That's true yaway - sometimes the most obvious mistake can be overlooked by someone who isn't looking for it.

I know you don't like defense missions, but I promise mine has lots of things to blow up. I spent a lot of time play testing it myself (and managed to beat it with shaman as well as warrior weapons with no other upgrades on my first try of each) but thus far nobody else has been able to beat it (the furthest anyone got was ozoxchris at 75%). I also tested it based on how long it'd take to fail if you did absolutely nothing and what was the minimum you had to accomplish in order to beat it, made the enemies behave more intelligently, etc. There are people who can't even get any % when the first objective is literally to walk forward.

So, at this point I want outside opinion. I can't concentrate on my next adventure with this looming over me (I'm a tad of a perfectionist).

http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=sast-500385136292

Hey RaptorZefier, i haven't finished my adventure yet, but i will be releasing 5 adventures in one pack as a series. I would be honored if you would test it when i am done and review the individual games, but also as a whole. Thank you in advance. It will take me a few more days. I am looking forward to your review and good luck with reviewing all these people, oh btw if you need a helping hand just tell me, i don't mind helping out as a tester.

I plan to play all Good+ adventures from this thread. In fact, this thread may become a great source of adventures to play.

On a side note, my adventure updated and is now worth 72 points! And in my opinion, I still don't think it's that hard.

Ahem, Gentlemen? *Fixes tie*

The Swarm (Part I) Fair

This is a game that suffers from harsh difficulty. Much like omgimonfire's Arena missions there's a sheer brick wall you hit that you just can't get pass. Which is a shame, let me get into the pros before I dig into it:

Pros: The city and layout is -beautiful-. The variety and number of civilians is amazing and so much attention to detail within the city makes it easy to see what all of that complexity was spent on. It's simply an amazing sight to see and I found myself taking a stroll around the city just to see everything before I began on the missions. In fact, on city layout alone I almost slated it for a Good. Which is where I hit the bumpy road. . .

Critique: Ok, Act 1. A simple act, talk to mayor, go retrieve gems from thieves and bring them to bounty hunter who can't seem to find the thieves who are cleverly hidden behind some crates. (Ok yeah I had to pick on that once, I'm done sorry. No points off for it.)

Now, after beating through some thugs you get to the thief leader guarding the gems. . . And he's doing a fairly crappy job as he doesn't move. I found through play-throughs his position changes, sometimes he's right next to the gem, other times he's not. . . After inspecting his advanced A.I. I figured out the innate problem, his two attacks are set to 'first sight' and on higher priority. . . This generally means it cancels out his wander if you're in sight, even if he can't shoot you due to having no guns. . . I know, I know, if you can't do a priority it's supposed to skip it but it's the best theory I can come up with.

SO, Mr. Blackclaw the leader, never chases you, and stands there looking menacing while you pick up the jewels and walk back to the bounty hunter for an easy finished quest.

So! Onto Act II, Killing the Khuigund tribe. . . Now, this was an easy one, first you talk to the Mayor who simply tells you that the Khuigund are evil people who attack the townsfolk. . . Never really explains -why- or how they're evil, or why they're attacking the townsfolk, but they're evil. (Ok, ok, sorry, -now- I'll stop.)

SO! Moving along, you go out and, well this part was fairly easy. I picked at them with my blaster, which forced them to come at me and my crew one by one via good ol' MMORPG style pulling. Worked fine and I took out the whole tribe with minimal effort. Though, I admitt one flaw I saw was Bountyhunter Julinz bounding off to attack buildings at random when I was getting mauled by tribesmen. But that was more comical the me then anything. . .

Regardless, onto Act 3, Swarm attacks. This was about when I noticed the innate problem. . . Though I was pretty much still above 700 health before attacking the swarm I found myself dangerously below 200 afterwards. I knew that didn't bode well, it meant the enemies simply did too much damage, and with the only health pack being next to the mayor in town I knew I would get into trouble soon. However, I had little problem dispatching the swarm and reporting to the mayor.

