(Review Completed) [SP] Spearhead by Live

[rhysduk]

File: Spearhead SP.zip (24k) Version: Final Requires: unknown Author:  Live Score:  8 Type:  SP Addons: unknown Description: Take part in an assault on the cliffs of Vigny. Artillery support from the ocean is on hand, but you've got to be up there on the ground.

Review by Dragunovska: 

Two words, great mission. Live has done a superb job on all aspects here, The briefing and overview is well structured with a nicely thought out storyline and gives you all the info you really need before actually taking part. The cutscenes are very cinematic in feel and provides you with a sense of realism but not too overdone. The mission is very meaty with alot of fast paced action, great scripting and suspense. My only gripe would be that it is pretty difficult and not for someone new to ofp, even advanced players will still find themselves hitting the retry button a few times before completion. Civilians and militia members also add to the confusion of friend or foe with some carrying guns, often you'll find yourself accidentaly popping a few unarmed frightened civilians because you swear they had a gun. Overall this mission gets a high score because of the depth and replayability it has to offer. Highly reccomended, just dont expect a walk in the park. I Hope to see more of Lives excellent work in the near future.

[NightJay0044]

Review by: NightJay0044~

Overview~
All and all I Like this mission. It had some good action and scenes and it did end up keeping me on my toes.

The Mission~
The Assualt on the first objective wasen't too bad.  Maybe a couple snipers could of did the trick in a well hidden place with long range capacity. Overall I enjoyed it though.  As we moved on to the 2nd assualt on the town, we encourted some forces along the way.

Ofcourse, once we got to the actualy town of Viginy I did loose all my men and my leader and I did end up making it to the town but he got capped just before the town and I was on my own. I did end up dying like 4-7 times a couple of them off of not paying attention.

Outro-Cutscene~
This was good and had some good angels and views, a basic outro it was.

I did enjoy this mission, could of been a little harder but it was good.

My Score: 8/10

I hope more mission can be made from this author.

Good job, thanks..

NightJay0044

[MattyDienhoff]

I'm afraid I can't agree with your giving this mission an 8, I wish I could, but I can't.

I played it, but I had to restart several times to actually play it through, simply because the boat kept doing a sharp left turn when we got the disembark order, and we ended up being booted out of the boat in open sea and drowning. It did this over and over again, and only worked properly when I was recording a video of the bug...

My first try was running FDF mod, I thought perhaps the mod was causing problems with the scripting in the mission, though I considered that unlikely, so the rest of the times I ran the mission in standard OFP:R, no mods, and the problem still occured. Every time, we got booted out of the boat into the sea. The intro didn't work either, unless the author intended the intro to depict a UH60 landing in the ocean in front of one of the PBRs (crashing into it in the process), then fade to black...

As for the mission itself, I thought it was unusually short.

I moved with the squad up the cliff, cleared the heli-base, which, for such a high value target, was extremely easy to take. Most of it's tents and fortifications were sticking up sideways out of the mountain, I could only fix this by setting the terrain detail to very low. And then, after waiting a short while to sync with the other squad, we moved on Vigny. My squad leader got killed immediately as he reached the top of the hill and exposed himself to all the enemies at once, the rest of the squad members did the same and all got themselves shot too, one at a time. Most of them didn't even get any shots off before they died. Only I and no. 5, the LAW soldier, who was stuck back down near the helipad for some reason, survived. I moved up slowly, popping up to fire, then crouching down again and shifting position, I managed to kill all of the enemies (militia mostly, few Soviets) on the first try, though I was wounded by a grenade close to the end. The battle only lasted a few minutes.

War stories aside, I thought it was buggy. Neither the intro, nor the insertion worked as intended, (though I have no idea why the insertion stuffed up like it did 9 times out of 10) and while the atmosphere was pretty good at times, I'll only give it a 5/10.

[Mikero]

Your comments are welcomed Matty,

After the 'great crash' that wiped out five years of ofpec database, we took the decision to try and locate, where possible, all missions having a 'decent' rating. Over a five year time frame what was considered 'great' in it's day, sometimes isn't so interesting later on, and the original reviewer has of course gone on to other things leaving us with only his (often reliable) opinion. Since there's a considerable diffence in scrore between the two comments above, we will try and find time to review it again.

Edit: This mission, and required addon, are available from the Missions Depot.