STRIDERS!!
That’s shout sounds fear into the hearts of the surviving Resistance.
Never has such an enemy caused so much damage to morale of fighters.
Here is your chance to strike a blow against the Combine.
This is mod has been updated as part of The Ville Retrospective event.
StriderVille is the result of a mapping competition.
The competition only received 2 entries, which was very disappointing, considering how successful the last one was.
This mod is dedicated to the memory of Jasper, who was really looking forward to playing it.
The winning map will be the one that creates an interesting scenario using Striders as the main enemy. The setting can be forest, town, Citadel-style Combine structures, anything you can think of, maybe even a coast area. I’d love to see some indoor areas to fight the Striders in and maybe some eye-level action (i.e. not always below them).
It would be nice to maybe use other weapons besides rocket launchers and maybe even use the environments against them but I don’t know how feasible that would be.
Basically I am looking for something that shakes up the idea of a boring battle where the player has to run around looking for rockets. Perhaps a chase on a buggy through the water canals with the Strider behind you. Perhaps a stealth mission to sneak up on one, perhaps something where you need to keep the Strider occupied while a bunch of citizens escape. Let your imagination run wild (ish).
I want to finish the map and say “WOW”, that was great!
Unfortunately, Sean’s map crashes for me and even using noclip doesn’t help. Therefore, I can’t really accept it as an entry, that, plus it doesn’t have the text at the beginning and I don’t know if it has at the end. I emailed him but haven’t received a reply at the time of writing.
This means that Samuli wins by default. However, whilst his entry is very good, it doesn’t really do anything different from other Strider encounters and as the text above stated “…I am looking for something that shakes up the idea of a boring battle where the player has to run around looking for rockets.” and his entry doesn’t do that.
I am fully aware that the last competition I ran had a similar problem and I didn’t give the proper prize. Even though this is probably the last mapping competition I will run, I don’t want to have a reputation for cheating entrants.
So, with that in mind, I am asking PP readers to suggest a fair prize, based on these circumstances. Please keep any discussion polite but honest.
- Title: StriderVille
- File Name: hl2-ep2-sp-mc-striderville.7z
- Size : 20.8MB
- Author: Samuli Jääskeläinen AKA Hemuuuli and Sean Dexter AKA SNDXR
- Date Released: 26 June 2011
- Copy the StriderVille folder into your SourceMods folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- StriderVille should now be listed in your Library tab.
If you require more help, please visit the Help page.
The playthrough below is provided by Custom Gamer as part of The Ville Retrospective event. See more of his playthroughs on this site: VP: Custom Gamer.
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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4,876Overall
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Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 4 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 40 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 30 Mins by DaZ
Longest: 1 Hours by Steve
Total Time Played: 3 Hours, 20 Mins
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Putting aside my disappointment of receiving only two entries, I do think you should play both of them.
It’s clear that a lot of work went into them and I will definitely try to side-step the crashing issue on coldfusion.
Outland Route is a typical forest encounter that looks and feels like it was well-planned and implemented. It’s hard but there is plenty of ammo and health lying around if you explore. The actually fight was the Strider can be more difficult than it should be depending on what you did before. Unfortunately, it’s nothing new and running around looking for rockets is a bit boring.
Coldfusion was difficult too and it was nice to see the Magnusson device waiting for me, let’s hope I can get to use it. The snow setting was pretty cool but a little too bright for me.
All in all two great looking maps that you should definitely play.
I don’t know whether this was one of the map packs that were affected by the updates, but 3 times now I’ve either dragged and dropped or unpacked this to source mods…but nothing in the library… 🙁
Create a new folder and name it StriderVille. Extract the contentents of the 7Zip to the StriderVille folder then copy/paste to your SourceMods folder. Don’t forget to restart Steam.
Okay, fixed it. The file now has the StriderVille folder instead of the files themselves. Sorry about that.
Thanks, played them both now, but looks like I’ll have to go back and replay Outland Route, it was my favourite for the scenery, really nice, but I never found any Striders…guess I’ve missed something, I did think it was a bit of an odd way to end…lol
Ok, replayed it and got everything but the radio, can’t find that despite the map and using no-clip…sure hid that well.
