2 Responses

1. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Running this on a low 40s rad/sonic defender, +0 x1 with bosses on.

   —

   Huh. Tie in to that… what was it, broken swords thing? (Ed: Splintered Shields.)

   Gonna do a little hero mayhem, albeit a bit more controlled here.

   Hmm. Checking the briefing here. Does ol’ WMD know something unofficial? Well, it’ll all come out.

   Interesting chatter. Also, for an accounting office, this place sure doesn’t have many desks or computers.

   Ah, Arachnos warehouse. I would expect more “redside office”.

   Even though it’s a special map the glowies are in the same place - the last computer is behind the giant pile of crates in the main room. Anybody else really want to be able to put things at specific points in a map?

   Looks like I’ve grabbed the entire accounts receivaboo database. Operative Kornfeld will no doubt be swearing revenge.

   —

   And now to kick the Council out of a cave to get a staging area for…

   Well, if it wasn’t important the dude wouldn’t be throwing himself at Arachnos as a distraction, now would he?

   This base looks like it’s entirely staffed by 5th in cover. Be kind of amusing if there was this Man Who Was Thursday thing where everybody thought they were the only group of covert operatives.

   Also, you might be able to work a good Santa recoloring of the standard uniform for the archon.

   Okay, interesting feint going on here. My contact’s going to burn this post to send Arachnos into high alert, and then we’ll slip into–

   Wait a second.

   Won’t that make it harder to get anywhere, or is this going to be an “anyone acting without explicit orders will be shot”-level alert?

   —

   And now, to save one of my contact’s contacts.

   Murano seems to have been up on my contact’s buddies, and she’s been working the Isles so long she expects him not to stick his neck out to bail out one of his own.

   Wow, what a short mission. The psychic ninja hardly got a chance to do anything.

   Hmm. Okay, Murano’s going to sweep up, which is fine, but she suspects my contact may not actually be planning what he’s telling me.

   My contact… is nowhere to be found.

   —

   So I decide to head to his purported base of operations.

   Arachnos have captured him.

   He and his captor are the only things in the base, much like last mission. An elec melee/willpower EB is, uh, not exactly undermatched.

   His discussion at the end feels a bit stilted and fake, like he’s a freshman describing this whole affair after reading about it on Wikipedia. He sounds detached rather than personally involved, which is odd for the spearhead of this whole affair.

   Here’s a human touch: Kobushi’s not entirely sure what he’s planning to bring over because it’s been so long he can’t remember what you’re supposed to do at Christmas. Played completely straight, it could work well.

   Also I don’t quite buy his justification. Recluse isn’t going to round up Oakes and then flood the facility with a deadly neurotoxin because then he’ll be too mad to do anything but seethe?

   If that’s supposed to show how naive he is, then it really does its job.

   Also doing its job: this is step one of his grand plan to retake the Isles?

   Actually that would, alternatively, explain why he sounds so detached. He’s not actually personally invested in this. Christmas is something other people would enjoy so he’s going to give it to them.

   —

   I’m not quite sure what to make of this sentence in the next briefing: “Letting them get confiscated was the easiest way to get them past security, especially when one of my people on the inside was ready to postpone their destruction, thanks to those files you stole.”

   What did the files help with? Inserting the agent, since they didn’t know who was working there? Stopping the trucks from being destroyed because the system isn’t up anymore to process form 543/K, “Demolitions Ash Disposal Form”? Erasing all shipping manifests so the inside guy can spin some bullshit about why they can’t destroy them?

   (”All I’m saying is, Dr. Aeon could have ordered all of this because he promised Recluse he could build an anti-Christmas ray and he wants to look busy. We’ve got no way to tell. Do YOU want to risk wrecking Dr. Aeon’s research material?”)

   No inside guy in evidence, though. Just one boss and one glowie, neither of which drop a clue.

   The souvenir letter is interesting, though the revelation comes out of nowhere. Maybe my contact’s inside guy could be a Mu Adept ally or something of the sort.

   I was hoping I’d get to defend some trucks in this mission. Ultimately I just hit the right levers inside the base and trust that things are working out okay on the outside.

   —

   Storyline - **. Scirocco is a bit of a deus ex machina in all this. Reading the letter from him makes a lot of things make sense - why my contact could do something Longbow thinks is beyond his power, why this is what he’s chosen to do despite having no great enthusiasm for Christmas, why Recluse really isn’t just going to wreck all this anyway. (Based on the chatter around Mercy, it seems like Recluse suffers the underclass to live mostly because desperate people can occasionally do something interesting.)

   It makes a lot of sense that Scirocco would do this in a roundabout way because of that whole ancient dread curse where everything he touches turns evil. He could also probably run interference of the “this guy paralyzed our whole defense network and only pulled this shit off, we should count our blessings” variety.

   You might be able to reasonably work this in, even. Expand mission 3 a little, the Longbow psychic ninja also digs up information about this guy working with Scirocco, and she tells me to pretend I don’t suspect anything until we know more about what’s going on. Then before I rescue my contact I meet a “captive” Mu Guardian in the third map who just “spontaneously” decides not to attack me and drops a little more information on Scirocco’s bona fides, maybe giving up some information about the cargo ship that’s bringing all this that Longbow can also verify.

   But as it is, this seems to be some crazy doomed endeavor that miraculously succeeds because, as we find out, someone else was backing it all along.

   Design - ***. I know you say that two missions are very short (and honestly, I’d say that of the middle three), but that’s a bit of a problem. Mostly because there’s a decent amount of plot to be had in missions 3 and 4, but the complete lack of anything separating the plot events means it all hits in one solid and largely indigestible wad. It’s given me an appreciation for how the generally mentally undemanding process of chewing through the rank and file can create some time to think about what’s going on.

   Gameplay - ****. I didn’t exactly time it, but I’m pretty sure that missions 3 and 4 had roughly equivalent amounts of loading screen and actual gameplay. Not even unusually exciting or novel gameplay.

   Detail - ****. My only complaint here is not really getting a look at the trucks or the supplies — specifically in mission 5, but also a little more generally. I’m working on my contact’s word that anything like what he’s describing is actually happening, right up to the end.

   Overall - ***. Even though deus ex machinas are practically de rigueur in your average Christmas special, that doesn’t really help this one go down easier. The nigh-on plot singularity in mission 3 and 4 could also do with some filler.

   Posted on March 17th, 2010 at 11:23 pm

2. PW Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   I thought this was a very nice holiday-themed story arc with good writing and characters. I had some issues with how little information was provided early on about what was going on, but the big reveal at the end of mission 4 cleared all that up and tied everything together quite neatly.

   Throughout the arc, I felt like numerous minor characters were given just enough personality to make each one a little more “alive” than the typical named boss or named hostage.

   I’m a little puzzled by the Council/5th Column interaction in mission 2; there was never any follow up on that part of the story.

   Posted on July 29th, 2010 at 11:24 am