…I must admit this is my first actual CoG-style game I played. And it by accident, I accidentally clicked the button, accidentally chosen a call sign, accidentally went through training, accidentally picked the worst armor, etc. I however have much to talk about in this game, so I decided to make a post, in the hopes of contacting the developer.
I liked MAM…I guess. Apparently there were multiple plotlines but somehow I wasn’t really interested in pursuing any of them (other than the mission plotline), and the game seemed so railroady that I don’t think I care enough to explore some more. The story and concept was interesting, and going through character history was nice, but…there’s a lot I find wrong.
I didn’t really like the morality system, as it appears to be you making sacrifices to increase your meter…for the meter’s sake. There’s a Perfect Evil Run and a Perfect Good Run, but the moral choices in this game were so very simplistic (Do you want to save puppy? Do you want to blow up a power station?) that I didn’t really care to see them…and in any event, I prefer these meters to play a role within the game itself. There also wasn’t any real reason to be “evil” except for the lulz. Sure, I ended up being evil (didn’t really care for my own men’s survival, had no feelings towards the Imperium or the Mobile Marines, and was more interested in completing my mission[1]), but that was probably due to me repeatedly blowing up the power station (more on that later). Many of the options tended towards being evil in the cartoony sense (killing random women…murdering my own troopers…ugh.) and I find that sort of “evil” to be rather repugnant.
I liked the idea of dying and then coming back to life with a slight hit to unit morale[2]. I didn’t like having to redo the entire mission because I died. I certainly did not like having to blow up the Power Station THREE TIMES, fight off against lizards that suddenly respawned, and rescue a starving puppy twice (probably the exact same puppy). I also let Elena died once and then saved her twice. All in the same run. …It’s as if the entire world was reset because I died…but it didn’t reset entirely, because my platoon knew I died and lost morale. I think death needs different consequences: instead of forcing me to replay a mission I already played through, place me right back where I last left off, but with unit morale lowered and all actions I did previously still maintained. If I let Elena die once and blew up the power station and then I myself die, then when I come back, Elena’s corpse should still be fresh and the power station is a wrecked mess.
I also think I disliked the “locked door” near the end of the game, not because it was hard to unlock the door but because the game implied that there was more than one solution to unlocking that door (say, finding a keycard), and that this second solution will lead to rewards such as higher glory. Making it clear that this is the ONLY way to unlock the door would remedy this problem, probably by having text that says to the effect of “I’ll come back later and unlock the door using the tools I have; the tools I have will unlock this door but might prevent me from exploring the rest of the complex”.
I wish I could praise this game more. I…can’t. Maybe this game was an average Hosted Game, or it’s the highlight of CoG’s Hosted Games. I don’t know. All I know is that I considered it mediocre, and while I had some fun, it wasn’t as much as I hoped. I have saved my game and will probably follow the life of Mr. Felix some more, but if there is a sequel, I’ll need to lower my expectations so I don’t get disappointed again.
[1]If the bad guys were reasonable people willing to talk to me, weren’t outright cannibals wanting to eat civilians, and didn’t try to kill me, I might have defected to them. I suppose that’s the real limit in these CoG games…there’s always a limit to what you can do because the author didn’t think you want to take a certain option.
[2]As a note: To my understanding, my two deaths was “cheap”, but I might not have understood the mechanics correctly though; I think the two death bypassed my armor however, and for most of the game, whenever you got hit, you lost armor, and I assumed once you lose all your armor you died.