T2
FM
So clearly there has been an enormous amount of work put into this campaign. Its detailed and has a tone that is very promising. But why in lords name it went overboard with whimsical non-sensual progression and objectives.
The entire campaign suffers from Brilliant level design and scripting being plagued by bad game design decisions that attempts to make sense of the missions. It feels like Zontic took a page out of LGS design dogma with "Design levels first and then think what kind of missions takes place there", but Zontic forgot to think about the role of the protagonist in his missions. "Hard" for sakes of "hard" is not game design, overcoming "hard" is, and that's the biggest flaw of the whole endeavour.
It could have been the greatest campaign ever if not for a few things:
- Restore the Classic menu and make due with a custom mission banner.
- Remove the Pornographic music from the menu, with hundreds of quickloads I dread opening the mission if I need to hear some boogaloo music with moaning women every time I do. I went into the FM files and replaced the cursed song with static. Only way to open the campaign and enjoy it.
- Zontic is clearly a battle hardened loot placer, most of the items that are suppose to be "fun" to find have frustrating placements, unless you spend hours looking at the ground and every weird brick. Game sets you up as a thief, as someone who can "spot" a valuable item hidden away because its sticking out for "you", but not the normal humans who placed items there in the first place. Entering a room and scanning is not enough with Zontic, Its not even enough to inspect a room thoroughly. You have to check if the floorboards or ceiling panels are interactive for the off chance its where the main objective wants you to go.
- This needs the community effort of Voice acting in English and lorification. The writing is pretty bad, story makes no sense.
- 4-5 Top-notch maps mixed with filler that destroys the overall impression.
- Repurpose the goals to flow with the levels, not against the levels.
Mission 1:
- Its been said times and times again by others, but you really need to skip the first mission.
- Its extremely hard, non-user friendly and linear, relying heavily on finding objects hidden away in corners of corners under floorboards of floorboards. I couldn't stand it after an hour of force play and Ctrl+Alt+Shift+End'ed to the next one.
Mission 2:
- Excellent start of the campaign! (Thats what Im telling myself when I play it). Almost perfect except the backtracking to pump rooms. - The tiny rooms with auto closing doors were driving me insane tho.
- Ending is excelent, fun and well scripted.
- Strip the campaign of all the custom music, it doesnt work in 99% cases and is outdated at this point. Use more ambiant soundtracks from obscure movies.
Mission 3:
- Excellent, albeit for Intro and outro sections
Mission 4:
- Excellent
Mission 5:
- Testing Area enemy glitched out so couldn't open the hatch with the wrench. Had to cheat skip
- Extremely interesting to explore, a lot of love went into the believability of the factory, amazingly detailed and animated.
- Impossible to complete without a guide. A tiny triangle of fuel on the floor? Jesus.
- Back and forth running is getting on my nerves, a big thing in the entire campaign
Mission 6:
- Needs remastering. The entire level looks like a Russian Quest from Petyka and Vasiliy Ivanovich where you need to combine obscure items to get a proper quest item.
Mission 7:
- Needs remastering. Its a overscaled empty-ass Mont Saint-Michel. Skipped.
Mission 8:
- Nice separation of zones, but the linearity of activatable objectives is killing me
- Impossible without a guide, objectives you need to collect are extremely hidden in places where you'd not look organically even when looking for loot.
- Excellent use of Human Actors and interactive NPC's
- Amazing full screen effect's in HUD
Mission 9:
- Initially I was happy with a huge mansion, I was a bit concerned initially, if Zontik wanted me to combine a pile of dirt with a balloon to get into the house, but noting like that happened, in fact there were many entries into the house at my disposal.
- Then I was extatic about the detail of inner layouts, shame that 90% of scrolls and books are not interactive.
- I was even ok with the what seemed like locked doors, excited to find keys for those.
- And then there it was, the Zontik-stopper. Thats what Im calling it. The requirement to find X items before a door on the other side of the mansion opens. The "Track back to the beginning of the level where a fence is now slightly bended" and thereby critical to mission completion. The running from one end of the level to another for one item, oh crist.
- As you can imagine I skipped the ending of the mission, it was unbearable. "Oh now that you've discovered that you need a very extremely specific item for this part, you need to track back 10 minutes to get the item that has now became active", there are is no fun in this. Why would you do it to me Zontik.
- Some keys and items are findable "Organically" by looking, while others are a 1 pixel high line hidden behind a bookshelf in a random room that looks like 20 other rooms. Now there's a hatch to an attic that you cant do anything with on expert cuz theres a book case blocking the way? Whyyyyyy?! You find a code but cant use it becase its not time to the story yet. Jesus.
- I dread that I have to go back and collect the items for the secret 10th mission.
Mission 10 [Secret]
[1 year later]
Pretty good level, very nice quality and attention to detail.
But as other levels, theres a weird dumb prop goose chase after items back and forth at the start and end of the level.
Interesting use of carrying a barrel of fuel that triggers automatically at a certain spot
Impossible to complete without a guide, the logic of progression is top notch shizo.
Mission 11
- Great level design varity and complexity
- Insane wild item goose hunt and usage
- Back and forth running
- Thank god this nightmare is over.
Completing this campaign is impossible without Fortuni's guide. You can sense his frustrations on every page of the walkthrough, something you would also surely experience in plenty.
thumb_up thumb_down Votes: 8
Thanks for the extensive review. Someone send me the campaign after it was released, I started it but stopped shortly after seing the whole mess of the first mission.
The voice acting is also very unpleasant. Not because of the language but it just sounds odd. I don´t know why the author didn´t ask people of the community to do it.
Agree with the menu and the music, both are not really needed.
I guess I didn´t miss much. A lot of content, but I don´t want it.
thumb_up thumb_down Votes: 2
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