[OFP] Dirty Trick - In the Name of Peace by Klavan

Review by Sui

Overview

The overview was adequate, with a good looking picture and brief description of the mission.

Intro

Setting the scene nicely, the intro had some good (though fairly slow or static) camera shots, with well-acted voice overs. English subtitles were supplied for those of us that are uni-lingual. Though the back story was hinted at during the Intro, I would have liked to have seen a few more "action" shots. Maybe some fire-fights highlighting why the upcoming target is such a bad guy...

Briefing

Structure was the order of the day with the Briefing. Klavan has set it out very sensibly, as he supplied us with a lot of information to digest. There is the history of the conflict included, with a bio of our assassination (or strike depending on your method, but we'll get to that later) target, as well as intelligence on the enemies' deployment. For those of you who dislike reading, I strongly suggest you at least read up on how the various interfaces (weapons selection and mission type selection) work, as they are unfortunately not very intuitive.

Mission

There is no weapons selection during the briefing... this is because the author has chosen to use dialogs to choose not only your weapons, but your preferred method of target neutralization. You can choose between roles as a sniper, full special ops team, or (my personal favourite) death by aircraft-dropped precision-guided munition. Things like weather and type of insertion (helicopter / boat / parachute) are also included.

Once you've completed that interface, the weapon selection screen appears. While it is a very nice looking dialog, it unfortunately gave me no end of problems. Once I worked out how to use it, I found it would often give errors like not assigning the correct ammunition to my guys despite specifying it correctly, and not dealing with illegal weapons assignments (like trying to give my guy a machine gun and AT weapon at the same time). Also, do not hit Escape to exit the dialog as the mission simply will not continue. All up I would have preferred the normal briefing weapons screen to this one (though then the different mission options would not have been possible).

The mission itself is very solid. The potential for replayability is huge, with the different mission types and random starting (and movement) positions for the target. Once common problem with wide ranging missions of this type is the "I'm all alone" factor, but the author has placed random patrols that do well to catch the player off their guard just when they start to relax.

Once you have hit (or bombed the living bejesus) out of the target, it will depend on your method of insertion (and to some extent, your method of assassination) as to how you get off the island. Suffice to say Klavan has put in a few surprises, so don't just assume it will be a simple hit and run.

Special

Custom dialogs abound, and are generally very well used. The satellite script is a crucial addition to a mission of this type, and the plethora of options for different approaches to the mission make this one you'll want to play through a few times at least. The voice acting also lends atmosphere to an already dark and suspenseful mission.

Overall

(Review Date: Dec 2005) This mission was very good, but unfortunately let down by a few mission critical bugs, and things that could have been thought through a little better. However in present form it is still well worth a run through (or three), and I found myself playing it just to have that attack jet come over and drop its load one more time...