Technichally speaking, the aliens weren't cannibals as they ate humans, not their own people. And I actually enjoyed this game, found it to be well-written and interesting. Not the best, but certainly not the worst (:

When you die, your tether pulls you back through time itself. Hence, everything should reset. That's how I understood it anyway. I enjoyed the game and would like to see more from the author.

Okay, form the start, I found the game to be riddled with both bad and good things. Some things were handled great, why other... not so much. I end up concentrating on the negative though (I'm just a horrible person like that).

First off, of course, I'm a bit of a hardliner when it comes to tech, so the description of the the tether makes me grit my teeth a little. It's obvious that it was written just as a game device with no other thought put into it, and that's something I've always disliked in stories. Setting aside it's lack of any connection to reality though, it still just feels like a cheap cop-out for balancing risk and reward. It's not there to facilitate the story, it's there just so the author doesn't have to keep things balanced, and can feel justified in any random act in the story. Just make the player play the game repeatedly until they can pick out what they want, and memorize how to dodge the obstacles. For me, that smacked of bad design, but wasn't a killer problem.

What was, however, was one of the first things that I encountered. Essentially, the game has no concept of proper tactical or strategic operations, and likewise zips back and forth on what is 'the right choice'. On my first play though, I hit the ground, and so, for me, the first thing is obvious: I turn to head to the power station to meet up with my troopers, cause that's the intelligent thing to do. Then the game tells me, 'No, you're dumb for trying that and should scout out the rest of the place first, rather than properly coordinating an attack on what sounds like the most threatening target and moving forward in an intelligent and methodic manner from there.' So, ignoring the fact that I'm the walking tank and should be assaulting the power station, rather than throwing soft targets at it (as I can hear gun fire and know that they're probably being mowed down), and that their greater number and smaller size makes them more capable of recon, particularly because I'm utter crap at stealth, I head East, towards the warehouses to lock down the places that seem most likely to be a center of military might, just in case things go wrong. So, obviously the game says 'Your stupid and got your troopers killed for wandering away from them.' From there I just basically face palmed my way through the rest of the game.

There are, however, some bright spots. the pacing of the story is very well done, and every last line is well written. As a story, I can not see a single fault with it (other than a bland, cliched plot). Okay, no, sorry, but seriously the entire thing is a cliche storm. I mean, you can literally kick a dog for heaven's sake. Why? As @IgorHorst mentioned, there is only one reason: To make yourself more evil.

That brings me to the second major problem: You usually have to choose between the less stupid of two profoundly stupid options. There are very few places where you can actually take the intelligent course of action. For example, I find surrendered alien, probably the most important thing when encountering a hostile alien species, and rather than be able to take it into custody, I have the option of blowing it up, or telling it scram like it's a small kid. I can even imagine Felix taking the top off his armor and tossing it to the alien like he's fricken Mean Green Joe. Oh, yea, and your evil if you choose the less stupid option, even if, in game, you already knew the damn thing was going to shoot you in the back.

Additionally, some technical little things keep cropping up to annoy me. First, the spam of blank pages when skipping between scenes, something like that really should be fixed before the game is released. There's honestly no reason for it, as it's not some out of the way one time thing if you do some specific list of actions, but instead is consistently there on every scene change. Secondly, their blaster technology uses lasers? Seriously, what the hell. (Pet Peeve of mine. If the right words exist, use them correctly. If your 'blaster' shoots lasers, why are you calling it a blaster?)

There were another three or four things I found cringe worthy, but I'm not making an exhaustive list here. (Oh Jeez, just found out that after doing another stupid-evil action (as opposed to the chaotic evil that I think it was going for) that ends up with you executing everyone, you can still call on the Shock Troopers to help you assaulting the plot-door.)

In the end though, I think the reason I find so much fault with it, is because there is so much good. There are uber evil options (steal the gold and run) to Superman level good options (Tuck a puppy in your boot to save it), there just doesn't seem to be any middle ground. There's great writing, and great pacing, but numberous small errors detract from the overall feel of the game. It almost feels incompletely done.

