User:Misterhaan/HUAR

Lost Contact - Part 2

type: Story (I would have marked it attack) creator: TheBuzzard captain: Wrothkar

summary: A quick adventure suitable for captains equipped to fight. Can jump in without having played the previous parts in the series.

story: Good, simple description hooks interest. It ended abruptly though and didn’t feel resolved. It’s part 2 of a series but didn’t rely on having played part 1 to know what was going on. Simple and short.

spelling/grammar: Not enough errors to significantly get in the way of enjoying the adventure. I noticed a [i]they’re[/i] that should have been [i]their[/i] and [i],ission[/i] instead of [i]mission[/i].

creations: Buildings looked good. Creatures mostly looked good but some were strange and could have been better outfitted.

environment: The camera started on the wrong side of the wall — should have started the captain a little further away from it so there was room for the camera. Falling down the elevator shaft was a bit disorienting (took a bit to figure out which way was out), but that seems reasonable. Convincing ship interior.

captain competence: A number of creatures with 50 health had to be defeated, and some had missile launchers. I had to be careful even though my captain had all warrior weapons. There were a couple health and energy powerups but they didn’t seem to respawn and taking hits from 3 missile attacks at once would take out most of my captains. There were grenades that took 1500 off buildings, but they could have been set to regenerate for captains without weapons. I wouldn’t recommend this for a captain without ranged warrior weapons.

puzzles: Some objectives hidden, and you might sometimes miss inspecting something and then get stuck. Other than that, what you need to do is obvious even if it is a hidden objective. Nothing you need to figure out, and you probably don’t even need to read anything to complete the mission.

overall: average

Blowing up the warehouse

type: none creator: Damnagoras captain: Andarius

summary: a quick mission where you blow up a building. that’s really all there is to it.

story: a guy in an alley wants you to blow up the warehouse, so you do. that is all.

spelling/grammar: didn’t notice any errors — hooray!

creations: city buildings were a little cartoony and the one creature could have looked better.

environment: buildings should have been sunken into the ground a bit so they don’t look to be floating. believable city environment.

captain competence: any captain should be able to complete this mission without issue.

puzzles: simple, unhidden objectives only.

overall: below average.

Dark Labyrinth

type: Puzzle author: Arisilde captain: Ape Rahim

summary: A very difficult maze in a dark setting.

story: Not much of a story — you get stuck in the labyrinth and figure that if you get to the center you can probably get out.

spelling/grammar: I didn’t notice anything, but there wasn’t much text either.

creations: A handful of creepy things haunt the maze. I couldn’t see them all that well but they did a good of looking creepy and crawly. The maze walls actually look like really good boulder walls.

environment: It’s definitely dark! The darkness, the music, and the sound of creatures stirring while you frantically try to find your way to the center of the labyrinth give it an anxious feel.

captain competence: There are respawning creatures in the labyrinth so you’ll probably need a captain attack, health regeneration, or sneak to survive them.

puzzles: The point of the adventure is that it’s a maze, which is a form of puzzle. I have not yet been able to actually complete the maze without looking at a map I traced the route on after pulling off the ceiling and taking a screenshot.

overall: above average

◄Live or Die►

type: Explore author: pelicanthor captain: Ape Rahim

summary: Explore a beautiful island to find the supplies you need to survive until help arrives. Most acts can be completed in multiple different ways, so you may even find yourself wanting to try it again a few times until you’ve experienced them all.

story: A basic story of being stranded on an island and needing to survive until you are rescued. There are multiple ways of completing each act, giving this adventure a unique replay value.

spelling/grammar: I only noticed one typo: [i]becuase[/i].

creations: The turtles face animated in a strange and disturbing way, but only the first time I talked to him. The leaves kept disappearing and reappearing throughout the whole time I played. I think both of these were just flukes but I don’t normally see that sort of thing. The few creations in this adventure looked pretty good, and I had a laugh over the rescue boat at the end.

environment: Excellent use of scenery pieces and effects to create a beautiful island. I’m still not quite sure which part of the island was the beach, which was somewhat frustrating when it told me I needed to find supplies there. I only played once so far, so didn’t experience the random start position that it sounded like it has.

captain competence: Any captain can complete this mission as no captain skills are required.

puzzles: Most acts have an exploration-based puzzle, where you need to find the appropriate supplies to complete the goal. You tend to have a few choices as to how exacly you want to complete it. The turtle who follows you around tends to give pretty specific hints, and talking to him is one of the goals just about every act.

