CoHMR Aggregator (a review thread)

@GlaziusF

Running this on a level 50 spine/regen scrapper, +1/x2 with bosses on.

---

Ah, a meta-Architect scenario? These can be fun.

A mysterious old man (no contact description) wants me to test his program. This should be simple...

Looks like an ordinary 5th column stomp in the Requiem base -- is that the first map in the special maps list? I’m curious.

Ordinary up until some weird sonic necromancer void cultist who shows up in the boss room.

---

...and immediately I’m fighting the cult that man was supposed to be a member of and sucking the soul out of one of its major operatives? Wow.

That’s kind of a jump from what might be a program glitch.

Anyway, I go to fight the cult... and wow, there’s a lot of variety. I think I’m seeing pretty much every conventional (non-elemental) melee set on display. And a little necro and some guys with guns.

The man in charge looks to be dark melee/dark blast, and too much in thrall to oblivion to feel anything.

---

And now I’m destroying them?

Something seems fishy here. I mean, if it was this easy to off these guys you’d think someone would have done it before.

Well, I’ll see how it all shakes out.

Judging by the altar showing up halfway through the mission, I suspect there’s something more going on here... and the clue does not disappoint. The only mystery is what this demon’s powers are.

Looks like... sonic blast. Nothing major.

Should probably be “decrepit shell” there in the debrief.

---

Storyline- **. I’d make a “curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal” joke, but... it wouldn’t really be a joke. The arc flips straight from an innocuous testing mission to murdering a dude to stuff his soul in a crystal, so the betrayal is both sudden and inevitable. It’s really the sudden tone shift from innocuous to murderous that tips my contact’s hand.

And why am I getting involved again? I’m killing a guy who’s tired of life anyway and who probably wouldn’t mind giving up his nihilized body to bring the cult’s dark patron into the world.

Design - **. There’s an attempt to establish an immediate breadth of activity with this death cult that’s supposedly been working in the world for a while now. I can’t really work out what makes them so different from the Banished Pantheon, the current established group of cultists for the gods outside reality.

By “breadth of activity” I’m talking about the varied descriptions on the various custom mobs, which seem to be setting up an internal structure. The problem is that it comes at us all at once, and the vast amount of variety on display makes it tough to actually pick out anybody’s individual story. Except for the case of the larvae and the pistolero there’s really nothing to tie an individual’s story to their powers. The meleers may just as well have all the same generic thug description (varying based on rank) -- it’d actually make them a little more sensible.

Gameplay - ****. The customs are generally not hard to fight, and the clustering in melee is appreciated. The first mission is a little long for something whose only gimmick is “there’s something off at the end”, though, and comes across feeling bland.

Detail - ***. The detail reasonably sets up the simple story; the only real problem I have with it is in the description of the customs, where there are a lot of supposed distinctions being drawn that don’t really matter in the short term.

Overall - **. So there are three kinds of games you can roughly call “horror”: shock, suspense, and Castlevania. Shock is a suddenness of lights and sounds to spark an adrenaline rush -- suddenly, a zombie jumps through a plate glass window! Suspense builds a feeling of dread through environments that take familiar elements and use them in odd and unsettling ways -- it only takes one zombie inside a department store mannequin before you’re suspicious of every one you pass. Castlevania puts a giant mass of zombies on the other end of a brightly lit corridor from you and lets you have at them with your sanctified weapon of choice.

It’s nigh-impossible to do shock in the mission architect. Maybe a clever arrangement of chained objectives could pull it off, on the right map? I think certain giant monsters or oddly boned mobs can be posed so that by default they largely clip into the ground, as well. Suspense is hard, but still doable -- there are decayed environments and it’s possible to introduce “noise” into text or use allied mob groups posed in strange tableaux. But by default what you get out of the mission architect is Castlevania. (Or if you’re using the Ruladak cave, Castlevania with the lights off, which isn’t so much shock as it is a bad Castlevania.)

Now, there’s nothing wrong with Castlevania by itself. But it’s not very shocking or unsettling. I came into this expecting a meta-architect scenario, where this cult would somehow start manifesting in Architect itself and the system would “go haywire” trapping me inside with something that wanted to possess me. That at least is some dread-flavored horror. But what I got was Castlevania, with a plot twist I saw coming a long way away.

Tonight's arc: Kali's Scythe (445456). Verdict - ****. Review in MA Forums thread.

My current queue:

• A review of TotTSM: EE (360243).

Could you please review my arc:
Title: Tales of the Terran Space Marines - Eternity's Edge
Story Arc ID: 360243
Author’s Global Chat Handle: @DeathSentry
Length: Very Long (3 missions)
Level Range: 41-54
Mission Status: Final; would ask that you only put in a star rating if its deserving of 5, otherwise please don't put a star rating and I'll just look at your commentary for any improvements.
Alignment: Heroic

Tonight's arc: TotTSM: EE (360243). Verdict - *. Review in MA Forums thread.

Already played arcs I went through finding another one to play:
The Amulet of J'Gara (1709), verdict: *****.
Tainted Waters (69315), verdict: *
Chapter and Verse (26065), verdict: **.

My current queue:

• Randoms!

Tonight's random arc: The Wretch's Gift (1008). Verdict - ****. Review lower in this thread.

My current queue:

• Randoms!

@GlaziusF

Running this on my low-40s merc/TA mastermind, +0/x2 with bosses on and normal architect rewards also on.

---

Interesting. Contact actually has a description! Nice to see a Dev Choice that’s still updated to keep with the modern limits.

Though whatever Wretch gives you to start the mission would make a nice leadoff clue, assuming you’ve a mind to.

So the “Nihilists” are the weird group who invaded the base. They are what it says on the tin, committed to the destruction of all life with the manic intensity of the Freakshow.

The traditional doom intersections are alive and well, but aside from that there’s some decent variety in showing off this enemy group - my only gripe is that the minions don’t try to close to melee, which is a bit of a pain for melee fighters who all expect it to some extent.

Two glowies show up in the last room -- are you sure this is where you wanted to put them? Anyway, one clicky stops the base from blowing up, one reveals that these yahoos wanted Seer Marino.

Or perhaps our local Hulk or Hulk equivalent. People were all the time trying to force the Hulk into all sorts of weirdness.

---

Anyway, off to the CoT for a withdrawal from their library.

Up front is who I think might be a succubus but is actually I believe a fire/mental blaster. Nice custom. Some fights take place deeper in, and at this point it’s safer to assume that they’ll never work “properly” -- that is, the dialogue that’s supposed to take place on initial aggro just play when they fight each other.

