Some comments on a playthrough

[LozzaK]

Hi there,

I have got a machine that I can run this on a bit better now, and it's Internet connects, so I can, and have been playing though it and have been writing up some comments, which I'll tray and get across below. Most things are fairly minor, abut I suppose they affect the game or confused me a bit.

Getting back to this version (1.13, compared to the one before the extra deployable weapons) it looks quite different, though I’m playing it on a laptop, so it’s somewhat limited, anyway. Is the camera angle lower? I seem to be able to get closer to the little guys. It’s nice to see them up closer, so you can see all of the effort you put into making them! It all looks really good, anyway.

I noticed on playing the game again (with it in non-windowed mode, 1280 by 800) that when attacking the targets on the firing range, if the target was very close to the right of the screen and I right-clicked it, then the options for what to attack it with fell off the right side of the screen. Could these be moved to the left a bit so they all fit on, if they are about to fall off? I guess they’re less likely to fall off any other edge of the screen?

I also noticed when playing through and looking at the leaderboards, that the little map under the Play Campain button has different names to those listed on the leaderboards.

The little jigsaw type map that allows you to select which mission you want to do next has the titles:

1 - We Are Not Alone, 2 – Cut off the head, etc. (by the way, the titles have somewhat inconsistent capitalization )

The leaderboards have:

1 - Tutorial, 2 - We Are Not Alone, etc.

I noticed this when I got a score for "Unfinished Business", and it seemed to be allocated to "Eyes on the Prize". I think, looking at it again, though, that the numbering is right in the leaderboards, but that the titles that go with them are maybe indexed one backwards?

On leaving the screen to write this and coming back, first of all I got a Project Aftermath splash screen. That went away well when I pressed Esc (went to the pause screen), but on pressing Resume, the game restarted with a target that wasn’t knocked down before as being knocked down. I could shoot at it, but it was knocked down. Since it was knocked down it was not able to carry on with the tutorial… Oh, it seems I had to switch to the laser to knock down the already knocked down target - all ok!

It works quite well, the Project Aftermath splash bit, but when I first got it, and a couple of times afterwards, I was concerned before it all came back (took maybe 3-5 seconds) hat it had crashed in the middle of a level.

I got a few of these inconsistencies later on, too, when things that hadn’t been "got" looked like they’d been "got" (blown up, knocked down, etc.) but they hadn’t.

I'll write a few more things soon.

[LozzaK]

A couple more comments from what I wrote down:

I didn’t get the 4th hero, Barbicaine on the "Unfinished Business" mission, even though Theora said I would.

Under both the Research Lab and Inventory panes, both kinds of amour have the title over them of "Single Defence Armour", even though the lower one should probably be titled "Dual Defence Armour" or something?

A runtime exception (I think it said) happened when I was in the middle of a mission, running in full screen mode. I’m pretty sure that I put the mouse down the bottom left of the screen, and I may have clicked one or other of the mouse buttons, though I’m less sure of that. I was thinking that it might have been some kind of interaction with the start menu or something that made it crash?

Sorry I can’t give more details than that. I haven’t managed to recreate that error yet.

I wrote all of this bit before reading the help properly, so please skip to the next bit if you like!!

* * * * *

One thing I was thinking was that it’s great to have one key that selects all of the heroes, but it’s annoying when it also selects the engineer, or more vulnerable hanger on that can’t die or the mission abruptly ends. I find myself leaving the engineer, somewhere with backup especially for him to make sure he dies, then using the tab key that you get so used to using when in a panic to select all of the heroes to move them or attack an enemy. Then the bloody engineer runs over to where the action is and something that you have been working on for 1/2 to 1 hour is instantly down the can. With no saves allowed in the game, or even a save point at the most recent objective, you have wasted a lot of time. To say it is very frustrating is putting it mildly.

The alternative of holding down Ctrl and selecting heroes one at a time seems the only alternative, and on an overloaded PC, I find it doesn’t always register those, or maybe my keyboard is not as responsive as it could be. Either way, selecting them individually is a pain, when you know it’s possible to do all at once. The engineer can always be added to the team later if really needed, but I can’t think of many situations where I want him to run with the others, anyway. Usually I get the heroes to go somewhere first to make sure I’m not ambushed along the way and the engineer dies, yet again...

