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Reviews for TIE-TC 244
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| | Bar none the most fantastic briefings of anything from the Battle Center, which is just the very first indicator that attention has been paid to every facet of this masterpiece. Every mission has been meticulously crafted to push the player to their limit, offering a challenge at every difficulty level whether the in-game cheats are used or not. What’s also unique about this battle is that almost every mission pits the player alone against everything else going on, there aren’t any friendlies that will accomplish the mission goals for you. Mission 1 gives you the most assistance with a number of friendly fighters on the map, but the scenario still forces the player to make the right choices in order to succeed. Mission 5 stands out as an intensely personal challenge to the player; either you’ve mastered energy management and maneuvering or you won’t make it. The final mission does a great job of putting everything together between the dogfighting, situational awareness, and problem-solving skills that the other missions tested. But I think the thing I enjoy the most about the battle is the entertaining premise and the way it’s fleshed out in the briefings, the pre-flight questions, the missions themselves, the post-flight questions, and even the Readme file. The battle isn’t just memorable for how difficult it is, it’s also a master class in storytelling and design and deserves nothing less than the highest rating. | | |
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| | Where to start with this ridiculously difficult, frustrating battle? It's full of gimmicks and gotchas that are absolutely designed to frustrate you. It requires memorization of what to expect, sheer repetition and perseverance until you succeed. It's clearly intended to test the limits of not just your skill, but also your patience. Especially on hard difficulty. There's even an aptly named "Fu" squadron. Lots of time will be wasted trying and learning from your mistakes. Whether insta-failing the mission or simply killing you, your fate is already decided if you stray from the correct path. The first mission is a fairly straightforward capture operation while flying the mighty T/A, but its gotcha comes at the very end with the transports. It's not super difficult, but it's not a pleasant experience to instantly fail after sinking so much time and effort into a single attempt. The second mission is where the real gimmicks begin, and completing them requires deeper knowledge of the game mechanics and how to exploit them. The puzzles take some thinking, and the difficulty comes from both solving them, and executing them well. Unfortunately there's a lot of luck involved too. A stray laser, damaged flight controls, or extra salvo of rockets can end a mission rather quickly, through no real fault of your own. Mission 5 was personally the most difficult, and marks the first time I've ever enabled cheats just to see how the mission is supposed to unfold before attempting it for real. It demands perfect execution, and that's not an understatement. While I suppose I could've beaten it on hard after enough attempts, ultimately I ended up dropping the difficulty to easy, which I'm sure will give Tempest great pleasure to read. The final mission isn't too bad, luckily it's the one mission with a couple gimmicks that actually make it somewhat easy, even on hard. Tempest can't be fooled here, as my own clever attempts to outsmart the design often proved futile. I was even called a chicken for my efforts. Overall the puzzles are moderately satisfying, especially mission 3 which featured very clever use of warheads. But the satisfaction of completing the puzzles and finishing the battle aren't enough to outweigh the overall frustration. Getting salty only makes things worse, and the humor in the briefings wore thin as the competition ended. If rating on fun-factor alone, I would probably give it a 2. Difficulty for the sake of difficulty, gimmicks and luck-based perfection aren't my cup of tea. But it wouldn't be fair to call this a bad battle, or merely average. Everything about its design is fully intentional. It's rather well designed and clever, even the briefings and its ASCII art of the TIEs. I give it a 3.5, grudgingly rounding up to 4. | | |
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| | Well first incident in the short time I played the mission that I had to say is I personally do not like mines. So clearing the minefield in mission one was not the best fun I ever had but it was done well, not too aggressive but very dense. So I guess you can say it wasn't too bad in that sense with the station not shooting also. The second incident I will point out is the diversion with the transports in the beginning of mission two. Natural instinct would be to leave the escort and go save it which is the wrong thing to do. I failed twice to this. The third incident I will point out is that one unshielded, unmissled TIE escorting a large group of TIE's did not seem realistic with all the constant attacks going on. There should have been a wingman or at least some form of help. This is the type of battle I dislike. I play these for fun, not to have a horrid meat grinder so I can consider myself l33t. I will say mission two was therapeutic in a way that I will not list here. | | |
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| | What can I say? Among the best battles I ever played, on par with Impact! free mission, Hammer & Anvil, most of Colonel Beef's stuff and other few pieces of fine art. The plot is splendid, it's quite innovative in many ways (yes, a TIE battle which is innovative in 2012! Those LA guys never actually used the true potential of the game engine they created), it's *VERY* funny being those animated briefings the best I've ever seen (beware the adult only stuff! ;P), it involves knowing a few gimmicks of the TIE engine in order to complete it, it's completely bug free and... its best feature: it restores all glory to the shieldless TIE line where it is due! Could we actually ask for more? Sincerely, if you don't fly this one while being able to do so and/or don't like it there's something really wrong with you and you're different and strange. All your friends think LotT is great (DooM II dixit). Thank you, Lt. Colonel Tempest, you did it again you bastard! ;D | | |
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| | Lord of the TIEs is a magnificently crafted battle. It earns the maximum rating for the briefings alone, which have been meticulously crafted. The premise is original and entertaining. This is an extremely tough battle, but it's clear that attention has been paid to each difficulty level. It's not for the fainthearted, but I highly recommend it. | | |
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