overall: above average

Super-Gravitonga!

type: Quest author: Parkaboy captain: Ape Rahim

summary: A quick adventure where you need to safely bring a criminal to justice.

story: It’s actually not a Gravitonga adventure — the stadium is closed due to thievery! The thief was named Kleptlug, and kleptomaniac is someone who has a strong urge to steal everything, so I liked the naming there.

spelling/grammar: The only error I noticed was in the failure message: [i]escape/escaped[/i].

creations: This adventure has the usual high quality level of Parkaboy’s creations.

environment: I liked how the edges of the roads were lined. The city was very simple but that made sense since it was pretty much just an arena and a hotel.

captain competence: A captain attack or two is definitely helpful as there are creatures who will kill your objective if you don’t keep them at bay. With some planning ahead you should be able to take care of them beforehand if you have weaker attacks. I didn’t see any powerups or grenades to help.

puzzles: There’s a sort of a puzzle in luring the thief without the animals killing him and without getting caught in his trap. My first attempt the animals killed the thief, and my second I wasn’t far enough ahead of him and got caught in the trap with him.

overall: above average

Before the Light

type: Puzzle author: Slyth33 captain: Ape Rahim

summary:

story: The story is optional since there isn’t much of it in the normal flow of the adventure. I liked the way the altars spoke in rhyme and the inspect text telling the stories of those who had come through in the past.

spelling/grammar: In reading through everything I found a couple errors: [i]Fithful[/i], [i]ahaed[/i], and [i]replenised[/i]

creations: There are no creations in this adventure, so nothing to say here . . .

environment: Excellent use of scenery pieces throughout the adventure, which of course it would need to do since there aren’t any creations. The effects also added a lot, often by obscuring your objective. I enjoyed jumping into the unknown, discovering invisible bridges, peeking under smoke and fog to see where to go next, and just taking in all the sights!

captain competence: You don’t need any specific abilities, but you might be able to cheat some of the puzzles with enough jump / glide skills. My captain was able to climb back up a cliff using level 1 jump after falling off an invisible bridge.

puzzles: Most of 5 altars you must reach have some sort of puzzle you have to solve in order to reach the altar. I think exactly one of them gave a hint about solving the puzzle, but they’re not overly difficult.

overall: above average

Snowed In

type: collect author: Xenopologist captain: Ape Rahim

summary: A fun bounce adventure with nice-looking creations.

story: More story than you might expect for a bouncing / collection adventure, which makes it more fun. The Andurith on the shuttle says the solar trees are behind him but they’re actually off to his left.

spelling/grammar: I didn’t notice any errors, though there were more quotation marks than I would have used.

creations: I really liked the Andurith creatures. The solar trees, shuttle, and cannon also looked great.

environment: I’m not sure why exactly, but I thought it would have made more sense for the shuttle to actually be over the area where the solar trees were. Still it was a nice winter-wonderland setting.

captain competence: It would definitely be helpful to have glide here, but I got through it with just level 1 jump. It might be difficult to make it from the shuttle to the first solar tree with just running (though sprint probably helps too).

puzzles: Straightforward objectives, but some strategy is required in order to reach some of the higher / further away snow piles. Thankfully you don’t need to collect ALL of them.

overall: above average

a Tale to Tell

type: story author: emperormiguel captain: (locked)

summary: I was only able to get as far as act VI because the character I had to give an item to would not take it. In order to complete it, I played it from the editor and once I had tried to give the item to complete act VI, I skipped to the next act. One person completed it though but another had the same percentage as me, so I’m calling this one impossible (red face).

story: It’s framed as a legend told to youngsters, but you’re actually playing the legend to tell the story. The story was set up well in the beginning, but then didn’t develop as I progressed through the acts and then ended abruptly (apparently it’s the first in a series). In act IV the objective is to talk to Thunder strike, who is still in the village, but you need to talk to the version of him outside of the village so the one in the village really shouldn’t have been there anymore. It looks like both are in the game for every act.

spelling/grammar: The title starts with a lower case letter. There are rarely spaces after the punctuation (commas, periods, or colons). [i]what is the latest reports[/i], [i]thier[/i]/[i]they’re[/i], [i]your[/i]/[i]you’re[/i], [i]do you both have plan[/i], [i]honnor[/i], [i]prescence[/i], [i]valuebal[/i], [i]will[/i]/[i]we’ll[/i], [i]alot[/i], and [i]their[/i]/[i]there[/i].