So it’s even more annoying when you’ve been carefully planning things and you accidentally get him to run into the middle of the action.

* * * * *

I’m a bit dumb. I looked in the help again and realized that I’d have been better off using 7 and 8 to select the right groups - much easier now I know that. *So* much easier!

I wasted a lot of time there. I wonder if that could be mentioned somewhere other than just the help, as it’s very useful in those missions with weak tag-along people.

More in a bit!

[LozzaK]

Just a few other things:

The grunt hunters could do with some slightly better AI, I think, Unless you want the slight dumbness to be a detracting feature that you have to weigh into the equation of whether you use them or not. Sometimes they can't see a grunt and they just stop. They only seem to work well when there's a path of grunts, like breadcrumbs, meaning they can end up sitting in one end of the map, not moving. If you could coax them to move to somewhere else at least, or is they followed your heroes when they weren't doing anything else, that would be good. At the moment, though, once released they can sometimes become useless if they can't see anything to attack.

When I've been pausing and going back to the game alter after going to another program or hibernating my laptop, it often replays some of the animations of things that have previously happened, such as gates going down or power nodes blowing up. It doesn't affect the game, but it's a bit confusing as to why they're played again.

Ah, I also got Barbicaine as my 4th hero on the next mission after the "Unfinished Business" mission, even though Theora said I'd get him in the previous one.

If you accidentally pick up two beacons with the same hero, do you lose one of the beacons, or do they from then on meld into two beacons always in the same place? I'm pretty sure I've lost some that way...

I think that's about it for stuff that I've noticed. Hope that's not too much!

[Mike]

Thanks for spotting these issues, LozzaK; all useful stuff.

I’m a bit dumb. I looked in the help again and realized that I’d have been better off using 7 and 8 to select the right groups - much easier now I know that. *So* much easier!

I wasted a lot of time there. I wonder if that could be mentioned somewhere other than just the help, as it’s very useful in those missions with weak tag-along people.

So you worked out okay that you can reallocate the selection groups by selecting the units you want, holding Shift and then pressing the button you want to assign them to (1-0)? That really does make a big difference when you're dealing with a unit you need to protect.

It should have been mentioned in-game as well - in mission 1, just as you are given the second Hero, Maston; the trooper should have given you a quick overview of it. Could you double-check that he does mention it, as it might be a bug on your machine if he doesn't?

[Lee]

Hi Lozzak,

Thanks for this list. SOme of these issues are already fixed and will be in the next patch, some of the others are still waiting to be done. In general, alt-tabbing away from the application is cocking up the animation and material system a little bit so anything odd you see after doing that will be because of this.

[LozzaK]

Hiya, and thank you for your replies. I'm glad to hear that some of these things are being fixed or already are - that's fast work!

I must say that with the hero selection, I found it easier to use numbers 7 and 8 on the keyboard to keep the vulnerable guy safe. Most of the time I wanted all of my troopers to be doing something or the engineer, and if I wanted one hero to do something on his own (if he had more health or a special armour/weapon) then I'd just select him individually with the 1-4 keys. That worked pretty well for me.

It'd definitely have helped if I checked the help sooner, but since I've replayed the games back now, with the knowledge of what happens in them and being able to select the troopers more efficiently, it's definitely helped my scores improve!

I must say that now I've got to the end, and gone back and improved some scores on the earlier levels, it's been a really enjoyable game. I love these kinds of games, and can spend ages pondering different strategies I might try when I get back into the game!

I have tried a couple of the challenge missions, which are a great add on, and as they are quite quick to play (though only if you don't get obsessive and play them 10 times in a row to try and improve a score!), they make for a different aspect to the game, as the priorities are quite different to those in the 'story' of the main game. They're really quite challenging, too! I've only finished one so far, despite trying several of them.

All in all, very enjoyable! Good work, guys!