Let's (Listen to Pr0nogo) Play: Flame Knives

[Pr0nogo]

Let us take a journey

through terror and torment

A short, six image trek

a trek
Through
Flame Knives!!



Here we see Maradun, or as I prefer to call him, Maradouche
His commander in chief, Emperor Ashtorium of the Hawk's Throne, is in danger. An imposter threatens his life.

Maradun's acolyte/sex slave, Praetor Kardin, stands ready to assist him, as does his accompanying Texan-British hybrid, Hayes.

The latest addition to this team of retardation and dismay was the Defiler/dildo known as Grakaa.



And now, that same dildo is ready to fight the imposter - known as Krassius.

Elite Dragoon/terabyte successor Mytradites delivers a chilling line to our heroes.
Note the expert usage of millions of unending elipses.



Shortly thereafter, councilor Thalandrus, a High Templar/rampanging hobo-hermit with absolutely no importance to the story, delivers an incredibly red line.

But all is not well with our heroes.



For, in their (permanent) stupor, they slew Ashtorium - the Emperor of Kharnika - and now, Krassius stands to take the throne!



Beware his brightly-coloured balls of fury, aptly named 'Ancient Minds' and 'HARBINGER OF TORMENNNNNT'

It's in red, so you know they aren't fucking around.


Now, you're probably thinking, 'WOW, INCREDIBLE! AMAZING! I HAD NO IDEA ANY CAMPAIGN COULD BE THIS SPLENDIFEROUS!'



'..but what about the gameplay?'
See for yourself...




Doesn't that look fun?

My review of Flame Knives is filled with Meskian rage and provides a thorough critique of pretty much every aspect of the campaign. Download the 33 minute, 33 second, 77mb audio file here.

[mark_009_vn]

You should just name the thread Flail Knifes you know.. Brings much less confusion to the end user..

..And yes, playing Flail Knifes is the same equivalent of getting castrated by agricultural machinery... in a bath of bloodsucking loli...

[Pr0nogo]

I had plans to LP it in its entirety but the segments have been utterly destroyed, so instead I will close off the attempt at LPing by just delivering a review. I'm almost finished planning it out, and with the campaign recently as completed as I could make it (many of the maps plainly do not work), the review will likely be posted tomorrow.

The campaign is just so fucking fake.

[UntamedLoli]

Harbringer

[IskatuMesk]

Hardbringer

[Krazy]

Was Flame Knives the one that plagiarized Watchmen or was that the other one? I can never remember.

I thought they were significantly better than the average fare and I think Meta is cool. But I'm not a huge fan of saving my game and reloading every 5 seconds of every map, which I recall that campaign demanding.

I remember taking a good hard look at that and the other one whose name I can neverremember--ayon or eon or aeon of the hawk yes that was it--looking for ideas to steal. I don't know why Meta felt the need to make the black guy so damn black in aeon of the hawk either. But whatever. What I do remember is that Meta took the time to actually create an atmosphere for his levels, so that you did feel you were entering a speculative world, which made it distinctive and a huge step up from the banal crap that you see coming out in droves everywhere. But the gameplay, especially in flame knives, made me want to stab myself in the face. Repeatedly.

I think that the real achievement of Laconius in Vile Egression was to take the attention to detail and the desire for a sense of atmosphere in FK but to tone down the "you clicked slightly to the right so you lose the game instantly" mechanics that were everywhere in FK.

And stuff.

[Laconius]

nope i bribed lav with taco bell coupons to win

[Falchion]

Was Flame Knives the one that plagiarized Watchmen or was that the other one? I can never remember.

That was Aeon of the Hawk.

But, oh well, can't criticize it. My latest (and dead) campaign, Infestation: The Pavel Reports, dared rip-off Dustin Hoffman's Outbreak.

[Pr0nogo]

Atmosphere is Meta's only strong suit. My review is filled with Meskian rage and it's guaranteed to cause a few hiccups in everyone's rhino, to say the least, but at least it'll be remotely funny.

[mark_009_vn]

Atmosphere is Meta's only strong suit. My review is filled with Meskian rage and it's guaranteed to cause a few hiccups in everyone's rhino, to say the least, but at least it'll be remotely funny.

I personally believes the atmosphere was completely ruined due to the ridicules of the gameplay/mechanics, I felt less like I'm inside of the world and more like inside of a puzzle game... Terrible... The medieval/ Asian feel of the atmosphere also does not bode well with the scifi/ mysterious settings Blizzard originally portrayed for the Protoss, especially concerning stock Blizzard graphics/ sounds... And, like many before, the lines, the voice acting, and the music sucked...

[Pr0nogo]

I actually forgot to talk about Meta's choice in music, but it was meh. There wasn't any tangible difference between playing the campaign with Meta's soundtrack and playing the campaign with stock Blizzard music. Occasionally, Meta's choice in music sucked ass, but most of the time it was just sort of there and didn't contribute anything.

Alright, review's done. I'll upload it in a sec.

[Pr0nogo]

Uploaded, check OP.

[Lavarinth]

Updated, moved and renamed thread to something I can semi-take seriously but still being a stretch.

[Pr0nogo]

What did you update?

And I'm not playing it, just reviewing it. Didn't you listen to the review? I even talked about you and your tacos.

[Meta]

lol I still have an account here somehow after all these years.

I agree completely about the difficulty; the campaign was made when I used to play Starcraft somewhat competitively, plus I had an unreliable supply of beta testers who were pretty much just there to play content ahead of the rest. So, multiple testing of one's map can harm his perception of difficulty, and coupled with people telling me it was just fine... yeah. They probably cheated all throughout it as well.

When I replayed the campaign years later (not having touched SC for 2+ years) I found myself stunned by the amount of downright impossible stuff I put in there, and cursing at whoever made that map. Except it was me. wtf. Obviously part of the dialogue suffered as well, since I'm not a native English speaker.

The story is just kind of there: there are good guys, evil guys, it's obvious who is who and it doesn't get really interesting until the 7th map in my opinion. The amount of Twilight maps (lol Twilight) helps the atmosphere but I guess it needed more variety early on as well. The medieval/semi-magical nature of the plot makes it far more like a fantasy story than something in the SC universe, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. It's not sci-fi per se, but rather its own thing.

I believe that the strongest points were the ambience and whatever minigames aren't completely imbalanced.

If I made anything resembling FK these days, it'd have a lot more background lore, several difficulty levels and would be much less punishing on players (even on the hardest level). The player would be able to roleplay some of the events, choose alliances and alter the outcome as well.

As for Aeon of the Hawk, the first 4 maps were cool with their cyberpunkish feeling, but I think it lost quite a bit after that, and on retrospect it does look like a Watchmen ripoff in the end, except without blue penises, pirate sociopaths and giant squids.