2 Responses

1. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Playing this on a high-30s archery/energy blaster, +1 x1 with bosses on.

   —

   Hmm. The giant orange paragraph at the bottom of the briefing… why is it orange? Colors are good for emphasis, but I think a block that large is some kind of other conversation. This is my contact saying all of it, right?

   So some custom psiblaster has stopped being a Crey test subject just in time to meet some heroes on a routine mission. That’s unfortunate.

   —

   Okay, now we go mind-diving to try and figure out what’s happened to Hammer’s partner.

   Hmm. Looking through a file, it seems like Toxin was making a deal with Crey to pick up some illicit chemical weapons?

   The tech my contact borrowed this machine from is in here. I would have appreciated a heads-up.

   The refrigerator drops a line into the system text on completion which is, basically, its clue. Seems redundant.

   Toxin rants about poisoning my mind. Wonder if Crey just wound him up and turned him loose.

   —

   Hmm. So he can project neurotoxins now. Somehow. Also he got the chemical weapons but couldn’t get any ammo.

   Unfortunately by the time I get to the university the 5th have made it out with the chemicals and left another Soviet expatriate to cover their tracks.

   (Dude shaves off a big chunk of my health just with throwing knives. Hate those things.)

   —

   My contact warns me that there’s a catch about the A-Team-styled guy he’s sending in. But the catch is… New York Sickle will be there at some point?

   I thought the catch was that I’d have to break him out of the Zig or something. My contact does seem to warn me that this guy might betray me, but that’s more of an afterthought than a natural progression of the “slight catch”.

   Oh! He’s a Council agent! That would have been a nice thing to learn in the briefing. Nice bomber jacket on him, too.

   As soon as I grab the guns, the dude goes for a backstab. I get a little time to pelt him so he’s not too overpowering.

   Halfway through the ship I find a whiteboard with the ship’s destination marked on it. And… that completes the mission?

   Yeah. Rest of the ship is empty. Dang.

   —

   Chemical weapons contained, it’s time to free Sickle.

   I find a lab on the way, which is probably the antivenin mentioned in the opening.

   Sickle talks about how she knows the truth about the Column and their attack on the Council, but that seems to be generic patter as she never lets on to us what that truth is.

   And yep, lab needs clickin’.

   —

   Storyline - ****. Simple story, solidly told. The subplot about chemical weaponry provides a nice little mini-boost before the final fight.

   Couple things bug me, though. First, I thought the simulation in the second mission was set up to find out what happened to Sickle, not investigate Toxin’s Crey experience. We could do that even without a simulation.

   Second, for all that the Council/5th conflict features in this arc, it never actually spills over into the missions, aside from the extremely temporary ally on the cargo ship.

   I’d say run a sim as Toxin fighting some Council and finally capturing Sickle, during which time we find out about the weapons and that Sickle’s on Striga… somewhere. But that’s just me.

   Design - ****. Overall, good choice of maps and costuming. Couple things about both, though.

   Toxin… the name honestly conjures up black and green more than it does white and red. White and red are Longbow colors, and seeing Toxin in them just makes him look like some kind of demented candy-striper.

   On a more minor note, American Hammer’s American hammer needs some red or blue highlighting.

   Something you should be aware of with the university map is that it’s all so close-quarters that a boss chained off a glowie click can spawn in right around the clicker. Maybe they should both be on the map from the start?

   The whiteboard about Sickle’s location can be there from the start too, on the cargo ship. And… was it in the middle of the ship for a reason? Lately I’ve been ending a lot of cargo ships early, so I wonder if something’s bugged somewhere. I can see the reason behind not wanting to put someone through the entire cargo ship experience, but at the same time with the way tickets work I like to know when a mission’s going to complete. Generally I don’t expect that clicking a glowie in the middle of a map is going to complete a mission.

   Gameplay - *****. Pretty solid stuff, with the custom bosses interesting but not overpowering.

   My one minor gripe here is that Hammer and the Mechanic can both nearly one-shot a minion, which is partly a function of tanker sets having such a big damage scale and as a result, at least in Hammer’s case, not something you can address. Maybe you could make Mechanic a bots mastermind but with just the laser rifle, or something along those lines.

   Detail - ***. I can kind of understand the reason behind highlighting an entire paragraph in the briefings, but I’ve got a couple of problems with it. I’m used to orange being something of a warning color, like for elite bosses or a minimum team size or a timer. And blocking an entire paragraph off, rather than a single sentence, indicates to me at first glance that there’s something in the paragraph separate from the briefing — like that warning. Since the highlighting is the “most important” stuff in the briefing it doesn’t really work well to single it out as separate.

   Many of the clues in this arc were what I’d call “yellow boxes”. Basically some narrator breaking in and talking about what’s going on. That doesn’t really sit well with me — I’m used to clues representing concrete things that my hero keeps or remembers, and narration’s a little more transitory. It isn’t always relevant in the way that many clues are. If you want to keep the style you have going then you should have the clues be, or include, things that the relevant people have said, rather than a description of their actions. It also helps to ground the clues, in terms of where they were found — for example, mention in the antivenin that it was found in a 5th Column forward base on Striga Isle.

   Overall - ****. A very accessible arc that sometimes plays with my expectations, but not in the good way.

   Posted on March 11th, 2010 at 11:47 pm

2. PW Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   I liked the overall idea of rescuing Sickle from the 5th Column. I thought the plot went off track in missions 2 and 3 which didn’t clearly contribute to locating Sickle; it felt like we ended up abandoning Sickle and pursuing an unrelated toxic weapons subplot, and only end up locating Sickle by accident while chasing down the chem weapons. Felt like missions 4 and 5 needed a little something more to make them more exciting.

   Posted on July 29th, 2010 at 11:03 am