[ArmA] Operation Night Owl by Smoke52

Review by LCD

Overview

The picture is a standard one. It could have been more interesting, but it does the job as it is. The text is brief and explains exactly what you are going to do in the mission.

Intro

The intro begins well, showing the player scanning the beach before landing on it. After that the camera moves around to much instead of cutting between the scenes, resulting in a weak intro. One scene tries to set the general atmosphere for the mission using wolf howling and some some soldiers talking (with custom voices, I think the maker could have added voices for the mission itself too), but the result is somewhat not connected to the mission. Note : Big parts of the intro are played in the dark. I could not see large parts of it untill I turned my brightness/gamma correction up a notch.

Briefing

The briefing is split into three parts : On the first page there is the regular briefing explaining the mission step by step, the notes section gives you a more detailed briefing and it also has another page explaining the exact situation in the area (Terrain/Weather/Who is taking part in the mission). Both extra pages do good work, but the author could have added some more background story to make it suit my taste. All the Links and markers seem to be working, the markers are a little bit dense around the mission area, but not in a really bad way. In my opinion the maker could and should have explained in more detail how to make the whole laser designator part work. I'm also missing the weapon selection part. The briefing also includes a credits section, that's a thing I don't like in a briefing, the place for credits is the readme and maybe the intro/outro, also it seems that no beta-testers are mentioned in the credits.

Mission

As the author notes in the readme the mission includes one bug that occurs when you use the quickmap, in my opinion the whole script could have been dropped as it doesnt really affect the mission. Anyway I think that sending in a mission with a known bug should be avoided at any cost. Anything else in the mission (except the aforementioned bug) works without any showstoppers and it offers you some nice fights and sneaking opportunities. Ths difficulty is not too hard, but you may need some patience when playing as veteran. The author goes some way trying to make the mission feel alive with couple of trucks and patrols moving around, this thing works at times but more attention should have been given to the reaction of the enemy to the player, because right now some of the enemy soldiers move around on careless mode and don't engage the player even if there is a firefight going on around them. There is also the same issue with bases not changing their alert status even when the base near them is under attack (note that the bases are very close to each other.) Also it seems large parts of the mission depend on the player doing everything the way the author planned it, a thing that reduces the freedom feeling ArmA has, a thing that also should be avoided if possible. There are also some small things that could have been improved (like the chopper selection method) or even all around changed (the really funny alarm sound, you have to hear it to believe it.).

Outro(s)

None.

Special

The mission has a couple of bonus objectives and three different endings that add to replayability (including a lose scenario). One of the endings plays fine while the two others could have been executed better (one is too easy to achieve and the lose scenario gets activated if only one tank is destroyed).

Overall

Operation Night Owl is a mission that gives you your regular fix of SF action with some shootouts and places to sneak around, but it lacks the attention and care to detail to make it go above average, with a little more testing and pushing some of the ideas to the limit this mission could have achieved a higher score. Right now the mission is fun at parts, but lacks that touch that could make you say WOW!