User:Misterhaan/HUAR

The Burning Sea

type: Quest author: Slyth33 captain: Ape Rahim

summary: An interesting look into corporate scandal while trying to recover a secret project. It unexpectedly demands high combat abilities though, so be prepared for that.

story: You’re inspecting a shut-down manufacturing site for a secret weapon, and the history unfolds as you go, mostly through reading log books and data pads you encounter throughout. Almost everything had inspect text to add to the story or explain the environment. The Ancient Books prop could have been renamed to fit the story. The same with some tree objectives — large tree or blue plant would have meant more to me than the Maxis names for those plants.

spelling/grammar: There was a lot of text, and I only noticed two errors: [i]it’s[/i]/[i]its[/i], and [i]allright[/i].

creations: I particularly liked the jets on stands. The buildings looked good and so did the collapsed structures, but I wasn’t into the sunken ship — it looks fine in the screenshot but not so good close up. The captain is visible in 2 of the 4 screenshots.

environment: It made a reasonable layout for an abandoned manufacturing facility, with well-placed plant life. The boarded up doorways was a cool effect but it was just a little annoying having to attack 4 boards before being able to go through the door (except the visitor center, which I could enter without breaking any boards). I found it strange that the sewer was quite so spacious though, and I wasn’t sure why water was spraying everywhere down there, though it did help to explain the way out. The wrecked truck in the sewer looked awesome though! After walking through the sewer once, the sewer grates could have skipped the sewer to save the player some time. The sunken ship’s escape hatch brought me out the doorway of a building on land, which didn’t make sense.

captain competence: Make sure your captain is ready to fight! There’s a battle toward the end where you have to defeat 3 hard-hitting characters — it took my level 4 captain five tries to actually survive. It’s unfortunate that this happens near the end in case you spent all that time exploring by yourself with a non-battle-ready captain only to be taken out just before completing the mission. There are a couple non-respawning grenades and powerups, but even turning on sneak and tossing the grenades undetected I still had to strategize how to win.

puzzles: There are a couple hidden objectives but it’s always clear what to do next.

overall: above average

Ancestral Spirit - Prologue

type: Story author: Damnagoras captain: Ape Rahim

summary: The adventure title says prologue and that’s mostly all this is. It seems to be focused on giving you some background before you get into what is probably meant to be an adventure series.

story: It’s very Grox-focused and not very detailed or original. It could have benefit from some more inspect text in the city to explain what the statues are, etc. Talk-to objective text was split in the middle of a sentence with ... a couple times — I prefer to re-work the sentences so that doesn’t need to happen.

spelling/grammar: Just a couple errors: [i]wich[/i], and [i]erease[/i].

creations: The Mysterious Kernavoris’ robes looked a little odd. I liked the Dera Guards’ outfits. The buildings in the city looked great! The vehicles I didn’t see very closely but they looked good from a distance at least.

environment: The city environment was well designed — I liked the statues on pedestals and the way the lamps lined the roadway. The war scenes didn’t seem to have much action — just some vehicles wandering around slowly while troops stood around. The destroyed city had normal-looking roads except with some cracks, and no buildings. I would have thought the roads would have been more damaged since the buildings were completely decimated.

captain competence: Any captain can complete this adventure.

puzzles: Most acts have you walk through a nearby portal and then talk to a character, so you should always know what to do.

overall: average

Sportuga!

type: none (quest) author: TarsTarkas captain: Ape Rahim

summary: A showcase of a bunch of great-looking pirate-themed creations suited to captains who are ready for a fight and happen to like pirates.

story: There isn’t all that much going on here, but there are plenty of chatty pirates about! Many characters have inspect text and chatter text, and they speak in a piratey dialect. One of them is even somewhat French! The name “Sportuga” sounds like it’s meant to be a combination of “Spore” and “Tortuga” which is an actual Caribbean island featured in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

spelling/grammar: Mostly pirate grammar is used, which I’m less an expert on but it all seemed reasonable to me. I didn’t find any errors in the rest.

