With so many of my troops out due to injury it's time to get some experience for some fresh faces. Fortunately it's just a moderate difficulty mission! I've got Lieutenant Matt "Eleventh Doc" Smith and Lieutenant Bill "First Doc" Hartnell leading Corporal Mandy and three squaddies! I've finally upgraded to six person squads, and hopefully the extra gunpower from an extra team member will help with the lower health and skills! The little icons underneath each character is a nice summary of just how few skills they have!
At one point in the mission, where we are recovering an item from a resistance haven while Advent swoop in, "Eleventh Doc" Smith finds himself craving food unexpectedly. I zoomed in to find that he's standing next to one of the ubiquitous billboards for the Advent burger.
Ahh, Tom Baker has joined us as scientific liaison, we'll be uncovering the secrets of Jelly Baby technology any second now! Maybe we can fight the Advent burger with a new type of sugar treat?
Mission successful and with only a few injuries, the next mission rolled on before everybody had time to recover. That's even with bonus healing from my med-bay! With a mix of A-team and B-team injuries, the next mission is a go in the snow!
Check out this beastie! This is a berserker, it has lots and lots of health, it likes to hit things really, really hard, berserker is always angry, don't be like berserker. Man, one of these can ruin your day, a smashing hit against a squaddie can mean no more squaddie. If only there were a way to concentrate lots of firepower against it.
Oh, yeah, there is a way to concentrate lots of firepower against it. Phew!
Of course, if you're not really careful you can end up with one of your troops on only one health. Phew, that was CLOSE! I think it's probably not the best idea to tell your wife that you let her die. Even in a game =)
And moving towards a large old building, "Cowboy" finds herself grenaded and shot at as well, leaving her on one health with enemies still close by! She's been with me since the very first mission! If you look at the name in the bottom left of the previous screenshot and this next one you'll see it's "First Doc". He has saved the bacon of SO many troops with his flying, healing, Gremlin drone!
By the way, one way to get extra intel from Advent troops is to "Skullmine" them. The Skulljack is a tool that "interfaces" with the chips in the Advent skulls. Unfortunately it's not USB compatible so "Analytic" Lovelace uses the interface that Doc Tygan has invented. It looks a lot like two long claws that stab upwards through the jaw and into the skull. It's slightly invasive. The trooper doesn't really survive. It looks awesome though! Here's to new intel! The only downside is that it's a melee attack, leaving the generally weaker specialist out in the open. Still, surely she won't die from one small step out into the more open area?
Oh, right, another Faceless (the shapeshifting goo monsters) was hiding in plain sight, pretending to be a civilian. One big claw sweep and my squad is almost destroyed, you can see the burning ruins of the cover "Analytic" was hiding behind. Fortunately Mandy is in a good position with her sniper rifle and liquifies the huge alien entity!
Wow, that was supposed to just be a moderate difficulty mission! Although I had three near casualties, I'd have had actual KIAs if the Doc hadn't been around! Mandy racked up a few kills too, sniping from a distance whenever there was an enemy that needed a little more incentive to pack up and go.
The boffins have been boffining away, and created this new special lab called the Shadow Chamber. With special computer systems, the hope is that we can discover more about the alien plan with targeted research.
And what amazing things we've discovered! Some of the intel we've "extracted" are chains of DNA. The bodies we found at the "special sauce" lab all have particular DNA strands in common. There is obviously some system at play here, specific DNA codes that Advent are interested in. Just what for, we're still not entirely sure.
Digging a little deeper we find a mailing list! Spam email and letter box drops targetting different fast foods to different people! Oh... My... Gosh... the devils are using a targeting DNA based approach to develop the ultimate special sauce tailored right down to the tastebuds of each human being. There are some that can resist this advertising, but soon I think we'll all be eating right out of their hands. Hmm. Hopefully not literally as some of them are big gooey monsters.
Just as well they're nowhere near developing this to its full extent... oh... wait... The project countdown has been reached and I have just a few days left to try and set back their plans or else the Earth is DOOOOOOOOMED!
I'm almost out of supplies, I'm almost out of time, I'm almost out of troops. This may not be the playthrough we were looking for!
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