[OFP] Realistic Combat Patrol by General Barron

Review by MachoMan

Overview

This mission has a good overview, again personally I don't like 2 page overviews, but they seem to be the standard nowadays :(. When using multi-page overviews this mission gets it right, use the first page for a mission intro, if you really feel people should know your name, put it in the second page.

Intro

A short flashback to the war, it works, there seem to be no errors. There's nothing wrong with it, we have seen better though.

Briefing

Now this is one big briefing! Personally I've never liked large briefings, but I'm gonna forgive the author for it, seeing as it really is neccesary to have this huge briefing. The Briefing section contains a nice straight to the point overview, this mission isn't really that complicated, so showing everything here is easy. In the Notes section we find a complete manual, which is uncool (because it takes ages to read), but essential. This mission uses a complicated command system, which simply isn't understandable without reading this manual.

Mission

Hmm not a second intro ... thank god it's short so no problem here. Ok so I start in some silly bunker, to put it simply, that sucks. First five minutes I try getting out, after hearing a peptalk from my CO, finally I decide to use the OFP bugs and walk through a wall. This seemed to be the only error I could find in the mission, the stupid bunker being a maze.

Ok when I get out I go and look for my squad, I find them near to my position and tell them to follow me, in a really cool way. So I take them to the first objective lose some men, but I manage to survive. First objective completed. I won't tell you all too much, but I lose more men, I get healed and notice I only have 3 men left, now that's not gonna be enough for the second objective :(.

So I try again, taking the first objective, making sure my medic survives this time, (I won't tell you why :P) and lose less men. I head off to the village and kill the VC there, objective cleared.

Outro(s)

Everything has an outro, you die, you win, you get an outro. The you win scenario even gets you a cool counter, showing your kills/losses. Apart from that, nothing special here - it works.

Special

Some kick-ass scripting by Mr. Barron. The command system is really cool and you really need to play this mission to get to know it, I'd really like to see more missions using this system, instead of the standard BIS one. It also uses the Unified Artillery system to give you mortar and air support. I have no way of expressing how cool the scripting is, you really need to see this.

Overall

(Review Date: Aug 2004) The mission itself is really basic, just kill two objectives, like we haven't seen that one before. Thank god Barron made this really cool command system, so I can love this mission instead. The scripting is really phenomenal. Please Barron give us a really cool original mission using the same command system and I will surely give you a 9! This mission gets a high mark, not because the story is cool, but because the execution was superb and because I really feel that people need to play this mission.