Description
Hunting down a renegade Vasudan Admiral, the GTD Thor's Hammer blockades a jump node. You're one of many wings sent all over the system to find him. However, due to the nature of the mission, the Thor's Hammer (and you) are not operating under orders from the GTVA. Our story picks up in a shipping lane...

The voice download may be large, but it definately makes the mission...

Note, this is mission 7 of the upcoming campaign 'The Hunted.' The campaign is in 2 parts- missions 1-6 and 7-12. Both halves are able to stand on their own, so this should (hopefully) make sense.

Storyline:
From the very beginning of this mission, ‘Crossing the Line’ oozes class. The premise for the storyline really is great. It lifts the story, which isn’t really all that original, though still well told to a much greater score than it would otherwise have achieved. The masterstroke of this mission, however, lies in the mission’s script. Not only is it well written, with some great chatter and full voice acting, but also the acting has appropriate feeling in the voices. This is important because there’s a brilliant moral angle in the story. I’ll let the swearing (once) slip, because it adds to the story, and I’d say the same in that situation. With all this, it wouldn’t matter a great deal if the briefing was almost non-existent, but it’s nicely laid out, with appropriate icons and makes you feel like you’re part of a team.

Balance:
Once there is a bit of action (which takes a few minutes, but not too long) itÂ’s a nicely balanced bit of dogfight action with those Vasudans. Anyway, the mission isnÂ’t too hard to complete, in fact perhaps a tad easy, but will still offer a challenge, especially if you donÂ’t disarm the Mentu cruiser that comes after your blood with beam cannons blazing.

Design:
The design of this mission is very good, though not without a couple of errors. The messages are handled competently, condensed to as small a size as possible – and it’s just as well really, given the number there are. Strangely, one set of messages is handled using chained messages, not send-message-lists, as the rest of the mission uses. Odd. Chained events give easy-to-use arrival cues and cut down on work on the author’s part. However, some of the goals for the ships could’ve been cut down and out into a single s-exp. All the events work fine, and the author has included fake battle damage, because all of Alpha wing are actually invulnerable. Wouldn’t it just have been easier to have them all go invulnerable when they fall below, say, 45 hull integrity, though? The background of this mission is very good and catches the eye nicely.

Gameplay:
The dialogue alone makes this mission great fun to play, and very immersive - especially with full sound, but when youÂ’re not taxed overly, but given a decent challenge as well, it really comes together. There isnÂ’t a great deal to say about the gameplay, as itÂ’s a deceptively simple thing with elaborate bits wrapped around it. The interception can get a bit repetitive, as all you fight during the mission are Serapis fighters and the cruiser, plus one transport. However, as a campaign introduction mission, this works very well indeed.

Other Thoughts:
Now IÂ’m really, really looking forward to his campaign. TheKenny, release that campaign ASAP, I command you! :-) Kudos for getting Barry White into the mission for a bit of humour tooÂ