Act 4 came, and my problems were realized. Many of your other players and myself included could not get pass this part. . . Yes I went to the leaderboard and compared the percentage, everyone who lost died at this very part. The innate problem is that the blasted Soldiers do far too much damage. . .

1/3rd of your health from a missile attack and 2/3rds from close range. Yes I kept track, I died this way, a lot. I know this is the final battle in the mission and it's supposed to be tough, but it seems unbeatable to me given the only skills you have with the locked captain are level 3 blades and your pee shooter level 1 blaster. Maybe if I had something to stun them like insect swarm, or lightening blades I could do better. However with their missile attack its impossible to kite them, and going into melee is absolute suicide.

So, all in all, it gets a fair to me. The city layout is stunning and amazing, if I could I'd have you designing city layouts in my adventures, but I think it limited you in the complexity meter and limited what you could do with the missions. So in the story and gameplay departments on the mission, it was lacking.

On the flip side of the coin, many people eat up a good challenge, and this is certainly a challenge to those with the patience to figure out an alternative.

I would love to see what you're take is in on my newest adventure. Your feedback is just the kind I'm looking for!

Jokt, The Wanderer!

I'll try out one of yours now actually, with a level 2 captain.

Since you responded to my thread, and PROMISED to review my adventures... I'm gonna hold ya to it!!

Here's a link to all 3 adventures (The Leviathan doesn't count... I just tweaked someone else's adventure) the other 3... they are all mine!!

A typical Post-Apocalyptic Day Fair

Ok, upon reading the very title of this I knew I wasn't going to be beating you over the head with the 'This story has no background and makes no sense' stick. . . It's just a nice post-apocalyptic rhomp. However. . . It suffers the same way The Swarm does, but in the opposite way. . . It's not too hard, it's too easy.

So, jumping in on this. . .

Pros: Detail, atmosphere, awesome. You really get the sense you're in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Dialog is amusing and it's nice seeing characters that don't tell you the mission up straight and use weird accents. Details on both environment and creatures is nice and fun.

Now. . .

Critique: Act 1, talk to this guy and this guy. Simple, get your missions for Act 2. Not complicated, dialog is amusing if short and worth a read through. Now, leading into Act 2, ahh. . . Zombie killing. Now this is what we were talkin' about. Qeue the dramatic music and get ready to chip away at the wall of unfeeling flesh and seething unstoppable hunger that is the Zombie! All. . . 13 of it. . .?

. . .Ok needless to say, this part is so easy it's painful. Kill three very, very weak zombies. . . I didn't even have the heart to pick them off with my blaster, I had to go in close and at least let it knock off one HP off my level 10 captain. . . Which kind of depressingly is instantly regenerated as I have health regen on my captain. . .

. . .Ok so after one-shotting the 'Zombie Swarm' to death and grabbing some loose meat, you report back to camp. More talking, now you have to find survivors. Act 4 I had to go find the survivors. I decided to take the 'high road'.

By high road I mean the crumbled highway going over the mission. And by take it I mean I spent hours grinding points for that Jetpack and Hover ability and dangit I was going to get my use out of it. So after some goofing off trying to find more enemies, fruitlessly, I finally gave up and grabbed the survivor. My initial 'Expect the worse' pessimism kicked in and I expected a redemption from the anti-clematic zombie swarm from before.

. . .Uuunfortunately I then realized no enemies spawned, nothing, there was no challenge to escorting this guy back to camp. Well. . . Except him getting caught on buildings and junk piles while he attempted to wade through it. . . Which I had to give him a little push to get out. Though by the end I was so frustrated with him getting stuck the 'Little Push' transformed into me maliciously leaping off the bridge with my jetpack on full blast and ramming into him at breakneck speeds.

Ahem, regardless, escort him back and get your congratulations, end of mission.

Really, for how detailed the environment was I was pretty disappointed with the game play. When I saw 'Post-Apocalyptic' I half expected myself to spend most of the mission tearing through zombie swarms. What was the nail in the coffin for me was when I went to edit mode and saw only 3 balls of the complexity meter used up. You had so much more to work with!