For some reason the custom chains into another boss fight? Ah, with the nihilist in her death clue. Not sure why that should chain, though. I can appreciate not being initially aware, but in these cases where there isn’t a necessary causal relationship I find it a good idea to have the player be initially aware of something. Like, an entrance popup that judging from the bullet casings in the entrance the CoT seem to be preoccupied, with “find the other intruder” in the navbar. Something like that.

Finding books in this three-story end room is kind of weird, though, especially since the room in the center of the spire is a valid glowie location.

The two books detailing the ritual are pretty far apart in the clue list. Since you can rearrange mission objectives now, and therefore the order clues show up in... well, probably there’s no changing this, but just in general, it’s worthwhile so people don’t have to scroll back and forth trying to piece something together.

---

Man, they’re trying to wire blood sacrifice into a particle inverter? No wonder they’re all so loopy, when I think how involved a transformer you’d need for that...

Anyway! Gonna stomp on Crey for a little. That’ll be a treat.

Look, I know lolcats are consuming the Internet, but just spouting off memes is the opposite of nothing.

...bother. I pick a lucky branch of the tech lab and find the single glowie that completes the map first thing. Maybe you could consider a more linear tech map? This branched structure is great for searching out multiple objectives but can just make for frustration with a single thing to look for.

It really strikes me that these guys don’t really have a philosophy very far removed from the Freakshow. It’s just destruction on a larger scale.

---

Wretch is... pranking Mako and Black Scorpion. Oh lord. I wonder if I’ll be able to move in this cave for tarantulas and crabs.

Wow. Lots of fights breaking out everywhere. Entire rooms just turn into little balls of everyone shooting at everyone else.

I’m not sure why I have to take down the CoT custom boss from the second mission. She doesn’t seem to be essential to fooling the Nihilists into leading us right to them.

But I suppose the CoT do know what these cosmic fools are planning.

---

Ah. Now I get Wretch and everything goes flying.

Hoo boy. The university rescue map. This one’s always a pain to find things on because of all the overhangs.

Someone who knows the MA a little better than me: can you lead an ally to another ally and get “you led me here” dialogue from the first ally but still have it follow you and fight? It seems like that sort of thing would be good for modeling reunions.

Ah. I thought so. The name of the clue when you find the thing in the Crey lab was too long and scrolled past the end of the clue window. As a destructible here it’s just got very very tiny font.

End boss! ...well, with the Wretch in tow there’s really nothing to any end boss. He whimpers about how rude it is to stop the end of all existence.

---

Storyline - ****. Pretty much the only problem I have with how things are going down here is: why Pia? Do they need someone who’s suffered to usher in the end of the universe? I could kind of buy that, except then they’re tangling with Arachnos and plenty of other people in the world are suffering.

..wait, given these yahoos Arachnos wouldn’t really be an obstacle either, would it?

I was kind of expecting something after the pattern of the classic Hulk where they were doing this all to draw in the Wretch for his special significance, but again there’s not much in evidence to support that.

I don’t really NEED a reason why they’ve involved Pia, necessarily, but it would be nice to have.

Design - ****. The problem with the Nihilists is that they’re as near to all black as they can get. This is offset somewhat by the decent variety in armament and behavior that gives them weapons and particle effects with generally distinctive colors. From a decisions-in-combat standpoint this works very well, but approaching a bunch of Nihilists at rest it’s generally a guessfest as to who has what power and is what rank.

The concern I have with the Nihilists is that this is basically what a splinter Freakshow faction that dabbled in the arcane (as Freakshow sometimes do) would pull off. Like, right down to the dialogue. That’s kinda the problem with making “the X equivalent of the Freakshow” -- the Freakshow are such anarchists that they’ll try anything.

I have a couple of concerns with objective placement, nothing too major. I don’t know if there are Arachnos bases with big end rooms, but putting mulltiple objectives at the end as happens in the first mission results in a very crowded-feeling room. The end room of the Circle map you’ve chosen can park glowies in weird places, including a room halfway up the central spire which I don’t believe is actually accessible by walking. The Crey lab is better support for a more comprehensive search but can be short-circuited in the case of a single objective.

The use of in-mission battles is a pretty good way to present the Nihilists as an active force. The only concern I have with them is that I seem to recall some of the dialogue assuming the battle would kick off with a hero in close proximity, or at least visual range, and by this point I’ve given up on that ever actually happening.

Gameplay - ****. The Nihilists, especially at the boss rank, are hard but fair, though guaranteeing the Wretch takes some sting out of the last fight. My only real problem is that of all the things happening on the last map, only the boss had any kind of particle effects to make him stand out. Dashing around pounding tilde to look for allies in a mostly empty map is a bit of a chore, but the provided allies make it a little easier to scrub the place clean, at least.

Detail - ***. This is where things kinda fall down. Wretch’s unique idiosyncracies often make it difficult to understand what he’s actually talking about. Generally this isn’t an issue for very long, as conditions on the ground become apparent, but when Wretch is taking about what he’s doing in spider central it’s a little more hazy.

Is the “smarty guy” he’s collaborating with a poor beleaguered Bane Spider who made the mistake of helping him once, or just poor beleaguered Dr. Aeon? I mean, when you’re Wretch, everybody else is kind of a smarty guy. It’s kind of hilarious either way, but getting the occasional note (“Smarty guy say give you this!”) would both make it clearer what was going on on the Arachnos end and change up the humor a bit.

Overall - ****. This is a great example of the good things that came out of the early days of MA. I can’t review it as I would have been then, though, only as I am now, more than a year and a half later. It’s a solid arc, and would still be a good intro to what you can do in MA for somebody who’s never seen it before, but after twenty months I can see some room for improvement.

Tonight's random arc: Dyne of the Times (6600). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

Random arcs I flipped through trying to find one I hadn't played before:

The Four Treasures of the Tuatha de Danaan (164100). Verdict - ***.
Astoria in D Minor (41565). Reviewed previously but not on-site, verdict - *****.
Spanks for the Memories (21144). Verdict - **.
Premium Quality Mission (148476). Verdict - ****.
How to Survive a Robot Uprising (12669). Verdict - ***.

My current queue:

• Randoms!

@GlaziusF

Running this on a mid-40s ice/axe tanker, +0/x2 with bosses on.

---

Hey, Babs. You could use a contact description. Maybe something about how you’re getting too old for this? Anyhow.

Well, somebody eventually decided to combine Superadine with Excelsior, and apparently it works in a non-heart-exploding fashion.

Whoah. Did they update the dilapidated warehouse textures when I wasn’t looking? Guess so.