Other people have already complained about the morality system so instead I'll try to offer advice on how to improve it.I get the impression you tried to make it similar to mass effect by having you finishing the job either way but having a different attitude/approach depending on your way of seeing things.

One early choice I think you did well was during the character creation when you can choose to cheat during training because there are no laws in warfare.This argument/justification says something about the protagonists view on life and his mission. There is a clear difference in intentions and personal philosophy between the character who cheats and the one who doesn't.The choices out in the field aren't as well thought out.If you find the child at the airport and try to talk to him/her (cant remember) you get a message some of your soldiers have died.Why is rushing to their aid immediately afterwards the "dark and evil" choice?Am I evil for caring about my squad?We know the child is there and can send someone later.

Since you are working for the empire I suggest replacing the light/dark meter with a philosophy meter in future installments.Exactly what does my protagonist think of the empire and what they do? Does he have a brothers in arms attitude or a every man for himself one? Having a personal philosophy based around compassion and unity versus one around individual strength and success should affect what kind of choices the protagonist is capable of considering.

@Trickster: Exactly. Replacing Light and Dark with "Paragon and Renegade," for lack of a better set of terms (thank you BioWare), and eliminating the random puppy punting would make the karma meter more meaningful.

I especially hated the puppy vignette. You are Dark if you refuse to help a poor starving puppy at the possible expense of your team and your mission. I can't get behind that call.

Another couple of notes on the game:

#1: The name of the aliens (Lacertians) was plagiarized from Space Lizard (creator of The Reconstruction and I Miss The Sunrise). While stealing names isn't necessarily going to damage the game itself, that's extremely bad karma if done without permission.

#2: The romances were non-optional. They happened without player input and assumed that if you got a chance at sexing up a member of the opposite sex, you would. That was extremely irritating.

Personally, I found the game to be fantastic, maybe because I know how difficult it is to make a game (I've tried many times...and failed) but mainly because the story line was GOOD.
I do not care if somethings were cliche or options were one of two extremes (Evil and Good), I could still understand where the story was going, and why certain things happened.

Scouting the area IS being tactical, and you WOULD be stupid not to do it. How would you know if a whole damn army wasn't marching towards the power station. Scouting the area is the first thing any tactician or General would do.
Of course, there was no army marching on the power-station. I found the puppy options annoying too, but I have come to realise that it was no annoying because it was not a good idea to have a puppy there, but because it challenged you morally, what was more important, saving the life of an innocent creature and jeopardizing the mission, or leaving the creature to die and keeping the mission safe from possible danger. I did however avoid the dog after that, as it is a very challenging choice to make.

You have to remember that you weren't fighting humans in the game, and you weren't in the 21st century, you were a random walking tank on a random planet on your first mission. There are certain things you wouldn't be able to do or think of doing. There IS no middle ground, you either be logical and complete the mission, the mission, and nothing but the mission, or you let your emotions lead the way.

One the whole, a great game, there were many story-lines you could go through, and the thrill of finding a new one each time I played it further proves that this game is GOOD.
I look forward to future instalments.

@Ramidel "Lacertian" is an English word; it means "lizard like."

I see.

@Kho
"You have to remember that you weren't fighting humans..."
I have to argue that speculative fiction has always been about fighting humans regardless of what form they come in. Authors often, albeit sometimes inadvertently, pick a quality within humans and externalize it into an alien species or time-travelling nazis, or what have you. At its core, aliens have always represented parts of the human heart. It's meant for us to use the juxtaposition to really see what humanity unique... aside from the superficial 'they look like lizards.'

After all, we wouldn't really know what aliens are like. They're alien for a reason.

@Lykantrope

That or they're just an obstacle which the good guys must overcome. Like most hostile alien races in video games.

In this game, Lacertians do have "moral standing," as it were. Intentionally shooting a surrendered Lacertian is a Dark decision. So they're not pure obstacles unless you're playing the kind of character who has no morals and deals ruthlessly with threats.

Also, does anyone know if starting with 95% Dark is a bug or not?

