*hi-fives PW* Good luck!
"...his madness keeps him sane.": My Profile on VirtueVerse
Can You WIN the Internet? MA Arc #85544
Inhuman Resources - At Work with IE #298132
Task Force Mutternacht #349522 <-- 1st AE Challenge
Review as part of the CoHMR Aggregator project.
@GlaziusF
Running this on a low-40s merc/TA mastermind, +0/x2 with bosses on.
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Ah, the life of a minor functionary. Huddling in the background while gravity controllers repeatedly toss forklifts at you because youre what the Tab key gave them.
I enter the warehouse to find chaos: longbow running around and the occasional doomed Crey security squad trying to contain them. Under the circumstances nobodys going to notice if I have seven pairs of hands doing the work, then. I smell promotion!
Looks like Fusionettes been huffing the fourth wall a little bit hard today. (protip: Summon Entirely Too Much Longbow Backup is a temp power, so get used to doing the task force without it.)
I spring a mail clerk, a shipping clerk, and Hopkins, who knows me by reputation and seems to think I should be setting my sights higher.
Welp, Longbow perforated, heroes routed, boss duly impressed, but the days not over until the labels are in place.
Ahh. Nothing like the lingering aroma of marker fumes after a job well done. Its the little things, really.
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And now, document shredding. I suppose the incident with the self-replicating office paper is long in the past?
It would seem so. Time to eliminate all the evidence of our old horrifically hazardous consumer product just in time, if these posters are any indication, for the rollout of the new line of horrifically hazardous consumer products.
Good lord. Simmons seems to be running the Inadvertent Hero Leads division (a product of the Truth in Labeling initiative, spearheaded by Kelly Uqua, official Crey Industries Alien Spy). But theres no amount of information that a withering hail of bullets cant return to the primal chaos.
Oh man. R&D. I dont know what I could have done to deserve this.
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Welp, time to get researching.
First experiment: the effects of kinesthetic memory stimulation on Friedkin-induced human replicants. Subject responded normally to the full range of ballistic and chemical stimuli.
Second experiment: the response of hybrid Devouring Earth in hostile situations. Despite annihilation of two of the six auxiliary experimenters, subject evidenced full control of all faculties.
Third experiment: mental development of Hydra/human test splice. Unfortunately instinctive reactions dominate the subject mentality.
Now to battle to the death for access to the sole lab computer! Hey, I dont make the policies, I just follow them.
Unfortunately the scientist in charge is a little displeased about the destruction of valuable experimental specimens.
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And now the glamorous life of a middle manager! Promoted into a job requiring an entirely different skill set!
Well, a withering hail of bullets tends to solve the main problem with people going off-schedule, that being the people complaining about them.
Man, now I wish I hadnt checked NEMESIS PLOT on that form.
Mr. Kellerman! Youre... still rocking your stock description. Might want to have that looked at. Wouldnt want people doubting your loyalty to the company.
Oh dear. 19th-century powered automatons are no match for the confusion of modern technology, it would seem. The laser printer is an amusing touch, but its got a couple problems as a defendable.
First, defendables always spawn ambushes. Not too bad if youre expecting it. Second, as an ally it can give the surprise Nemesis boss a target right when he spawns in, and you may not want to give advance warning.
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And now its time to be the VP of executions! ...thats the right word, right?
Anyway, the entire office is all what about severance pay this and not in the face that, and along the way I find the supplies for our wonderful new consumer product. ...waste from the cloning facility? Well, move over Boris!
So on the one hand, this is a profitable new product line, the direct result of thousands of man-hours of hard work. On the other hand, my conscience is probably going to haunt me forever about this.
And by my conscience, I mean a ten-story humanoid glob of glue possessed by the spirits of the vengeful dead. Seriously, you thought Equalizers were bad? You right-click the debuff icon and all it says is Recharge: NO.
Really its no contest.
(Also I was a good little corporate citizen last time I played this arc, so I want to see the other ending.)
Oh, interesting mission exit screen. While its not the light show that accompanies the Praetorian choices, it does its job well enough.
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Storyline - *****. Just when I thought Id got out, they dragged me et cetera et cetera. Does a decent job of building you up to have the responsibility (and therefore, the power) for yet another corporate crime, and presenting a decent binary choice right at the end. Its a track we dont really get to explore in CoV, given that ethical business practices are more or less whatever you can get away with.
Design - ****. More than anything, what dragged this down was the four Nemesis automaton bosses in the fourth map, prior to fighting Barbie. If her deal was supposed to be anything more than the same custom boss in a pink dress, I didnt really get an appreciation for it. Maybe she can be some kind of mace-wielding or cuisinarting or poison-spitting Jaeger automaton, just to set her apart.
The defendable printer is a fun idea but has its own problems. Maybe it could be a destructible, using CreyComp drivers and keeping the automatons trapped trying to handle the error? Just tossing ideas out there.
Gameplay - ****. Yeah, its the four custom blast set bosses. Unlike the experiments and doc in the last map they all function just as well at range, and one thing office maps surprise you with is a boss around a blind corner. Stealthing past is really not an option for a mastermind, either. Maybe it was just a bad AT/arc mismatch? Im pretty sure, though, that they werent in the last time I played.
Turning some of them into custom lieuts, maybe with bigger escorts, would work just as well from an immersion perspective.
Detail - *****. Just a couple minor things that slip out of true here. Ken Kellerman still has his stock description, and the descriptions on the Crey files in the second mission might be a little too in-the-know about whats really going on. If were still supposed to be looking for gainful employment on the straight and narrow at that point, they should probably be a little vaguer.
Overall - *****. This ones got a decent heft to it, with missions that are busy and varied without feeling overwhelming (most of the time, anyway). The story mixes in humor with dark humor pretty well, without getting too saccharine or too dissonant.
Aeon Challenge Special Comment - This one doesnt ride as hard on the arc of moral development as some of the other ones Ive played. It uses a structure that you see now and again in the villain arcs, with a final choice coming when you have the power to make it. And well, some of those worked, in themselves. And so does this.
Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?
My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)
* Added another custom Nemesis Automaton in mission 4, because despite them being all robots so I could probably get away with them being identical, I thought a second custom boss might be nice.
* Added a "HUMAN RESOURCES: People are our greatest asset" motivational poster in mission 5, because that slogan just makes me laugh.
* Cut the number of clues down to 32, because that appears to be a hard limit on the number that will appear in the clue journal. (Who knew?)
* Marked "Final" and submitted to the Dr. Aeon Architect Challenge! Hoping for the best!
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"