[OFP] The Fortress by Gambla

Review by Cheetah

Overview

With a border, shade and decent picture the overview picture is decent. The summary is short and sweet, but a version number and author's name are lacking.

Intro

It's good that this mission has an intro, the author shows that he tried making the mission complete. But he hasn't been able to hide his inability or lack of interest to make it a good one. For me, the intro was somewhat dark and there were a few errors. One was that the intro begins with the no-camera-follow-a-unit-with-crosshair problem. Even when the camera script kicks in the quality of the camera angles is lacking as well as what the intro shows. Just two units running around, I think that more could have been done with the intro. Two examples: wouldn't it be better if you showed a cessna doing some recon on the area and get shot down. Or a US spy infiltrating to confirm the SCUD positions, but getting himself killed on his way into the base?

Briefing

There is a briefing with one special page for more mission details. This page gives the player all the information he needs for his mission. What I miss is a line to remind the player of the radio possibilities. Good were the reports of multiple armoured vehicles, thus the warning to take additional AT weapons. The objectives have the correct layout and there are almost no spelling errors. Your teammates are expert shooters, which will help you in your upcoming mission. The weapon selection is moderate and gives you the option to use a lot of JAM2 weapons. What I don't like of them is that the AT weapons can't even take care of a BMP in one shot, well they can but are considerably weaker requiring a BMP to explode in ten seconds.

Mission

You start in a forest near several ammo boxes, tents and several boats. The ammo box offers the player some BIS AT weapons, which is probaly a mistake by the author because it opens up the possibility to not use JAM launchers. There's a limited number of options for the player, does he go by boat, on foot and on his own or with his team? It's up to the player to decide what he thinks is best in the given situation. Every route you take gives you some opposition and makes patrols divert to your position. There are some bugs in this mission, for example two saves in a short period of time at the start of the mission. Another is that it's hard to get your teammates into the boats, they will take a detour because they won't crawl down the steep hill. It takes up quite a lot of time even on 4x speed. Smaller bugs are, an objective not ticked off at debriefing, some patrols on "at ease" mode even when the base is on fire, minor typos, and a yes-yes radio option everywhere everytime. I liked the position of several snipers which can make your life a lot harder, it's hard to get them before you're dead. Not only the position of the snipers is good, but the position of soldiers in and around the base will make it hard to get a good read on the base. It's up to the player to tackle this problem. Once you make the wrong decision to trigger the alarm unprepared, you're in an unhealthy position. The radio messages come in slowly, sometimes you'll have to wait for multiple minutes before you get the next objective. And not all objectives seem logical, but are hard to execute when unprepared. After flying away in the evac chopper I was glad to put an end to this tricky adventure.

Special

A helidust script is being used in this mission, but you won't really see it in action as you'll play in the dark and there is only the helicopter extraction at the end of the mission. Even then you'll be happy that you survived and probably won't notice the sand going up in the air. I consider the difficulty of the mission as a special feature, gambla did a good job with patrolling units. But, if you know how to tackle the enemies, the high difficulty fades away. More important is getting the right approach of the base, I found a pretty good one. This is a plus for the author, there are only a few angles fit for launching your attack.

Overall

It was hard to figure out the overall score of this mission, because there were some bugs but one can enjoy the mission to some degree. Of course this depends on your playstyle. If you want a lot of action, play this mission and don't get bothered with the bugs and lack of polishing you'll find. However, if you want a mission that's decent and bugfree you can entertain yourself, but could get irritated by bugs. The intro and lack of outro make this mission not a good one for the cinematics lovers, reality seekers shouldn't play this mission as well as people who want more dynamics in the objectives. In short: technically it's lacking, but the gameplay is good for certain people nevertheless. Consider this an bit better than the average BIS OFP mission due to the action, but worse in the polishing department.