I'm not sure what you mean by saying they have a "moral standing"... They're basically just written as obstacles... But because of the moral standard that your character is held too by the game, it's still considered "dark" to kill that surrendered one even when your character already knows it'll shoot him him in the back if he doesn't.

That's what I meant by "moral standing." Personhood. A right to not be casually murdered because it's convenient. While your superiors might not care, a moral Marine will.

That just means the game considers killing a helpless living thing evil even if you know it's about to pull out a gun and shoot you in the back the moment you give it a chance because you've seen the future. Whether or not the game considers Lacertians people is completely irrelevant. And also, while we're at it, deciding to kill a hostile alien because you know it's going to attack you the moment you show it any mercy is hardly 'Casual murder because it's convenient.'

I think equating being shot with an 'inconvenience' is stretching things a little. Certainly killing a surrendering combatant is illegal, but then so is pretending to surrender then firing on your captor. The Lacertian is a war criminal, thus voiding its rights under the laws and customs of war. However, killing the Lacertian before you know it's going to shoot you in the back is pretty much not a great thing to do.

@Canisa I don't remember the game ever saying anything about laws and customs of war. Pretty much all we're told is to try not to do too much damage to the infrastructure of the colony while we violently subjugate suspected political dissidents.

@Shoelip The game makes a statement through its morality meter. Shooting unarmed Lacertians causes darkness to grow within you.

Right. It's just an arbitrary game mechanic. Not something that could be described as "illegal".

True, shooting it is not stated as being illegal, but your character is implied to already know of various different species of aliens, meaning that you might give them the benefit of being a sentient species automatically. That would make a moral dilemma, except because of the time machine, you've already seen the future and know its going to shoot you, and you're still evil for shooting it.

Hey guys! I'm Steve, the guy who wrote MAM, and I wanted to say thanks for all of your thought and insight. I'm working right now on the first update to the first mission, and I'm going to try (if possible!) to put a lot of these suggestions in action! Some of them might be too big of a rewrite, but I'll see what I can do. Again, thank you, and if you have any more ideas, I'm open - don't worry about ruffling my feathers. Of course, don't get yours ruffled if I don't take your ideas! :0)

@dfabulich - thanks for clearing that up. I read that plagerism accusation and thought, "Crud, I've never even heard of that book!" Ha! Thanks man

Freaking LOVE you guys' morality debate here, by the way. Awesome stuff.

Also, if you know of any true and real bugs (you know, as opposed to my science just being ridiculous), I'd REALLY like to hear about them soon! The other stuff is good to know too - thanks guys!

@Reaperoa - if you've got those other things that were "cringeworthy" handy, if you remember them, I'd like to hear what they are!

Also, I'm definitely making a sequel. It was just too much fun not to. And so far with my plans, it'll be a LOT less "on rails", and there won't be any temporal tether. I've even got a clever reason why! I like the tether idea, but I can TOTALLY see why it would also be irritating to replay parts over and over!

@Dangerpuppy First of all, it's nice to see a writer that can take someone really ripping into their story, particularly 'cause I'm a a-hole when it comes to reviewing things. >.<

As for the things I disliked, IIRC, they mostly revolved around the fact that a lot of combinations of choices ended up with strange things. Like if you run to the powerplant when you first touch down, you're admonished for not scouting and forced to, then if you run to the warehouses (east?), a marine is killed and you're told off for taking the time to scout. If you're playing a nice guy and come across the alien that surrendered a second time, you have to take a shot in the back to stay a 'nice guy'. The last major one I can remember is you being able to send the marines at the final door whether or not you killed them all already. It just seems like the game was far undertested, as most of these seem like things that would crop up in a beta test. (There were a few other things that I can't really recall, but I think most of them were personal issues, either from the fact that MAM is soft sci-fi, and I usually only read harder sci-fi, so any 'science' problems really get to me, or from an inability to optimize the tactics used in game.)

