Description
Use a new technology to intercept and destroy the Iceni, but the Iceni isn't the only thing you intercept.

Storyline:
The storyline to this mission doesn't fit in with the storyline of the main FS2 campaign at all, but hey, who said all missions had to? At least you have a chance to alter history – this time by giving Bosch aboard the NTF Iceni a good kicking, thanks to a nifty piece of technology much like the Interdictors of Star Wars. Anyway, as for actual mission stuff, there's good and there's bad. What's good is that there is an attempt at chatter messages, which is quite good, and all of the icons in the fairly informative briefing match up nicely. The bad are the spelling mistakes in messages, briefings and wing names, and the command briefing, which is way too short.

Balance:
The first time I played this mission it was very hard indeed. The second time I got into the swing of this incredibly fast-paced and chaotic mission, and it wasn't so hard. Equip yourself with some anti-subsystem weaponry (tip: Maxim/Prometheus S), as the Shivan corvettes that appear are more heavily armed than most. You'll also have to deal with lots of Shivan bombers, who arrive a little close to their targets for my liking – in one case they're so close to a transport that they just sit still and shoot at it. Your wingmen will drop like flies unless you give them the toughest ships around. The author has given some attention to loadout, and as this mission seems to be set quite late in the war, the ship and weapon selection isn't entirely bad. Besides, the Ares is the best ship in which to complete the mission and still survive.

Design:
When you get into the mission, you'll wonder what's up with the background to it. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how the author has done it. The effect would be quite nice if it weren't for the warping at the edges. Apart from this, directives, beam cannons, waypoints and the like work perfectly well. Once again, messages could be handled better, but they'll appear fine in the mission and I suppose that's the main thing. The action is, however, far too flat (in XZ plane terms, that is) and this really impedes some beam cannon combat – for example the Mjolnir cannons, which can't fire, as nothing comes across their fire arcs.

Gameplay:
This mission really is organized chaos, but in a fairly good way. Depending on the vessels that are destroyed, it can be very hard and unstructured or quite structured, though frantic when the Shivans do pop up. It helps a lot to have a look at the arrival cues of the various vessels before playing the mission, as some ships are cued to arrive when only one ship out of ten is destroyed. Still, if you can get the structure to hold together, it's good fun.

Other Thoughts:
Don't you think that the lines between the various parts of the mission have become a little blurred in this review? To be honest, I'm not quite sure where put a lot of things about missions in terms of category. Maybe it's time I stopped for todayÂ