Campaign review: Wingman

Wingman is a custom campaign made by RoughRider in 2021.

Mission 1 - “Ambush”: There’s a good map layout in this mission, where the player can choose between going through two different paths, one of them leads to a free expansion (after sending Artanis to clear the Siege Tanks) and the other one serves to take the AI’s expansion.
Map should include a distorsion sound effect during Mojo’s transmission during the final assault.
Enemy bases were too tight. When I reached the bottom right corner of the map I found some Siege Tanks getting stuck in the stairs.
The trigger with the defeat condition should include Set Next Scenario, and the same goes for the rest of the maps.

Mission 2 - “Aquarium”: This map also needs more space, even more than before. I don’t consider tight bases to be bad, but the map size was too small in my opinion. The Gateway in the main base create units too far away from the bridges where the action happens. Pylons and Photon Cannons made a bit more difficult to move the units around. A Probe gets stuck behind the isolated Assimilator, but interestingly the AI never attacks it because of pathfinding.
The idea of the aquarium in Shakuras and its marine life under threat from the Zerg was really cool and very original.

Mission 3 - “The Better Man”: The friendly base mining from the beginning is a very good detail. After taking control of it, the player receives the resources that were harvested by the AI. That’s something you won’t see often, and it’s not even in the official campaigns. The map layout have an issue though, brown and white Zerg attacks get stuck behind the two geysers near the bridge.
Instead of just giving a tip, it would have fit better a dialogue of Mojo and Artanis saying something like they’re shifting turns, “I’ll stand here and repair my ship while you go ahead” or something like “you should take some rest while I handle the Zerg”, these are just some examples. This map doesn’t have any in-game dialogue. In the briefing of mission 5 there’s something explanatory during dialogue.
I don’t know why you fight the Baelrog and Leviathan Broods in Shakuras.
The layout was simple. This was my least favourite map in the campaign.

Mission 4 - “Under Attack”: Artanis is suddenly in another city. The in-game dialogue was a huge improvement for the story (compared to the map version that DK played), although it’s still too abrupt how you come from rescuing Mojo to the situation where you must rescue Artanis.
I liked the use of caves and how the different tiles were placed.

Mission 5 - “Front to Back”: It’s the first time I see extra Probes being delivered in the late game. This mission is low paced because there aren’t many Mineral Fields available per base. It’s a lenghty 1v1 game, but there’s a good design in the layout, where the player must draw a plan on which enemy base to attack next. After taking the first expansion above, I attacked the expansion below my starting base and then I attacked the main enemy base. I lost the game that time, so I decided to go further above. I destroyed the expansion in the top side (using high ground advantage) to weaken the enemy, and I eliminated the base in the bottom as well. I found too late the clean expansion available in the upper right corner.

Mission 6 - “Party Crashers”: I like how this last mission unfolds. The dialogues are focused on what’s important, which is why they aren’t that extensive.
I had the impression that units were spawned in the other side, and for some reason I wasn’t being attacked in my side of the map. However, my impression was correct about which AI was used.
There’s an useful expansion on the other side of the “river”, but I found some difficulties defending it. After I lost that expansion, I managed to beat the mission using the high ground advantage.
The final cutscene needs sound effects for the shackle and voice acting for the events being described in parentheses. These improvements will make the cutscene more fluid since there will be no moments of silence in between.
There’s a good storyline in this campaign, but it’s very important to fix all the typos and grammar mistakes.

7 out of 10.

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