Description
Five years after the second Great War, you have been assigned to help escort a convoy carrying the pieces to the new Knossoss device. This device will be used to reastablish the jump node to Earth, so it is imperative that it arrives safely.

Storyline:
I was left quietly impressed by the Command briefing to this mission. Not only was it long enough to qualify to be a ‘real’ Command briefing, and contained no spelling errors, and the author had used some appropriate Command animations, but they had also shown remarkable restraint and had the GTVA develop another Colossus, but made the completion date 15 years distant. Bravo to them, as the original took 20 years to construct and I doubt whether they could just throw another together in the 5 years most people choose. Anyway, end of rant. The briefing is equally good, with correct icons and everything. There are plenty of messages, and they’re good too. The debriefing is thorough and well written, so good all around here.

Balance:
The balance in Surprise Guest is good. It does what it’s supposed to – at least, I think so. Don’t worry about the beginning – it’s meant to happen (I’m trying not to spoil it here ). After that there’s some combat with small capital ships and freighters, though some of it is a little unnecessary – I managed to destroy one Cain before it had slowed down from emerging from subspace. There’s some good dogfighting and some small bomber interception as well, with tense moments as you try to stop a Shivan wing from wiping out a vulnerable freighter, for one, as well as a pyrotechnic finale which isn’t entirely needed, but very pretty. However, you don’t do a great deal during this ending. Apart from that though, you have a tremendous effect on the outcome of the mission and there’s always loads to do. Another good thing – someone finally paid attention to loadout and what people use and gave us a good default loadout that doesn’t require five minutes of fiddling about with before the mission begins.

Design:
Like the rest of this mission the design is good. The events are shortened as far as they’ll go and there are send-message-lists and combined events present. The author has also included a variable, which is affected by the Shivans’ attempts to steal the cargo – if they do, you’ll get some advice on stopping them in the debriefing. This is the best way of doing this in a debriefing that I’ve seen so far – more so than the has-arrived-delay + not-has-departed delay stuff that most people (myself included) have used before. The Shivan bombers carry Rebel bombs, which is one problem – Cylcops#short bombs are usually used. Not a huge problem though. A couple of other plus points: the positioning of the Moloch corvettes for them to use their beams is excellent, as it is with the Rakshasa cruisers too, and the background really reflects the mood of the mission.

Gameplay:
The introduction to this mission really is very good, even if the beginning could have been strung out a bit more with a few more messages and so on to build up the tension. ItÂ’s nice to see the GTVA fail once in a while, like they did so well, and so frequently in the original game. It adds hopelessness and it also makes the Shivans feel more powerful, which is good, because we all know they are. The dogfighting is fast and furious too, especially when defending your transports from the Shivan fighters. The ending, when two Moloch cruisers arrive to block the node feels somewhat forced and tacked-on just to put some explosive beam combat in, but makes for some nice screenshot chances.

Other Thoughts:
I think the author said there’s going to be a campaign based on this storyline, provided he grabs people’s interest. Well, he grabbed mine this is my first recommended mission in a while.