creations: Most of the creations (creatures, buildings, water vehicles) look great, though they don’t always fit in all that well with the others. Pretty much what you’d expect from creations entered in a contest.

environment: Nicely shaped islands and well designed pirate town, tribal village, and other areas. Riding Moby Ted to the island past a bunch of pirate ships was a cool way to showcase a lot of high-quality ships, sea monsters, and mermaids. Once I got to the island I wasn't sure which way to go and ended up dropping in on the headhunter village from the back.

captain competence: There's some combat near the end which would probably be a problem for a captain without a captain-level weapon.

puzzles: No hidden objectives, and there are often arrows showing you the way to your next objective.

overall: above average

SOTP - Winter's Breath

type: Story author: JonathonD94 captain: Ape Rahim

summary: An enjoyable adventure for a captain who’s prepared to fight and is also interested in a good story.

story: You start out determined to take down some troublesome but not too bright beasts and end up unraveling a secret plan. The story is executed well and there’s extra non-objective text you can read if you want more of it. The characters make good use of chatter text. Much of it is written as dialogue with your captain saying some things (even some of the non-objective inspect text), which I usually find ackward since that’s not what I would say or not how I would say it. I prefer writing in a style where what my captain has said can be assumed.

spelling/grammar: Since the O and T of SOTP (in the title) stand for “of” and “the,” I would have put them in lower case. I found a small number of errors when you consider how much I read: [i]wine[/i]/[i]whine[/i], [i]simple[/i]/[i]simply[/i], [i]crops[/i]/[i]corps[/i], [i]yourself[/i]/[i]you[/i], [i]warrents[/i], [i]through[/i]/[i]thorough[/i], and [i]was[/i]/[i]were[/i].

creations: I really liked the buildings, especially the tent and solar panels. All the creatures had excellent outfitting, though the Jex’ lightning strikers were larger than I prefer.

environment: Nice use of dirt clearings around fires to make it look like the snow had melted back. It took me a while to find the arrow in act I pointing to the communications equipment. It was odd to see a raised roof over some storage crates since I wouldn’t think that would help much against blowing snow. The camera didn't fit in the dropship very well, but it made sense for it to be somewhat small.

captain competence: A lot of combat is necessary. You can try to avoid it but you’ll enjoy it a lot better with captain attacks, and probably a ranged one. There are powerups but not in great numbers and no grenades either. You often have allies you can depend on to do much of the fighting for you, but there’s one battle against a formidable enemy that I barely got through even with my level 5 warrior captain. There’s a credits and information character who recommends some captain abilities, but that’s a little late since I already started playing.

puzzles: There were at least two hidden objectives that I stumbled upon by just following what the objective text had told me to do. Sometimes the next objective is a ways away and the path to it isn’t abundantly clear (so I at times wondered if I was still going the right way) but I never actually got lost so it was actually nice.

overall: good

Calsonettes - VX Virus

type: Quest author: Bluhman captain: Ape Rahim

summary: A quick adventure suitable for a captain with some combat skills.

story: Another colony with a problem that you need to clean up for them — not much that stood out in this story. I liked the description saying props to certain people for props. There was a point where the morality of your objectives could have been brought into question but it was ignored.

spelling/grammar: I noticed one mispelling: [i]woah[/i].

creations: The Calsonette creatures outfits look great! I also liked the buildings but didn’t really see the monsters all that well. They seemed plenty creepy from a distance though.

environment: The destroyed part of the colony looked like a destroyed version of the part of the colony that was still intact. Somehow there were a couple intact outposts within the destroyed area though. Inside the lab, the health powerup is disguised but the energy powerup isn’t. I like that the fog lifts once you’ve taken care of the virus.

captain competence: You’ll want either sneak or some good combat skills since there are a lot of hostile creatures you need to get past. There is a kill objective though that sneak won’t help you with so you’ll want at least one captain attack for that.

puzzles: You need to find your way to the lab, but there aren’t many choices which way to go so it shouldn’t take long. Everything else is straightforward.

overall: okay