MADNESS: Project Nexus

MADNESS: Project Nexus

The Supermall Addendum
Technically impressive, not much else
To be clear, the mod is really impressive.. but only from a technical standpoint. Otherwise, it's a rather tedious slog that's marred with weapons that don't really fit mechanically, a way-too-fragile character, and a final boss that just sucks plain and simple.

All of the modded weapons in the campaign are decked out with tacti-cool attachments like scopes and other stuff, meaning their Sweet Spots are roughly on par with the base game's LMGs and hardly able to be used effectively in close range. That wouldn't be so bad if say, 90% of the campaign's fights didn't take place in close quarters, that said those fights weren't typically made up of enemies with fairly chunky Tac-Bars and multiple Corpus, and that the enemies weren't coded to magdump their way through your own Tac-Bar.

It also wouldn't be so bad if your character didn't have a foot in the grave at all times. I think if that the content was better balanced, the dynamic of being a relatively fragile foot soldier with only two Corpus would be perfectly fine, but as it stands you're way too easy to take down relative to squads of military-grade killers sent to stop you. All it takes is one mistake for that first health bar to go, and generally being in that situation means that the second will follow not long after. Sounds cool on paper, feels awful in practice.

The final boss of Act 3 is just terrible. It's the culmination of the prior two issues with an added cherry-on-top of cringeworthy taunts and a "I'm the mod author's edgy OC" design. He's literally named Apex Fury for god's sake. He gets his own fancy Patriot style LMG which he constantly fires at you whenever you're in his line of sight (shredding your tac-bar and eventually you too), has his own special takedown where you have to go grab a barely visible custom weapon and stick it in him from behind twice over, and worst of all, his third phase has a riot shield combined with a revolver with an incredibly short dodge window.

TL;DR give the modded weapons tighter sweet spots, train N51 in trigger discipline, make the protag sturdier than a piece of cardboard by default, replace the OC entirely or at least remove his third phase
Last edited by Goddess Natalia; 10 hours ago
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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments
DarkSignal  [developer] 9 hours ago 
To address the point on tighter sweet spots, there's a reason the enemy doesn't have them on their guns. The AI is hardcoded to use their sweet spot as their engagement distance, so anyone using an "in your face" gun will move to get "in your face" before they even start shooting. That said, we can always throw down more guns from dead SQ troops to give more close quarters options.

As for having a fragile player character, I'm going to assume you didn't have SceneUtils enabled, which is a common issue. Otherwise without extra detail I've got nothing else for you.

As for the final boss's third phase, that shield is not invincible; you have enough bullets lying around to break it.
I did have SceneUtils enabled, it's just that the player's health and tac-bar are just not able to stand up to a squad of N51 blasting you from behind cover. Outside of snipers and mortars, they're all coded to magdump you like turrets, reload fairly quickly, and either run away from you or kick you away if you try and melee them to regain your tac-bar. If there was more player-oriented cover, better means to refill your bar, or if squads were given trigger discipline then it wouldn't be so much of an issue.

The part about turrets and the player's lacking tac-bar is especially true for The Leader and Apex Fury, who both wield LMGs that can shred it like tissue paper. With The Leader it's balanced out by the amount of cover in his arena and his low mobility. Not so much with Apex Fury, while there's cover, it's rather janky with spots where he can still hit you, and the crashed helicopter is very inconsistent on whether he'll just shoot you through it or not, particularly the back section.
Last edited by Goddess Natalia; 9 hours ago
just gonna quickly mention that the N51 were originally a fanmade creation by darksignal that got added to the game because he donated enough to M:PN's kickstarter.

the reason i'm telling you this is to explain the reason why Apex Fury is called that. it's because they're the head of the N51's Fury Company (also known as the guys you fight in hard sell).

wouldn't blame you for not knowing this, though.
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