Part 4: NSDF #4 - Farewell Bourgeois Imperialist Pigs!

Sorry for the absence. I make it up to you with the last of the NSDF campaign (for now) and invite you to ponder the Russian Campaign coming up which I promise is Dick Dastardly as all hell.




On Jupiter's moon Io, the NSDF and the CCA race to recover three relics of such immense power that they could end the war on their own. Rushing across the volcanic planet, the Americans manage to retrieve and take hold of the three Fury Relics, a project undertaken by a Cthonian scientist which ended the war as soon as they were built. The Furies were built to be sentient and incorporate aspects of human DNA, namely humanity's aggression and warlike nature. A convoy is established by the NSDF and they make an attempt to take the relics off the planet. Although CCA interference was strong, the worst of it was Dr. Wilhelm Arkin stealing away one of the transports and defecting to the CCA. Despite this, two relics are secured and Grizzly One safely gets them off of the moon. In the aftermath, the Americans scour the nearby planets for any sign of the CCA until they stumble upon a quiet outpost on Europa: a communications outpost.

Being assigned a dangerous mission, Commander Jason Bates (Grizzly One) infiltrates the Soviet comm base in a Russian vehicle, completes its patrol route, and intercepts the Soviet transmissions, which detail that Arkin and the Relic were moved to Titan, one of Saturn's moons. Before leaving Europa for good, Collins orders the base there destroyed before they send word and reinforcements to the CCA's main base on Titan.

Io and Europa, despite their changes, remain very easy missions. In Io 1, all you have to do is build a factory, a tug, then take your Recycler with you. As long as the Tug is carrying the relic and is near the Recycler you automatically win, but I drug it out to show off the map and build things on Lava. For the second mission, your strategy (and skill behind the wheel) needs to be on point. Losing any of your vehicles is a death sentence and while the bomb isn't required, the way I did it is certainly unnecessarily optimal. You just have to watch out for the spawning in of some Soviets after the first Launch pad is destroyed, otherwise these two missions are very unremarkable.

Europa is a different story. It's fun to play as the infiltrator but unfortunately there is no interesting gimmick to it beyond that. The route you are intended to take is very easy and you could just as easily jump around on foot and snipe a lot of the tanks or bring your tank over some mountains. The second mission in the original game was very much a throwaway, but they put the pressure on your hard and fast in Redux, which is good. Racing to get the towers up and controlling the pass to your base is vital, but otherwise a pretty simple mission with no special gimmicks.

From here on, Battlezone can start taking off for real. The CCA campaign has some tricks up its sleeve, we will encounter a new faction, and at the end of it all, we will finally see what the Furies really are. Look forward to it!

I know this is a shot in the dark but if someone would make fanart of a thing that got pointed out in the chaotic rambling starting from 20:00 to the end of the video in Episode 5, please do so. It was something about a Bingo card of memes and shit we say all the time