SneakyJack on 29/1/2009 at 02:43
Night In Rocksbourg 3: Ink And Dust by DrK
Alright, lets get this out of the way first: This mission is pants-shittingly scary. I mean that. Its hard for me to struggle through it due to some of the enemies and scripted events being literally terrifying - and I'm an adult who can handle scary movies and jump-scare movie scenes like nothing.
The third mission in the Rocksbourg series blows the first two away in all areas. The texturing is better (if you can believe that, the bar was set high already!) the design is better (more fancy effects, scripted events and varied enemies), the voice acting is above and beyond the first two (almost professional grade with some very cool voice effects on the souls) and so on.
The souls themselves steal the show - from their great look to the creepy (and funny if you listen to the fellows discussing scrolls and such) sounds they make - Its a shame they aren't part of thief canon.. they very well should be the next faction. I find them more interesting than the keepers at least.
This mission gameplaywise kicks my ass as far as difficulty. The souls themselves are a terrifying foe - and once you anger them you'll have a very hard time matching them in speed or skill.. in other words - they will gang beat you until you reach for the reload button.
The locations housed in this mission are so varied and interesting (but again, scary.. wait until you see the dark zone.) that I encourage everyone to try it once just to see what was accomplished in dromed for this one. Give it a spin - you may need a change of pants or two - but it is more than worth it.
SneakyJack on 29/1/2009 at 02:53
And to take a break from posting tons of reviews and to get back into discussion - I really enjoyed replaying Rocksbourg 3: Ink And Dust due to the Souls being a new faction to the thief world.
I cant think of many fan missions that create their own groups of enemies - can anyone else direct me to any?
Lady Taffer on 29/1/2009 at 08:27
"Curse these glyphs, they make a FOOL OF ME!" :cheeky:
DrK on 29/1/2009 at 13:39
Finally you made screens of my missions, awesome :)
They look incredibly good, sharp, with high definition. It almost looks like you cleaned the textures ! And they show how the first missions lack of details and harmony in colors and textures compared to the third...
And Captain Spooky voice is made by Quincy Jones Wannabe ;)
Quote Posted by SneakyJack
The souls themselves steal the show - from their great look to the creepy (and funny if you listen to the fellows discussing scrolls and such) sounds they make - Its a shame they aren't part of thief canon.. they very well should be the next faction. I find them more interesting than the keepers at least.
Thanks a lot ! :D
all on 29/1/2009 at 14:09
Quote Posted by SneakyJack
Its a shame they aren't part of thief canon.. they very well should be the next faction. I find them more interesting than the keepers at least.
Especially those lame T3 keepers... ungh... :nono: The Souls are actually closer to how I represented the keepers to myself when I first played the TDP when it was released.
SneakyJack on 29/1/2009 at 17:46
Quote Posted by Lady Taffer
"Curse these glyphs, they make a
FOOL OF ME!"
:laff:
Exactly the kind of stuff I was talking about. Even their mumbling sounds were amusing to listen to - partly because of the strange inflection of the voice effects used.
Quote Posted by all
Especially those lame T3 keepers... ungh... The Souls are actually closer to how I represented the keepers to myself when I first played the TDP when it was released.
I agree, the Souls are much more mysterious and less.. well - "safe feeling" I guess than the keepers. With the souls you are actually frightened of the people you are trying to help. :laff: Well, that and the fact that they keep horrifying and sometimes invincible monsters in their home is a bit unsettling as well.
Quote Posted by DrK
Finally you made screens of my missions, awesome :)
They look incredibly good, sharp, with high definition. It almost looks like you cleaned the textures ! And they show how the first missions lack of details and harmony in colors and textures compared to the third...
And Captain Spooky voice is made by Quincy Jones Wannabe ;)
Thanks a lot ! :D
All I did to your screenshots were crank up the contrast and brightness to make them visible like I do all of the screens to attempt to make them "pop" - other than that, I didn't even use a smoothness filter or anything that I recall. Thats all your excellent texture work my friend ;)
Quincy Jones Wannabe did a superb job with the voice acting of course - but the amazing vocal effects (the part where he first begins talking to you and starts to get angry with multilayered spooky voices... yikes) made the character both scary and likable at the same time.
