Eh . .. . so I finally played through the campaign, sort of . .. here's my comments such as they are:
EDIT - This is some MAJOR spoilerage . . so don't read if you want to actually play through the story for yourself.
For some reason, the last mission would after one point continually crash whenever I killed Saya. I don't know why. Since I played past that point numerous times before that. Incidentally it was kind of annoying have them purple, instead of red, because Select nearest hostile no longer did anything and using the N key only works so far. In the end I just extracted the mission and made it complete after 10 seconds or whatnot. (then the movie didnt play so I extracted that too . . etcetera). I was honestly getting annoyed with the last mission anyway . . . maybe I'm not flying right, but when I can't even get a shot at either the Horus or the Pegasus because I'm in a crappy Herc 2 and they fly circles around me, well I was loosing patience. I like the Herc, but fighting two interceptors with no shields was not a winning proposition.
On the positive side of things:
I liked uh, the atmosphere that you were going for. It was nice to see someone try to add much more of a horror element. Some of the little cut scene sequences were quite well done, etcetera. So good job on that. (I think it was probably even a better job when these features first came out???? but I didn't play it back then).
A lot of the dialogue was quite well written, though I didn't really care for the briefings at all. The logs . . .well, I found them lacking in a lot of ways. Some of them were cool, but some them were just a few lines, etcetera. Seemed more like placeholders. But yeah, the in-flight was for the most part pretty darn good.
On the negative side . . .
Well, after about the 30th mission consisting of either:
1. Move from Point A to Point B and jump
2. Wait around before you can Jump.
And meanwhile, kill 2-4 wings of fighters while avoiding pursuing capitals. Yeah, after about the 30th mission of that . . I just got fed up and didn't care anymore. I mean, I don't mind the whole . . . fighters going around with an unlimited supply of missiles and health and what not, but playing the same mission over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, just meh . . . didn't care. To point out the precise moment, I think it was the mission where the Generation was just destroyed and you jump out . . .and then in the next mission an Aeolus and a Levy jump in and a bunch of Perseus come at you. And there I am in a slowass Herc fighting a whole wing of Interceptors AGAIN, meanwhile my wingmen are doing nothing at all to help me, they're just flying around the cruisers getting the **** kicked out of them. That's when I just got fed up. It's oh, yay . .. 7 harpoons coming my way. And man, it drove me nuts. I'd throw out countermeasures, I'd get "EVADED" on my screen, and then the fricken missile still hit me? What the hell is that **** about? (not your fault of course, but man that was annoying). Well, actually I probably stopped caring before that. I know in the previous mission I just sat around a few kilometers from the battle, and proceeded to watch the Generation kick the crap out of a Hecate because the latter didn't bother to launch any fighters (save a few token ones to start). And basically neither ship manouevred, the Hecate had one beam bearing, the Deimos had 3 bearing and had some turrets in range. So . . the Hecate exploded, the mission didnt work and I started it over of course.
And some of the missions were honestly . . . kinda stupid. I mean, the capital ship battles in particular. Like the Generations, is being pursued by a Leviathan. Okay, that's fine. But in the next mission, the Leviathan jumps in front of the Generation and makes no attempt to turn around. So it gets the crap shot out of it. Then a Mentu jumps in, again IN FRONT of a Deimos and flies in a straight line. Taking it up the ass and not doing anything about it except the occasional AAAf? It's like as if I'm in a mission, where's there's a Ravana. And Command sends in a Sobek, and the Sobek jumps in front of the Ravana facing the wrong direction so the Sobek fires at nothing because its beams are the wrong way and the Ravana blows the crap out of it because the Sobek jumped right where the Ravana wanted it. That would be a dumb mission. Or like in that same mission, the Aeolus jumps _right_ in front of the Deimos? I mean, the Deimos ramming through the Aeolus is cool and stuff, but why would the Aeolus jump so damn close in front of the Corvette to begin with??? It might've been better if the Aeolus was trying to block the node, and the Deimos had a bit more time to shoot it before it finally decides to ram it. As the mission was set up, the ram was sort of unavoidable so it was less cool imo.
And I didnt get some of the other plot points either. I mean they get some wierd transmissions, so they go and get this Karl guy because he's got a neat gizmo. But then, they go back to the Nebula? Why do they go back? All they want is for the guy to use his gizmo on the stuff they received. Going back wasn't really explained. I mean, the stuff in the nebula tended to be the cooler part of the story . . .but they'd go there, and then they'd leave go some place else, and then come back, and leave again, and then come back again. All the meantime being chased by "enemy of the moment" (insert here: "pirates, deimos, GTVA cruisers") and having to kill X # of wings over and over and over.
So yeah, I gave up on the campaign. But just played it through so as to finish it and not have to come back to it if I wanted to know the ending.
It's like in that one mission with the huge battle . . . Rikas says "let's save the civilians!!!" and my character says <why?> and really, that hit the nail on the head at that moment. Because I didn't care, and thought "who cares? Let's just go to the node". Then from the dialogue I got the impression that I was supposed to care, so I killed some bombers, and then went to the node.
I liked some parts, but on the whole . . . not my favourite unforunately. But Sync seems to get pretty good reviews, so maybe I'll try that out pretty soon.
And btw, I didnt mind the mission structure at first. I mean, the whole initial part where they're chasing the freighter and it calls in support, that was cool. But then it didn't end. It just kept going on and on and on and on. Oi. But for my part, I seem to be the exception since most people seem to love this campaign.