I’m pretty upset that there is only 2 maps, so I can hardly call this a Ville. The bright side is: Both maps were awesome, and there were no not-so-good maps at all, unlike some of the other villes.
Outland Route:
There’s a map where the spawn is, it’ll tell you where everything is. It was a nice map, detailed, nice lighting, weapon hiding places, etc. The first thing I did was find where everything I needed are before I wanted to start the battle. When you pick up the Gravity Gun, it starts the battle with some Striders, Hunters and Antlions (with Workers too). I got lost finding the Rocket Launcher though, but I didn’t know it was behind a wall that only the Gravity Gun can pick up stuff from the other side. Then I got startled when the artillery missiles hit me, but I didn’t die. It was a small battle. After you find the radio, the map is finished, I thought there would be another battle while you wait for a Helicopter to arrive or something. It was a great map, but small.
Cold Fusion
I was a bit upset about the beginning, because after the Antlions attacked, I hardly had any ammo for any of mah weapons. So when I finally ran out of ammo, I had to run through more Antlions to get to the trainyard that was full of Zombies, I finally got ammo after this though. The Barnacles saved mah life against the Poison Headcrabs jumping out of the Poison Zombie’s back, so as a reward I didn’t kill them, lol! The Sniper part was very hard to do. I had to keeping crouching behind the APCs to get to the Sniper, and none of the Grenades would stay in, so I couldn’t kill the Sniper. I couldn’t get back to get the Hopper Mines neither, so I just ran ahead, using the rest of mah grenades to slow the Sniper down. The Hunters were a bit tricky in the dark trainstation. The Turrets in the room were a little to easy, because I can just run to them and flip them over. It was fun, but difficult in the rooftops, because it was only Combine Elites up there, no normal Soldiers. The ending Strider battle was the best! When the Striders kept coming, I had to think fast and put the Maggie bombs on the Striders and shoot them. I never fought so many Striders that fast before!
Mah vote:
I loved both of those maps! They were both difficult, and fun at the same time! Great enviroment, lots of trees, Antlions everywhere, lots of Striders to kill I mean, that’s a great Ville to play! I would like to thank Phil for hosting this contest (and all the other ones), and I would like to thank both Samuli “Hemuuuli” Jääskeläinen and SNDXR for taking time out of their daily lives to make these maps! It’s upsetting that there are only two maps. Both of you did very well, brahs! But my vote would have to be Cold Fusion. The Strider battle was more epic, and there were many more types of enemies to defeat, and there was a Crossbow (jk in that crossbow part). Sorry Samuli, your map was awesome too, and you’re my second-place vote, lol! Thanks again guys! That was fun!
I’m not really sure why it would be crashing. I got through it on both my computers and one can barely run ep 2 at all. Other than just lowering the graphics settings (It probably looks better without HDR anyways) I don’t know of a way to fix it.
Oh well!
I am eager to try out Cold Fusion, I like snowy theme that it has going on.
My map was designed to be just an another solid strider encouter, nothing groundbreaking. I wanted to try out more open/non-linear enviroment. I also had another map planned and started. It featured flooded city and you had to drive around with airboat and blast striders. Unfortunatly it was too large bugged quite badly so I scrapped it.
As for prize, it isn’t important for me (altought I gotta admin that it helps a student like me). I just get better results and more finished maps when I work with a deadline so these contests are great practise. I hope you’ll try keep them going. Couple of bulletpoints for reasons why I think there were not enough parcipitants:
– Strider’s ai is quite irratating to work with.
– Fade in/out + “Map is made for..” + quitting the map might be too hard to make for newbie mappers, just clear ending should be fine.
– I didn’t spot any advertising for the contest outside PP. Maybe a moddb mod profile for contests would work?
A fair prize? 100 dollars. He entered the contest knowing that if he won, he’d receive 100 dollars. I don’t think its fair to change the prize after the end of the contest (unless that was something you detailed in the terms of the contest).
I agree. The default winner is still the winner and therefore deserving of the whole prize. It’s not their fault that the one that “should have won” has technical issues.
In the future, a clause in the contest specifying a minimum number of entries would help.
