[ Transcript of review for Arkon Weapons Beta 3 | Posted by Nemephosis on 2003-11-04 | Score: 9 ]
Blasters away, men, there’s killing to be done!
Well first if you’re wondering where the other two versions of Arkon are, beta 1 wasn’t submitted for review and someone didn’t get around to reviewing Beta 2 like he told the author he would. What? What are you looking at me like that for.....
Well if someone had reviewed the last version like he was supposed, he could compare the two, but he didn’t instead, so I’ll have to make this a “first review” where I describe your implements of destruction. Now I know there’s some of you who don’t enjoy this, so just skip to the bottom and move on cause I’m not teaching a class here.
Your implements of destruction are:
Thermo Blasters: These dual pistols (I started with two anyway...) are rapid fire heat rays. They fire out little red bolts that do pretty good damage if you have good accuracy and fire both. Primary fires the left pistol, secondary fires the right one, and they can both be fired at the same time for a lot more damage but of course at twice the ammo expense. A good starting weapon. If you aim at an enemy long enough, it makes a beep sound and locks on. The beams then have a slight homing property to them to help you hit with them.
Weapon 3 replaces the Bio Rifle with the Desintegrator. I’m not sure if it should be spelled that way, but if it isn’t, it’s “disintegrator”. The faster you can press the fire button, the faster the Desintegrator fires. The less of a charge it has, the lower the damage it deals with every shot. It replenishes very quickly though, so ammo is never a problem, but dealing high damage consistently might be. Good weapon overall. Secondary is a zoom to help you peg those campin’ bastards. Don't worry, it does not hit horribly off center like it might look in the picture over there: The decal disappears fast even on "decal stay high" and to get that pic I had to fire really fast while moving then hit F9 straight away so I could get the decal it made. It hits dead on, not what it looks like in that pic.
The Shock Rifle is replaced with the Thermal Projector. One of the cooler weapons I’ve seen in a while now, it is simply a recoloured Lightning Gun model, but holding primary emits a high powered, very hot laser capable of searing the flesh (or metal as the case may be) off your opponent in seconds, if that. The muzzle flare is amazing on this weapon. Secondary is zoom again.Power of this magnitude comes at a cost, specifically the ammo cost. My God I haven’t seen a weapon chew up ammo this fast before, not even the Weapons of Evil flamethrower. Pack a lot cause ammo in this weapon goes down faster than a bucket of fried chicken at Oprah’s place.
The Plasma Gun tries to make the Link Gun its bitch (I can say that, right? Wait, yeah I can.) It boasts a much higher rate of fire on primary fire, and holding secondary charges up a huge plasma shot capable of Instagib like properties when fully charged. Leaves a nice little lightning trail in secondary too. Merely for looks but it’s the little things like this that let you know an author has put a lot of work into their mod and really cares about it. However I’d still give the edge to the Link Gun cause of the linking up you can do with it. Good luck finding any of that online though, I swear most people don’t know what the LINK gun does.
Meanwhile the Fusion Gatling Gun DOES make the Minigun its bitch. Boasting a hefty as hell two-second spinup time (the author says 4 but it isn’t) the firepower that you get out of this thing is well worth the compromise. Pressing secondary makes the gun go “CLICK”. Not that impressive until you realize that it actually locks the barrels in a rotating position so that you don’t have to spin up between volleys of shots. However your walking speed is reduced while the barrels are spinning, and is nearly non existant when you’re firing. Think of a class-style mod having a heavy gunner, and their armaments. Heavy guns, walk slow, built like a brick ****house and deal ten tons of damage. This gun is the Heavy Gunners “main” weapon, if you will. As such it’s certainly not a weapon to go on the attack with but makes one hell of a defense.
Our Flak Cannon replacement is the Combat Mortar. Primary launches what I think is an EMP grenade of sorts that leaves a wiry, stripped down shock combo explosion when it hits a solid surface. When it hits a softer target, it doesn’t explode but deals a lot more damage for a direct hit. Holding primary charges the grenade. Secondary does the same thing except your view changes to that of the grenade, so you can see what it “sees” (as much as a grenade can “see” anyway) as it flies. Makes a great “scout” type weapon as you can fire the grenade up ahead of you and look around with it until it blows up that is. And you might get lucky and peg some sorry bastard with it too. If you get hit with it you take residual damage from the electric current (one damage/three seconds three or four times) and your shields disappear, it seems. Mine didn’t come back. If they were supposed to, this is a possible bug. If they weren’t, then it works as intended.
The Rocket Launcher gets the boot in favour of the Missile Launcher. Not a real fundamental difference, they both go boom, but what the Missile Launcher lacks in finesse and versatility it makes up in sheer power. For starters, assuming no shields a UT2K3 rocket does 90 damage with a full on shot. The Missile Launcher kills in one head on shot. The missiles are also about three times as fast as rockets too. So it’s a great medium range weapon, better than the RL. Secondary bounces out a grenade with very minor incendiary properties. Like, really minor. That needs to be increased.
The Lightning Gun gives way to the Mass Driver. It’s a railgun that doesn’t fire through walls and the shots explode when they hit. I think any FPS player is familiar with what a railgun is, so I don’t think I need to say too much here. Secondary zooms.
The Redeemer’s replacement is the Desintegrator grenade. It’s a grenade (REALLY?!) that spews out tiny put really powerful green particles when it hits. Getting hit by these is not pleasant, and has the Desintegrator weapon effect in that you will die very fast when hit.
There’s also a laser tripbomb. I’m not sure what they replace as it’s on weapon slot 1, but you know what a tripbomb is if you’ve played Duke Nukem. You put it on the wall, it makes a red line and when you break that line the bomb goes boom and you go dead. There’s one of them as well. Altfire.... I don’t know what it does. All I know is you blow up and it’s real painful. I think it’s a suicidal attack.
There’s another grenade that is like a redeemer explosion, nothing to write much about. I’m not sure when I picked it up but it might have come bundled with the laser bombs cause I sure didn’t see one before then.
On the road to greatness, but every road has some speedbumps
While this is indeed one really fun mod to play and I thank the author for bringing more quality to the UT2K3/4 scene, there’s a couple niggling little problems with it. Or maybe it’s just annoying me, I dunno.
First, the shaking, or “recoil” if you will. I have it disabled in UT2K3 for a really good reason, in that I get motion sick if I have to put up with the Minigun and friends causing a virtual earthquake on my screen. The Thermo Blasters, Plasma Gun, and Fusion Gatling all shake the screen. It would be great if you could make them not do that.
Second, your weapons don’t seem to be classed right if at all. Pressing F3 gives you a listing of all the weapons you used that game. Well, the list is, um, wrong. Weapons either don’t show up with a name in the list and have a blank entry for a name (but it has a kill/death count) or they don’t even show up in the list at all, even as blanks. Just press F3, you’ll see what I mean, I’m not gonna sit here and try to explain it. Get a kill with the Desintegrator rifle, then with the Fusion Gatling. See the weapon entries? Now get a kill with the Thermo Blasters and the Missile Launcher. The Blasters don’t even show up in the list and the Missile Launcher has no name. Actually a lot of them don’t even show up in the list. Oops.
Other than those tweaks, there’s not much holding this back from being one of the top tier weapon mods out there. Great work. Those tweaks would be nice though, especially the “no more motion sickness” thing
Nemephosis
