[OFP] Widows Ridge by Ian Murrin

Review by Mike Beil

Overview

The Overview in this mission is just as it should be. It has some lite reading and a working picture. There isn't much I can say, while I know you aren't anticipating this overview, it won't let you down.

Intro

The Intro here is pretty impressive. It has a Mecca of dynamic shots and a fake-looking battle. No complaints here, I thought it was sweet. Also, dedicated to his wife Tonia. How sweet :)

Briefing

The Briefing here is above average. It has an in-depth write up from this soldiers Officer. It also has a very impressive personal note talk about his men and so forth. It would've been a 10 but the lack of a picture bumped it to a respectable 9.

Mission

Ok. Now for the meat of the mission. The actual mission. I press "Continue" and it sends me on a cutscene that doesn't make sense. It is cool though because it shows me my base and it actually looks like a base. Unlike some of the fake bases I have seen with soldiers running around guns a'ready. It tells me to go to the C.O. in a hint box. You get orders from your C.O. with a parody on words. You pick up your squad and you are on your way. Now here is my first complaint of the whole mission so far. When your troops join you, he did it so each individual troop joins. So this makes it go "1 join... 2 join... 3 join..." and so on for about 3 minutes. Instead he should have made it "ALL, join..". Now it tells you how to order the driver and so on, but I can't find the driver. It never really explains what vehicle to take. So I find a waypoint pointing to a M113, but the M113 is full. Screw it I say, I will take my own truck. This was very hard to find. While the author might have thought it would be easy to find the right vehicle, it was very difficult. Maybe he should not have locked up the other vehicles. So after dealing with that flaw, I find a way to get going. I head towards Bravo team's last known position. So I find "Kevlar" and start talking to him. I don't know where the hell he is, I just read the captions. 

So when I find out where he is, I see that he is a fellow M21'er. Nice. There is more humor and I actually laughed. So, he tells me that bad guys are up the hill and I am FUBAR. He joins me and we move on. Ian forgot one thing here, The M113 can't fit 11 people. So I had to leave 3 behind. Sorry Kevlar. All of a sudden my M113 blows up. Now if he did this on purpose, he should have told me not to take the M113. Guess I will huff it. You are lucky Kevlar.

So we head up the road and intense fighting starts. They are firing from the hill. If you have ever seen "Take The Hill", it is as intense as that. I lose lots of men in a long FUBAR fire fight. I had fun with this, I kicked BMP ass, I kicked east ass, I kicked west ass (oops). But I really did have fun, trees crashing down, smoke, chaos. I got my ass kicked as well. At one point, I was sniping, and bullets came down both sides of me and missed. I was very relieved. But then I got shot in the arm. I was screwed with my M21. This mission is not easy. It makes you think it is, but it deceives you. Then I remember the arty strike. THANK GOD. I call all reinforcements I can quickly. All of a sudden I get the the advantage. It feels damn good too. I storm up the hill with a smile on my face. I get a message "Fire Support Complete, Have A Nice Day". That smile turns to a frown as the fire starts back up. Where is that damn air support. A lot of the arty missed. This hill is hard to take. So I finally take most of it by sneaking around. I have everyone but ONE bmp dead. All my men are dead, no help. Just me and the BMP. I use everything in the arsenal I have. I finally beat it by ramming it with a St. Truck.

Overall

(Review version 1.00 - Date: Dec 2001) This mission was a very fun mission. I was going to give it a 9 but it had some flaws and was very difficult.