creations: The main adventure screenshot is interesting (though I didn’t see it in the actual adventure), and the others would be too except that they are clearly from within the editor since you can see all the highlighting and respawn numbers that the editor puts in. The villagers were well outfitted but could have looked better with more color. Something like Zar village is green and another village is purple, etc. There are some great scenery creations like the shipwreck, the bridge, the dock, the boat, the ruins, etc.

environment: The captain starts out with his back right up against a building, which put the camera actually inside the building so I saw a close-up of the captain's back through the crossbars of the window. The hostiles in the “level 1” area seemed to respawn too quickly — I’d have just walked by and then as I walked back there they were again. Also many enemies had charge and / or freeze blast, and it is not fun to stand there stunned and / or frozen unable to do anything. Everything seemed unreasonably close together, with the exception of the imperial scout camp.

captain competence: N/A: locked captain.

puzzles: Everything I got to seemed pretty straightforward. If you were able to find enough coins you could buy access to a map which would help you to know where to go in case you had trouble with that.

overall: impossible

Flaxius - The Staff (V2 quikfix)

type: Puzzle author: Bluhman captain: Ape Rahim

summary: Some very difficult puzzles make completing this great-looking adventure feel like an accomplishment. It has four puzzles to solve which can be done in any order.

story: It seemed to fit into a larger story — I’m fairly certain it’s part of a series. Each of the four puzzles aligns with one of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. The air and fire puzzles had some interesting reading and there was some non-puzzle-related inspect text to give a little more of an idea what was going on.

spelling/grammar: I didn’t notice any errors.

creations: Everything looked great! Most of the creations in this adventure are buildings, including a lot of great-looking archways.

environment: Great use of visual and sound effects to suit the elements. I really liked how the dirt roads looked on the black planet. Great placement of scenery pieces as well.

captain competence: No special abilities are required so any captain can complete this adventure.

puzzles: There are four separate puzzles in this adventure that you can complete in any order. They are more difficult than most puzzles you tend to see in adventures, but (with the possible exception of one) can be solved via means other than guess-and-check or peeking in the editor. I found the earth puzzle to be the easiest and still don’t understand what was going on with the water puzzle (solved that one by guess-and-check). For the fire puzzle it makes a big difference if you know how to play chess. The air puzzle took me a lot longer than it should have to figure out, and each time you choose wrong you have to quit the mission and start over. Messing up the fire puzzle gets you killed. The earth and water puzzles you can keep trying the wrong thing as long as you like (so long as you don’t fall in the water.

overall: amazing

Capture the flag

type: Collect Author: Raptorsaurus captain: Ape Rahim

summary: An interesting idea that just wasn’t put together very well and ended up too difficult for most captains.

story: The story is simple but I like the concept: a town has split into two factions (which are different races for some reason) and you have to help one of them get the gold back that was stolen by the other faction. The title doesn’t quite fit since there are no flags in the adventure: you’re “capturing” sacks of gold. The beginning and ending text are very short and aren’t specific to this adventure.

spelling/grammar: There wasn’t much text (and a lot of it was repeated), so these two errors stood out more: [i]lets[/i]/[i]let’s[/i], [i]whats[/i]/[i]what’s[/i]

creations: The creatures aren’t very good (posed such that they would probably fall forward) but are outfitted better than just slapped on outfitter parts. The buildings that make up the town look great! The bridge between the two halves of town is very narrow and plain though.

environment: The camp where you meet the Jeggeras leader is crowded and has a small entrance. The entire town feels a bit crowded, and it’s odd to me that it’s arranged as two squares divided by a moat with a narrow bridge across it (that the creatures of course don’t use).

captain competence: The enemies hit hard with ranged weapons and respawn quickly. I was the first one to get to 100% on this adventure and managed that by turning on sneak for the entire adventure. The creator of the adventure (along with most others who attempted it) was apparently only able to make it to 14.2%.

puzzles: You sort of need to be in two places at once to both keep the invaders out of your camp and go retrieve more stolen goods from the other camp, so there’s opportunity for some strategy there. You have to do it 4 times in a row, so that gives you the opportunity to tune your strategy.

overall: bad

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