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.
◄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
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
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