Mission 9 is moderately easy and I get to the conference at the end of it with no great trouble. The chairman is discussing some sort of orbital weapons platform which can be used to strike targets from space.

When I get back to base, I’m met by the sergeant I rescued some time back. The captain volunteered for a mission himself with Brookes but didn’t come back. The sergeant is in command now.

Brookes is not happy as ever and thinks they were set up.

I get my next briefing from the sergeant who tells me that we have finally got the cipher chip working and have learnt of some sort of weapon being developed by WEC. We don’t know what it is but I’m to go in and destroy it.

The place is some sort of lab full of genetic experiments of some sort.

I bought a graviton shield from Weasel in my last break between missions. This is a bit more effective than my old one and also gives a nice effect when I’m hit.

At the end of the level I find and shoot the Doctor. He describes me as a prodigal son suggesting that I’m a product of these experiments myself. He has the most ridiculous death in any of the FMV to date, with his hand refusing to go for as long as possible.

I’m ordered to kill all the prototypes before I go so I have to shoot out all the tanks.

I’m met by the Sergeant again when I get back. She says that she discovered Brookes was the traitor and Brookes teleported out as soon as she was discovered.

My next mission is to get information on Project Vigilence. I have to infiltrate a base and steal the electronic plans.

This mission is again fairly easy and I get through it quickly.

We have discovered that Operation Vigilence involves a new space station (I knew this already of course). This space station still can’t operate without ground control. The president is planning to use this station to eliminate the resistance and threaten any city allying with them. There is to be a demonstration of its power -I’m to change its target using its ground base.

At the end of the mission I change the coordinates to destroy a WEC military base.

The Sergeant has learnt that our Captain is still alive and sheduled for execution so I’m sent off to rescue him.

Shortly after starting the mission, I intercept a call from our Sergeant and discover that she was the traitor all along.

I discover that Brookes is imprisoned here so my mission changes to having to rescue her instead.

This is a much harder mission and loses the linearity of the others. I do have to work from one area to another using keycards but these new areas are all over the map so its a challenge to figure out where to go next. I make it to Brookes in the end.

As ever there is a convienient teleport right outside and Brookes knows the code as she could see from her cell.

Before I get back to the HQ, I get a message from Maxis himself. My next mission is going to be to teleport onto a space station and hijack one of the craft on it. I’m then to use this to get to the Vigilence platform.

Rebel HQ is a mess and there is only me and Brookes who are left alive. I could just step on the teleport and leave but I have a look around and kill of the WEC guards. There is a bit of loot around, especially in Weasels crate.

The space station is by far the best guarded area so far. There is a new type of security bot armed with plasma guns and a lot of the guards have these guns also. Admitedly these aren’t as nasty as rockets but they hurt a lot when near enough every guard has one.

I find an area with the space ships at the end and climb into one of them.

There is a cutscene showing me landing on the station.

And then another scene showing the chairman giving our ex-sergeant her final ultimatum if she doesn’t manage to kill me off now.

Maxis gives me a short brieing – I have to go to level 7 and destroy the guidance system.

I’m facing the same level of opposition as in the last mission but I don’t have that much trouble getting to the target and blowing it up. There are a lot of recharging stations on this mission, in compensation for the inability to restock after the last one.

I’m not done yet. Maxis gets back to me wanting me to destroy the whole station now by taking out its cooling system.

By this stage I’m getting everything the game has to throw at me – loads of troops with rocket launchers and equal numbers of security bots. I don’t need to conserve ammo though so I just stick to my rocket launcher for this part of the game which takes anything out in a couple of hits.

I destroy the cooling system. Now I just have to get off here as quick as I can.

On the way out I bump into the sergeant. Now I’ve ruined her career with both the resistance and WEC she is going to use all the money she has earnt to retire to some backwater. First she plans to take care of me. She isn’t the most likely candidate for a boss at the end of a game but is tougher than she looks.

She has some sort of cloaking shield. I try using tactics for this fight and rolling to avoid her plasma gun and pick her off slowly but it gets me nowhere. In the end I just slug it out toe to toe with her while firing off rockets as fast as I can and using up all my energy and health packs. This works well and she goes down in seconds. I grab her keycard and take the last escape pod out of here.

The station blows up, I return to Earth but the chairman threatens in a message on the way back to hunt me down once the mess is sorted out.

I’ve probably been overly critical of this game on the way through. It definitely improved and got more complex as it went on and is well worth playing. It desevered a sequel less than Cybermage and especially Bioforge but I’m still quite looking forward to playing No Regret. There was hardly anything in any of the levels that stood out for me though – they all used the same elements leaving me nothing in particular to write about. This is stopping it from being a classic in my book, but it was an exceptionally well made game for its time and far better than it should have been. Its definitely been more entertaining than playing the last game to use this engine.

Next: Wing Commander 4