[ArmA] Fida'i - Checkpoint by LCD

Review by Cheetah

Overview

This is the good quality an overview needs. There is a picture with border, which shows some of the content this mission has in store for you. The text is descriptive and brief, just what you expect of an overview.

Intro

A rather short but enjoyable intro, timing was the issue in this one and the author succeeded in doing it right. The camera angles are fine, what is lacking? A few lines of text to introduce the background story of this mission.

Briefing

There is plenty of background in the briefing to understand what is going on. Plan and notes section are written in good fashion, paragraphs are used as well as marker links. The markers though could have been improved, the most important marker has a typo. Others, placed on top of each other, make the map look crowded and harder to read. Clicking the links in the objectives brings up a special page with more information instead of the normal link, could have been all added to one additional page. Better was to link to the markers in the objectives.

Mission

The mission has been well scripted, a guard at the checkpoint makes sure the drivers don't pass unnoticed. Weird were the soldiers at the camp in the 'sit' switchMove. A looping script is used and that results in the odd feature of guards hopping from sit to stand in a fraction of a second. The reinforcements' timing could have been sharpened, right now they arrive too late. It takes them way too long to get there, the player has enough time to complete his objectives. As the objectives aren't hard once you know how to tackle them, the difficulty of this mission is lower than average. Your teammate is useful and a good shooter, necessary to complete the mission as planned. The base layout is pretty good, it looks like a roadblock, but it would have been good to add an additional dynamic element. Like an enemy 4x4 moving towards the roadblock in 1/3th of the cases. To make it less predictable and easy, more dynamic.

Outro(s)

As the intro short, but here the timing is a bit odd. You get an ocean view for a second and it was hard for me to understand what was going on. The connection with the mission is far from obvious.

Special

Worth mentioning are all the special scripts LCD made for this mission. They add a replayability factor to the mission, allowing you to score more points and complete the mission either with more or less success.

Overall

Fida'i - Checkpoint is a short mission with plenty of action and good use of scripts which make the mission replayable. See this mission as one of the BIS missions one can use to entertain themselves for a few minutes. The polish in this one could have been upped a notch or two, for example the enemy guards sitting/standing or the outro which could have made more sense.