Marauder’s goons are in here, talking up a storm. You might want to cut down on the number of destructibles and patrols in this small space - the dialogue was getting all jammed together, and I think a patrol managed to get itself right up in the rafters, because there was something up there that I had to knock down to clear the mission.

Anyway, looks like the Destroyers are the pushers for this crap.

---

Now that we can get clues to open the mission, it’d probably be a good idea for Babs to hand off one of those. Anyway, headin’ off to break a drug deal over my large chitin-plated knee.

A cargo ship.

...a defeat all cargo ship? Oy.

Well, at least it’s just Destroyers and Freakshow. And battles between them which assume I’m somewhere in line of sight when they start, which again, I’ve pretty much given up on actually happening.

Judging by the bosses who’ve tipped some CyberDyne down their gullet, this stuff is bad for you when the adrenaline kicks in.

The Destroyers talk about a mysterious “Doc” who’s actually synthesizing this stuff. Is it time to go blow up some drug labs? I hope I hope I hope.

---

Yaaaaaaay it’s time to wreck the machinery of the latest drug cartel!

The CoT’s possessed scientists could use some new descriptions, though of course this was written before that was possible.

The synthesizers look like ordinary metal crates. I do know there is some lab equipment among the destructibles that would probably work better.

Oh, this is stuff to make cybernetics work... better? But the Freak who took it was going insane just as much as the “ordinary” Destroyer. I guess it also awakened some latent genetic potential or whatever the side effects are supposed to be.

---

And now that one of the rats leaving that sinking ship has gone back to his nest, it’s time to take out the mastermind of this little operation.

...with an assist from Manticore! Well, that’s unexpected.

The Doc seems to have overestimated the effectiveness of his own formula, sticking around in the vain hope it’ll eventually kick in and he can repel us.

(Well, maybe it does. It’s hard to tell with his armor set, but does he have Build Up, or did two lucky blows just manage to get through my armor at the same time?)

---

...and it looks like Babs is going to try the stuff for himself. He’s been coming off as overwhelmed during this arc, but this really feels a bit off. I mean, the whole going against his crusade thing aside? This stuff hasn’t actually worked as advertised for anybody! They’ve all been just “oh wait till the Dyne kicks in then I’ll beat you down you agh argh bluh”.

Huh. The Cyberdyne gang is in here with him. Figured this for more of a one-man showdown. But alright. Pop a Shivan, because Babs never goes down easy. Around three-quarters health he comes off his high and the ‘dyne starts taking control of him. Mercy comes swiftly afterward.

---

Storyline - ***. Even if Babs is griping about having Wyvern steal a march on him, it really seems from Manticore’s warnings that he’s going to be trying the Cyberdyne for really no reason.

Well, why not give him one?

Superadine and Excelsior are both modified super-soldier fomulae as it is. What if this whole thing started off as a side project by Babs to get himself more integrated with his power gloves, and then one of the researchers sampled his own manufacture and got all hopped up on evil? It’d explain why he was trying to overtake Wyvern’s investigation, and why he dips into the supply at the end despite all evidence pointing to it being ineffective at best, crippling at worst.

At least then Babs has a bit of a reason to go against everything he ever fought for, as opposed to a general malaise. The story was going pretty well up until that point, and you did a decent job foreshadowing that all was not right with our favorite Galaxy City-standin’ bad boy. I just find it difficult to buy that last sharp turn.

Design - ***. This is an arc that modern MA design innovations can help. The ability to rename stock enemy groups and write custom descriptions would let you write a good story for the various possessed scientists, and clarify if the Destroyers have come over from Praetoria or just reflect the muscle of the gang. Mission-entrance clues would let Babs actually pass along the evidence he says he’s handing us to go bust CyberDyne. I’m not sure if the odd destructibles in mission 3 were a product of “mission rot” as the MA changed or just the best available to you at the time, but you can use Supes labs now and they don’t buff you or dangerously explode.

Gameplay - ****. Something you may not have been aware of: patrols count for the purposes of defeat all in mission/in final room (if they’re set to spawn in the final room). Why this is I don’t know, as they fall victim to the same pitfalls as ambushes/defend ambushes: pathing can get enemies stuck in weird places. The only place this really hurt me was in the initial mission, getting a few enemies stuck in the rafters and having to find the tiny angle they were actually open to attack from.

Other than that, a generally solid outing against generally stock mobs.

Detail - ***. This is another “drifting modern expectations” gripe, but because all the mobs are stock with stock descriptions (as are the destructibles) I never really get a feel for who this Cyberdyne Gang is or how they operate. Seeing as how they’re the “new group” and prime driver of the plot, this is a little problematic.

Overall - ***. Can I say “drifting modern expectations” again? The Architect is more capable than it was when this arc was written, so I expect that arcs will take advantage of these capabilities to present alternate enemy group backstories and provide me with the clues my contact could credibly hand off to start a mission, among other things. There’d probably be another star on this rating if the arc was kept current, but in addition to these upgrades there’s still the issue of putting a little more reason behind Babs’ appearance in the last mission.

Heya, I appreciate the review. This is definitely one of my older arcs (look at the arc number), so it could easily benefit from an overhaul thanks to AE's updates. I feel it has the potential to be really good so I never got rid of it, and I'll definitely keep your review in mind to give it a revamp.

Once I'm done (and not before the New Year, that's for sure), any chance you'd be willing to test it again as a before/after comparison?

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Thanks for the review. The Wretch's Gift was written when the the AE was in beta.

some of the odd placement issues you are talking about are random and rare. I've done that arc many times, and the books are usually next to each other, and the glowies in the first mission are usually far apart. They also use larger maps than I would likely use on a modern arc. One of the glowies in the first mission used to be a "protect object" but they were broken for a while, and still don't work to my satisfaction.

The Wretch's Gift is a story I'm very fond of, it all culminates in one of the clues you get in the last mission.

That said, it received a single, thorough polish pass, but nothing since, as I don't want to pester Dr. Aeon with republishes.

Some good advice none the less, and if I ever decide to make edits in the future, a lot of your advice will be taken into account. Thank you for your constructiveness and civility.

Tonight's random arc: Warrior's Three (64855). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

Random arcs I flipped through trying to find one I hadn't played before:

The Tannhauser Gate(96322). Verdict - ****.
The Labors of Rustam: The Cold and The Dark (54293). Verdict - ***.
The Echo (1688). Verdict - ****.
Through Rose-Tinted Glasses (101681). Verdict - ****.

My current queue:

• Randoms!

@GlaziusF

Running this on a mid-20s stone/stone brute, +0/x2 with bosses on.

