[Arma2OA] Guardian by nominesine

Review by Zipper5

Overview

A nicely made graphic with the mission name and a description of the mission. My only criticism would be that the picture itself doesn't tell us a lot about the mission apart from we'll be playing as British soldiers.

Intro

Surprisingly irrelevant to what actually happens in the mission. Just shows a squad of Brits running unharmed through presumed enemy artillery fire with civilians stood around dumbfounded, all with some credits appearing on the screen with some music. There is no camera scripting done here, you view it through the view of the unit set to player, thus you see all the HUD elements as well. It's nice to have an intro for a mission also intended to be played in MP, but it's severely lacking.

Briefing

Very well done and detailed, as well as accompanied by some more nice looking graphics relevant to each section. Oddly, there is no gear selection, and you at first have many more team members than you actually do when playing. I presume they are only accessible in the MP side of the mission. For a MP mission it is odd to have no way of selecting custom weapons for your team. However, the rest of it is fine.

Mission

Sadly, this is where the mission falls down a bit. The first time I tried the mission the convoy went wildly off track and got stuck, at which point I had to go and "dig it out" by destroying the piece of a complex it was stuck on with an enemy RPG. I notified the author of this, but I was told that he was not experiencing the issue. So I decided to try it a second time for this review, and it still veered wildly off course and got stuck. I had ignored it for the time being to go about diffusing the mines, but then it got attacked, destroying the truck and leaving the APC alive before I managed to kill off the attackers by rushing back to its position. I don't know what it is, but the way the convoy currently acts had it veer offroad on both of my playthroughs. Still, I was able to complete the mission with only the APC surviving once I "dug it out" again.

The friendly units apart from the Chinook get chewed up by the insurgents very quickly. It took no time at all to lose the AI British squad that starts at the same location as you, as well as the only Abrams tank. However, by the time the rest of the friendly forces have proceeded through the town, most of it is cleared before you get there, making the mission mainly about disarming the mines thereafter. It can be very annoying dealing with your AI when they go into the auto-Danger mode after being fired upon, especially the Engineer unit. It would have been nice to be able to teamswitch to only him, at least.

There are again the same dumbfounded civilians placed around the town as in the intro, I presume to give some ambience and challenge to try and tell them apart from the insurgents. It just seems a bit odd that they would be out in the street rather than taking shelter in their houses what with all the fighting going on.

Outro(s)

A simple credits affair with a blank screen and music, along with some of the same splashes we see throughout the mission. Again, no camera scripting, but no real closure to the story either.

Special

An Engineer-based mission, which is quite unique at the moment despite the potential of the new unit class, and the Engineering aspects of the mission are executed just fine.

Voices from the Cold War Crisis mission of the same name are a nice touch, albeit being, personally, out of place. It's odd to hear Chernarussian UN soldiers speaking with American accents in English, as well as British units sounding exactly like David Armstrong.

Overall

The mission seems to suffer in SP due to the MP. While I know from first-hand experience how hard it is to make a mission work perfectly in both SP and MP, it should be in a better state than it is at the moment. That may seem harsh, but the bugs in the mission, particularly that on both of my playthroughs the convoy would not stick to the road, definitely hold it back from otherwise achieving a 5 or a 6, which I just can't give it in it's current state.