Make a zombie swarm appear during the escort mission, give it some challenge, also, make the zombies tougher, more HP, more then one hit to take them down. Also I saw this weird creature in the cast list called 'Abythiss', where was that? Why didn't it make it in? I get this feeling it would have made a good boss or something.

Ah well, my advice on improvement? More enemies, more depth, more challenge and use that complexity meter to it's fullest!

So I played the first Adventure of Rach. I will comment on it as soon as Sporepedia is back up, but here's an indepth review. It's not too long mind you, the adventure itself was short.

I entered this uninhabited planet with my captain Rik'is, he has Energy Slash 1 and Battle Armor 1. Though that's not necessary with my captain, as he has flight 4 from his creature stage wings (it was my first creation when Spore first released, who knew flying would become so useful again?). Since there is no required fighting in this adventure, I opted to ignore the beasties except for one or two to see how I fared.

The story itself is just a little snippet, but it does leave you with an open ending. I'm guessing this is where the following adventures come in. I will certainly be playing the rest, once Sporepedia is back up and I can download them. I loved the design of the Rach and the ship was very well done too. I loved the music choices by the way, very mood fitting.

My only nitpick here is a creature called "Arctic <forgot what>". It seemed odd considering the planet isn't snow based. Perhaps find/create another predator to fit the prairie based planet? Overall, it was enjoyable and will be played by my future space stage captains.

please review my adventure
i would really like your feedback, that way i can set the meter highter for my next adventures in this series
http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=usr-ClintostheGreat%7C2258578413%3Asast-500385594858
the series is called Boba Fett Stories

Ahem, Gentlemen? *Fixes tie*

The Swarm (Part I) Fair

This is a game that suffers from harsh difficulty. Much like omgimonfire's Arena missions there's a sheer brick wall you hit that you just can't get pass. Which is a shame, let me get into the pros before I dig into it:

Pros: The city and layout is -beautiful-. The variety and number of civilians is amazing and so much attention to detail within the city makes it easy to see what all of that complexity was spent on. It's simply an amazing sight to see and I found myself taking a stroll around the city just to see everything before I began on the missions. In fact, on city layout alone I almost slated it for a Good. Which is where I hit the bumpy road. . .

Critique: Ok, Act 1. A simple act, talk to mayor, go retrieve gems from thieves and bring them to bounty hunter who can't seem to find the thieves who are cleverly hidden behind some crates. (Ok yeah I had to pick on that once, I'm done sorry. No points off for it.)

Now, after beating through some thugs you get to the thief leader guarding the gems. . . And he's doing a fairly crappy job as he doesn't move. I found through play-throughs his position changes, sometimes he's right next to the gem, other times he's not. . . After inspecting his advanced A.I. I figured out the innate problem, his two attacks are set to 'first sight' and on higher priority. . . This generally means it cancels out his wander if you're in sight, even if he can't shoot you due to having no guns. . . I know, I know, if you can't do a priority it's supposed to skip it but it's the best theory I can come up with.

SO, Mr. Blackclaw the leader, never chases you, and stands there looking menacing while you pick up the jewels and walk back to the bounty hunter for an easy finished quest.

So! Onto Act II, Killing the Khuigund tribe. . . Now, this was an easy one, first you talk to the Mayor who simply tells you that the Khuigund are evil people who attack the townsfolk. . . Never really explains -why- or how they're evil, or why they're attacking the townsfolk, but they're evil. (Ok, ok, sorry, -now- I'll stop.)

SO! Moving along, you go out and, well this part was fairly easy. I picked at them with my blaster, which forced them to come at me and my crew one by one via good ol' MMORPG style pulling. Worked fine and I took out the whole tribe with minimal effort. Though, I admitt one flaw I saw was Bountyhunter Julinz bounding off to attack buildings at random when I was getting mauled by tribesmen. But that was more comical the me then anything. . .

Regardless, onto Act 3, Swarm attacks. This was about when I noticed the innate problem. . . Though I was pretty much still above 700 health before attacking the swarm I found myself dangerously below 200 afterwards. I knew that didn't bode well, it meant the enemies simply did too much damage, and with the only health pack being next to the mayor in town I knew I would get into trouble soon. However, I had little problem dispatching the swarm and reporting to the mayor.

