Terminator 2029 - Operation Scour: Introduction

The intro cinematic cut down to one line.

Welcome back to Terminator 2029, after nearly 5 years and 200 games. To put this in perspective, this was released one year after the game. This is a good reason to just play an expansion soon after the original game. Otherwise, you forget everything. Even if you've been reading since then, I wouldn't be surprised if you forgot about this game, I've got to get back up to speed as well. You'll also note that this is an introduction, not just one entry. This is what we call foreshadowing.

The gist is, a major in the resistance broke into a facility containing a set of experimental power armor, which by coincidence, works for humans. You, under the command of John Conner, used this armor to perform various missions in California until Skynet was taken out. Since Terminator as a franchise is all about pulling out the rug on any hope that humanity will survive, this isn't the end of it, there's something funny going on in Washington DC.

More or less how I was equipped for the game.

Gameplay-wise, this is a Dungeon Master-style FPS, you are given six weapon slots before a mission, divided into four categories of items. Plasma Rifles, rechargeable weapons which shoot lasers at things. Missiles, more damaging, but takes time to lock on. Grenades, most damaging, useful for the many stationary targets, requires you to hold down the attack button and pay attention to where it's going on the radar at the bottom of the screen. Other defensive items, like an autodoc. You can use two of these six at a time, one for a left mouse click, one for the right. 

The start of the training simulation.

The GUI is mostly straight forward. Various important items can be accessed on the lower right with the indicated keys. The armor shows where it's been damaged and if you've been hurt. The radar in the middle shows where enemies and targets are, and the top part is your weapons. Left click and right click select, you can have two active at once. Assuming they aren't always active, like autodocs.

Fully animated characters, which means that taking screenshots makes them look funny.

The team we get is the same as the one we had in the original game, because it's easier than making new characters. Block One, a secure research and operations base in DC. We were supposed to head there, but despite the base having incredible defenses, somehow the machines managed to defeat its defenses in ten minutes. Since the data there could turn the tide of the war back in their favor, it's important that it be removed. Unfortunately, the method they'd use to extract the data has been stopped by an above ground tower. My objective is to destroy that, then using an access code, reach the part of the bunker with the database and destroy it. We're certainly hitting the ground running.

For purposes of this mission, I've chosen two 100 watt plasma rifles, two sets of fusion grenades, an autodoc and one missile launcher. I doubt the effectiveness of the missiles, I remember that much, but maybe I'm wrong. Grenades are useful for stationary targets and everything else should be taken out by the plasma rifles. I have done a bit of testing in the training section.

All right, first to make my way towards where the tower is. I'm surrounded by enemies, which freaks me out. I start shooting them, and they don't seem to be shooting back. Uh...hang on, is one saying resistance? Uh...restart. Friendly fire isn't exactly what I want on my record if I can help it.

It all comes rushing back as I play through the mission. The hordes of enemies I have to run away from until I reach my objective. Stationary targets which I have to snipe with my lasers to take out, lest I run out of grenades. The sheer uselessness of missiles. Seriously, by the time they lock-on, you've probably been shot half a dozen times. And of course, sound cutting out halfway through the mission.

The mission goes very poorly, as in well before I reach the bunker or the target, I use up my repair kit. The mission succeeds, somehow, but I'm just limping along by the time I find the place I'm supposed to scan. That's right, scan, not destroy. I forgot that was a thing. And now I have to find the other thing, which I now have to destroy. Somehow, I managed.

Mission 2, the nuclear power plant is under attack, and since this building is providing power for half the resistance on the eastern side of the US. What my job is to protect the technicians and the reactors itself. There will also be friendlies around. Since it too, used the same defense system as the other base, afterwards, I should head to it to find out what happened.

So, the whole defending the power plant part is tricky. Because enemies respawn infinitely, how that'll work is an interesting point. Just shoot things until the game decides I'm good, I guess. The first time around I get shot to bits just finding my way around. There seems to be only two ways to the first one, it's not obvious that it leads to it, and it's the long way around. The first time, I die. The second time...I might as well be dead, because my menu is damaged enough to frizz out and I can't repair it.

On my third try, I manage it, but I'm not sure how. It costs me my repair pack, which surely won't be a problem even though I have four more places to go to, right? Of course it doesn't go well, but I make it to the uplink badly, badly damaged. They're already throwing the toughest enemies at me, and I'm just barely holding on. If only...if only I had another way of repairing myself. I ended up in a dead end and press R out of frustration...only for it to start working. I can't believe I forgot that worked. Which turns this level from a frantic mission to defend our base to a slow but tense set of moments waiting for my armor to repair itself.