Besides that, I speak from experience when I say that Striders are a pain to setup. The tutorials out there are insufficient for some of their more interesting behaviors. Much of what I had to glean for Sebastian came from ancient forum posts or decompiling and studying Valve’s maps to understand what made them tick. They are pretty fragile entities that require extensive testing and scripting, even for a decent rocket encounter with one. Once you find the right combination of ingredients, it will work reliably. But getting there is the challenge.
Incidentally, I did spend a few days working on an entry, but scrapped it when I couldn’t resolve some scale issues with the environment and the gimmick that would kill the Strider.
I also agree. The prize was stated to be £100; a winner by default is still a winner.
You could split the prize 50-50 if it makes you feel better, Phillip.
I understand what you are both saying but I see it differently.
If there is a race and ther is only one runner, for whatever reason, then I agree that runner (assuming they get to the finishing line) is the winner and any prize and medal should be awarded.
But my competition are not races and are chosen by subjective means. Imagine only one film is released in the 2012, at the Academy Awards (Oscars) would that film automatically qualify for Best Picture, Best Leading actor and actress? No, because they are chosen.
I honestly don’t feel that Outland Route did what I asked the winner to do and that was make me say “WOW”
With all that said, I also feel a very strong obligation that because I didn’t say there needed to be a minimum number of entries or reserve the right to adjust or even not award a prize I should pay something.
I may just offer to buy both entrants a game via Steam and ensure that IF (that’s a freaking big IF) be absolutely iron-clad clear about prizes etc.
As I said in my earlier post I am not really expecting to be rewarded.
I understand Phillip. If I were running a mapping competition and all I got was one “nothing special” map and a half-broken map that I coudn’t get working well I might not give any rewards. Btw. this isn’t even first time when I enter a mapping competion and it fails because of the lack of entries. 😀
I just hope you continue having these great competitions. Just think the subjects more clearly and ask mappers what kind of competitions they like. One of the reasons why my map wasn’t very good in WOW factor is the cold fact that striders are pain in the ass to work with.
I am pretty sure there were only two enterants because striders are so large, scripted, and somewhat limited in their use.
I think you should continue competitions, but pick something so simple only the most creative uses of the theme will win.
Perhaps this is a chance to try out Doorville, or even simpler, zombieville. (turretville would also be pretty easy to implement)
another location competition would also be interesting.
cafeville
underville
surrealville.
heightville
The possibilities are virtually endless, and if no-one enters, just pick another!
Sad to hear about the poor number of entries. I was working on an entry, but couldn’t make the deadline due to burn injuries which kept me out of action the past couple of weeks. I am back in action now and will keep working on my entry. Even though it won’t make the deadline it will be something to play for everyone – for free. That’s the awesome thing about PlanetPhillip, you find all these amazing single player experiences.
So even though there were few entries I bet there are some more entries coming due to the competition, that didn’t make the deadline. With the competitions you also give inspiration and motivation to people to put down lots of work into making new cool stuff. So it would be sad if there were no new competitions due to this result. I am not sure I think the competition had great commercial even from here, on this site. I heard more about it from Podcast 17 than from PlanetPhillip. Could have been exposed more from here I think. Sorry if I am wrong.
Glad to see that the ones that made the deadline are awesome maps. I will definitely play them! Good job.
Will review later, busy.
Long ago, I had the great idea of using the cranes to smash striders. Turns out they dont die from physics objects, only explosives. Spent hours trying to bodge it; it crashes and I cant be bothered to continue trying. Oh well, have a nice day. Make the competitions consise and small not such a big development gap and not such big projects, that is IMHO.
Both maps are good in there own way. Outland Route is well constructed with lots of ammo and enemies for a good battle. Cold Fusion had the winter setting which is really nice for a change. However, it crashed on my computer a few times in the train area. I used notarget to pass the section that was crashing. When I played it a second time it didn’t crash in the train area, so I am not sure what was causing it. Although I really liked using the Magnusson device again, I have to vote for Outland Route since it played well and I experienced no problems with it.
I Found both maps to be enjoyable. Outland Route was highly detailed. Cold Fusion had more variety in weapons and enemies. Both required stragety in order to finish. Both maps ran fine without any glitches for me.
@David Lundvall — Look forward to playing your map when you finish it.
I am so terribly sorry, I did not enter. However with exams and such being in the same period I had to read social studies instead. I still hope that you will one day make another competition, and I’m not busy at that time.