Act 4 came, and my problems were realized. Many of your other players and myself included could not get pass this part. . . Yes I went to the leaderboard and compared the percentage, everyone who lost died at this very part. The innate problem is that the blasted Soldiers do far too much damage. . .

1/3rd of your health from a missile attack and 2/3rds from close range. Yes I kept track, I died this way, a lot. I know this is the final battle in the mission and it's supposed to be tough, but it seems unbeatable to me given the only skills you have with the locked captain are level 3 blades and your pee shooter level 1 blaster. Maybe if I had something to stun them like insect swarm, or lightening blades I could do better. However with their missile attack its impossible to kite them, and going into melee is absolute suicide.

So, all in all, it gets a fair to me. The city layout is stunning and amazing, if I could I'd have you designing city layouts in my adventures, but I think it limited you in the complexity meter and limited what you could do with the missions. So in the story and gameplay departments on the mission, it was lacking.

On the flip side of the coin, many people eat up a good challenge, and this is certainly a challenge to those with the patience to figure out an alternative.

Hey, thanks for the comments! I really liked your review, and I have noticed the Soldiers may be alittle too powerful. However, I'm planning on fixing these problems in Part II. In Part II, you'll have one more ally fighting beside you, you'll have more powerful weapons, and I may make the Soldiers alittle less powerful. In Part II, I think I'll keep you in the same city, but with different objectives. And this was also my first adventure, so I did expect some flaws. I'll start on Part II once I get more plays on Part I.

And if you're interested, you can visit the site in my sig for a walkthrough.

Alelo: Adventure of the Rach 1. . . Yeah. . . I'm gonna remake that, that was more me seeing the capabilities of the adventure creator and testing what I can do. It's an essential start to a story, so I really have to re-do it and make it viable. Maybe when I'm done all these reviews, if I ever get through 'em all! Anyway! Next review HO!

Terraptors on the Loose Fair / Good

Ok, all in all this one's on the cusp of Fair and Good. I went into this one seeing the 'Story' adventure marker. So, I went into this expecting a good story. Something endearing and nice to read. So in this review I'm going to be much more critical of the story itself. Right, moving along.

Pros: Ok so, gameplay is balanced and genuinely fun. Well. . . Actually it leans more towards the easy side but, not so much that you're standing over your enemies after you just one-shotted them wondering if you should have gone into this with a captain that had no weapons. . . While buildings, creatures and cities aren't as detailed as the last three, the effects are awesome. Nuclear explosion to cover a demolished building and the rain in the final battle all add nice subtle touches to the feel.

Critique: Act 1, talk to guy who gives you mission. . . One of these days someone's going to throw an Act 1 in my face that involves nine epics charging at me from all directions spitting flames of doom I know it. . . Anyway you get the basic story of the mission. . . Skeloptines are getting the crap by 'Terraptors', Feltonites helping you but they need your guidance. . . Or as the game explains it your intelligence which immediately made me think they're a bunch of sterotypical mindless thugs running around going "Durr" and punching things with grenades. Which I was horribly wrong about but I found a comical thought anyway.

Act 2, you go to a nearby base to attack Terraptors! Who are epics that are kind of busy fighting vehicles that are honestly giving them a good run for their money. Que the epic music it's time for. . . Wait. Ok this was my first problem, the music. It's there, don't get me wrong, but it's really hard to hear over the screaming epics and tanks screaming things in horrible Sporelish that you can't possibly hope to understand. A quick fix to this is going into your editor and dragging the arrow that points up in the air, it turns up the volume of the music so you can actually hear it over the big battle.

The small Terraptors aren't too challenging, easy to take down, the big ones would be challenging if they weren't always occupied with the tanks. It made them easy to chip away at and take down. So, you finish this act, to run back to your base in Act 3, finding out that Act 2's fight was a big decoy and everything is destroyed! The General and Leader are taken and you need to rescue them. You get an ancient tablet written by the Terraptors that tells you all this. . . And kinda explains why they do what they're doing which is a step up from the 'We are evil because we are evil'. . . If albeit still leaving a lot to the imagination.

