Just Another Day. Where to begin? Why, at the beginning, because it was at the beginning that this conglomeration of faeces began to smear itself all over HLP culture. But where was the beginning? Upon release of JAD1? When Axem finished the first mission? No, my friends. The beginning occurred at the moment when the idea first entered Axem’s primitive mind, which brings us to the source of the problem: Axem. This subhuman specimen has been a HLP member since 2004. That’s almost 8 years of his infection vomiting all over this honourable forum. Let’s just look at what this thing known as Axem has accomplished in his time here.
Shadows of Kraken: Typical first campaign. Nothing to see here. Horrible, but that was unintentional as everyone tries to make a decent campaign on their first go.
Just Another Day 1: This was obviously a blatant ripoff of and an attempt to one-up Deus Ex Machina, which was made by the mighty Goober5000. I mean, look at how close the release dates were! The main antagonist is called “FRED”. I mean, really Axem? Really? Could you not think of a name while you were spastically ctrl-clicking in FRED, look up at the top right hand corner of your screen, see “FRED” and decide to use that? I think that having FRED be the god of some dimension was meant to be a clever reference to how you can use FRED to control the FreeSpace universe. Sorry Axem, but that was lost on everyone. Any player with a modicum of sense would have just thought of the mission editor, immediately drawing their minds away from the game. Congrats, Axem, you shattered the immersion right there. Oh wait, what immersion? I forgot, there is none! It’s clear that Axem learned nothing from the miserable failure that was Shadows of Kraken, because this time it looks like he intended for JAD to be horrible, whilst branding it a “parody”, which was probably done after the campaign was released and Axem realised that nobody would take the random typing of a retard into the briefing window combined with a few ctrl clicks and maybe one or two directives (with attempted jokes in them!) as an actual campaign. Did you really think us so brainless, Axem? That we wouldn’t see through your piss-poor attempt to engage the player? Sorry, but for that you need gameplay. You know, that phenomenon that makes a game interesting, let alone playable? You had none of that in JAD, Axem, and your (probably unintentional) attempts at humour (which failed, by the way) did nothing to remedy it. And don’t even get me started on the goddamn disco music.
Just Another Day 2: Electric Boogaloo: Okay, the name right there should ring alarm bells immediately. Electric Boogaloo? What the ****ing ****? Here, let me try to approximate your line of thinking there, Axem: “Oh, it’s been a year. Surely everyone’s stupid enough by now that they’ll find me funny? I should include a completely retarded name in there for u1tr4 1u1Z!” I don’t see how anyone could justify using such a name with any other method of thought. Let’s move on to the campaign itself. The antagonist? FRED2. Very clever, Axem. Oh wait, it’s not. It’s about as stupid as the original FRED. I’m not even going to expand on this because I don’t want to have to hit something out of sheer disgust. Let’s go through the list: Recycled jokes? Check. Nothing more to be said here. Lack of playtesting? Check. There’s an infinite loop at the end of the campaign. I don’t know if that was actually meant to be funny or whether Axem accidentally the campaign file, but it was stupid nonetheless. Any halfway decent FREDder would have picked this up. More retarded music, this time in the form of YMCA? Check. I guess Axem thought it would be entertaining for us to see FreeSpace ships used as letters with music in the background. How many times do I have to say it? We want gameplay. This is a game, not a movie, not a TV show, not a goddamn children’s book! Do you have any idea what differentiates a game from other forms of entertainment (if you can call this pathetic series of missions entertainment)? It’s the interactivity. The involvement. The player has to do stuff! Yeah, I know! How revolutionary! Yet Axem seems to have completely missed the point as he continues to include such gags as the YMCA sequence in the sequel.
Just Another Day 3: Shivans on a Plane: Right. The third instalment. At this point I’ve gotten a headache just from having to think about this series of campaigns enough to review them, but the world must be informed. Actually, you know what? **** this one. I’m moving on. Let’s just say that the only positive thing about the third part was the small sliver of hope that Axem was finally done torturing us and that the series was over.
Not so, it seems. We do get a few years of merciful silence, but then someone called QueenHolley shows up and posts a “campaign” so horrible it’s worthy only of Axem. Oh wait, that’s because she is Axem. I don’t have the faintest clue why the majority of HLP has been keeping up the charade that Holley is in fact a distinct person, but I’m going to go ahead and bring the truth out right now: Holley is an alternate account made by Axem. “Why though?” I hear you ask, “Why would Axem create a new account under a different name?”