I was acutely making an entry when I first saw the striderville competition, where you got to control the strider, against another strider. It’s possible, however the project got buried under homework.
I really liked cold fusion, it hinted the strider battle all the way through, and were over all most fun, even though it didn’t look as good as the Outland route.
But I found both the maps to very challenging,
[spoiler]especially Outland route, as it just pitted you against 2 Striders and a lot of hunters.[/spoiler]
Cold Fusion.
We go through the snowy forest, running from the antlions and zombies. Eventually we end up in the town which sinks in the snow. The design is not bad, but far from great. Even more, the map crashes. Thankfully, the crash won’t happen if you turn off HDR before playing.
At the Resistance base there’s a simple arena which we protect from striders and combines. The only originality are the quantity of striders and the usage of Magnusson Bombs. When all batteries and healthkits were over, and I had 10 health and was going to take them through the console, the level, thankfully, ended.
Nothing really stands out here except that it takes place in winter and you need to use the Magnusson bombs.
3\5
Outland route.
This one is more interesting. The design is better here, and we wander the forest, explore some ruins and defuse the turrets in there. The ruins are guarded by antlions and ministriders. There are plenty of healthkits and batteries around – you’ll need them. The action consists of two parts. First, we search for the weapons, then run to the rockets crate and fire the rockets from there.
I wonder why there’s an airboat there? Maybe there’s some river or canal nearby, which was planned to be used as an escape route in the continuation?
I spent quite some time to find an ending. When I was going to quit, I, thankfully, found it.
[spoiler]
There is a radio in the one of the rooms of the house where’s the rockets crate. After defeating the striders, use it.
[/spoiler]
Very solid work, but the fight with striders is not jaw-dropping.
4\5
That would be a pretty kick ass end!!, having the airboat for some more usefull goal!, I mean get on the boat once the hell has ended open some door canal and get the heck outta there!!!, and if there’s a continuing part that could be the best option.
The consistent problem with the mapping competitions is the scale of the idea.
I’m aware that Phillip likes to push the boat out, and I think that’s a fair idea, but it isn’t necessarily a good one. The community on PP is relatively small, and the mapping skill is limited. This isn’t Interlopers or FacePunch, it’s a motley gathering rather than a forum where professionals and noobs mix.
-Striderville was a failure because Striders are a pain in the arse to set up.
-Voiceville was a failure because voice files are very difficult to work with at times, particularly for noobs. I also found the sound bites limitational.
-Spot-The-Difference-Ville is going to suffer the same issue – it’s hugely over-complex.
The issue is the limitation. Competitions should be about pushing imagination AND skill, not pushing imagination because you HAVE skill.
It’s a harsh criticism, but it answers the question as to why participation in map battles has fallen dramatically. It’s too difficult, and though the prize is fantastic, it doesn’t have enough publicity.
Perhaps these themes would have had a lot more success if posts at Facepunch, Half-Wit, Interlopers and ModDB had been made to draw in some interest. You’re giving away £100, and you only get two entries? Regardless of theme, that raises big questions in my mind.
You make very valid points and I can’t argue against any of them. just for clarity I never said I would run a SpotTheDifferenceVille.
I always send emails to the big sites and ask them to post details of events and competitions, but to be perfectly honest they very rarely do and I got tired of always being ignored. I admit that I haven’t tried FacePunch.
The problem, as I see it, is that for every person who supports a mapping idea, there are 3 who complain about it. It’s either too open or too limited. I am really not sure what to do.
People who complain are usually ones who don’t even participate in my experience of running Map Battles on ‘lopers. Go with what you feel is correct.
To be honest, I don’t see why you set up posts yourself on these sites – ModDB publishes anything that qualifies as “newsworthy’, assuming you do it yourself, and a polite request to Ad Hominem on Interlopers can put a competition straight onto the front page. I could give you his Steam ID in fact.
As for Facepunch, that’s out of my domain so I wouldn’t really know – a forum post perhaps?
I think the issue is the way you approached these sites in the past. You approached them as a professional, and many of them aren’t. Sometimes you have to jump past the rarely-online moderators and talk to the community instead.