---

Ah, Tarixus. How’s it floatin’, dead man?

Mission 1: Defeat the Warriors Three. Well, this is going to be a short arc!

Nah, probably not. But I am getting involved to make the needle in this power struggle point due Arachnos.

Okay, so I defeat the three warrior bosses who use unconventional (for the Warriors) weaponry -- nice touch, by the way -- and find their assault plans. Time to go zombie-stomping.

As an aside, since there’s only one clue in the mission you don’t need to make it and the end-of-mission clue say basically the same thing.

---

Hope this is a small map, because the briefing makes it sound like I have to wax everything in it.

Okay, pretty compact, actually. Battles going on, pretty interesting, but a couple things: first, the NPC dialogue radius is pretty big these days so there’s no need to have multiple battles with identical dialogue. One talky battle (per unique talk) and silent battles for the remainder will do fine. Second, battles will pretty much always start where you can’t even see them, so battle dialogue that assumes anybody new is there doesn’t make much sense.

The Pantheon talk about protecting a Coven, which doesn’t make much sense. I think that’s the enemy group that shows up every Halloween chasing the Malleus Mundi.

The closing-mission clue once again recaps the single clue you get from grabbing the only glowie.

---

Okay, so some nobody has absorbed the power from out the crystal and is going to be a big threat in our taking it back from the Warriors.

I say “Bring it”.

The guy actually goes down pretty quickly... is that Energy Aura he’s got on? Well, that’d be why, though it does fit a temporary arcane powerup.

Anyway, the closing briefing says something about the Mu restoring the power to the recovered crystal, but as far as I know we haven’t actually recovered the crystal yet. Was it supposed to be a glowie on the boat?

---

Heh. Tarixus decides we should give the Warriors a nice present for their troubles. I’m all for that. So, let’s steal something from the Banished Pantheon.

In the sendoff Tarixus calls them “witches” but the Pantheon magicians are all “shamans”. “Witches” can refer to either the Coven or the Cabal, neither of whom seem to be involved here.

Hmm. According to the crystal clue I drop it in a protective container of some sort. Now that we have opening clues this would be a good opportunity for one.

---

And now to place it. The ending room looks a bit empty, so I get ready for a fight when I place the crystal.

Well well well, look who broke out. They yack as they go down about spoiling the trap I’ve set, and I find some sort of midnighter amulet on one of them.

Apparently even though I’ve bopped them one they still have the energy to spring the trap meant for Odysseus. Faithful to the end. Tarixus is pretty satisfied with us going 1-0-1 against the Warriors, and the arc’s over.

---

Storyline - *****. The story is a pretty simple one, but I’ve marked it highly because it does something that in my experience is unusual in Mission Architect: legitimately builds to a head in mission three and achieves closure over the last two missions through repetition of story elements even though the “big boss fight” is over and done with.

There’s nothing unusual about what goes on, save perhaps for the intervention of the Midnight Squad, (but then again they’re feeling their druthers a bit so I can dig it) and it’s a decent reason for a villain to get involved butting heads with the Warriors.

Design - ***. One of the good things about the Warriors is that their costume design is so spartan (if you’ll forgive the pun) that it’s easy to make customs that look like they fit in, and these customs certainly manage that, while still being distinguishable from the rank-and-file due to combat auras that Warriors don’t have.

There are some places to deposit opening clues now that the technology exists, but more than that there was an awful lot of duplication - doing a single clue-yielding objective to complete the mission and acquiring both its clue and a mission complete clue that said essentially the same thing. This isn’t really necessary, except perhaps for space concerns which aren’t relevant here.

Also, I couldn’t pick out anything I did on the cargo ship in mission 3 that actually accomplished the plot objective of retrieving the power crystal. Unless the EB had it stuffed down his pants or something.

Gameplay - ****. Stock enemies for the most part, and reasonable customs otherwise, in missions with sensible geometry and therefore not a whole lot of running around trying to find stuff to do. Word of caution: now that you can peel powers off enemies individually, you might want to take Aim, Build Up, and powers that work like them (especially Rage) off of bosses, as the scales end up a bit too punishing.

Detail - **. This is where the arc falls down. In addition to some more specific concerns, it has a tendency to use German/18th-century capitalization, capitalizing all nouns of any sort, which makes for a choppy read and the occasional bit of confusion. The names for the customs and the way the arc characterizes various enemy groups don’t make a lot of sense.

The Warrior custom bosses all have names based on their various weapons of choice, which seems a bit at odds with the group’s roots in mythic symbolism. The titular three custom bosses - an archer, a brawler, and a dagger master - could stand to have more mythical names, say Apollo, Cratus, and Hermes, or if you can find some mythological trio of strength, speed, and brains (archery equals brains because you have to aim, you see) among the Argonauts or in the Iliad that would work too. The super-Hewer, gone mad with power (as you do) could call himself simply “The Axe”.

While the game occasionally uses “coven” as a collective noun for the Banished Pantheon, this can cause confusion with other enemy groups who are much more witchy than the shamans of the Pantheon. I’d suggest calling a shaman a shaman and referring to the BP as “cultists” in collective, having the minions talk about protecting the crystal or serving a boss Spirit as appropriate for the map.

Overall - ***. An arc that feels in large part like it could have come out of the game, with a simple but novel (in my experience with MA at least) story progression. However, it’s marred by the occasional oversight with clue presentation, and generally unpolished text.

Tonight's random arc: Unbearable Funk (3573). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

Random arcs I flipped through trying to find one I hadn't played before:

Impossible Kung Fu Mission (111367). Verdict - not spelled out, in the neighborhood of ***.

My current queue:

• Assault on Aru Prime (174586)

@GlaziusF

Running this on a level 50 DB/Fire brute, +1/x2 with bosses on.

---

Ah, Igor. When you want a dab hand with the needle and a willingness to stick all manner of jury-rigged devices out in the harshest weather, you can always count on an Igor.

So let’s go fetch some bodies. For SCIENCE! And also maniacal affective disorder.

Oh man. ZOMBIES. Zombies with freakish undead strength! Zombies with bone clubs! Zombies with bone claws! Zombie soldiers with guns! Zombies with... freaky radiation powers? Okay, I can kinda buy that. Though watch the rad/rad synergy, a little casual combat had me down under Base Defense -50% (the technical term for this is Base Defense: Haha, No). Zombies with... gravity control and sonics? You lost me.

---

Zombies ain’t cutting it, it would seem. Welp, time to hold the world for ransom. Let’s just nick a standard in-package doomsday device here.

