Decided to edit this to suit the whole "project Beta" thing
PackagePackaged just fine, as far as I could see.
OverviewEnjoyed the use of a quote. Made me smile.
IntroAlso good stuff. My graphics card is too slooooow to be able to load every new scene instantly, so I got to see at a lot of low LOD blocks for a couple of seconds at the start of every scene (same with outro). But oh well.
BriefingGood stuff, generally. Nothing to complain about.
MissionThe start was nice, although it seems a bit weird how the explosion managed to take out specifically the guards, especially the ones in the back. Also, why did none of the guards have any weapons (unless the one AK-74 + mag found in the back of the truck is one of the guards')? I suppose just not to bathe the player in weapons right from the start, so it's all cool.
The first thing I did was take off to the American chopper-landing spot, and following the trail to the pilot himself (nice and RPG-like, likey). Note that I did this on foot since I didn't realise that you could steal the truck
But that was all nice and well, anyway (couldn't've scaled that mountain with the truck as it were). Anyway, hired the pilot, drove off with the car, and got that other guy in the mountain pass. Note that the suicide bomber didn't manage to kill all the civilians, the guy with the dark shirt survived (although all bloody). Ah well. Got sniper rifle, drove back to the truck.
There was a biiig group of white-black soldiers close to the truck, but I just drove by them real fast-like into Eponia, where I took out the whole garrison there soldier-by-soldier (no reinforcements that I saw).
After that I stole all the weapons of the killed soldiers and drove up to the ? Resistance sign, where I met with the captain who told me of the cache of AKs (d'oh, I think, having just been there). Anyway, go and grab them, return them, and yes indeed, the AKs disappear from the trunk but the captain just runs away.
One note here: The Landrovers are the "trucks" of the RACS, consequently they're filled with phat loot -> lots of ammo, including M136 rounds. This also includes the police variants (which is just plain odd). Might want to consider removing the magazine cargo on all the police landrovers. Also, the crate contained four odd M4s -> considering the police force just wanted 12 AKs, one would think they could also want 8 AKs and then just grab the 4 M4s, or somesuch
Point is, I mean, that there are four perfectly good assault rifles lying around in that crate. Maybe one old M16A2 or somesuch, but 4 M4s? I dunno...
Anyway, afterwards I carry on to Marco, get him and his pal and the directions to more places to go. I first head to the dead guys (lots of wolves howling - one lonely might be more effective), and then head straight south to Pablo's gang. I kill people on the way, and Pablo joins me happily, and I have a largish army with lots of equipment, including AT weaponry and the like, and that nice M2 truck as well. This time it's off to take out those AA units and get the promised American goodies, so it's off to the north again. Drivedrivedrive. For some reason there's no longer a radio option
Also, the radio set up like in Abandoned Armies (random playing standard song) would be pretty cool as well, instead of just that one song.
The trip north is pretty eventless, and the resistance at the goal is not too dangerous at all, especially with the nice little Dragunov you've picked up. The Shilka and the BRDM are only guarded by one lone patrolman, and are easily taken out by me alone. MadMatt's effects = niiice and satisfying to see things go up in flames.
It may be at this point noted I hadn't seen a single case of anyone chasing me down, which was a bit boring. Even with my super-slow AI micro-management (yarr, stupid buggers) there was never apparently time for any reinforcements or the promised elite troops to arrive. Oh well. We drop Floyd off (that was kind of cool, seeing him run through the fog and rain into the underwash of the copter blades while keeping a distance). Anyway, the promised crates were there, and I spent the next 10 minutes or so loading everything into the truck (amazing how they gave us like 4 man-portable Stinger AA systems + missiles...pretty heavy-duty stuff that!), and then after having rearmed all my men with American weapons I headed off again.
Back to..Carmen, I believe? (the place north of Pablo's base, where you kill the SLA in the pub with the car outside). Here I ran into trouble though - 2 T72s and a BMP with an X amount of beret-clad soldiers running around came zooming into the rainy city, right at us! Luckily I had just saved, although it took manymany retries before I managed to kill all the tanks and soldiers. This was the one point I actually had some challenge before me, although most of it was due to poor visibility and wanting to do things myself without endangering my somewhat-stupid AI companions.
Eventually they were all burning wrecks and we continued on, this time to pick up Albert and Carla and assault the airbase. Carla we picked up nicely (very cool concept!), and Albert I immediately suspected something with his dialog. Hmm! Ah well. M-17 arrives, I've just saved before it and go through a couple of save points until I manage to shoot it down over the ocean with a Stinger, causing most of its cargo to drop into the sea. Mwahah. Wonder if any of them managed to swim to shore...anyway, I shoot the traitor in the back after him having tried "running" (which amounted to dismounting from the truck, magically carrying different weapons, and then just standing there like an eejit until I shot his face off). After this I continue on to the Airbase...and here's the big niggle.