The Tablet basically says the Terraptors lived for 50'000 years, destroying everything, but they see you as a new challenge. So basically they're after you. It still doesn't explain why, why are they interested in challenges? Why are they destroying everything? Why you? It leaves a lot to wonder about. . .

Anyway, moving along, you finally find this guy called Baltinil, which basically summed up tells you that the Terraptors are evil and you should attack their base head on. . . Once again the evil explanation makes me snicker a little. . .

Just being 'evil' doesn't explain why they're bad, there has to be an overriding reason why a race is doing something. For example, my race the Margan in my Rach adventures, they have a complex backstory of being very xenophobic due to being abused herbivores of their home planet and constantly being hunted, leading to them declaring war on everything they can and being very untrusting, and giving them a certain bloodlust. The reason for their actions is not that they're 'evil', they just have grown up knowing only to not trust anything that's not Margan.

I digress, back to the adventure. to get to this guy you need to cross a bridge. In doing so your previous crew quite happily leaps to their deaths in the lava pit. . . . I'm not going to ask why, but it works with the quest text as Baltinil tells you you need to get a crew. . . So, I guess he knew they were going to run into the lava pit. . .

. . .Right. . . Moving along. Teleporter to enemy base, destroy wall to free captains. However, if you have jump and jump inside you see there's really nothing in the base. Leaving a big empty, nothing. . . This makes freeing them way too easy, something I'd be crazy enough to suggest is make the walls invisible and put in blue keys to free them from the blue cells. Thus it makes it more interesting. . . So, what comes next after you free them in Act 5 is basically taking them back to Baltinil and then walk up to some machine within a one minute time limit, which is easy.

Honestly your biggest threat is the flame geysers from the hostile lava planet. They do respectable damage and really all this running back and fourth wears at you with no health power ups between. I've gotten closer to dying from these geysers then the enemies. But this is a story mission so I can't hit it too hard for that. So, moving along, the machine. . .

Yes the machine, there's no explanation as to what it does or why. It just, is there. So next act swings in like a hurricane, cool rain effects, laser blasts, things fighting everywhere. You can feel the epic finale. Which, everything's kind of occupied fighting everything else so killing the objectives is easy. . . I kind of just goofed off stabbing things in the face and got away with an easy win over the enemies with very little backlash.

SO, destroy Skeloptin and a few enemies and it's down to the final boss. Who's busy fighting Baltinil and getting hammered by all your allies. So it's a fairly easy job just wearing him down.

All of it comes to an end for your final congratulations. . . This is when I noticed one last bizarre thing. You see, before freeing the Captain and General I went a bit willy nilly destroying the walls, and I noticed Baltinil who stood outside of the wall, he's still there in the final act. . . But so is Baltinil who fights the final boss!

. . .So. . . There's. . . Two Baltinils. . .

Anyway, I gave this thing a cusp of good to fair. The story left more to be desired, and I felt it could be better fleshed out overall given you have over half of the complexity meter left to you. Effects are nice, battles are cool, music needs to be cranked up. All in all though, I see it as worth playing through.

RaptorZefier wrote:Alelo: Adventure of the Rach 1. . . Yeah. . . I'm gonna remake that, that was more me seeing the capabilities of the adventure creator and testing what I can do. It's an essential start to a story, so I really have to re-do it and make it viable. Maybe when I'm done all these reviews, if I ever get through 'em all! Anyway! Next review HO!

Terraptors on the Loose Fair / Good

Ok, all in all this one's on the cusp of Fair and Good. I went into this one seeing the 'Story' adventure marker. So, I went into this expecting a good story. Something endearing and nice to read. So in this review I'm going to be much more critical of the story itself. Right, moving along.

Pros: Ok so, gameplay is balanced and genuinely fun. Well. . . Actually it leans more towards the easy side but, not so much that you're standing over your enemies after you just one-shotted them wondering if you should have gone into this with a captain that had no weapons. . . While buildings, creatures and cities aren't as detailed as the last three, the effects are awesome. Nuclear explosion to cover a demolished building and the rain in the final battle all add nice subtle touches to the feel.