Man. Freaky radiation zombie plus soldier zombie equals base defense minus a hundred. (So do two freaky radiation zombies in quick succession, before the click radiation powers wear off.)

I see some bosses in here. A claws... something, and a necro... something. Casually using necro on bosses can turn out wrong, as you can get focus-fired by the minions and lose all your accuracy. It isn’t as bad without the lich vomiting darkness everywhere, but you might want to keep it to just minion zombies.

Wisely I decide not to prod happy fun doomsday device and just leave it in its protective packaging.

---

Doomsday ain’t cuttin’ it either, it would seem. Only one hope remains: horrifying abominations of mad science! What has man wrought?

...well, I suppose we’ll see.

Oh. Standard super mutant. Big, blue, exposed brain, giant power gauntlets. He is silent, some might say stoic, as we head for the exit.

I bypass the guard and drop the super mutant off, and this turns out to be a pretty big mistake as I wind up facing a +2 axe/will elite boss with buildup.

And a name you probably never thought would be relevant again, but surprise surprise! That’s Rick and his mask, alright.

---

Even a super mutant doesn’t work. Igor’s so shocked he drops his accent.

And decides to go off and extract a brain that still loves mad science, in the vain hope of getting his doctor’s spark back.

Unfortunately he runs into a bit of trouble. Well, well.

So I hook up with an elec/elec brute and start laying waste to some zombies.

And then the doctor on the top floor, whose energy melee/energy aura suit gets shredded by the both of us.

Unfortunately then I have to run Igor back to the main door before the mission will complete. I think there’s a better way to do this, but more on that later. With Igor’s grim work both finished and started, the arc’s over.

---

Storyline - ****. A little light mad science parody, though I was a little disappointed we didn’t spend a last mission butting heads with Igor’s now-overenthusiastic master. Never addressed (perhaps not important?) is the source of Igor’s animosity towards Dr. Weirdstrum. It’s not as though there isn’t a whole academy’s worth of mad science out there in the Rogue Isles so we only need to pick on one guy.

Design - ***. I’d suggest dropping the two required escorts. In the third mission, it means that if the super mutant dies it fails the mission, and I’ve had bad experiences with custom bosses getting lucky before, so the design encourages people to fight the elite boss in that mission without any help. In the last mission similarly, if Igor dies it fails, and after the doctor drops he needs to be led to the exit.

I would have suggested making Igor an escort who responds to being led to the doctor in the last mission, except the Mission Architect is apparently interpreting all escort arrival directives as “do nothing”, so having him respond on arrival would disable his combat capabilities for the fight.

Also it’s a little off for the doomsday device to be just a single glowie in a plain wooden box at the end of a lab map. Maybe we can pick up a bunch of crazy components with no idea how they fit together? Just a thought.

Gameplay - ***. I applaud not giving all the custom zombies dark powers as that often makes it impossible for me to fight enemies in large groups. Unfortunately two of the lieutenants have such drastic defense debuffing powers that it makes it impossible or me to survive against enemies in large groups. I’d suggest making the radiation zombie just have radiant aura and accelerate metabolism.

Also, watch the use of Aim and similar short-term buffing powers, especially on boss and elite enemies, who can take out an entire health bar in a good burst.

Detail - ***. While I can appreciate the desire to replicate the cinematic Igor accent, giant blocks of Igor text (such as is found in every briefing) stop looking like words. The practical payoff seems to be Igor being so shocked on one briefing that he temporarily drops his accent, and honestly it’s not worth the hassle.

Overall - ***. There’s definitely some comedy going on here, but the customs can be a bit of a doomed endeavor to fight, the escorts you grab in missions are set up so that you’re reluctant to rely on them as allies, and Igor is true to the flavor but a real pain to actually understand.

Tonight's random arc: Assault on Aru Prime (174586). Verdict - ***. Review in MA Forums thread.

My current queue:

• Randoms!

Tonight's random arc: Pest Control (397624 + 397625). Verdict - **. Review lower in this thread.

Random arcs I flipped through trying to find one I hadn't played before:

Kali's Scythe (445456). Verdict - ****
Drakule Armageddon V (257242). Verdict - ***
Evolve or Die (411446). Verdict - *****
The Night Has A Thousand Eyes (121455). Verdict - *****
The Labors of Rustam III: The Longest Day (78130). Verdict - **
The Sinister Song (454892). Verdict - **.

My current queue:

• Randoms!

@GlaziusF

Running this on a level 50 DB/Fire brute, +1/x2 with bosses on.

Apparently this arc’s been refactored into easy and difficult versions. 397625 is the difficult version and that’s what I’m playing. 397624 is the easy version, and I’ll play enough of that for an enemy group comparison when I’m done. The difficulty I’ve chosen is the “usual” difficulty on this character, where I can get through any given canon mission chain solo. We’ll see how it goes.

Incidentally, did you know there were like two dozen arcs named exactly “Pest Control” by various authors?

---

Ah, Dobbs. Your go-to guy for all things pestular.

Looks like an intro mission to the new customs with Arachnoids brawling with ‘em. And giving as good as they get, generally.

The one kinda sore spot is a boss with Build Up and Stone Melee. That’s just hurtin’.

Also there’s a guy down here makin’ like he came to fight Arachnoids. Laughable on the face of it, but I don’t pay it much mind.

But hey, now Dobbs is all riled up on account of he doesn’t much like competition.

---

Time to go headbutt some Crey. The rationale Dobbs gives doesn’t seem to fit well, though. Maybe he took my description of the uniform and ran it past his various informants?

Up until the end level Crey are containing the ants pretty well. The only battle they don’t win is one where some kind of boss ice ant spawns.

And then the end room, with boss skull ants and the dark armor powers that give +perception.and stealth. Honestly nice effect, but there’s too much accidental overaggro.

Does the end console only spawn when all the skull ants are down, or was I just terribly unlucky in not noticing it until then?

Anyway, looks like Crey is just using these strange organisms for research. Apparenly a rogue member may have created them. Whether this is a rogue rogue member or a “corporate will disavow all knowledge of your actions” rogue member remains to be seen.

---

Oh boy, time to crash the mandatory voluntary employee recreation day! I imagine many people there will want the sweet release of death anyway, so.

Oh. Well, can’t have a picnic without ants.

The navbar just says “6 Crey employees”. I like it when I get some hint on what to look for. Body bags? Rescues?

Seems like rescues.

The generic employees dump some dialogue into the system text. I think you’ve put it in the wrong box.

No clue from this mission, but from the employees I get a name.

---

Dobbs says he’ll look into it while we stop the ants from tearing up St. Martial.

