“F**k this for a game of soldiers”… “I didn’t sign up for this”… “The mission designer needs shooting”… Alpha One, my level 3 Rangers team, has turned mutinous! Having suffered heavy casualties during the first three days of Operation Subjugator (three KIA, three seriously wounded, and three lightly wounded) the top brass now expects them to fight their way into a water filtration plant crawling with hostiles, and defuse three bombs in under two minutes. “This shit is pure Hollywood” mutters Dalton as, shaking his head, he slots a mag into his M249. I nod in agreement.
Although bomb disposal missions are my least favourite Door Kickers 2 outings (their tight time limits don’t suit my preferred slow ‘n’ cautious play style) I’m willing to put up with them if they’re set on smallish maps and don’t involve dozens of bad guys. I only end up exasperated and rebellious when faced with far-fetched tall-orders like mission 4 in Operation Subjugator. Unavoidable and brutally hard, this blood boiler has caused me to abandon the first of DK2’s four stock ops, and eye the others with trepidation.
Fortunately, KilllHouse provide an alternative long-game format that’s much less likely to leave you grumpy – the Tour of Duty. In ToDs, missions are randomly generated and rarely compulsory. For most of the the past week, courtesy of ‘Shrine District’, one of DK2’s two ToDs, I’ve been enjoying turning a band of keen but inept Nowheraki novices into a truly formidable SWAT outfit.
Initially armed with AK-47s or AKMs and little else, and handicapped by atrocious marksmanship and ‘field skills’ stats (field skills represent efficiency with kit such as sledgehammers), level 1 locals come as a bit of a shock after the clinical efficiency of the Rangers. In early excursions with my new charges, there were incidents reminiscent of that famous scene in Pulp Fiction. Moments when my guys blazed away hitting sweet Fanny Adams.
On reflection I suppose I should have been grateful KillHouse haven’t represented inexperience in other ways too. If DK2 simmed fumbled grenades, dropped magazines, weapons jams, and the accidental shooting of civilians and comrades, Mo and co’s bloody baptisms would have been even bloodier.
What Nowheraki units initially lack in finesse and kit choice, they partially make up for in numbers. While the militiaman, the lowliest form of indiginous fighter, never gets a helmet and doesn’t benefit from the doctrinal decisions you make during the course of a ToD, he is buffed by nearby leaders, and only costs half a deployment point so can be employed in sizeable numbers. As time passes and they gain access to body armour and weapons like the FAL rifle and Uzi SMG, the temptation to use them only increases.
Fifteen days/missions into my current Shrine District tour of duty, most of my dozen militiamen sport wound circles – a testament to how much I’ve relied on them of late. Sometimes sent into the field in the company of just one ‘pro’ (leader, sapper, or assaulter), they’ve doughtily held the line while the specialists wounded in the first week or so of operations have been hors de combat.
In coming days I plan to field more balanced teams. Using a mix of specialists armed with quality firearms like the APC9 and M249, and militiamen toting Uzis, FALs, and Molotov cocktails, I’m confident Black 1-0’s pleasing success and maturation will continue.
Would my Nowheraki prodigies be Level 16 right now, if I’d selected the ‘Iron Man’ option at the start of the tour, or if DK2’s somewhat reckless AI, hadn’t given me a slight helping hand from time to time? No way.
It’s incredibly rare I ‘three star’ or ‘two star’ a mission at the first time of asking, and the willingness of alerted foes to hurry through potentially dangerous doorways, regularly leaves Mo, Starlord, Rathwan, and comrades contemplating unlikely corpse heaps. DK2 doesn’t need smarter enemies or less frustrating operations to keep me plugging away at its mesmerising brainteasers day after day – its immediacy, drama, tactical subtlety, and amazing fund of missions guarantee my continued patronage – but I suspect I’m not the only person who’d be pleased to hear that the devs had plans in these areas.
100% enemies could bunker more frequently. The lemming rush can feel a bit silly, but is also what prompts the most believable flanking and surprise maneuvers.
It’s a tough nut to crack, and I can remember being frustrated with the opposite problem in the original rainbow six’s: enemies who never seemed to move enough!
I wonder what a WW2 version of door kickers might look like…
It’s a pity DK2’s admirable modability doesn’t extend to AI. If something was available that would make foes more reluctant to pathfind through ‘corpse heaps’ and more likely to suppress doorways and bottlenecks between themselves and suspicious noises, I’d be keen to try it. If it came with a ‘more grenades for enemies’ slider, all the better.
How are you getting on with the CIA? I’ve spent very little time with them thus far, but If my DK2 review gets a third part, they will probably be the subject of it.
The covert/overt wings are great fun, but probably where I do my least “planning.”
Often the CIA missions feel like 3 second turns with all the pausing and tinkering: react, adjust, experiment room by room.