Description
Atack an heavily defended repair base.

Storyline:
The usual story: lead our intrepid warriors against the not-so-nice Hammer of Light. A few questions naged at me, though: Why aren't we sending any capital ships? Why are 4 Hercules expected to effectively protect 12 Ursas? Why the hell do the HoL pigs have an Arcadia? Even in this updated version, that's not explained. And if this is a repair facility, why are there no damaged ships? Simply inserting a few crippled cruisers and fighters being "serviced" by docking freighters and support ships would go a long way towards making this seem real. The briefing is rather mediocre as well, and in the revised edition it is actually worse - much overlapping of icons. Finally, there is NO debriefing and the inflight messages lack any semblance of punctuation or non-capitalization.

Balance:
The chance of victory in HoLA is similar to the odds of the proverbial snowflake in hell. Actually, it's more similar to the chances of a disabled, Great War-era Hermes surrounded by 16 Hercules and 35 Ursas with dual-fire Harbingers. Okay, so it's not <i>that</i> bad, but while the two Typhons fall quick enough with some not-so-gentle prodding from the Ursas' Harbingers, but then, when it's time to tackle the Arcadia, things get hairy. You see, the arrival of an overwhelming Shivan force results in the lightning-paced splattering of the Ursas, and a single Herc, with about 30 Shivan fighters on its tail, is, to say the least, insufficient to deal with the Arcadia. The Typhon and Aten in the revised version do help a bit, but this is still impossible.

Design:
First off, I'd like to mention that there's a nasty case of Endor Syndrome going up here. The numbers of cap ships are enough to give any computer a case of the fits. That said, on to the other problems. The enemy is easily avoided while the Ursas clobber the Typhon destroyers, with only a bomber or two being taken out of space by the Vasudan craft. However, upon the annihliation of the second Typhon, two Lillith cruisers and a bunch of fighters enter the fray. Dealing with them would be hard enough, but then comes Mr. Lucifer. Yes, the LUCIFER comes into the battle, deploying yet more fighters. The Ursas are all quickly disposed of, before they can do critical damage to the Arcadia, and the player is left to try to survive long enough to jump out and read "No debriefing for mission: Apocolips". There are no messages to explain why the Lucifer is in this, only a copied Volition WAV announcing its arrival. No, let me rephrase that - in the newest version, an "explanation" is provided "It must be the Lucifers twin". That gives you an idea of the inflight messages, which have no punctuation. The HoL says, "remember we are ally with you"... but can they really speak to the Shivans? And why can WE hear them?

Gameplay:
As you may imagine, things are less than fun in Apocolips. Gameplay goes from boring as the Ursas dance around the Typhons to frustrating as all of the player's wingmen are annihilated in short order by Lucifer & Co. And no fun at any time... The Lucifer is still not explained. The creator seems to have adressed the problems I brought up initially without actually understanding the underlying problems.

Other Thoughts:
Why are the two WAV files extracted at all? They could have been simply referenced from inside the VP file.