1 Response

1. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Running this on a mid-40s DB/fire brute, diff 2 for the boss fights.

   —

   Ah, the generally offscreen fencing operation. Kind of a transparently generic intro, but I’ll roll with it.

   Sigh. Freakin’ Freakshow. Alright, rowdy boys, time to eat sword.

   Oh. That’s interesting. They had a giant robot to help them.

   …which is different from your average Tank Freak by the meat content of the average Tank Freak’s lunch.

   Time to see what this wrinkle is.

   —

   Huh. A time counter. This is feeling… heist movie.

   Aw, they never actually get anything in the heist movie.

   Okay, so Crey hired the Freaks to grab something, which may explain the giant robot, but one of the Freaks narced to the council.

   Which is already part space alien, thank you very much snarky mission exit clue.

   —

   Time to keep running.

   Well, there’s two leads dead and dried up.

   Can you size up these bomb-planty clickers? Transparent is hard enough to see but they’re so tiny. SO TINY.

   I’m guessing you filled the last room full of these dudes with silent boss spawns. Well, and the one noisy one. Nice trick, but who’s gonna boost it from THEM?

   —

   Wait, how does my spaceship know which way to go, here? Council telemetry on their porter?

   Oh, somehow I… tracked one down? O… kay.

   Plenty of cruft around the base to interact with but not much of it’s profitable. Good posing that I don’t have the time or inclination to mess around with this.

   But really, why fake it? I know allies and timed missions don’t play well together, but this is a freakin’ level 40 story arc. A little robodroid isn’t going to swing the boss fight one way or another.

   And after all that horrible runaround I… made the sale after all? Uh. Not that I’m complaining but “great job here’s another 10 percent” is something you say to a shoe salesman.

   —

   Storyline - ***. Laz, this is going to sound like the weirdest thing ever, but it feels like you ripped yourself off here. I mean, I’ve been introduced to the Nagans - villainside, even, as part of another arc - and I’ve played MacGuffin tag even though I was trying to drop it instead of find it. Novelty is all the Nagan presence contributes here (and a superfluous 2001 joke if that was supposed to be their robot helping the Freaks in the first mission) and at least while I was playing keep-away with the parakeet I had some clue as to what the hell it actually WAS. Also, actually winning at the heist movie without even trying doesn’t feel right. Timers! We got ‘em so use ‘em!

   Design - ****. I don’t really get the robot henchmen. They felt more like proof of concept than anything useful, since a tank freak would make a better boss than an assault bot, and a little minion is about as useful as a paper-mache breastplate against any given ambush. Actually picking out the tiny transparent bombs against the busy Council base was a bit of a pain too.

   Gameplay - *****. But since they were optional and I brought it on myself, no points off here.

   Detail - ****. Solid work here too. Even though all the bug texts were the same they made sense the way they were. The one thing that bugs me is that a lot of the clues drop out of order, and since they’re all so small and perfunctory they blend in with each other.

   Overall - ****. A solidly crafted arc that nonetheless rings a bit hollow, and doesn’t put enough effort into selling its plot.

   Posted on August 10th, 2009 at 7:55 pm