Mission Critical

Review: RPG

Reviewed by Matt Staroscik

Legend Entertainment
$45 on the street
Requires: 486/33, 4MB RAM, CD-ROM, SVGA

Mission Cntical is the latest in Legend's line of adventure games. In my opinion, it's a big step up from Shannara, even though the fundamentals of gameplay remain the same. As in Shannara, and most games in the genre, you move from place to place accumulating items that you use to solve puzzles.

In Mission Critical you play the sole survivor of a vicious space battle. Your ships, exploring a distant star system, are bested in combat by a UN cruiser. Yes, I - said UN. In this future, it's become a tyrannical organization -- the fight between the UN and the "Alliance" forms the backdrop for this game.

Your commander (played by Michael Dorn) reluctantly surrenders but sneaks a fusion bomb into one of the shuttles that are moving the crew to the UN ship. He sacrifices everyone -- save you, who remains on the Lexington -- so that hopefully you alone can complete the mission. (This is all explained in the game's excellent intro. The space combat scenes are especially nice.)

With the UN ship destroyed, you are left alone in orbit around the rocky hellhole known as Persephone; this is where the game really begins. Your ultimate goal is the exploration (and exploitation) of an abandoned alien facility on the planet below. First though you're going to have to make some essential repairs to the Lexingwn, including repairing a hull breach and stabilizing the fission reactor. You'll also have to get up to speed on the Lexington's ship-to-ship combat systems.

I was really impressed with the feel of the world. If I could go buy a Misston Critical RPG sourcebook I'd do it in a second. The UN- Alliance war is a nice change from wars with aliens, and the way the starships look and work is guaranteed to please any hard SF fan.

Misszon Critical is one of the better sci-fi adventure games I have seen lately, and I'd have to rate it as Legend's best game to date.

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