Sunday, August 23, 2020

Flames of Freedom: Blub, Blub, Blub

Its been a while. The siren song of Blake Stone has been more appealing than the rather more unrelenting nature of Flames of Freedom. The less said about Galactic Empire the better. Blake Stone is actually the tenth game since then, a good sign for my continued progress. Not to mention I haven't truly made any progress in 3 months. Right, enough whining about that.
I left off in a submarine, in the midst of fighting some zeppelins and a boat. Well, I say that, but its not much of a fight when you can't hit inside the water. By the same token, I can't hit them, so the me and my enemies are stuck in a stalemate. So I steal a zeppelin, from a boat. Figure it out yourself. I didn't realize how much of a joy it was to fly one. I make short work of the nearby squadron. There's another squadron of boats nearby, I might as well solve two problems at once.
As I fight the boats it very quickly becomes apparent that there's another problem, the blimp can't hit anything on the ground. Which leads me me hijacking a boat. A minute or two of combat later, and a boat change, and the unit is destroyed. That's lame...Of course, there's nothing else here, at least on the surface. It occurs to me to actually pay attention to the stated locations of the objectives. That puts the base, and probably the radar station, on the little crescent on the northern part of the island.. That leaves the enemy, if I were expecting a realistic placement of the "Famous Flying Subs" I would put it near there, but I'm prepared to be disappointed.
I return to the sub I left behind. This is a bit tricky as somehow a small group of hovercraft are on the attack and the sub sunk to the bottom. Interesting situation, but whatever. Soon enough I'm slowly autorouting my way across the island. Fun fact, if you enter the map screen, your autoroute is removed. Hope that wasn't vitally important or anything.
Outlook Island is a little chunk of rock off the coast of the north eastern point of the island. I assume, it could very well be the whole part of the island. Its guarded by submarines and speedboats, which works to my advantage, I wanted another one anyway. After eliminating the commander of the submarines, who looks quite comical, I began to look for the radar station, since it should be nearer to me than the base.

The radar station proves to be a bit tricky to get to. Its on the ground, which means taking out the speedboats, and that means no sub. Fortunately, its no problem sneaking onto one from the water. Speedboats are fast, and on the water that's not necessarily a good thing, but I manage to roll with it enough to take out a few speedboats. I try to take out the radar, ending up beaching my craft. No matter, I have grenades. Now, the base. Oh, and as I get back on a speedboat, you'd never guess who I manage to take out. The commander of the speedboat squadron.
My crossing to the base is rather nightmarish. There's a landbridge, for the monorail there. Which means there's not enough water to cross my sub through. On the other side, I am besieged by minisubs, which are too quick to control and are questionable in their homing capabilities. Then I find out there's something called a crawler, crawls on the sea, I missed it in the manual. The minisub, when engaged with combat with a regular sub, misses more often than not.
But after a loss of the minisub and a lucky acquisition of a regular one, the underwater base is destroyed. Now, where are the famous flying subs? Well, I asked that question too soon.
Quickly the flying subs attack, and boy, are they a pain to fight. My only ability to retaliate against them is in another vehicle, they're too fast when I'm just swimming. Even so, I am forced to hit them from far away, otherwise they'll take out my sub in one hit, and with enough injuries I have no choice but to bypass it in a scummy way. See, whenever you activate a menu, the enemies disappear, so I just rested, underwater, for a few hours until most of my injuries were gone.
And for what? Its not even the right flying submarine squadron. I go to the north, clearing out the seafloor as I go, nothing. I go to the south...as I transition between areas, something interesting happens. Interesting.
My sub is destroyed, beached. Its a quarter mile into the shore. Several enemy boats are trapped inside. I have no idea what screwed things up, but no matter. I quickly get back in the water and find myself a boat. The sea doesn't have him. A lot of boats, but no flying subs. Well, they're flying subs, they have to be somewhere, might as well be somewhere on land.
Upon returning to land, I quickly end up in the sights of a tank brigade. They seem to have homing capabilities, and I don't. But I manage to take out the commander and all is well. Comandeering every other vehicle sure helps. Now, the only question is, where are those damn flying subs?

This Session: 2 hours

Total Time: 11 hours

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