Part 26: The Judgment - Part 1

Sorry for the delay, but work has been eating me lately.

The Judgment


Let's be heroes

Well, this is it. All that is left to do now, is to take out the leader of the COTUC. Since his subjects refer to him in ALL CAPS all the fucking time, he's probably going to be a big deal! But this is also the last mission, so we can bring all the explosions to him.

Equipping the troops is pretty straight forward this time.

Everyone just gets grenades, rockets, a spare vest, and bugs for the plane or more ammo. But it's not like everyone will seriously need all of this. It's more about spreading supplies through the whole unit, that'll get mostly used by a select group of soldiers. Mine decoys can also be useful in this level, but they're not required.

Our vehicles get a very similar treatment.

The Abrams' get the best stuff, and whatever is left gets stuffed into the T-55s.


I also had enough rockets to completely fill the Katyusha, and enough shells for the HOW to make it a viable addition.


Also,




I'll go ahead and say that I brought way more vehicles than I actually needed. I had all that stuff in my base, so why not?

With that said though, it's not a bad idea to bring a couple spare tanks. On your first run through this mission, you are likely to stumble into some mean things, and your tanks can get demolished rather quickly.

Okay, as always, let's get our bearings first.

Directly ahead of us, lies a large train yard. That's where we'll bust into the base.


This shot is roughly from the other end of the train yard, with our units barely visible in the distance. See that large building with the pipes? Take this as a landmark for the next shot.


Here you can see the outskirts of the base, with the previous landmark on the right. There are tank barriers and outposts here, and the actual base lies in the distance.


The base has a lot of structures all over the place, and they are roughly centered around another glass-covered temple.


This area is marked as an objective, and looks very similar to the lab from the last mission.


Of course, there's also an airfield with chopper pads, a runway, and storage hangars.

There is still a bit more to see, but let's postpone that until we get there. So yeah, this place is really fucking large, and probably the biggest base in the whole game!


Let's


I really like this animation right here!


I aimed at the gate, but as said, the HOW is rather inaccurate.


Oh well, a few more shells make us a nice and wide entrance.


One of our Abrams' clears out a Humvee patrol, while Akim goes on a sneaking-mission.


Let's play a little game called "Spot the Undead Knight". Can you do it? No? Well, the fucker is directly above my mouse cursor! As the briefing told us, the base has a lot of knights, and spotting them is quite painful. You really have to pay attention to your minimap, or your soldiers will suddenly get turned into Swiss cheese out of nowhere. Due to their high fire rate, they are also quite dangerous to your vehicles. And this mission also has a special type of Knight - with an automatic rocket launcher. Yeah, I'm not kidding here. Imagine a minigun that shoots small rockets, and tremble in fear, because you can't tell the difference between the two types. So you basically have to handle each single knight with care!


Sneaking up on them with grenades or rockets, is pretty much the best way to handle them.

The commotion attracted some guards, but Akim is in a prime position to just snipe them.

There is some stuff to do at the far end of the train yard, but we'll skip that for now. The area has crawler mines and guards, so I'll take care of that in a special way.

For now, Akim creeps deeper into the base.

The building on the right has a knight on patrol, and I can't grenade him since he doesn't stop moving.




That should do it


This is the effect of a large bomb, jfyi. The explosion was big enough to even shatter the tank barrier that Akim was hiding behind! He basically cheated death by a few pixels.

Here is something neat about large bombs.

The shockwave will uproot trees and throws them around a bit. That's some pretty cool attention to detail! It's also weird, if you consider how many parts of this game could have used a bit more attention.

Anyway, the outpost ahead is staffed by another sneaky knight.

He's on the left, but I can't really target him because the cover shields him pretty good.


So let's poke him with a rocket from above!


It's pretty tempting to abuse the hell out of your artillery in this mission. In fact, with my current units, I could basically flatten the whole base from my starting position! But that would be kinda boring, and also fails some hidden objectives. Yeah, I tried it just for fun.

The explosion also made a nice gap for our tanks to roll trough.

The area is guarded by some BTRs and other cheap stuff.


But they really have no chance against two Abrams', so let's jump back to the train yard and clear it out.


Pro Click


Since the area has mines, I just fly over them!

At the end of the yard, is a power plant that will be become important later.

It's also guarded by a BMP, some knights, and other units.


Since I don't want to take any unnecessary damage, I poke the BMP with two AT-2 missiles, and kite it...


...right into more rockets


There is still a knight coming...


...but an AT-2 missile takes care of him before he can get in range.

The noises also attract more guards.

Soldiers get cut down by the machine gun...


..and Humvees have a bad time while driving through rocket-showers. As said before, this place becomes important later, but it's much later so let's not dwell on this for now.


With his job done, the Hind takes a long flank around the base, and lands in the hills close to the airfield. I have my reasons for doing that, but it'll also come up much later.

Let's jump back to where we left our Abrams'.

Akim picks off some guards, while I ponder a little problem.


These units, and some more that are hidden, are directly across from our Abrams'. Due to the buildings here, they don't have a line of sight right now. My first goal is the lab area at the top of the screen, but going there now will end badly. See, the guards here are likely to come around when I press on. And then they'll pincer my units with the other guards in the base. So we have to take them out first, but the buildings also block our line of sight. So what to do? Well, the obvious answer is to just blow everything up! And we'll do that, but first I wanna show you something.

There is a new unit here.

This is a T-80 and this unit is exclusive to the COTUC. It even has their logo on the front. Oh, and it also has a flame thrower cobbled to its cannon! There is no info blurb for it, and I'm actually not completely sure if you can even get it. I guess we'll see about that, when we go down the other part for the ending.

On the other hand...



..I could also disable it with some rockets!


Sadly, some guards in the area come running. You can't see it here, but some soldiers also sprint towards the tank, and they'll capture it before I can get there.





Okay, with that not turning out so well, I need to vent my disappointment.


By finally destroying those damn buildings!

Here's another neat detail.

The buildings are connected by large metal pipes, and the explosion actually travels along those pipes! I guess they're supposed to be pipes for gas/fuel or something?


The explosions also traveled a bit farther into the base than I expected.


This pulls a bunch more guards into the area, but again, two Abrams' can take care of almost anything.

With our flank finally secured, let's move on to the labs.

The place is staffed tightly, and also has some mines around it. Since I have very little room to maneuver, this will be another commando mission.


Akim is really the best choice here, since he kills normal guards in one hit.


Knights still require explosions though.


While pushing into the place, Akim sadly attracts another knight.


He has just enough time to whip out an RPG...


...and kills the knight before his own armor disintegrates. Yeah, this was was really close and I'm lucky that this knight wasn't carrying a rocket launcher


There are more guards around the corner...


...but we have grenades. And it still amuses me how easy it is to shatter concrete walls.

Next to the lab, is a small computer station that's really easy to miss. It's not required for beating this mission, but you'll miss out on a piece of plot if you skip it.





After that, Prof engages in some war crimes.


He even develops a taste for it


We'll find out next time!