[OFP] Short Straight by Dinger

Review by Ace

Overview

I’ve never been a keen fan of the SEB Nam pack. I mean, I’m a 56k’er with an average benchmark and as any other full-blooded 56k’er will tell you the Nam pack is murder to download. Not to mention the host of poorly executed Nam missions already out.

But a warning first, before you even download Short Straight: you must take in to account that there are twenty-odd choppers, 120 soldiers running around the map and the occasional artillery bombing… I guarantee your machine must be firing on all cylinders to cope with this mission. My recommendation is a scan-disk followed by a disk defragmenter because otherwise you’ll experience so much lag even the Pope would lose his rag and throw his monitor through the next-door neighbors window.

OK, you’ve disk defragged? Good, lets start the mission!

The Overview is put together well and comes complete with a very "Apocalypse Now"-style picture.

Intro

Next, the Intro, or should I say briefing? No, it’s an intro briefing! You see Dinger utilizes the resistance forceMap command (complete with voice instructions) and very well he utilizes it too! OK, when the commander has finished his briefing, the AirCav platoon now must board the 20-odd choppers I mentioned before. It goes without saying that this causes real pauses and lag problems but it doesn’t overly affect the beauty of this intro, which in one word is – Breathtaking!

Oliver Stone would be proud of the cinematics Dinger has created as 20 choppers fly over the river and the Vietnam boatmen can all but stare up at the droning sky as it passes over…. Like I said, breathtaking!

Briefing

OK, intro’s over and the “real” briefing starts. It seems quite ordinary after watching the last real-time one.

Mission

Some nice camera work shows the artillery softening up the LZ before landing, after you begin the mission. The beginning of the mission is the worst for lag because, although the platoon of men firing covering fire at the jungle opposite while 20-odd choppers land is well scripted, it does eat up system resources.

The goal after landing is to destroy the entrenched positions of the enemy’s mortars and machine-guns. Sound easy? Well I can assure you it isn’t! Half the time you’ll only be shooting at trees and air. But this all adds to the very cinematic Vietnam feel.

Outro(s)

If you complete the mission by achieving your objectives then you are greeted by an Outro that is not of amazing caliber, but it definitely doesn’t ruin the Vietnam atmosphere!

Overall

(Review Date: May 2003) Now, I have played a fair few Nam Pack missions, but this is the only one I like. So Dinger, if you read this, congratulations! And if there were more missions out there like this one I might even begin to really appreciate the SEB Nam pack for its subtle genius. Who knows, I may even splash out an a faster PC so I can play more missions like this with no lag.