2 Responses

1. Perceptor II Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   I was expecting an amusing arc. You try to enjoy a relaxing night in front of the TV after a day of crime-fighting, but then some kid hijacks the signal and asks you to help his little robot rescue a girl in his class.

   Silly, but amusing for a mission. But then the story gets bigger, and bigger and bigger. Pretty soon you’re racing a full-blown operation by one of the world’s most dangerous villainous organizations.

   The custom robots are interesting and well designed, especially the way they progress from Mark I to Mark II and on and sometimes appear to be malfunctioning. A word of warning: the custom enemies in the final mission can be very hard to defeat solo. By themselves they’re fairly easy, but put four of them together and they pack quite a wallop!

   In the end, this is a story about a nerdy boy in love with a girl, and that gives this offbeat tale the right amount of heart. I have nothing but praise for this arc. Five stars across the board.

   Posted on May 15th, 2009 at 5:16 am

2. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Taking this one on with a high-teens Peacebringer, who is old diff 1 except he fights bosses too.

   —

   Well, this is a promising sign for light comedy - the TV is labeled “Supergroup Relaxation Device”.

   So the briefing starts with “[Your show's just about over and you are about to find out what "It" is, when the reception crackles and goes blank...]” Why am I wondering what “It” is? A little description of the cheesy monster movie would help here.

   But it’s always good to help the nascent technologists along, so let’s go.

   I can’t speak for everyone, but I like how the game does accept text, which is to turn some of the mission description green to indicate the most important bits, then make the accept text an objective statement of the mission goals.

   Anyway, I head in to find the Council everywhere, and their scientists examining the thing I was supposed to reboot.

   Oddly they both seem like melee types.

   Even more oddly, the robot a decent way from the end room completes the mission with the hostage still waiting.

   I go anyway… huh. Maemae? Really? I thought from the opening briefing I was dealing more with grade-schoolers.

   —

   Anyway, time for round 2. Judging by the patrol chatter the Council are doing the time-tested thing and getting to an inventor via his family.

   Lot of patrol chatter, though. It’s not exactly missable anymore, so can you maybe do one talky patrol and some greater number of quiet ones?

   The mark 2 is a pretty classy machine. But… it doesn’t seem to have any offensive powers? It just follows me around and stares menacingly at things.

   I spring Melanie from her captors but now I have to wax that signal jammer the Mark 2 was talking about. It’s somewhere in the map before I found him, which I guess is unavoidable if you set ‘em both to middle. There’s just so much middle.

   I find the signal jammer up on a catwalk, with perhaps a guard but he is non-vocal. It’s a Vanguard warhead with the standard warhead description.

   Ah. The briefing clarifies that yes, the robot wasn’t accepting offensive commands. Ah well, at least he was a nice distraction.

   —

   Huh. I don’t know how that little drone’s going to be a fight for me, but alright, off I go to save the day.

   Oh, it’s Lou’s. I was expecting a pawn shop. This place is huge.

   And full of very vocal patrols! Eesh. So many dialog boxes they all over you screen.

   Huh. Based on the rescue dialogue and the patrols, it seems like the scientists from the first mission have worked out a way to hack my contact’s bots.

   Oh! He was talking about the Mk II, not the little drone from the first mission. Yes, that one’s a lot more dangerous.

   Good lord, how many patrols are there in this place?

   I investigate a control computer and find, among other things, “Additionally, it appears they know the location of it’s controller, and there are notes citing questions only the creator can answer!”

   Does that mean they’re planning on asking the kid a few things in a less than forthcoming manner, or does it indicate they’ve already pumped him for information (or he’s gone open source)?

   The boss of the shop is still “hapless foreman” faction, and still has the description calling him the foreman of the PTS.

   Reading the end mission clue, and hoo boy. The idealism of the wireless age runs smack dab into hard cold wardriving reality.

   —

   Yeah, they came after him. Saw THIS coming. I wonder why I didn’t try to figure out where the kid was. I mean, I knew where his signal was coming from and that the Council was after him.

   Oh, interesting. Yeah, I can see this map as an apartment building.

   But apparently the Council got in, got the people, and got out, leaving behind only a bomb to erase their tracks.

