Unknown Enemy Preview

As mentioned yesterday, the CIC staff have been given an exclusive preview of Unknown Enemy, the upcoming fan made add-on to Secret Ops. This preview consists of a 90% complete version of the intro and the first mission, and here's my take on it:

Before even playing
This preview was quite a large download considering what it is. It's 25.5 meg for the intro and the first mission, so you can well imagine what the finished product will be like. Note that the download doesn't include the core Secret Ops files that you'll need installed. The reason for the huge size is there is a whole lot of speech there, and its all uncompressed presumably because no one has figured out how to get the game engine to read compressed stuff.

Starting the game
Well now there is the intro. All featured in this intro are Dragons, a Banshee, a Moray which just sits there while it gets shot at (?), asteroids, and music which ends long before the end of the intro (like I said, it's not finished). Also featured is crackly speech which comes complete with background buzzing, but hey, I guess not everyone has access to a professional recording studio. One thing about the intro... it changes every time and I don't think its designed that way. For example, at the end of the intro you are supposed to see two Dragons jump out, but on occasions you can only see one jump out because the fighters finish in different positions every time.

The mission
This is pretty much a standard WC style patrol mission... start out on a standard patrol then get a message diverting you to another objective halfway through. For some reason when you get the new Nav point, you have to target it manually. Pedro tells me it does that to make the game more interactive, but I don't think everyone would figure out what to do. The new objective has you shooting down pirates in Bearcats and Thunderbolts, while trying to stop Kilrathi in Pelican transports (don't ask because I don't know) and a Corvette getting toasted.

The screenshots
I bet most people just skipped to this section anyway. If you are wondering why the HUD shows the Bearcat as a Piranha, it's because the HUD graphics aren't done yet. Oh, and I'm flying a Banshee, not a Piranha. And the BWS Dauntless (the Bengal class carrier that you fly off in UE) isn't really a corvette. Pedro assures me that most if not all little things like this will be fixed for release. Anyway, screenshots...