, or is it merely a way to send anonymous messages? And why does the corruption get worse when I remove said-drive from the 5th Column?

   Even without the unexplained intricacies of the story, I was often confused by the author’s writing style. Odd phrases and awkward grammar runs rampant throughout the text, causing me to re-read everything at least twice. I found this to be a huge hindrance in deciphering an increasingly-convaluted time-travel story.

   I feel like there’s definite potential in this arc, but it’s weighed down by some inelegant writing and too many loose ends.

   Posted on May 30th, 2009 at 1:17 am

3. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Running this on a high-40s ice/axe tank, +0/x2 with bosses on.

   —

   Mender Tess (she could use a description now that you can do that) sends me off against a group with designs against Ouroboros. Apparently I don’t exist in their past, which will let me blindside them.

   I begin engaging the soldiers. Let’s see here… AR/elec armor and elec melee/elec armor minions, mercs/mind control and AR/empathy lieutenants… and Vanguard Sergeants for some reason?

   Yeah, stock description and everything. Are these guys supposed to be here? If so you might want to at least tweak their stock description to note how odd that is.

   I meet a metahuman called “The Alpha”, a fire blast (with Aim)/fire manip (with Build Up). He shows up later in the mission as a normal boss, which seems a little odd. I also meet a timelost caveman, Mace (with build up)/Invuln, and a mad archer, bow (with aim)/pain dom.

   The map boss is an energy melee (with build up) robot who seems to have used my existence to crack Ouroboros.

   Problematic.

   —

   Tess decides to send me after them, surmising I won’t die just yet and offering to off me and dump the body down a blind time-hole if I don’t get on it.

   Woman after my own heart, that one.

   I enter the map to a bunch of greens. If you don’t want that to happen you should look at the mission pacing setting - this may have been made before it actually worked properly.

   Yeah, I’m betting you didn’t want The Alpha to be a regular feature, but I fight him all through this place, including three times in one room.

   Apparently someone’s been feeding this information to the robot…

   —

   …someone in the 5th Column. Trying to span across history before time travel is uninvented. Tess says she’ll come with? Now this will be interesting.

   I pick her up in the first room. Pretty standard MA/SR, really. The base is a small 5th Column affair with the troops discussing the upcoming schism. I pick up the drive as a clue, but no idea what’s on it yet - I’m guessing Tess will read that after we get out.

   —

   Not even. But with the drive gone Time-Shift never cuts Ouro off from the time stream, so that’s a win of sorts. I go to get news of Ouro while Tess works on figuring out who tipped the robot off.

   …well. Somehow things have gone even worse now.

   …or… wait. The ambush that shows up when I drop the bot is casting things in a new light. I’m a traitor in this timeline? Are all the other Menders that way too?

   —

   Huh. Apparently this whole affair was Tess’s plan in the future to turn TimeShift into a traitor and seal off Ouroboros against those who would destroy it all. So now I’m going to make sure the robot finds out how to get that done.

   Well, this should be an easy little coda.

   This… uh… this isn’t the same base I was in last time The overall topology is similar, but the last room is markedly different. For a second I think things are going to go weird once I set the drive in place, but the mission ends normally.

   —

   Storyline - ***. But the future refused to change.

   It’s not really easy to keep up tension in an arc where you’re fighting as hard as you can just to stay in the same place. I respect that, but even then mission 2 is pretty much the last time I got in a meaningful fight to learn something novel. Missions 3 and 5 are milk runs through a small 5th base. Mission 4 is ultimately completely misguided, and I’m still not sure how much of it really changed. Absent the other people who’ve been ill done by time travel… was the whole mission really against Ouroboros loyalists? The actual future threat never appeared on the map?

   I was expecting something to try and stop me in the last mission at least, some little glimpse of how bad this alternate future is that Tess would rather turn down an entire army of dudes than face it. But it’s just a little stealth to click and then it’s over.

   Design - ***. The maps are alright. The 5th bunkers are 5th bunkers, the lab’s a lab, and Eleusis does a decent job standing in for somewhere near Ouro. I don’t even think the kickoff for the Alpha unlock arc is available in Mission Architect, and I rather doubt you could put much on it even then.

   The custom enemy group’s pretty thematically decent. Purple, occasionally sparkity, soldiers.

   Mender Tess is some pretty nice design work. I can tell she looks a little bit different, but she doesn’t look wrong.

   But there are places where the design feels a little unpolished. The Timeshift lab that kicks off with greens, though that might well be a symptom of pacing that’s only comparatively recently started working. The incongruous Vanguard soldier, who does kind of look the part in the customs but retains his original title and description, just seeming to have wandered in. The Alpha showing up as a regular boss among the customs, which I’m pretty sure is not intended. And the two 5th bunkers that are almost, but not quite, completely identical-looking.

   Gameplay - ***. I occasionally have harsh words for Aim and Build Up in lower-level arcs or on elite bosses, but on bosses they actually make for some pretty notable fights at the higher levels.

   Though if the Alpha’s really supposed to be a regular presence in the custom group, he’s got both Aim and Build up and is a regular fight, so that doesn’t work out quite as well.

   But there’s only one proper melee unit in the custom group, maybe one and a half if the Vanguard lieut is supposed to be there as he sometimes will close to melee. The problem with ranged enemies that I often talk about is that, especially on open ground, there’s no real way to get them to group together. So every battle ends with a little bit of mop-up. This is a little bit irritating, but it doesn’t really get very bad unless the mission’s a defeat all.

   Or a chained mission on an outdoor map, which often practically works out to “defeat all” so you have a prayer of finding the new objective when it warps in. And both the outdoor missions with the custom group involve some degree of chaining.

   Detail - *****. Mission 4 is actually pretty well-written. The attack calls and such are flavorful enough that it seems to a casual observer like nothing’s changed, but the reveal at the end throws the whole thing into pretty sharp contrast. The effect only lasts for a little bit - ultimately it was a lot of running to stand still - but it’s a nice effect.

   Tess is a sardonic, just barely not murderous joy to listen to, and when the enemy group showed up in the first mission their descriptions and dialogues made me want to see more of them, and explore their deeply-rooted personal animosity against time travel.

   Overall - ***. But ultimately the people who hate time travel enough to drown it in the wrathtub play second fiddle to an ouroboros in the snake-eating-own-tail sense and an unspecified future enemy of Ouroboros who never really gets any screen time. That’s disappointing, and the little annoyances don’t do much to cushion the blow.

   But unless I miss my guess, this is an arc that has a lot to gain from the capabilities now present in Architect and perhaps even the expanded file size.

   Posted on February 2nd, 2012 at 5:27 pm