   The exit popup is I guess referring to the rogue SAM tracer from one mission back. But why didn’t I follow up on that? How much time has it been? Are the timestamps in the mission subtitles just arbitrary or do they actually MEAN something?

   —

   Ah, that’s why there’s the warning - ambushes and patrols made up entirely of lieutenants.

   Which thanks to the change in custom group XP are now worth less than minions. Because there ARE no minions.

   Wouldn’t be hard, just mix in some Mek Men and maybe Wolfpacks if you don’t have bosses from this faction.

   Man, I wish I had more inspiration slots.

   Anyway, I spring Jimmy’s mom (the navbar is telling me to both “save the last Driskel” and “find Jimmy Driskel” now, which is odd) and then Melanie, who asks me to take her to her dad… and then runs off.

   You can actually set her to Ally - follow - pacifist to get her to really tag along.

   Oh! Okay, so THAT’s the last Driskel. See, “Jimmy” is a viable nickname for “James”, so when the trace hit I thought it was Jimmy and his single mom.

   And from Jimmy’s description he’s in the sixth grade.

   …I am pretty sure Maemae is NOT in the sixth grade.

   Okay, the doc is free, another batch of ambushers taken care of…

   And the destruction of robot parts changes into “purge files to protect Jimmy” when it’s done? Those two things don’t seem to be causally related.

   And the files are two floors down from the end room where I found the last crate of parts.

   Man. I was expecting a fight against like the first Beta model with the new Mark 4 for backup.

   —

   Storyline - ***. The big problem I have here is that, per the clues for mission 3, my hero knows the Council is going to be coming after Jimmy, and has sufficient information to find both his house and the Council base where they’re controlling the robots from. I think missions 3, 4, and 5 are supposed to hit in rapid succession, but you’ve established that missions 1, 2, and 3 take place some arbitrary time units apart, so it’s tough for me to make the jump.

   Maybe if the debrief from mission 3 actually had the Council showing up, with a little narrative note about how I’d better work on pinning down those coordinates, and mission 4 started with me finishing up on the coordinates and checking the TV to see if I can see anything more. Or something like that, anyway.

   Design - ***. Minor but niggling - there is no force on Earth capable of convincing me that Maemae von Whooters is in the sixth grade. Maybe you could recolor, say, Penny Yin, assuming her psi-aura could be turned off.

   Several missions seemed to complete early - either there was an implied objective like rescuing a hostage that I didn’t do, or the required objectives showed up a good ways before the actual end of the mission. And I’m not sure why destroying the files on Jimmy shows up after I complete my sabotage of the robot parts in the last mission.

   Speaking of the last mission, it actually worked out pretty well, if you intended the player to worry about dodging around the BADGUY patrols up until the Mark 4 comes into play. But the problem is that the Mark 4 showed up for me on like the next-to-last floor and before that, there were objectives that spawned ambush groups of BADGUYs, which couldn’t be avoided. Maybe if you folded in other Council robots like I suggested the ambushes could use that mix.

   The custom Council scientists are a bit odd in that they focus on matrial arts. Admittedly that is standard training for Council troops but I was expecting more of an assault rifle-y thing from them.

   Also, why was the level range so oddly constrained? It goes like 10-15-20-25-25 as the cap. I didn’t see any enemies that needed to be in that particular range.

   Finally, so many patrol dialogues. So many. And all identical. One talky patrol, N silent ones, and I can practically guarantee you the talky one will not be missed.

   Gameplay - ***. Mostly for the backtracking, trying to find things that spawned in the nebulous “middle” of a map. I realize this isn’t entirely your doing, as the MA loves its flaky middles. But it rankled all the same.

   Detail - *****. Aside from the occasional nonstandard description or faction, everything was fairly sensical. The robots had their own “voices”, the clues are fun to pick over, or appropriately dread-inducing, and there’s a nonstandard contact that’s pulled off very well.

   Overall - ****. Pretty much greater than the sum of its parts. If it worked at a consistent level range, tightened up the story a bit, tuned down the ambushes in the last mission, and either made it about a high-schooler or bid a fond farewell to MaeMae, it’d be better, but as it is, it tells a story through non-conventional means and pulls it off very ably.

   Posted on December 2nd, 2009 at 12:59 am