In any case, if you contact me before the next battle – assuming you do a next battle – I’d be happy to help you do some PR and drum up some interest. If not, that’s a damn shame but it’s reflective of the HL2 mapping community; we’re all moving on.
Scraps managed to successfully download Striderville. I preferred outland route, mainly because of the scenery. Liked coldfusion, but too many striders for me. (I’m not a very good shot)
Not sure which Jasper would have preferred, think it would probably be outland route because of the hunters and the scenery. I know he was looking forward to Striderville, so hope he’s impressed that I managed to download it, never had to do it before as he did it for me. (It took me 2 days to get it right)
I just saw you playing it. I can’t say for sure which one he would ahve liked. I know he liked hectic battles.
If you ever need help, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Ok, so finally we have the most wanted and waited StriderVille, that also could be named as HardestVille because this are the two most difficult maps i’ve ever played for HL2 modding and that’s no easy to say!!, I think is a Shame only having 2 entries because it’s sure having more entries thiis could have been just a classic!, and even then this competition is relevant for choosing the Strider as a central element of mapping.
About Outland Route i have to sya it was beautiful, just beautiful can describe well the narrow and little part of forrest sourrounded by mountains where this hell combat tooks place, at a certain time I felt just like if I were Che Guevara n Bolivia during his last combat, just with no escape and sourrended to death by those hell striders and hunters all over me and all over the place!, so if you see this the advice is: plan well your strategy before atempt going out there and try to kill those hell striders, I know now thanks to this entry why the combine conquered the earth in just 7 hrs!!, and that’s because they launched the Striders and Hunters together as a hell team to exterminate any resistance on their way!, there’s no human Army which just can beat that team from hell Striders and Hunters make together”!!. I also must say thet I don’t really knoe wath the hell was doing the airboat there!!!, for me having that airboat was just like having a booat into a NASSCAR Race, so usless!!, you can’t move faster or better in the map with that airboat it’s almost impossible in that narrow small map full and fill with trees rocks and fences as obstacles, so unless the airboat were a plane or a helicopter, which obviously is NOT, dont use that airboat under any circumstance, because you will be so dead as a turkey into a hunting convention or something like that, I knoow that map passed thru BTC but whoever tested that must have said get rid of that ussles airbooat°!!!!
Regarding to Cold Fussion, I can say this was like Stalingrad going Cmb, is a beautifull snow all withe combat scenario, where apparently the CMB had to hold so strongly because they only sent the Cmb elite overwatches troops, so that was soo hard and hectic battle indeed!, I loved to use the magnusson bombs again against those hell bugs, but I have to say the rebels waiting for me were just a nuisance oh I really used to love those guys but in that particular point I just loathed them!!, I mean they could be a little bit stronger, helping me out killing those cmb bastards, while I was really busy blasting Striders appart!!!, but they just died like ants in a flood, so quick and so fast they couldn’t even said goodbye Dr. Freeman!! Anyways as the old Freeman style, you just end up doing the hard job by your own, I guess life is not allways fair that’s for sure!!
The airboat was there for those who wish to use it. One of the playtesters used it and when I made my own playtest runs on hard I also used it from time to time. I admit that the map is quite narrow and driving airboat isn’t too easy but I thought it won’t hurt anyone to have it there.
Thanks for comments everyone. I try to balance the difficulty better for my maps in future.
Oh well that’s ok about the airboat, but ur map was so great, i’d like to see maybe a 2nd part where u can get that airboat and gett outa there with some action that would be a good start for a 2nd part.
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Both maps are great. I can’t believe the quality. Outlands was tough at the end until I figured out what to do.
Off to find more maps to play.
This is a great site. 🙂
Good to be back on PP. not a fan of Portal so I thought it a good time to take a break when portal 2 was released. Seems I have alot of maps to play 🙂 Now getting used to the new and improved site, Fantastic work PP, Thank You.
I enjoyed both of these entries, well laid out and I had no problem with knowing what needed to be done. I did have a glitch on outland the first try, I never located the grav gun but somehow hit a trip point and had the rockets explode around me which blew open the area containing the rpg but it caused me to be stuck and not able to move, restarted and went another route and had no problems.
