Let's Play X-COM Enforcer Mission 34 -Finale

And that's the final level of the game. A bit of a boss rush -though poor Fat Guy On Treads and Spinning Freezing Thingy don't return, I meant it when I said the tread guy was unique- but most of the time it's actually weirdly easy. You just don't fight that many enemies, and it's suddenly slanted toward basic enemies like Sectoids and Snakemen when you're not fighting boss-tier enemies.

A nice touch is that Professor Utonium is completely silent in this mission. None of his stock dialogue will trigger, not even if you deliberately summon the objective arrow, and of course he doesn't have any unique dialogue once the mission has actually started.

The initial bit with Enforcer coming back is surprisingly good at being a bit sad. It's a little disappointing the game doesn't do more with plot stuff, because what few moments it makes the attempt in lean toward pretty decent.

Though the Ethereal's voice acting is awful. His lines also feel very out of place, like he's a stock fantasy villain rather than master of a high-tech alien invasion, and his visual design is pretty bizarre. Not quite as baffling as the remaquel's attempt at Ethereals, but still possibly the worst translation of an X-COM design into 3D Enforcer performs. Why is this guy in ragged bandages?

The boss fight itself is fairly basic, and the game does a decent job of leading you into understanding what you're supposed to do: break the three generators so the shield goes down, then take the Ethereal out. None of Enforcer's boss fights is particularly complex, but the Ethereal is notable for how much unique work is put into his fight, with two brand-new attacks -even if one of them really seems to be just summoning ghost versions of Snakemen that happen to fly- and the arena and yadda yadda. Most bosses have one ranged attack and one melee attack, if that.

I'd apparently badly misremembered the ending. For some reason I'd thought we just got a sad shot of Enforcer dying and some radio chatter as X-COM headed off to the Mars assault. Nnnnno. No, we get a sad shot of Enforcer, everything fades to black, and then Enforcer starts talking about initiating repairs in what's pretty obviously a sequel hook.

I'm genuinely curious what, if anything, the devs had in mind as a possible sequel. What, would Enforcer repair itself just in time to perform an equivalent rampage during Terror From the Deep's events? I mean, if it were me doing a sequel I'd probably go with having Enforcer end up picked up by alien craft as scrap metal, which then retreats far off elsewhere, with Enforcer thus waking up somewhere far off in the galaxy as an opportunity to both explore the aliens on their terms and get Enforcer out of the way of the rest of the continuity, but I kind of doubt that's the sort of direction they had in mind with the hook.

Anyway, this is the end of this run, but it's not the end of the LP. I'm also going to make a run showing off Xtra Spicy difficulty, and possibly cycle through Enforcer's many, many alternate skins as I go. I've never tried Xtra Spicy, and I'm hoping the game will get enjoyably challenging sooner as a result. Maybe there's custom changes! We'll see.

I'm not entirely sure when I'll get started on that, though. There's going to be a bit of a break via a totally different game getting videos and posts before I come back to Enforcer.

See you next mission.