[ Transscript of review for FragHouse Invasion 3.1 | Posted by Bean on 2004-07-04 | Score: 8.5 ]
Fraghouse Invasion is a twist on the regular old Invasion from Epic. The monsters spawn in a preset place and you have many different weapons to defend yourself with. Not just the substandard Epic standard fare. They work well, just not against monsters in Invasion. Weapons are sort of basic so I’ll just breeze through these.
You start with a Heavy Assault Rifle. It’s weak as hell, go get something else. The mines it fires are nicebut require good aim.
The Turbo Laser is a faster, yellow-coloured beam firing shock rifle, that looks a lot cooler. Do a combo, and the effec t is just purely amazing.
The Particle Gun is a faster more damaging Link gun that fires purple shots. Secondary fires a particle bomb that does pretty good damage.
The Pistol is torn straight out of Unreal 2. It’s, well, a pistol. You have to know how these work by now. This one doesn’t need clips, and secondary fires an explosive shot that damages opponents as if they weren’t wearing armour.
The Widowmaker is the Unreal 2 sniper rifle. The zoom is that of the UT2K4 sniper rifle. Does 120 damage per shot to the body. Headshots are more deadly.
The Combat Shotgun is yet another out-of-Unreal 2 weapon. Primary fires a pellet spread, secondary fires a round that travels a short distance then explodes. Causes massive damage. This is sort of an oxymoron, as since it is a shotgun it wants to be close to its target but if you get too close firing will injure you too.
[edit: You saw nothing about a double barreled shotgun. That weapon is from a different pack that I\'m too damned used to using. There is NO double barreled shotgun in Fraghouse Invasion. Forgive my idiocy.-Nem]
The Riot Shotgun is an instant-hit flak cannon, more or less. Secondary fires more shards. Very powerful, can take down brutes and skaarj in one hit.
The Underslinger fires incendiary bolts in primary and rockets in secondary. Not my favourite but has its uses. This one’s a “use if you have nothing else” weapon for me.
The Volva is an M16 with a zoom, the BS69 machine gun is a powerful machine gun that fires even more powerful bullets in secondary, the Flare Launcher fires unguided “flares” (they’re rockets with better effects), the Laser Rifle is your basic sniper rifle with lasers instead of bullets. There’s a Razorbomb that fires ripper blades (!!!) In primary and grenades in secondary.
There’s a Plasma Grenade Launcher with some of the coolest effects I’ve seen short of U4E, the Singularity Cannon fires this... thing.. of sorts... that kills most anything it touches (it’s a mini black hole so there you go) and then we have the Yichus Cannon, which fires Goliath tank shells at a rate of about 5 a second.They don’t do as much damage as the Goliath shells but in the long run they’ll do MORE because it just fires so damn much faster.
Of course these all sound overpowered until you see your opposition. Warlords, brutes, krall, new enemies like the Solid Shot Sniper and the Turncoat Soldier, the Ictus (which I LOATHE... flying skaarj that fire super-speed rockets... I have them disabled
It’s not just defending yourself this time around either. FHI has introduced small and shallow, but pretty fun maps called Objective maps. They are prefixed with FHI-OBJ. In three of the maps, you have to attack and reach a certain point before you get killed. Sounds easy but it’s not! In the last Objective map you have to defend a portal and prevent the enemies from reaching it. I don’t care for this one myself.
Not enough yet? FHI introduces end bosses. These maps are prefixed with FHI-BOSS. After the second-last wave is over, the boss spawns on the last one. He spawns BEFORE the wave countdown, which really should be fixed. Make sure you’re not in any vehicles and that you don’t need your Translocator anymore because they all disappear. If you’re in a vehicle at the time, boom, you’re dead. The bosses have an amazing 20,000 health each and definitely require teamwork to take it down, or lots and lots of patience if you’re playing by yourself with no bots like I do. And you can’t screw up and die, orits game over. In a team game you can afford a team member or even two, in a one player game... no messups! The bosses are just bigger versions of a Warlord, Mr. Crow, a Pupae, a spider bomb, and Xan. Still, these guys are tough as hell. Definitely a challenge to bring down with a team let alone by yourself.
There could be a couple of improvements. Maybe a little more to do in the FHI Objective maps. They don’t have to be assault sized, nor should they be, but they’re just over too quick. Second, I wouldn’t mind if the translocators and the vehicles were killed AFTER the boss spawns... and speaking of the boss spawning, it would be nice if he spawned AFTER the countdown to afford you a chance to get out of your vehicles and get into position.
One other thing I’d like to see is some way of telling how much health the boss has, preferably numerically. You know where your frags are on-screen up in the left corner under the timer? That space isn’t being used for anything in FHI so I see no reason a numerical boss health readout can’t go there. These would make FHI damn near perfect. It’s what Invasion should have been., with the monsters congregating in one place and trying to overrun you. You have to give this a try for sure cause you’re missing something amazing if you don’t.
Nemephosis
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