On Coldfusion, of course the explorer that I am, it caused me to get to an area I wasn’t intended to be and needed to restart, the area behind the set of RR cars to the far left when approaching the wall the first time. This map had a nice variety of combat well placed with ammo and health. The final strider battle was a little overwhelming for my game skill, Im not that quick at weapon changes and thought there were too many striders, but just my skill level opinion. I did enjoy the magnusson gun, that was a nice change. Thanks to both authors well done !
What is going on with Steam?
I played this mod one/two years ago and it worked perfect.
Now I want to play it again and I get the message: Can’t find backgroudn image materials/console/startup_loading.vtf
I get this message also playing other mods. (sometimes it is couldn’t find Materials\console\background01_widescreen.vtf )
So what is going on and what can I do ? ?
(hope that someone still reads/follows this topic)
Sure would like to play this…404.
The link has a backslash in it by mistake. If you copy the link location above, then replace the \ with a / it will work.
This review has been written after playing the mod for The Ville Retrospective event.
While this is for the most part a fun arena map it suffers from a few bad design decisions that limit the ability to free roam around the level. There is only one rocket crate in the map which forces the player to stay around that area in order to defeat the threat.
Aside from that, the level is actually very fun and visually it is quite appealing.
The level doesn’t end once you “finish” it. No fade out, no level exit, no text, nothing. STOP DOING THIS!
Overall this was a nice level with a great final arena. Some of the sections of map felt very “filler” and could have been removed.
The “trench run” with the zombies and combine was excellent, as was the final arena where you have to use Magnusson devices to kill a large amount of striders. I didn’t like that there was no recharge time on the Magnusson device spawners. There was no tension of trying to survive while waiting for a new device to appear. There could have been less striders and the battle would have been better with this delay mechanic present!
Manually
Medium
30 Minutes
It DOES! You have to go back to the radio and call for help.
Yeah, I was going to say, there was that radio in the basement of that one building. Of course, Darren’s confusion is justified, since the level never makes it clear that you’re supposed to go there.
I wonder if Samuli Jääskeläinen ever released other maps. Between this one and his RooftopVille entry, he seemed to have a great sense for ruined buildings and lighting.
Ahh. Well that is a different kind of failure then 😉
I made a big mistake: I watched Darren’s video BEFORE I replayed these. I’ve done that before but I had always remembered the maps, but this time I didn’t and B I managed to play all the way through Cold Fusion, whereas it crashed on me before. Funnily enough, it crashed this time too, but I tried a few times more and it worked.
All in all these are two pretty cool maps.
This is the standard Ep2 forest setting and it does it very well. There’s a great mix of hunters, and striders with interesting cover and enough health laying around for you to have a lot of fun.
Make sure you use the radio at the end to close the map.
Again, this is a fun entry with a lot of snow. In some cases it’s over bright. Where it falls down is the ability to see outside the map and that freaking sniper you can’t kill.
I suppose that some areas are too bland and empty, but that could be because the author was quite ambitious.
The final battle is neat but the timing of certain events is a little off. As Darren pointed out in his video the Magnusson Devices spawn too quickly.
Using Gauge
Medium
40 Minutes
I could only start first map with the menu, i had to use the map command to start coldfusion…
The rest was playable without problems…
The subject of this competition is interesting, but unfortunately there are only 2 entries. Still though, the entries weren’t that bad. Not at all. In fact, they were great!
This entry is a classic HL2: Ep2 forest map, and I have no problem with that. The theme was nicely implemented but I thought that the Striders should have attacked a bit earlier. I liked the small map of the area at the beginning. The fight with the Striders was pretty cool and I really liked how the building can get destroyed by their attacks. But unfortunately, it’s really short and not that challenging. Overall, this entry is for me the winner of this competition. It’s fun, the Strider theme is implemented nicely and even though it’s short, it’s just classic HL2 action.Play it.
This entry was pretty fun too. I really liked the inclusion of snow here. You rarely see that in HL2 mods or maps. The gameplay was overall enjoyable, but it crashed 2 times for me. The Strider battles were fun too, and I liked how it used Magnusson Devices instead of rockets. However, I believe that – like Outland Route – the fight with the Striders should have taken place earlier. Overall, this is a great entry too, but I didn’t have as much fun as I had with Outland Route.