Critique: Act 1, talk to guy who gives you mission. . . One of these days someone's going to throw an Act 1 in my face that involves nine epics charging at me from all directions spitting flames of doom I know it. . . Anyway you get the basic story of the mission. . . Skeloptines are getting the crap by 'Terraptors', Feltonites helping you but they need your guidance. . . Or as the game explains it your intelligence which immediately made me think they're a bunch of sterotypical mindless thugs running around going "Durr" and punching things with grenades. Which I was horribly wrong about but I found a comical thought anyway.

Act 2, you go to a nearby base to attack Terraptors! Who are epics that are kind of busy fighting vehicles that are honestly giving them a good run for their money. Que the epic music it's time for. . . Wait. Ok this was my first problem, the music. It's there, don't get me wrong, but it's really hard to hear over the screaming epics and tanks screaming things in horrible Sporelish that you can't possibly hope to understand. A quick fix to this is going into your editor and dragging the arrow that points up in the air, it turns up the volume of the music so you can actually hear it over the big battle.

The small Terraptors aren't too challenging, easy to take down, the big ones would be challenging if they weren't always occupied with the tanks. It made them easy to chip away at and take down. So, you finish this act, to run back to your base in Act 3, finding out that Act 2's fight was a big decoy and everything is destroyed! The General and Leader are taken and you need to rescue them. You get an ancient tablet written by the Terraptors that tells you all this. . . And kinda explains why they do what they're doing which is a step up from the 'We are evil because we are evil'. . . If albeit still leaving a lot to the imagination.

The Tablet basically says the Terraptors lived for 50'000 years, destroying everything, but they see you as a new challenge. So basically they're after you. It still doesn't explain why, why are they interested in challenges? Why are they destroying everything? Why you? It leaves a lot to wonder about. . .

Anyway, moving along, you finally find this guy called Baltinil, which basically summed up tells you that the Terraptors are evil and you should attack their base head on. . . Once again the evil explanation makes me snicker a little. . .

Just being 'evil' doesn't explain why they're bad, there has to be an overriding reason why a race is doing something. For example, my race the Margan in my Rach adventures, they have a complex backstory of being very xenophobic due to being abused herbivores of their home planet and constantly being hunted, leading to them declaring war on everything they can and being very untrusting, and giving them a certain bloodlust. The reason for their actions is not that they're 'evil', they just have grown up knowing only to not trust anything that's not Margan.

I digress, back to the adventure. to get to this guy you need to cross a bridge. In doing so your previous crew quite happily leaps to their deaths in the lava pit. . . . I'm not going to ask why, but it works with the quest text as Baltinil tells you you need to get a crew. . . So, I guess he knew they were going to run into the lava pit. . .

. . .Right. . . Moving along. Teleporter to enemy base, destroy wall to free captains. However, if you have jump and jump inside you see there's really nothing in the base. Leaving a big empty, nothing. . . This makes freeing them way too easy, something I'd be crazy enough to suggest is make the walls invisible and put in blue keys to free them from the blue cells. Thus it makes it more interesting. . . So, what comes next after you free them in Act 5 is basically taking them back to Baltinil and then walk up to some machine within a one minute time limit, which is easy.

Honestly your biggest threat is the flame geysers from the hostile lava planet. They do respectable damage and really all this running back and fourth wears at you with no health power ups between. I've gotten closer to dying from these geysers then the enemies. But this is a story mission so I can't hit it too hard for that. So, moving along, the machine. . .

Yes the machine, there's no explanation as to what it does or why. It just, is there. So next act swings in like a hurricane, cool rain effects, laser blasts, things fighting everywhere. You can feel the epic finale. Which, everything's kind of occupied fighting everything else so killing the objectives is easy. . . I kind of just goofed off stabbing things in the face and got away with an easy win over the enemies with very little backlash.

SO, destroy Skeloptin and a few enemies and it's down to the final boss. Who's busy fighting Baltinil and getting hammered by all your allies. So it's a fairly easy job just wearing him down.

