A satisfied customer: Shrouding the Light. First off: You left me, once again, completely stunned. Absolutely brilliant overall. In fact, i'll try to make a more or less detailed review
MOD Content - 7.2 (out of 10)The additional MOD content is of very good quality. The graphical stuff still has it's problems: The Leviathan is pointing to some old, ugly model, instead of the high-poly Leviathan (ShineLT4.0 onwards), various missile and laser effects are sub-optimal. However, most of those issues can be fixed easily and in relatively little time. Another problem is the lack of envmaps for all the ships, not your fault of course, though.
The new content (concerning weapons and ships) is superbly balanced, not something common with most campaigns here, and the upgrades to the weapons from FS1 feel like LOGICAL, IMPROVED updates of the weapon. They are both fair, adequate for their time, and reasonably improved. Your MOD encouraged me to choose from the new variety of missiles and weapons - something almost no campaign made me do as of yet. Two thumbs up for the stats. The backgrounds are composed more or less nicely (although we only get to see two different systems
), use of background planets and suns is appropriate. (i.e. correctly placed for transparencies, colour matching, etc.)
Story Line / Content - 9.3 Good and complex background story, magnificently told and worked out. The transistion cutscenes (though the HUD is still a SCP issue) are absolutely stunning, and create more ambient than most CUTSCENES could even do. They're excellent, and if there'd be voice acting with them, they would (by far) surpass even Volitions own cutscenes. The story itself is consistant, and well told in the command briefings, briefings, and through pilot chatter. The pilot interactions are interesting, and got me hooked throughout the campaign. I understand the problem with Vasudan names, though i'd still have liked if the pilots had recieved some names as well as their designations. Nevertheless, by keeping the same squad throughout the whole campaign this does not matter as much. There was a great variety in the missions (even more so than in HomeSick), and there was absolutely no mission that got annoying or that wasn't exciting play-time. The difficulty level was great - it was a bit of a challenge, yet every mission was perfectly beatable and absolutely no mission got to the frustrated level of the thousand replays
The missions were fairly balanced from start to finish.
There were absolutely no major mission design problems, and a lot of use was made from SCP's new range of features. I was pleasantly surprised to find use of turning off glowmaps in the campaign, as well as some other SCP only features. Long story cut short: Excellent plot brought to the player by magnificent "cutscenes", well-designed missions and realistically written command briefings/debriefings.
Audio - 9.4 The music tracks of FS1 were chosen in a very atmospheric and fitting way. The music really added to the plot, and it was great to have the story underlined with suitable music. Especially the cutscenes were vitally improved by the music tracks. Two thumbs up for this.
Replay Value - 8.3 Absolutely a campaign you can play various times - there's several missions that leave certain decisions to the player, effectively creating variety for each replay. Also, ship states will be ported appropriately from mission to mission, so you will experience different difficulty levels, based on how well you managed to cover your targets in the last mission. Also, the mission is just too great to remain unplayed after a while.
This would give a total of 8.55 on the rating, but I feel it needs to be incremented by another 1.25 points for its excellent sytle. The way the various open ends from FS1 and the start of FS2 were perfectly expanded - the use of the technology was excellent. Everything felt "right" when playing this MOD. It was more "FreeSpace" than even HomeSick, or the main campaigns. If this would have been an official new part of Freespace (Say Freespace 3) I would certainly NOT have been disappointed. It was professional quality all around, and it provided long lasting fun and entertainment. Thank you for your wonderful work. Thank you for bringing us Shrouding the Light.
Overall rating: 9.8 / 10Result: Download and play this immediately. It is just as much (if not even more) fun as HomeSick. It is the best thing I have played in a long, long time.
Sa Vasuda, B.R.
