Part 12: Macomb Part 1: You Brought A Roadblock To A Gunfight
Right, enough of my bitching, we have a convoy vehicle to rescue!Post 12: Macomb, pt. 1: You Brought a Roadblock To A Gunfight
We start the mission by checking out the nearby buildings. Eastern side of the road is taken by Flashman, Stitch and Rebecca, the rest check the West. Nothing is found, but empty rooms. You'd think people would move into this kind of prime estate.
Nope, more empty buildings.
And a rooftop position that is either totally useless or totally useless at night
Meanwhile, Flashman is stopped by invisible walls. Invisible to a commander that's monitoring their progress from an isometric perspective, that is: you can see the lines barring his path in the minimap. What a dick move!
Tired of careful approach and frustrated by random walls, Flashman charges down the street.
Rebecca still can't hit - or aim at - the raider.
Stitch humwees down the road because, well, why not?
Ah, a Box Co. Box Warehouse, with so many boxes left unshipped. The great war was truly a tragedy.
Oh, I find a repair kit on the shelf. Yay?
Thank God, action! The raiders do the strategic mistake of placing the switch controlling the gate on the wrong side of the gate. It's kind of a running theme in this level.
The raiders don't have anything nice, anyways. Oh, and the Power Fist works wonders. Bloody bloody wonders
The gates are open ride on!
But before riding on, check the quick keys! I don't know how to get out of the car, nor how to get in.
Yet even before that, Ice goes to take position on a roof... GAH, A RAIDER! Luckily, he's as inaccurate as a stereotypical AK-47 wielding mook.
It's strange how many
Ice (and eventually Rebecca) starts a long, wasteful night time shootout with the raider on the roof across the street.
Flashman checks out the building under the sniper. MORE NOTHING!
On the other hand, the building next door seems to have a bowling alley that's mostly intact. Unfortunately, I can't reach it because...
...there's a chest high sandbag wall in the way.
Chest high walls: because lazy level design should not be reserved to FPS games!
All aboard!
Humwee controls quite nice, in that it doesn't pivot in place (like in RTS games that use tank movement animations for anything, wheels be damned) and has to be navigated like a real car. It's not entirely comfortable, but it will only matter two-three times in game.
The Humwee sits six: one driver and five homies for drive-bys.
Ice hopes that the raider will catch pneumonia from the draft of all the bullets passing him. I would personally prefer that she actually tried shooting the guy.
Snipers, am I right?
One raider had been waiting past the gate to ambush the convoy... with a club. He got shot in short order.
And down the road, you can see some doggies munching on a dead civvie.
Fortunatelly, Ice and Rebecca had already shot the raider enough times to make him statistically dead, so they were able to attract the attention of the mutts. The rest was done by the people in the car.
Flashman goes to check out if there's some grisly, blood and doggie saliva soaked loot on the corpse.
Those must have been some drug sniffing DARE dogs, because they left the drugs untouched. Holy shit, was this guy the neighborhood dealer?
Ah, more assholes up front. There's only way to deal with it.
CHECK OUT ABANDONED BUILDINGS. This diner with an outside picnic table inside/car dealership is empty.
And so is this ruin...
You know what? I'm not going to show off empty building anymore. Assume most of the buildings in the map have nothing of value.
Haven't seen that much effort put into making nothing since I played JULIA: Among The Stars
I'm sure I'll be able to cram in a few more mentions of that shitty game
Rebecca engages the raiders on the North roof, while Flashman gets almost shot dead because I forgot that I tasked him to climb the other roof.
The raider still dies. Power Fist deaths are boring: most of the time, the enemy just pops in two.
Eventually, both snipers get to the task of shooting people on the roof. The rest are chilling in the car.
Stitch heals Flashman; Flashman loots corpse.
My punch sense is tingling (not pictured: Stitching scouting out the building underneath the first raider, finding SWEET FUCK ALL.
The third raider is found purely on fine honed instinct. Time to du-du-du-duel!
A very one sided duel.
A whole roof of nothing.
Macomb is long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of excitement
What's this? A lone, friendly raider?
The raider
Angry for not finding the box, Flashman charges into the bowling alley. The raiders don't stand a chance.
T.N.T.!
Ice here, seen a little wounded since Stein hit her with the Humwee.
Stein and Mandy are sent to check out the buildings. Naturally, they can't enter, since the entrance is behind the next gate.
Flashman goes to loot corpses on the roof and finds a live raider!
Turns out, a double barreled shotgun is not the best weapon against people running at you.
Ice is a good driver (or has the best Pilot skill in the whole squad... even though it's not that important), so she doesn't hit
Rebecca goes to try her lockpicks on the door to the switch. It fails, of course, and I still don't realize where the key is.
Welp, time to try and brute force it.
Of course, shit like that (the gates, I mean) would never work in, say, Men of War, since we could probably simply drive through the gate. Or, if it was Silent Storm, blow it all up.
So when/if the new, modern war Men of War comes out, someone could/should/probably shouldn't remake Fallout Tactics on it. Call it "Fallout: Actual Tactics".
Me no trap good. Setting a the dynamite timer with low trap skill will usually result in unplanned suicide.
Be right back guys, read something on Fallout Wi... I mean, I think I remembered something!
*huff huff*
*loot loot*
FO BoS has the most underwhelming boxes
This looks in no way like an ambush with grenades and RPGs. OSCAR MIKE!
Oh no, an ambush with grenades, RPGs and AKs!
This Humwee has the future FRAG-8 armor upgrade kit, since RPGs and grenades only managed to take out the front wheels.
Eventually, grenades kill the Hummer. As luck would have it, the passengers emerge unscathed. Unfortunately, the car is essential to the mission.
The order to "try again" is as immersion breaking as my comments in this LP.
"...and stay out!"
It's nice to see that the renders of three vehicles (out of 5) in game are present for your banishment ceremony.
OK, we position snipers to provide covering fire... No, they can't see anything. Plan B!
Plan B: Find out that you can't really use Psycho, Buffout and After Burner Gum in one go.
Gameplay and story segregation people: video game characters get effects other than combat boosts only if drug induced hallucinations are a plot point.
He's super charged, but unconscious. Time to Alt+L.
St 12, En 10 Ag 12... ROCK AND ROLL!
RPG hits to the face: mildly annoying.
Grenades, AK rounds (it's 7.62mm, right?), RPG rounds... and still in better shape than that raider.
Murders later, Stitch charges forth to save Flashman at 11th hour.
Second time in this mission, and it will happen at least two more times.
Jacked up and good to!
It wasn't me!
The stupid raider managed to explode himself. Still had 10 grenades extra, tho!
That's the stupidest name for a piece of military equipment ever (I still that Magpul Massada was an OK name).
But Flashman still looks cool carrying around this bastard child of RPG-7 and CoH's Recoiless Rifle.
Hey, a library! Books live there!
A person!
His line delivery is fine and dandy, but since I can't get any of websites to work... Well...
He as a Trapping book worth 162 RPs.
We have a mission worth a Trapping book!
Thus, with a new quest, our first heavy weapons and drugged up to the point where eyes are trying to pop out of the skull, our troops march forth!
Next Time: Hubris vs. Bullets