Why indeed? Perhaps it is simply the result of Axem’s longing for young girls that he had to create an account to represent a fictional girl (which, might I add, is the only type of girl he’ll ever get, being such a failure)? Perhaps Axem genuinely has a multiple personality disorder, which he insisted on carrying through to the internet (if he is genuinely mentally affected, it might explain why he can’t seem to pull off a decent mission, let alone a campaign)? Or perhaps he was trying to salvage his reputation and, by releasing a campaign under a different name, not have its inevitable failure attached to his record?
Whatever the reason, Operation Ressurection (note the spelling mistake) was indeed a failure. Axem (in the form of QueenHolley) himself states that he “had no time” to spellcheck or beta test. Yeah, thanks, we figured out that you didn’t test your **** all the way back when you released your first campaign. This one didn’t even have a campaign file, it was just three missions. And you “had no time”? The internet doesn’t have deadlines. No one knew it was coming, so you could have gone and tried to polish it a bit, you know? “Nah, no way”, thinks Axem, “also, I’ll release it on April Fools’ Day, so that if it goes to **** I can claim it was a joke!”
Well, that’s what its description claims to this day. Nobody’s fooled though. We all know you tried once more to make a serious campaign and as usual learned nothing from your past “accomplishments”. At least you were smart (in the loosest possible meaning of that word) enough to abandon your idea for a 40 mission campaign and stopped after the first three.
Just Another Day 2.21: You Are (Not) Alpha 1: And yes, the most recent part. Axem shows us how deeply he hates the idea of beta testing his campaigns with the main antagonists being Beta Testers. Yes, that’s right, Axem can’t keep his utterly idiotic notions to himself, he has to go out and try to convince everyone that beta testing is bad. Perhaps he thinks that if everyone stopped beta testing his campaigns might have a slight chance of being ranked somewhere other than the bottom? Not going to happen. But that’s not the only aspect of his depressing personality that Axem throws at us. He keeps up the QueenHolley charade by naming the main character of the campaign Holley. We don’t care if you’re going to be single forever, Axem, we really don’t. We’re just a bunch of guys on the internet.
The gameplay here is stupid, but hey, at least it’s gameplay, right? Not so. “To hell with weapons and shooting stuff!” thinks Axem, “I’m going to have the player push stuff with their guns!” Yeah, no. We’re in a spaceship. Do you think we’d want to do anything other than destroy other spaceships with our own weapons? But noo, Axem thinks it’s a good idea for us to push boxes of tacos into a Shivan Comm Node (with no-collide enabled). Oh, and what happens when we fail a mission? We have to start again. Take a leaf out of WiH’s book and include checkpoints! I don’t care if your missions are short, I do not want to have to sit through this **** more than once! Seriously, they were done in the greatest campaign of all time and if you want your campaign to have a shred of credibility then at least include them! Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, two wrongs don’t make a right. If we fail a failure, that doesn’t make it a success.
What else? Oh, yeah, Axem doesn’t even finish off the p... the p... “plot”. Sorry, I struggled to apply that word here. Yeah, so we cut to credits in-mission. Perhaps Axem thinks that people are interested enough in the p... the p... -****, I can’t do it- that thing that they’ll want to subject themselves to another campaign to see it through to its conclusion? That seems like too much thought for Axem’s little mind, but it’s a possibility. Oh, and what the **** is up with the numbering? Was that a joke too? Because this campaign is certainly a joke, and not in the way Axem intended it to be!
Right, so that’s all the JAD instalments covered. Shall I touch on Vassago’s Dirge? Yeah, why not? I’ve come this far, I might as well see this ****storm through to the end, even though my hands are shaking at this point and I feel cold. My head’s pounding, but anyway. So Axem takes a different tack and tries to make an ultra serious campaign that doesn’t get received as a parody. Well, he succeeds in that regard, because the utter crap we see in VD can’t be taken as funny in any conceivable way. It’s just crap. Let’s get this straight: Axem tries to add some depth to FS2’s excellent storyline (which definitely doesn’t need it) by suggesting that the Shivans showed the protagonist a vision of Capella’s supernova. Yeah, so? What’s the point? I don’t see it, I don’t think anyone else saw it, I’m curious to see if even Axem knows why the **** he continues to try and make something of his pathetic existence.
The Collector's Edition: Oh, and I can’t believe I almost forgot about this. This is simply all three original JAD turds bundled into one toilet (which, on the plus side, makes them easier to delete). Although the release thread claims 13% new material and new characters, I have to say that whatever differences there were I didn’t notice them. It’s all equally rubbish. Oh, and Axem wastes no time in calling it a RERERERERELEASE. Makes sense, because all the JAD releases have been nothing but the same mind rot in different colour packaging, and this one certainly isn’t any different.
I give JAD one star, I give Axem the finger and I hope never to see his dreaded name ever on the internet again.
tl;dr: the campaigns are ****, Axem sucks hardcore.