@Reaperoa Sweet - thanks! So far, all of the things that you named I've already edited for, so ... that's a good sign! You now won't need to scout the settlement unless you want the glory (and the code to the hatch, or the puppy - you can get the code from the kid in the tower, and the puppy is a shortcut with the woman, or it can become the Ajax mascot, but now you can skip the puppy with no repercussions if you want to. That little guy seemed a sore spot to a lot of people! Whups!), and when you meet that alien, you now have the choice of taking it prisoner (why wasn't that an option before? Beats me!) And yeah, that part where you could send the troopers in even if they were dead was a total glitch!

I've also added in the option to sort of reset your temporal tether to send you back to right before you go into the power station. That way you don't need to replay the WHOLE mission, at least... I THOUGHT that tether idea would be better than dying, but I think it was more irritating than I realized...

Beta testing revealed almost no mistakes at all. How funny is that?!

And you are certainly right about it being under-tested... I wrote the game in two days! And then much later, went through to edit it, and it was total junk, so the final game is a weird product of vomiting out a story, and then re-writing it like 6 months later. Which works OK for just plain old stories, but not so much for something like this... Anyway, don't worry about being an a-hole! Hahaha! It's all right! I want this thing to be awesome, and if I get all bent out of shape, who is that helping?! I really do appreciate how much thought you put into this. Thank you.

I'm not sure whether this is fixable, but the romance and friendship are non-optional, particularly the meeting with John. There's no agency on the player's part in either case; if you're the opposite sex to John or Eleanor and the conditions are met, you start shagging, and if you're the same sex, you become friends. This is particularly badly done in John's case, as whether you meet him is random (from a first-time player's perspective) and you can end up in a relationship just by being purely aggressive. To wit, a female marine can be a hell-out Dark brawler who charges head-on into combat and then, suddenly, sex happens because you charged John there at the end of the paintball game.

Romances really need at least a subplot if you want to include them; I'd scratch John's route entirely, but that may leave the game teetering in another way.

Also, shouldn't Light and Dark stats both start at 50 instead of 5/95?

Yeah, light and dark should have started at 50 - that was a weird mistake! Thanks!

For the romance part, that's a good point. I reworked them to ignore your own gender, and now you sort have have the option to pursue whatever you want, fight John and create and enemy, or to just brush them off as not important. Keeping John in allows for romance or friendship possibilities, and now those same are possible with Eleanor - so players who are working towards one of those two purposes have two chances to do it...

Maybe there should be more in there that deals with it... Hmmm. If I don't shove something in here, there'll certainly come up again in part 2...

Thanks for the ideas and suggestions! Keep em coming!

As to the light vs dark aspect of the game, I like the idea someone here shared of using different titles like Renegade or Paragon. I havent played Mass Effect, but it sounds like that's along the lines that I was thinking! Unfortunately, I don't have any other terms on my mind to use ... Hmmm... Rogue, maybe? For dark? If you've got any ideas, please share em!

Kindness vs Cruelty? To me the one problem was that it didn't seem to effect anything. I mean, to me it seemed like it was just telling you whether you're good or evil, which is something that should be shown through the story, rather than through stats.

Hmmm! Good point! So, if you make decisions that lean a certain way, then the story simply unfolds in that direction? Well that makes a lot of sense! :0)

As it stands now, it's more just a side facet to the game - I think the only things it effect are whether or not you can find love, and then being especially light or dark gets you a light or dark marine ending.

I don't think that I can really edit this first mission to be more that way - it might be too huge of a rewrite ... But maybe for the second one... Hmm... Good point though!!

Having played the game through several times, I've got a couple of thoughts. First of all, the good:
-I liked the fact that when you were retrieved by the temporal tether, the text was different each time. Though I think the tether is a bit of a dubious plot device in sci-fi terms...well, let's just say that it's a decent device for letting you hold onto a character rather than having to do the generation bits every time.
-Each scene was well-written and enjoyable.
-In general, this is on my short list of favorite games on here. I particularly love the Starship Troopers shout-outs.

