Hopefully you don't mind me doing my own beta test of it? I just thought it was such a great campaign that it warrented another one.
"The cordon"
Tested with: The required addons | UNA FoV Replacement | v1.14 Final
!!! Warning: Spoilers !!!Overview:Very cool, as are all of them. Nothing more to add.
Intro:None, as it's a continuation of the previous mission, which is fine.
Mission:Since this is a continuation of the previous mission, I started where I ended in "
Morning in fog". Having had a chat with Kex and my senior officer, a BRDM with two Urals drive past full of infantry. Gave me a real sense that something was wrong. After a few more spoken words between the three of us, a civilian car came up the road. The panicking driver gets out screaming at us that "They are coming". As we listen to the radio chatter, people at one of the other outposts begin to come in over the radio. This is where I think the voice acting is truely outstanding. As he screasm that his arm is being bitten off, I get a real chill down my neck.
Eventually, the injured civilian in the back of the car gets out and starts attacking the soldier closest to the car, in which we all open fire on both of them. Damn, the buttless AK47 has a huge amount of recoil. Once this happens, the real action starts. I can hear the moans and groans of the infected coming up the road as we prepare to fire. As they come over the ridge, I realize that there are just too many of them to hold off with my two magazines and two grenades... As we shoot at them, we are quickly being overwhelmed. Eventually, my senior officer orders Kex and I to run to the UAZ and he'll hold them off. As we do so, I turn around to watch him be consumed by the zombies until I couldn't see his body anymore.
As soon as I got in the UAZ with Kex, I sped off towards the next waypoint. Along the way, I approach more infected blocking the road... And the engine cuts out! Kex gets out screaming "Shit, shit, shit!" as he gives me a push to try and get the engine started again. As he does this, the infected come ever closer. It was so intense that I kept my middle-mouse button hovered over the "Get out" action ready to have to fight my way out. Thankfully, Kex gets the UAZ to start up again and I speed off through the infected, hitting a couple of them.
Just outside of Eponia, the engine cuts out again. This time we're so close to base that we decide to run to it. I encountered a few infected as we approached Eponia, but Kex and I quickly took them down. The intensity up to this point has been absolutely amazing, and as soon as it went quiet it got even more intense. When I heard the shots to my west, I actually jumped due to the tension. As the waypoint changed for us to check out the firing, we run to our west.
As we approach, I see a flipped upside down UAZ (good touch) with a bunch of friendlies in a circle fending off infected. As we get there, I am welcomed by the fact that the UAZ and one dead soldier contain a proper AK47 and tons of ammunition and grenades. I take the AK47 and load up with as many magazines as I can, and then order Kex to rearm at the UAZ. The chatter as we wait is quite funny, with the guy asking his friend if he always smells this bad. Of course, that's a hint that something's about to happen...
And it does. Hordes of infected attack us from all sides. I pretty much had my finger pressed down in full-auto, pelting lead into as many infected as I could. The two guys infront of me get overwhelmed with infected, which at one point was welcome as I was firing at them and was afraid to accidentally shoot him. As they go down, the guy to my left goes down too, as does Kex (sadly). I run behind me as much as I can and throw a grenade into the huge group of infected. I end up beginning to think nothing's going to happen, I'm actually supposed to kill all of them myself, which was looking to be impossible...
Then a blood-stained BRDM (absolutely amazing that you guys thought to include that, adds a lot to the atmosphere) storms over the ridge and starts taking down all of the infected. I take a knee where I am and begin to fire back again. Eventually, the occupants of the BRDM scream to anyone left alive to get into the BRDM quickly, and here is where the mission ends.
Outro:The cutscene afterwards is quite funny, I wasn't expecting that type of music. It just shows the BRDM heading back to base, passing through Eponia and running over/killing a lot of infected along the way. Great camera angles and scripting though, keeping the BRDM on the road as the gunner fires at them. Nothing special, but a good way to end the mission.
Overall:An excellent mission, as are all of them in the campaign. Great voice acting, great mission design, fantastic atmosphere (largely amounted to the weather conditions and the great use of addons) and quite challenging. There was never a dull moment in this mission as I was constently wondering if I was going to make it out alive.