I moved in with Carla, and as advertised she wasn't attacked. I merrily went around planting bombs at the various tanks, blowing them up and continuing further into the base. (Niggle "0" : no-one seems to mind her walking into the base, putting a satchel in plain daylight behind a tank, walking a couple of steps away and detonating it ^^)
Niggle 1: Since the player has this unique possibility of seeing the insides of the base through the eyes of this "spy", making things look good should be prioritized. Just having people standing in the middle of the field doing nothing or having those static guns sit entirely unprotected in the open is a bit...lazy-looking.
Adding vegetation, sandbags or the like is generally a cool thing, methinks!
Niggle 2 (the big one): Carla can drive a tank! Yes she can. And there just happens to be an empty one close to the hangars. And, seeing as she's SetCaptived, she can merrily drive off with the tank, put manual fire on, and gun down the rest of the base. D'oh. I'm sad to say I used the tank to take out the rest of the base, entirely unmolested, before returning to my peeps (who were under attack, and managed to get their truck wasted, but somehow still survived with 0 casualities! Nice work, guys)
Anyway, after turning back to Number Uno, I drive into the decimated base (getting a nice airstrike on the way in - cool thought!), and find Beria. I elect to have him incarcerated. The nice thing to do, yes? And then...it's off.
I finish the rest of the objectives with the help of the tank, and it was, frankly, a bit TOO easy: First I rescued my girlfriend, then I single-handedly attacked the base with my tank, killing everyone inside. After a little while, the mission ended.
DebriefingDon't really remember the debriefing, guess it wasn't too complicated
OutroFor some reason, the cutscene started playing twice O.o Don't know if it continued more times after that, but I didn't check. It was a nice cutscene though, explaining what happened to the characters afterwards!
SummaryAtmosphere/story : Excellent! Loved it, quite a lot! Although did it have to rain THAT much? I mean...there's rain, and there's ridiculous...
Scripts/mechanics : No bad script errors or showstoppers, very professionally made! Except for the initial non-show of the elite reaction force (was it supposed to be the tanks? maybe they were just slow in that case!)
Cutscenes/voices/etc: Yay! Fully voiced! Alright, some small things to note here and there (for instance you didn't use the Say command very often, leaving people who were talking standing there with no lip movement), but overall very nice and very unique. Kudos to all your voice actors! Cutscenes were not amazing, but quite adequate
Gameplay : Also very excellent indeed, had a nice old time driving from place to place, picking people up, noticing the roadside events and the like. Although unfortunately the whole "resistance strike-hide-strike guerilla warfare!" thing didn't really manifest for me. I think this is partly due to the early availability of AT weapons, and the fact that tanks in ArmA can be taken out with one well-placed shot (instead of 3 to really-lots like in OFP. Tanks were naaasty then). Also, in Abandoned Armies the importance of your base was accentuated because you kept having to bring civilians and such back there -> in this mission you never really had the need to make a "base" for yourself, since all you needed was in the truck you drove around with.
Also, there ultimately weren't that many enemies around. I'm not a very good ArmA player, I'll admit to that immediately, and the AI kills me very efficiently throughout...but overall I didn't actually get in all that many firefights I didn't know I'd win almost immediately. Maybe if I hadn't abused that tank...ah well. Also, I didn't do anything at night, despite the advice to do so. The AI enemy is even nastier at night, I've found
It took me several days of off-time gaming to get through this mission, and I enjoyed every minute of it! I heartily commend you for it, hooraah! Just don't be afraid to up the difficulty a bit : more tanks and APCs (patrolling BRDMs and the like) and less weapons (especially the American dropoff -> consider limiting the Stingers to one or two [missiles, that is]). The Kamov was a nice challenge when it turned up, but I already had Stingers by then -> make it appear earlier as well to harass you, maybe? The Mi-17 could be changed to the PK variant, and then have it involved in fighting you after dropping off the parachutists : the PK gunner is not TOO accurate (but accurate enough to be scary) and he sits in a pretty heavy piece of machinery that isn't going to be easy to drop unless you have AA, and he can harass you while the paratroopers land.
The odd end-game thing was...well, odd...but maybe that just happened to me! Dunno why.
Anyway, thanks for this mission, a lot! Keep up the good work, mate.
Final score: 8.5/10 (for the various niggles mentioned above)Wolfrug out.