After a long time repairing my armor, I head out, to find where the second power plant is, only to immediately get so damaged I need to crash back into the hole I just came out of. Sigh...Oh, and then I realize that a significant chunk of the T-800s I've been taking out are actually resistance members. I don't know if I'm going to get blamed, but anyway, attempt four. This time, I actually make it pretty far, but get killed again.

This is what I remember the last missions of the base game feeling like. The game can effectively spawn unlimited enemies who, in a single shot, will completely shred one part of your armor. There's not really any way you can dodge this, no side-stepping, and the only way you can counteract this is with pure attack power. Grenades and missiles take too long to fire, so just spam lasers.

This is from him chewing me out, you can tell because it looks nearly exactly the same as the last one.

Somehow, I eventually make it through the mission. Barely, just barely. Worse still, you get a warning for hitting resistance troops. Yeah, that's why the game puts a whole bunch of T-800s next to them. I can advance, but screw that. Reload. This time I'm cheating, because trying to do this any other way is going to be extremely tedious.

The easiest way to accomplish this is to change my location, as health is divided into about seventeen different variables, armor, two arms, two shoulders, two legs, two waists, chest and head. Six weapons and then the underlying health. Unfortunately, the movement is a single variable. For instance, 2,1 is 65538, which means that the second number represents a full 65535 places of a 32-bit integer. So, it's something like the second number times 65535, plus the first number. Kind of, because my math keeps messing up. Please feel free to correct my math if I'm wrong, math isn't my best subject and in the case someone actually wants to play through this, having some way to bypass the worst of it is going to help him.

Naturally, when I actually get it right and end up next to the tower, it spawns a dozen tanks and resistance fighters. Even after I get the tanks, someone's still shooting at me. I shoot who I think is shooting at me, and he explodes in a pile of meat. Oh, good, it's time to rage quit again. The next day, I decide to try the missiles again. Since I don't need to destroy any stationary objects this level.

Somehow, despite being able to teleport however I please, I still get killed. Frequently. The only thing this is changing is making it so that I don't have to go through a million enemies to die in the middle of an open area surrounded by more enemies. Huzzah. And the one time I get tired of it all and record a video showing how bad the game is, it just goes smoothly as silk. Even when I'm winning, I can't win.

This still means I'm the first one to win this level since the '90s though, since I highly doubt anyone else bothered to finish this nightmare if they had the ability to do anything else. Though I must admit, this has some tension that I rarely get from other games. There's nothing like the fear of losing an hour of work to bad luck.

My success means that we have the location of where the signal that deactivated the defense system. The area I'm being sent into has three towers where I have to place three tracers...or rather viruses. Which I have to potentially use depending on the tower? The briefing makes it clear that the three viruses do different things and they might just depend what I get as orders in mission. They might hurt me too if I use them too many times. At least I won't have to worry about friendly fire.

There's a couple of new items in the defensive category, most importantly, an item which improves the repair system. It says x2 the repair rate, which I'm going to assume means I'll be spending half as much time repairing things. Everything else has a capacity upgrade, though since missiles are useless, I'll only be taking advantage of this for grenades. Fortunately, I get a good test, since the game practically spawns a whole bunch of flyers on top of you at the start.

When I say that the game spawns a whole bunch of enemies on you, I mean the game spawns a whole bunch of enemies on you. It's an unrelenting barrage, and the unfortunate thing is, sooner or later you're going to need to stop to take them all out. Unless you abuse your ability to reset things via the section transition tiles, but that's just for that section. It's easier than the big areas, thanks to so much cover, but don't mistake that for easy.

Especially since, as the briefing alluded to, the viruses hurt me. Not if I use them twice, if I use them. This isn't just normal damage, either, if you get hit, it will only be fixed if you can make it to an area which will cause the "repairs initialized" screen to show up, the aforementioned area transition or a few lucky spaces. This got me on the first attempt and took out my faster repair on the second. Fortunately, attempts three through...oh...twenty were just me dying to regular enemy attacks.

This happens at such frequency because I change up my tactics. Well, if this is going to result in me taking damage no matter what, why bother fighting and instead rush through and get an easier result? I still don't really understand the way I'm supposed to be doing this, but this kind of works. There are two big stumbling blocks here, beyond the high number of enemies. One, there's a single corridor to the third tower, which spawns a whole lot of enemies which can block my passage through. The second is that when I made it through and back again, the exit despawned. Since there were no more orders, I took a gamble and used the mission abort, thankfully, it still counted.

The end briefing, after Conner notes that I got hit a lot, goes into details on metanodes, basically, the individual blocks of Skynet which I guess are make up the bigger AI. There are a bunch all over the world, and naturally, there's one in DC which is giving us big trouble. If we don't keep it in check, it has the potential to be as bad as Skynet. Considering how many units it has at its disposal, I'm not sure we need to worry about it getting as bad as anything. We'll find out how we're going to deal with that next time.

This Session: 4 hours 30 minutes