I finished playing Random Mission Project, a somewhat strange custom campaign made by DK in 2011.
Terran I: The biggest problem with this mission is that losing some units makes it excessively difficult towards the end. Fortunately I didn’t have to restart the mission, just loaded the game. Saving and overwriting save was enough.
Terran II: I tried to do everything very quickly when I reached the Terran base. The problem is that when I’m doing everything quick the Center View rate gets worse, making gameplay harder. In the final section there’s a road to a dead end which I skipped after reloading the game a few times.
Terran III: I restarted from the beginning to rebuilt my base from scratch. Missile Turrets were not necessary, dialogue is misleading, as I can’t find the purpose of building an Engineering Bay when I only have to defend my base for such a short period of time. Sunken Colonies in the corner shouldn’t have been invincible. I built 4 Barracks, landed one where I knew a Sunken Colony would spawn to see the magic happens.
I saw DK’s playthrough later, so I was surprised when he said that saving and loading the game after teleporting to the other half of the map can mess up the attack waves.
Zerg I: I liked the new factions. One being the Zerg with custom color, and the other some Terrans with custom names for their units. The map layout was acceptable. I couldn’t kill the final Battlecruiser.
Protoss I: Center View was annoying all the campaign, but one of the worst was right at the moment when finding the enemy Reaver. It was funny to see that DK moved his screen back to where it was during that precise moment too, which clearly shows that it is unnecessary to center view.
The player should be told, through an objective update, that the rescuable Nexus has to be saved quickly.
Protoss II: I didn’t understand why attacking the Terrans was so important, to the point of ignoring the Protoss enemy.
Zerg II: Like the previous mission, I had to restart because I lost the hero unit. Revealing the Protoss base using fog of war was very useful, as well as getting their resource expansions. During my retry I eliminated the Protoss first and I harvested all the minerals I could in every expansion. The starting base has an interesting layout.
Zerg III: I liked the ambient sound. I’m not sure if Experiment 001 is Zerg, Protoss, or hybrid. I saved lots of units for the end, even a Field Medic. I saw that DK didn’t mind the Walking Bombs and only kept Experiment 001 alive.
Protoss III: The soundtrack seems a remix from Megaman or Sonic, probably a game from the 90’s. I don’t understand why some Protoss buildings are invincible and others not.
Terran F: It took me some time to realize that the Warp Gate was the same from Terran III, but I didn’t pass the bridge going up, because Sunken Colonies discouraged me to do so. I decided to explore the other two paths. I followed the hint and went down. I was able to control Yaro before sending Ren and Makers to talk to him. The map didn’t break though.
I had troubles more than once trying to nuke the Zerg. I had my Ghost on the high ground expansion, but the Zerg seemed alert and attacked my Ghost. Although Personnel Cloaking wasn’t available I still tried to send nuclear attacks, because it seemed the better option to make progress considering my tech limitations.
Mutalisks from the upper right corner were annoying, I built a couple of Turrets and a Bunker to defend myself. I didn’t lose too many SCVs from those attacks but I had to keep repairing my buildings. I kept a tight defense in my main base, consisting of Bunkers and Missile Turrets, with a lot of infantry.
Again, invincible Zerg buildings come out from nowhere, at the southeast corner. These didn’t give me trouble, but it would have been annoying if I had missed areas to explore there and my ground units died to such static defense. Actually I missed the rescuable units going up right before the Protoss base.
I trained a lot of Ghosts for my final attack because I barely had minerals. I attacked through the only bridge connecting the Zerg base.
Zerg F: I just can’t believe the Crystal of Knowledge is laying down in a rusty pit as if it was nothing important.
I don’t know why Mind Control isn’t just given to the player through triggers, exchanging the hero unit with another player that has the ability already researched, instead of using a Templar Archives.
The first unit I mind controlled was a Scientist (Civilian), which I used to lure the Ultralisk nearby so I could use mind control again. Some funny things happened. Some Overlords were flying nearby, so I mind controlled one and was able to see the Dark Templar wall with units renamed as “Dublin’s Invisible Wall”. Then I saw a Dropship and mind controlled it too, so I was able to transport my units to the other side of the wall. Then, after controlling some Zerglings, I burrowed and unburrowed them near the wall to move away the Dark Templars so the wall opened. None of the three things were supposed to happen but I managed to do the three of them, LOL. Anyways, the map didn’t break. But one stray Dark Templar never got removed with its designated trigger.
I mind controlled four Medics, which were very useful. Unfortunately I killed the Medics in the first section, before I obtained Mind Control.
I built my main base where the rescuable Zergling was. So something funny happened later. One of the dialogues took place in the fog of war, the screen moved to the resource node where the brown Hatchery was, but I didn’t have my base built there yet. A flock of enemy Mutas flew there later.
Protoss F: This one has very chill vibes for a finale. I’m glad it wasn’t difficult.
The main issue with this campaign was the difficulty of micro missions, and that these missions were abundant. Knowing what’s next is not the only advantage that the map maker has, but also the map maker knows what is needed to complete the mission (for example what happened in Zerg III), which is a second advantage, that I think it might be often ignored when making maps. I was wary most of the time, and completed the missions with way more stuff than what was needed.
I enjoyed the craziness of this campaign. Not only there’s a lot of variety in the missions, but there’s a lot of creativity put into them. Throughout the campaign, the terrain ranges from simply awful to very good. Some maps barely have dialogue and some others tell a good story. I absolutely liked the format of three mini series in non-sequential order. Many of the design choices made me laugh, in a good way. If you’re looking for something crazy to play then give this campaign a try.
7 out of 10