Now, I would like to see some adjustments:
(1) Enforced stupidity and "dumb or evil" choices are a big problem in a few places. The most notable is the faked surrender incident...I wish there was an unlockable option whereby if you had the requisite information, you could opt to keep your gun at the ready/remain ready to jump and have a shot (if your stats were good enough, at least) of dodging the attack. It's not alone:
-There's a difference between saving the kid and making sure he gets picked up and feeding a dog. I'm sorry, but I /really/ wish there was a non-evil option that didn't involve you either taking half an hour out to feed a stray animal or dumping tools by the wayside to carry the puppy along with you.
-In this vein, I'd like for some option to exist where you /do/ kindle something with Ms. Monroe and lay a bit of groundwork (that is, if you want the romance option to exist as a side-plot for later episodes)...but you don't start smooching while there's a battle going on.
-With the alien lab, I'd like to see a fifth "call it in" option (i.e. you inform your superiors of what you've found and move on rather than torching it).

(2) "Cartoon evil"/"evil for the lulz" options bug me. I'm sorry...I don't really even feel terribly comfortable choosing a "randomly kill the woman" option even if this /is/ a game. To put it in a more familiar context, there's a difference between the corrupt cop who is taking kickbacks and the corrupt cop also willing to shoot innocent civilians.
-Mind you, that's not to say that there's not room for some sorts of behavior that qualifies as evil (shooting enemy prisoners/enemies attempting to surrender, for example) within the context of the game (there's a /long/ history of blind eyes being turned to this during wars, particularly in "discretionary" situations such as the aliens' spiky tails would likely create).
-A sub-point I would suggest here: Enable the option of the cartoon evil, but each time you cross the line and purposefully kill civilians, you risk some sort of discovery (use a hidden dice roll for this, perhaps) that results in an end-of-mission execution (or, if combined with super-low morale, possibly getting fragged) when someone "goes over the tapes". Super-evil movie empires notwithstanding, completely random killings of /your own/ civilians does /not/ tend to go over well upon high. That sort of misbehavior tends to be reserved for Chaos in Warhammer 40K and the like.

(3) I'd like to see some sort of "professionalism" rating added, even if hidden from view for the most part. Basically, this would be increased by doing things "by the book". It wouldn't correlate directly with light/dark (ignoring the dog, for example, would be professional while clearing out your toolbox to carry him along would be about as unprofessional as you can get; by contrast, phoning in the discovery of the kid is probably going to qualify as professional) or glory/not-glory (diving through all guns blazing, while a fun story when you get back to the bar on base, is more likely to trigger a reprimand from your superior)...but then again, I tend to play the game more or less along the lines of "I am doing this mission as by-the-book as I can while minimizing casualties" and I'd sort of like to see that encouraged.
-It bears mentioning that some options would be a plus here, some would be a minus, and some would be neutral (sometimes the rules offer a bit of latitude; other times, there's nothing that specifically addresses the option).
-Also, some "by the book" options are going to also be the "stupid" option (surrendering alien with spiky tail, anyone?). Rules of engagement can range from common sense (if you're lucky) to downright stupid. Ask some vets from any of a number of wars and not-wars IRL.
-For what it's worth, I disagree with one of the first posters...from how I understand my orders in the game, I need to scout out the settlement in the event that there is another threat lurking somewhere there /aside/ from the overt firefight, particularly since there's a lot of mystery as to what happened at the colony.

Finally, I think there's a bug in the game...when I take the blue liquid, I can still "call for backup" even though when I do, I see there as being 0 troopers with me when I do. Is this an error (and if all the troopers are dead, shouldn't that mean I can't call for backup)?

@Gray Thank you VERY much for the in depth response there! I'll take all of that into consideration - and I think you'll like my first round of edits.

I'm hoping to wrap those up and send them in today, but before I do I wanted to get your feedback on something (if you see this in time!) I like your "by the book" idea a lot, and I'm wondering if I couldn't fuse that with the light/dark meter. Here's my idea: I've already added a part to your training where a chaplain talks at your group about the idea of "walking in the Light", and gives a rough idea of what the mitary's expectations are. This is sort of a fusion of a basic morality and doing things "by the book" - super generally, in Dungeons and Dragons terms, they hope that you'll act Lawful Good.