So the Titan Ants I’m supposed to drop have good stone armor but don’t seem to be a big jump above the normal boss bull ants, as they’ve got no buildup or I believe Rage.

...not that I WANT them to have Rage. That’d just be silly.

Huh. That’s odd. I get a clue on mission end about Lockland, but that seems like it’d make a more appropriate end clue for the previous mission.

On the plus side, this map has shown me something I never knew before - enemies can spawn on the beach in that St. Martial map with all the rubble. “The Flush”, is it?

---

Dobbs still has no leads on the Crey madman who may have made these ants, but he did manage to find their queen. Well, well.

...this is Atta’s cave. Only full of ants.

SO MUCH REPRESSED PICKUP TEAM RAAAAAAAAAGE. But seriously? Atta’s cave is h-u-g-e HUGE with about 5000% of your RIRDA of busy intersections. This is a terrible map to find anything in. It’s a double terrible map to find anything in when most of the mobs have perception-boosting armors of one sort or another!

The exterminator has entirely too large a perception range thanks to his targeting drone, and aggroes on me right when I run in. Fortunately this means I fight him alone.

I can kinda see the idea of having glowies which drop bits of inf and inspirations, as many glowies in the main game do this. But all the destructibles and glowies, while kinda nice for flavor, don’t really mean anything past the first repetition. They just make noise and get in the way. (Also, it’s spelled jewelry. One less E than you think.)

Finally I find the ant queen. Either she calls silent ambushes or a patrol wanders in midfight and I wipe. (This is why ambushes should always make noise, so the player knows what’s up.)

Yep. Multiple silent ambushes. Peachy.

The ant queen goes down.

I get 770 bonus tickets, and that’s with remembering where the boss room traditionally is in the Atta caves.

---

Storyline - ***. It does an alright job of linking the missions together. It’s functional, doesn’t try to be complicated, and is generally true to its contact’s character in the way it’s approached. The connection to Crey Industries does kinda come out of nowhere, though. Maybe we pick up the canister the exterminator in the first mission was using and go from there? That seems about right.

Design - ***. The big capper mission is Atta’s cave. Atta’s cave is way too big. The bonus from carving through only part of Atta’s cave is greater than the total payout I’ve gotten from some entire 5-mission arcs. The destructibles are an interesting bit of flair but the glowies, while they would be sensible if used in a canon mission for the purpose of extra inspiration refills, are just a lot of sound and annoying.

The environs are capably done generally, and the ants are impressively insectile, though unfortunately the auras around them often obscure some of the nice detail. As a cute little touch, the ants in the easy-mode mission look like extremely scaled-down versions of their selves in the difficult mission, though you’ll only notice that it for some reason you want to play both.

Gameplay - *. As I’ve remarked in at least one other review, there’s a difference between being challenged and being “bludgeoned with math”. I reserve the latter case for situations where my base to-hit is floored so I only connect when the RNG is feeling generous, my base defense hits -50% or below so I only get missed when the RNG is feeling generous, an enemy can chain confuses so I can only do something when the RNG is feeling generous, enemy groups have wide-spread and auto-hit or high-volume endurance drain so I get all the fun of being chain-held by Malta Sappers with the added bonus of actually dying in reasonable order, my base recharge is jacked up so I can go get a drink while the little teeny dots in my power bars come back, or an enemy (especially a boss) acquires significant burst damage capacity through a nuke or Aim/Build Up so the RNG can kill me off at will.

This arc bludgeoned me with math a lot. And you know what? The easy arc actually did it way more often.

Here’s the thing. For a while I thought of thorn assault as basically an all-range version of spines. Not that spines isn’t a good mixed-range set, but even so. But there’s something about thorn assault that you may not realize: crazy mad staggering defense debuffs. On everything. That stack with themselves, and often get the chance to, because it’s one quickfire set.

The difficult ants mostly use spines, except for one lieut. The “easy” ants use a whole lot of thorn assault.

You know what’s a decent mixed-range set to face in mass numbers? Claws. Leave out Followup and maybe Slash for the -def (though in a decent mix it’ll rarely come up) and it’ll do just fine.

Apart from that, the only real objections I had were Build Up on the bull ants, Liquefy on the Magma Ants (though they rarely used it, if it connects that’s a long-duration chop at both to-hit AND defense), and maybe Midnight Grasp on the Skull Ants (it’s so strong Paragon Protectors save that and Inferno as desperation attacks), perception-boosting armors on any ant that’s got them as the last three missions offer lots of opportunities for chain aggro, and Willpower on the end boss, because its natural regeneration plus the standard AV regeneration is a big deal.

Detail - ***. The ant descriptions are alright, generally. The two big problems I have are: first, there seems to be an end mission clue showing up one mission too late; second, the exterminator’s maniacal “you’re too late to stop me” rant is hinted at in the clue to mean that there’s some trick he’s got up his sleeve, but the mission proceeds as the briefing indicates that it ought to, with the ant queen going down and the ants tearing themselves apart.

Overall - **. An arc with serviceable design choices and story progression brought down by what is to all appearances unintentionally boosted difficulty.

Oddly, I put "Cole In Your Stocking" on CoHMR a while ago and it still hasn't come through....

Tonight's random arc: Quoth the Raven (74617). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

My current queue:

• Randoms!

@GlaziusF

Running this on my mid-20s stone/stone brute, +0/x2 with bosses on.

---

Contact is pretty visually distinct, but he could use a description now that you can add one.

Okay, so another villain group’s being raided by the Rikti for some reason and they need an outsider like me to bail them out. Well, alright.

I rummage around the trash cans in the initial room before finding part of a map, which the Rikti spawn an ambush to get their hands on.

The structure here is a bit odd, though. There’s a bunker down in the caves... has this villain group been working above a Rikti bunker all this time, or is the conceit that the Rikti expanded their bunker network to break in?

Anyway, the magus goes down fairly easily, but the room itself and the rather large spread of his minions means that I have to find a Rikti swathed in glowing energy walls who just completely spaced out during the fight before the boss will count as complete. You could probably just narrow it down to him alone to clear this fight.

---

And now the Rikti are messing around in the sewers under the base with some high explosives. Alright, easy enough to stop.

There are some SG lower-ranks bumming around here, mostly getting slaughtered by the Rikti. I don’t really get the chance to see many of them alive.

...and the Lost, as the level dips down below 30. I didn’t know that worked the other way. Maybe you could just make a custom group out of normal Rikti, or mess with mission pacing so nobody faces -1s by default. The “Lost” talk just like Rikti do, so I’m betting this wasn’t intended.