It took me a while to post shots from the Rocksbourg series due to me knowing I'd have to play through Ink and Dust again and I had to mentally prepare :laff:
Edit: I just got an error that I included more than nine images in my post with this one - smilies really don't need to be included as images.
SneakyJack on 29/1/2009 at 23:18
I think the most frustrated I've ever been with a fan mission had to be my recent playthrough of Calendra's Legacy Part 2: Midnight At Murkbell.
Just about everything I dislike about a fan mission was thrown into this one all at once. :laff:
* Timed objective? Check.
* Forced ghosting? Check.
* Both at the same time? Double check.
* Completely unarmed? Check.
* Undead everywhere? Check.
* Putting undead in every main location entrance without giving you any weapons on easy difficulty? Yeap.
I reloaded about 20 times after being massacred by hammer haunts and finally gave up. I replayed it for screenshots knowing that I did not enjoy it the first time - so what can you do, really.
I'm sure ghosters loved this mission series and it is very good looking well built - but its not for me. Seeing that it came out around 2000 I bet it was amazing for its time, though. The area is absolutely huge.
SneakyJack on 30/1/2009 at 00:41
Calendra's Legacy Part 1: A Meeting With Basso by Purah
Released around 2002 - I had consistently read Calendra's Legacy on many lists of the best missions of all time here at ttlg - so I decided to replay it for the sake of posting screenshots and giving my impressions.
This mission set is huge, varied and impressive indeed. The scripted events are impressive in themselves, and the objectives are creative and varied. Overall this is a very good mission set, though for me personally it was not my cup of tea.
Part 1 has you meeting with Basso - I don't think the name could make your objective more clear than that. This mission is interesting in that the way it is set up is pretty non linear in its objectives - you could spend 3-4 hours exploring and collecting loot or you could spend 3-4 minutes meeting with basso and hightailing it to the inn to collect your room key. The choice is yours. This mission was fun gameplay wise, and has come creative design. If you've read any of my posted impressions before you'll know that I really enjoy bits of friendly AI and think it adds alot to immersion and believability (in that day and age other than posting flyers everywhere, how would the guards know who to look for in a public place and why would every one of them want to kill you on sight unless you were at a private residence? I like that missions like this take that into account) and the area itself was varied and interesting.
The difficulty of this one is extremely easy as long as you don't get busted doing anything thiefy - but that ends the mission automatically so you'll know if you do.
Overall, I enjoyed the first mission the most out of the three. I like "don't get caught stealing things" more than forced ghosting, at least. More on that later.
SneakyJack on 30/1/2009 at 00:54
Calendra's Legacy Part 2: Midnight At Murkbell by Purah
This mission.. Oh - this mission.
Never before have I been that simultaneously frustrated and curious with a mission. The large city is very nicely built and the gameplay possibilities are very high had the undead portion been left out of this mission - but the way it is.. its just not for me.
Why was I frustrated?
You begin the mission with a 10 minute time limit forced upon your shoulders. The only thing I dislike more than timed missions are forced ghosting missions.. and this one has both in the first 10 minutes!
Once you manage to overcome the first objective you get your glimmer of hope - you get to grab your stash and run amok on the city. Well, you think so anyway.. You grab your stash and are immediately thrown into the night of the living dead instead of a fun city filled with guards.
The problem? On easy difficulty you are left with nothing but a blackjack, a few fire arrows and a metric ton of undead. This wouldnt be so bad if the undead were not hammer haunts - and were not standing in every important passageway.
Needless to say, I didn't finish this mission. I didn't even get into the most interesting looking buildings like the museum - I spent the two hours I tried playing this mission reloading after getting swatted into the abyss by the super sensitive AI hammer haunts. Had I been given a sword - I may have finished this one - but I didn't find out until two hours in and reading an old forum thread that you get some sort of dagger on the higher difficulty levels.. which seems sort of backwards to me.
At any rate - the mission is great in scope and in the technical and aesthetic aspects.. but it just was not fun to me. At the time of its release it was probably a sight to behold, but I probably won't be going back to it.
SneakyJack on 30/1/2009 at 01:02
Calendra's Legacy Part 3: A Winters Eve by Purah
This mission has alot of great scripting, some interesting thieves highway rooftop shenanigans and overall was less frustrating than the first two. The winter setting was also a nice touch - it added alot to the atmosphere and provided some variety.
