Episode 6 starts out showing the Confed forces already in this system beating up some alien capships. It nice to know that we aren’t doing it all by ourselves.

It’s straight into action, as we are launched in Wasps to defend the station.

This isn’t the most difficult of missions but its not exactly the gentle warmup we’ve got in some of the other episodes, suggesting that this episode is going to be the most difficult yet.

Mission 2 is escorting the Cebereus to a new nav point.

This is no straight escort as we have to face capships along the way.  I’ll be seeing a lot of these in the next few missions.

For mission 3 we are de-turreting a capship.

Again this isn’t too difficult a mission. I always find that if I stay close enough to the capship, I’m usually pretty safe from enemy fighters.

It’s straight out again in bombers for Mission 4 to finish the job.

I’m in a Devastator for the first time in Secret Ops and its about time. There were some flying tips for these in the episodes fiction so I knew it was coming.

Taking out the carrier proves to be just a warmup for the main action at Nav 2.  This isn’t the easiest of missions with so many ships. The best tactic I find is to take out the transport ships first – this is silly but the fact is that my co-pilots can’t torpedoes the engines on these things because they always shoot down the torpedos. If I take them out myself then all their torpedoes count.

Mission 5 looks innocuous enough but proves to be the hardest mission of the game as I struggle to keep the Cerberus alive through 3 nav points. There are an insane number of enemy fighters on this mission and I run out of afterburners before the end. I must spend well over an hour before I complete this one mission.

After that, things get a lot easier again, first with another turret destroying mission.

Then as before its back out in the bomber.

Support arrived while we were swapping to bombers but these Devastators make light work of capships.

After we take them out we see yet more of them arriving in a mini cutscene.

Mission 8 has us escorting the Cerberus to the jump point. We know now that the aliens are using the stars in Proxima as a power source for a new gate to their system so we are going to head there and shut it down.

We have to get through all those capships first. I’m only in a fighter for this mission but I have a few torpedoes for all that. I just make sure to hold them back until the end so I don’t run out with a capship left alive.

That ends Episode 6. Aside from being the most difficult, this was the longest episode so far at 8 missions.

Episode 7 starts by showing the alien wormhole which looks more impressive than the WCP one.

As you would expect I’m starting out with a patrol.

I’m in a Devastator though which is unusual for a patrol mission. It’s just as well as its capships all the way in these later missions.

Mission 2 is another escort.

We get help from some Confed forces that are in system. After struggling through episode 6, I’m making light work of these final missions so far.

Mission 3 is a bit harder as we have to take out a lot of capships with limited torpedoes. Again the tricks here are taking out the transports turrets and also holding back my own torpedoes until the very end.

Someone must have spotted a plot hole with Dekker not getting ill on the alien ships which is filled in with a bit of dialog after the mission.

This is a short episode and mission 4 is the last. We don’t want to destroy the wormhole but to capture and study it.

I’m ordered to destroy the command ship. This is one of those dreadnoughts. It may be huge but this mission is easy. I head straight for the shield emitters and shoot them out. After this its a sitting duck – just a few shots to engine and bridge and its dead.

I don’t even have to mop up the fighters afterwards – the moment the command ship is down the mission is complete.

There is a very small cutscene at the end and thats it. I was expecting more of an ending and this is a bit of a letdown.

I’ve quite enjoyed Secret Ops despite the poor ending mainly due to the ludicrous scale of the battles. It has been repetitive at times but never boring. There has been a distinct lack of originality but even if this had been a £15 mission pack for WCP, I don’t think people would have complained. It didn’t really advance the story or tie up any loose ends from WCP, which is what I would have liked ,but I didn’t miss the FMV as much as I thought I would.

Next : Ultima 9 – Ascension