Looks like I’m putting together some sort of map pieces? Also while the clear-all is pretty reasonable, for some reason it doesn’t count the bosses and such spawned by battles, so the mission completes while I'm fighting for my life against a couple Chief Soldiers and spray around some damage to hit the normal minions with them.

---

Yeah. No idea why this map is so important or why it got broken into pieces, but apparently I’m going after the last one now.

It would seem that this whole punch-up has been over.. the soul of some Oranbegan? What could the Rikti even do with that? The maguses aren’t exactly very sophisticated.

It’s not really clear from the debrief what it was, either.

---

Oh, alright, it’s a phylactery. Still not sure why the Rikti wanted it.

Hmm. The problem with this Oranbega map; that is, the special map called “Oranbega”, is that it’s all twisty corridors and intersections, and there’s hardly any room for anything. My ally and the end boss spawn in the same room.

You may want to take Detention Field off of him, though, so he doesn’t lock away the end boss. Took a while before I realized her health bar wasn’t going down because of being a boss but because I wasn’t affecting her.

Lich down, cash in hand.

---

Storyline - **. So, the Rikti are invading this supergroup to get a map. Like, an actual paper map, not the encryption keys to reveal a map. It’s a magic map so I suppose that makes a little sense. Over the course of the first three missions we collect the pieces of this map, only to find that the Rikti... already have what it points to? Or they already have the phylactery related to it, and they’re looking for the place of power it points to, because...?

I get that the end boss defected to the Circle some time ago. I’ve got no freakin’ idea what the Rikti are doing mixed up in all this. I mean, sure, there are Rikti maguses, but those are special troops, for the express purpose of dispelling the magic barrier locking them off from their home dimension. They’re not engaged in what you’d call general-purpose magical activity.

What I could make out of the overarching story seemed to focus around the end boss, but she wasn’t really talked about until the exit briefing in the third mission, so that’s the vast majority of the arc without any mention of the one thing that really ties it together. And therefore the vast majority of the arc really isn’t tied together.

Design - **. The Rikti bunker doesn’t make a lot of sense. Not the one in the third mission, that one’s fine; it’s supposed to be an invasion of a Rikti base so a bunker fits there. But the bunker-under-derelict office in the first mission is kind of weird given that the premise is “Rikti invading a supergroup base”. Why not just use, say, a tech lab set and put Rikti on it? Are they supposed to have come in in some kind of ground-crawler?

I mean, that’s fine, but set up a little in the briefing or similar.

The last map may be called “Oranbega”, but it’s not the best map for general-purpose use. It’s about 90% corridors and 10% very, very tiny rooms. They’re not even special corridors and tiny rooms, they’re all drawn from generic map tiles. I forget why it’s a special map, exactly -- maybe it’s the introduction to Oranbega that shows up in the Hollows? -- but you should pick a different one.

Also now that it’s possible, it would be nice if you decided on a desired level range for this arc instead of just leaving the lower bound trawling.

Gameplay - ****. Watch for defeat alls in maps with blind corners or other difficult-to-see areas, like the sewer map. We have a nice little objective radar now to help with such things but that doesn’t mean going back to the first room to pop a conscript who ran behind a pump any less frustrating.

Aside from that the opposition was stock and generally not given over to crazy crossfire scenarios, and the end boss was reasonable with help, once she popped out of her detention field anyway.

Detail - ****. Individual missions had reasonable objectives and I was never misled by the navbar or confused about a single mission’s story by a clue I found inside it. I unfortunately didn’t get a chance to size up the custom group of henchmen but as they were all allies who mostly died offscreen that doesn’t much matter.

Overall - ***. Decent scrap against stock enemies with a custom to cap it all off. Motivations and objectives are clear on a mission-to-mission basis, but there’s a bit of poor map choice and the story doesn’t come together well.

Tonight's random arc: Project Parallel (316325). Verdict - ***(*). Review lower in this thread.

Random arcs I flipped through trying to find one I hadn't played before:

A Spanner in the Works, Part 1 (336662). Verdict - **

My current queue:

• Randoms!

@GlaziusF

Running this on a spine/regen scrapper, +1/x2 with bosses on.

---

Oh, I do like this Crimson opening. Promises some high-stakes stuff. Let’s see what’s on offer.

Job one: go kick Requiem when he’s down. But isn’t he always?

Ah, he’s got a Cyclops body guard. That’s a little interesting.

...and he’s “sleeping” inside a cyst crystal? Nice touch.

He calls for backup, but nobody comes.

---

And now it’s a little more explicit that this is a backline to the Kahn TF. With the Reichsman running free, Crimson wants a line on what the reborn 5th is up to, and I get to extract a loyalist.

Ah, Vandal! Cool, he’s got a nice suit. No real match for Nosferatu, at least a +2 Nosferatu, but he does help do some damage before the vampyr becomes an ex-bloodsucker.

The lieutenant Wolfpack bot I get as a supposed help is even more chaff before Nosferatu’s chill. And I find that the 5th has been storing files on Omega Team?

Maybe that has to do with the patrols that were talking about burning the files and then shucking their uniforms. I wonder who they were with?

---

Well, judging by the fake automatons in the next mission, it’s probably Malta. Who fed the 5th information on Omega Team for... a reason.

Oh. Controlling Reichsman. That’s a pretty good reason.

Apparently the Malta pumped Infernia for information, and she, having missed their big coming-out party (with the giant robot door prize and everything) went along with the whole charade.

---

Look, if scientists were afraid to try crazy wild ideas to save the world we’d all be sitting in caves afraid of fire.

Still, a little more intel never hurt nobody. I explode some trucks and set off their theft alarms, capture some bosses, and drop a 5th EB, who spills the whole plan: fueled by all Axis Amerika and steered by the Malta, Reichsman and the 5th will stomp on human faces forever.

(I find Max Action and the Civic Squad as some kind of allied hostage? But I can’t really interact with them as the navbar objective would seem to indicate. Did I miss somebody?)

Crimson seems to think that the Omega Team ruse was just a distraction - Malta have had the codes to Reichsman’s prison for a year, but were waiting to spring him so people thought the Omega Team capsule was somehow involved. Ultimately they wanted to... well, I suppose we’ll see.

This cliffhanger’s good stuff.

---

Hmm. Okay. So I’m going to go spring enough Statesmen that Reichsman’s hybrid synergy drive runs out of gas in time for the end of the Kahn TF. Crimson points me to Gyrfalcon, and warns me that there was some other purpose for gathering intel on Omega Team.