And this way, your Light meter can increase through things like NOT helping the puppy, if your reason is because you have orders and duty. So in a few places, there can be a couple of ways to increase Light.

Oh and I think that when dark increases, I'm going to chnge it to simply say, "dark increased". I think my creepy "darkness grows within you..." might be ... Too judgemental?

The chaplain will also make a small mention that as a Mobile Armored Marine, your actions are recorded and come under greater scrutiny than regular infantry...

Anyway, I had that idea after reading your comment. What do you think?

@Dangerpuppy:
I like the ideas in general. I guess the one thought that comes to mind is this: Do you want a straight Lawful Good-Chaotic Evil axis? Or would you like to try for the "traditional" (i.e. standard RPG) two-axis morality system? I ask because when I think about a few situations, different combinations of actions generate different moralities in this context:
-Lawful Good would, in my mind, definitely help the kid...but romancing Eleanor and helping the puppy are definitely questionable to unlikely (and throwing out equipment to stash the puppy in the carrier would be /right/ out) given their impact on the mission. They'd also hold tightly to rules of engagement (possibly to the point of Lawful Stupidity...again, I've heard fun stories of Lawful Stupid rules of engagement).
-Chaotic Good would probably help everyone out that they can, even at the expense of the mission. Basically, you help everyone you can, chase love, etc...and probably get chewed out more often than not by your CO. Likewise, this guy might be a gloryhound while Mr. Lawful Good will stick a bit more closely to the manual when dealing with some combat situations.
-Lawful Evil would, in this context, probably still help out the kid...but there's at least some room for shooting the aliens a bit more indiscriminately and not accepting surrenders IMHO. Basically, if his mission is to save the colony, then this guy is going to save the colony and/or save his men if he has to shove the aliens up against a wall and start firing to do so. However, I don't see /literal/ dog-kicking here...if you're in a bar fight, he's the guy you want to have your back. He's got a moral compass...it's just got a certain lean to it that's a bit more ruthless than average. He'll hold to the RoE, but there's a wonderful grey area in war that differentiates him from lawful good.
-Chaotic Evil is, in this context, the guy who (literally) kicks the dog and randomly kills people (I see this as the classic "cackling villain"). A lot of the super-dark options fall here. In the context of the game, I believe that the technical term is "war criminal".

Mind you, you could still fuse the effects as an "overt" light/dark stat but use a pair of hidden stats to actually determine things. It would mean more coding, but it might be more effective for handling "you cross this line and so help you" situations. Not everything has to be "on top"; some "under the hood" stats doing the real work can be used to give the player derived stats.

I prefer a two-axis system to a one-axis system, but that's because I do see a categorical difference in handling certain sorts of dilemmas. Chaotic Good is probably going to be the most personally satisfying in certain regards (there's something really cool about the ending where you're having drinks with your best friend, you've got the puppy as the station pet, you've got the girl, and everything is great). However, I suspect that the Lawful Good and Lawful Evil tendencies I described above would have their own rewards (praise from above in the first case and men who really care about you because they know you're that one-in-a-million commander who is willing to throw out some "inconvenient" rules to protect "his" men and/or make sure that their lives aren't wasted in the second). And yes, I may be mangling the compass slightly to explain the ideas, but I think you know what I'm getting at.

One other thought, per the above suggestion to make the game follow a slightly different bent depending on how you're playing: I think keeping the first mission (i.e. this one) pretty straightforward but adjusting subsequent missions slightly (either in some slightly different stats at the start, in perhaps adjusting a few of the situations/scenes, or both) would be the best course. There's really no need to redo the first mission from the ground up...it's a great mission and I love playing through it.

Just wondering, but any idea how long it usually takes for new code to be updated for these stories?

is there going to be a mobile armed marine 2 ?

@Gray it was about 3 weeks after I submitted my update that it was published

@Zane yeah I'd like to! In fact I've got a rough outline ready. But unfortunately, I need time....