"Panic"
Tested with: The required addons | UNA FoV Replacement | v1.14 Final
!!! Warning: Spoilers !!!Overview:Again, excellent. Leaves little idea of what the mission is going to be like, but like the style of all the other missions the picture is very well made and makes me wonder what is going to happen.
Intro:I guess it's the cutscene following "
The cordon".
Mission:Having completed the last mission as the sole survivor of my group, I felt happy to be finally returning to the friendly base. As we entered it was obvious that things weren't right.
We disembarked from the BRDM near the barracks in the center of the camp and walked over to the officer. As we went there, I took notice of all the badly injured people in there, and was nervous about what they might do. The chat between the guy beside me and the officer indicated the situation, and that there was not at all enough ammunition to go around. He eventually ordered me to take a PKM from the crate and head over to the guy guarding the eastern gate.
As I got there, I began to speak to the lone guard there. As our conversation drew to a close, he exclaimed "What was that noise?" and I knew I was going to have to fight. I ran backwards to the waypoint and took a firing position and began to mow down the infected as they came in. I liked how the infected came from down the road and the left and right sides of the wall. Too many of them were coming, and again I knew it was hopeless to try and fend them off. Eventually, they broke down the wall and came in through another direction. Here was a very cool bit of scripting, where a friendly BMP drove as fast as he could through the line of infected and then came back the same way, game me a real sense of desperation.
Once this happened, I was ordered to run to the BRDM and gun down the infected. Not much ammunition was left, so I tried to use it sparingly. My friend from the gate had already been consumed by the infected. I gunned down a bunch of infected before being ordered to pick up the specops at the southern gate. I got then and the specops borded the BRDM. By that time, the BRDM was already out of ammunition so I just drove through the infected. As I did this, radio chatter was indicating that the injured people I was worried about earlier were indeed infected and killing the people around them. I was then ordered to join the tail end of the convoy as they went out of the base...
We didn't get far, though. Thankfully I stayed back a bit when the chopper attacked and destroyed the bridge. I sat there for a second in shock as I watched them fall to the ground, before reversing as fast as I could back into the base. We went back to the southern gate where we met up with a group of refugees who had managed to get into a Ural and join us. I was then ordered to follow them as we went south-wards away from the gate. Here, the mission ended.
Outro:This was an excellent outro. It started off with the Ural and BRDM pulling over due to the lack of fuel in the BRDM. It was here, that I noticed that they had still brought injured people along. As my character approached one of the soldiers and asked for ammunition, I find it funny how he and Jorge had only 1 clip left each. Gave me a real sense of the lack of ammunition. The angle then switched to Jorge, a specops operative and the officer talking to each other. When they went aside to chat in private, I realized that it was probably related to the injured civilians.
The angle switched to the civilians talking about the reasons why they got so battered up, with one of them eventually asking a soldier for a medkit. The soldier he asked said no, hinting the word "Ethiopian", which I thought was a good touch as it gave you two ideas; either 1) the guy's just being a racist asshole or 2) he knows the possibility of what the civilian could do. As the civilian got angry, I knew something was not quite right.
The scene switched back to the 3 guys having the conversation about the civlians possibly being infected, and how likely it was that they were. So again, the angle switched back to the civilian getting angry. The specop from the conversation came over and told the other soldier to calm down, and also for the civilian to calm down. The officer then ordered all the injured to the BRDM to "tend to their wounds". As they did, I knew what was going to happen. The officer and two soldiers pulled out their weapons and aimed them at the men, and I liked how you used the panicking animation from QG for them as it added a lot to the emotion. The screen blacked out, and I could hear them shoot the civilians and the officer take a few more "just-to-be-sure" shots at them, followed by a simple "Sorry, guys...". The Ural then drove away, and they placed a satchel and blew up the "evidence".
The scene then switched yet again to them all on the beach, organizing how they were going to get to the outpost. I found it interesting how each of the characters had a role to play, and how the officer trusted, say, Jorge, to actually stay behind and follow his orders to drive the Ural into the water. The officer then gave me his Makarov PM and took my empty PKM as my character was sent with the first bunch of people to clear the island. After my character got into the boat, the cutscene ended with us driving away into the ocean.
Overall:Another excellent mission, with great cinematics, tension and atmosphere. The story really began to shine as it got to this point, as I felt the soldiers were all beginning to have a meaning and personality to them.
Will post up another report soon of the last missions!