All of it comes to an end for your final congratulations. . . This is when I noticed one last bizarre thing. You see, before freeing the Captain and General I went a bit willy nilly destroying the walls, and I noticed Baltinil who stood outside of the wall, he's still there in the final act. . . But so is Baltinil who fights the final boss!

. . .So. . . There's. . . Two Baltinils. . .

Anyway, I gave this thing a cusp of good to fair. The story left more to be desired, and I felt it could be better fleshed out overall given you have over half of the complexity meter left to you. Effects are nice, battles are cool, music needs to be cranked up. All in all though, I see it as worth playing through.

Thank you for the review!

Im working on a series next, I hope you can review it when it goes live

I'd appreciate it if you reviewed any of the ones in my signature.

Valley of the Mist Fair

I have to admitt, I came into this mission with a bit of bais. I mentioned earlier I'm a huge fan of Silent Hill so using the mist and talking about 'suspense' was an immediate hook for me and I couldn't wait to try this. Unfortunately, it's not so much terrifying as hectic, allow me to explain.

Pros: The creatures are creepy, and the mission is pretty much a fun and simple creature bash. Even an un-leveled captain could have some fun here. Atmosphere is good with the mist, but I honestly think the mission pace and music kills it after Act 2.

Critique: This one actually starts -before- I even began the mission. Reading the comments. I saw Rythmear of this thread had played it and commented! I noticed his comment on charge and immediately began shaking like a war veteran with flashbacks to omgimonfire's Arena and Maze missions where it absolutely tore me apart.

I also saw a comment stating it was 'easy' due to soldiers, this comes in later. . .

Alright, gameplay. Act one is simple, your crew tells you, holy crap we crashed, we're in trouble, it had to be THIS planet! . . .No explanation why this planet is so bad or where all these monsters are coming from but, it's horror, not knowing is half the suspense. Come act 1 this goes out the window, as a mass of creatures charge you and you realize this is a -very- straightforward defense game. You better get comfortable with that sparking ship behind you because you're not going anywhere from start to finish of this mission. I understand that's the point, but being somewhere alone with malicious things lurking in the shadows is half of horror. . .

Let me Explain. . . Silent Hill, The Mist. It wasn't the appearance of the monsters themselves that scared you, it's the apprehension that they could attack at any moment. That you're alone, stranded, with horrible things all around you. They may not be attacking, hell, when they show they may not even do anything! However, what terrifies you is walking through that mist not knowing what's out there. Seeing only silhouettes and hearing malicious noises, it's your imagination that eats at you, makes you think of your worst nightmares. . . It's impossible to scare everyone with one thing, not everyone's afraid of the same thing, however if you let their imagination work against them you can creep out -anyone- simply by letting them creep themselves out.

A mad rush of monsters like this, it's not scary, it's more hectic and panicky like Resident Evil.

So, anyway, moving right along, act 2. . . Soldiers come in. Honestly, I can't even get into the enemies because the soldiers made them all so easy. I just hung back and blasted at whatever made it pass the soldiers who quite happily mowed the monsters back over the horizon, despite their constant respawning. This inevitably gave me an idea. . . So, regardless, after getting annoyed by creatures with charge and constantly having my kills stolen by soldiers with their rockets and laser claws. . . I finally completed the mission a few acts later. Nothing eventful happening between them.

Oh but I wasn't done, Rythmear had a better time then me! I couldn't take that sitting down! So, I started the mission, talked to the quest givers as fast as I could, got past the first wave. . . THEN!

. . .Got up and made myself a sammich. . . Checked what was on the news, came back. Oh hey final wave! Just finished it, talk to quest ender real quick, bam, fastest time, number 1 baby. I didn't even move a muscle. . . Soldiers did -everything- for me, that's how powerful they were.

So, yeah, it gets a Fair for me if for no other reason it falls short in the suspense department and generally. . . You don't need to do anything, the mission plays itself.

Which, brings me back to my critique on mass battles. They just fight themselves, you can do things hither and thither, but everything honestly depends on your A.I. allies.