So I pop out Hippie Statesman, Genius Statesman, Petite Phalanx Statesman, and Francis Statesman, who hates being used as a dimensional battery. AND EVERYTHING ELSE. After picking off one of Hatesman’s entourage who wandered up into the catwalks, I feel the dimension start to collapse inward as someone tries to smash the last pod.

Ah. Ajax. Now it’s all starting to come together. Malta got at him, too, and played on his guilt at being the last apparent survivor. (But how on earth did he get into phase? Did he just bull through the dimensional barrier?)

Apparently the mission wasn’t somehow setup to insta-fail if I let the timer on native Statesman’s pod run out, so I click it to... complete the mission? Aw, I was hoping Gyrfalcon got cloned for Kahn, or something similar.

---

Storyline - ***. Anybody who’s been in a comic shop during a massive companywide crossover event has acquired at least a passing familiarity with the concept of the tie-in book. Well, this is Crimson’s tie-in book, about foiling an attempt by Malta through social engineering, heavy disguise, and baldfaced lies, to free Reichsman and....

And....

And it kind of escapes me what comes next. Actual physical remote control, either directly or through a backdoor in the hybrid synergy drive? Nosferatu mentions finding and thwarting some attempt at physical control of the Reichsman but I don’t think it’s brought up again. Social control, through shepherding the Primal 5th Column and liaising with Axis Amerika? Certainly plausible, but I wonder if even the Malta could keep it up forever. Distract him while they try to hijack the drive to power a certain alternate dimension’s Zeus Omega 1-5-0? I’ve just made that up entirely, of course.

The spycraft kind of flies out the window in the last mission, as supporting the Kahn-running Civic Squad is of immediate importance, and Ajax shows up through some unexplained mechanism to slot the last piece in the jigsaw puzzle of the past.

Admittedly at that point it probably doesn’t matter what the Malta are planning unless we might be helping to accomplish it, which we aren’t. The missions shift focus from investigation to accomplishing a set of known objectives, but the threads of the earlier investigation (how did Malta get the codes, and what are they planning) keep on getting resolved anyway. It feels artificial, and deflates a lot of the mystery and secrecy that had pulled me through the arc up to that point.

Design - *****. Great use of thematic maps and mission features to set the stage, though my general advice about patrols applies here: patrols have a giant sound-off radius now, so you can get away with one talky patrol per message you want to convey and have the rest tromp around in silence.

Two caveats with this whole affair. One, the containment device glowie in the last mission is talked up to have disastrous consequences if it’s activated, which I assumed (as it turns out unreasonably) would include premature mission failure through some clever mechanism or other. It would help to either make the objective optional or describe it with positive language instead of negative language (inspect the containment unit, maybe?) Two, I have no idea what’s supposed to be done to accomplish the optional objective on the Axis map. I combed as much of it as I was comfortable with and found the Civic Squad, but was at a loss with how to interact with them.

Gameplay - ***. I don’t make difficulty exceptions, even for missions designated as TF-style, but the bulk of the opposition here were stock EBs/AVs with generally reasonable powers. Except in the last mission, but because of objective placement and generous use of allies it played out as half normal mission, half interactive cutscene, which is a decent enough ending.

This is really all down to the Skyway rescue mission. Generally when that map is used in canon it seems dirt-simple. Run down the single ribbon of elevated highway, grab Olivia Darque, run back to the truck. In the Mission Architect, with a sufficiently beefy objective list, it undergoes a startling transformation. Objectives can be placed on the slightly lower strip of elevated highway off to the left of the main drag. And on the street level at the south end of the map. And down under both strips of highway in the slums. So even if you don’t punch your map reveal button like a chump, you may have already run over the proper location for your objective, only ten stories up.

I don’t know if I wound up clearing that entire map, but after my first circuit came up several objectives short I did start wiping out everything I could see so that my old friend the tab key could be of some use. And it took a long, long time to get down to the vacant lot behind a concrete partition that held the last boss fight.

Detail - ***. This is Crimson’s tie-in book, and it feels a little like a tie-in book written by an author with a bone to pick with editorial’s handling of the marquee title.

Don’t get me wrong, here. I’m not going to hold up the Kahn TF as a shining jewel of plot and characterization. Nor am I going to object to the characterization of Crimson as the smartest guy in the room, because that’s his dang job description. But part of the reason Crimson is the smartest guy in the room is that he understands that there are certain pieces of information which are dangerous to know, especially if they’re about the wrong people. Or perhaps the right people, depending on how you look at it.

I can understand running a combination of overwatch, disinformation, and good old spying (specifically the part where you fight a dude with an iron bowler hat and another dude with a bear trap for a mouth) to make sure other people can live with their comfortable illusions. But those illusions come out of Crimson’s deliberate choice rather than their deliberate ignorance. It feels more vindictive than anything for Crimson to be looking down on people for not seeing the whole picture, especially considering he’s blocked off parts of it.

By and large the dialogue and descriptions in this arc are clear, often humorous, and generally fitting, but running across the occasional bit of bile is akin to eating a delicious cherry pie and then biting into a Warhead candy some jerk shoved into it.

Overall - ***(*). So, confession time. When I trawl through CoHMR looking for randoms there are some sorts of arcs I avoid, because I know I’m probably going to skew them low. It’s something I’m probably a little more personally sensitive about, maybe unreasonably so, and as a result I try to avoid it

What is it? Well, it has to do with the player-character separation that I keep nattering on about. As a neutral example of this, consider the scenario in mission 3 where I’m looking for objectives in the middle of a 5th Column attack. My character knows that she shouldn’t be wasting time on the troops, or the distracting patrols Malta cooked up, but as a player I know that if I don’t take them out it’ll be a lot harder to target and find what I’m looking for. There are things I as a player know, about the history and development of CoH, that don’t really have an in-character equivalent. My character can flash back to the time when Sister Psyche was in Aurora Borealis’s body, but not to the time when, say, smoke grenades did a -50% to-hit debuff.

By and large the Mission Architect has to operate through characters talking to other characters, even if its ultimate goal is for you as a player to tell your story to me as a player. And the arcs I tend to avoid are the ones where I suspect there’s going to be a lot of player-to-player talking with maybe a bit of ill-fitting character veneer slapped on top.

This arc doesn’t do it very egregiously, mostly in the occasional side comment to a story that’s pretty much capable of standing on its own. But that makes it worse, in its own way -- you’ve got this decent setup for a completely character-driven way to say what you want to say, so why pull back the curtain?

Anyway, this would probably be at least a four-star arc in any reviewer’s hands but mine, though you might want to have that Skyway City map looked at all the same.