That definitely was a lot of fun man, your game has a very fun and adventurous quality about it; a very original looking universe, with lots that is going on around the player for him/her to take in, which is really entertaining and diverse. You don't throw these endless, page long stories about the game at the player, but give them tid bits about the world and what's going on, letting them expand where they'd like, and feel as if they're really part of it all; that was something I really enjoyed.
Now, your textures and segments are very cool. The maps flow nicely, there could have been a few more environmental puzzles, but the ones you did have, varied greatly and added gameplay differentiation at just the perfect times, which was awesome. For the most part, enemy placement was good, although sometimes it seemed to get a smidge predictable as to where you'd run into them
Generally at the end of a hallway.
. However, the amount of enemies in each level worked out very well, and created quite the desired balance between map exploration and fire fights. What also worked out great was the use of cover you employed in your level design, whether intentional or not, I always seemed to be able to easily find cover during fights, which helped a lot!
As for some suggestions, I few I could think of are: Music, you don't use any in your game, which can work out in some instances, however most of the time there are stretches of awkward and unappealing silence. If you searched, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find something that fit the atmosphere of your game; I wouldn't go with any high tech, futuristic sci-fi music that blasted the whole time, but perhaps something with a solemn, haunting ambience for a war and battle scene? Or at very least, if you choose to stick with no music (which would actually still be ok), perhaps working in some ambient sounds that added to the atmosphere during the quiet areas of maps? You could have gunfire in the background sometimes, maybe some siren or machine sounds here and there, or perhaps the facility the player is in has some form of a PA system that could periodically blast automated voice messages, which could come out as sounding though it's coming through a radio, and maybe echoing a bit and perhaps barely even comprehendable. Although, as it stands the game
does still work well with no ambient sound, so you wouldn't want to over do the sound bits if you chose to try them. Just some thoughts though!
Oh and also, having some health in the game would be great, haha. I definitely didn't make it through the game with just 5 lives, probably closer to 10 or so - saved games for the win! - however something I did notice, which made me quite happy was the use of Checkpoints in your maps. A lot of people I think just forget to use them, and when you've made it some distance into the map, die....and realize you're back at the beginning, well it can be a bummer. You might want to check out the Health Station that you can find on
http://fpsfree.com/ created by
Xplosys, or if you could find the one
Darkfact made...at least I think it was
Darkfact...anyways, either one would go great in your environment. I digress! Either way, some health that the player could come across would be superb; and if there
was health in the game, and I just never found it, then disregard this suggestion completely
Other than those two suggestions, I think over all
Squadron AIU - Dark Storm is a very fun game. It's a brilliant start to the series, both intriguing and entertaining with a perfect blend of textures, enemies, weapons, lighting, entities and plot. I hope to see more from this soon, and I'll certainly keep testing out every new version the more you work on it. For those of you who haven't tried this out yet, I highly recommend it!
Oh! And I'm looking forward to seeing
Zombie World #16: Always nice to see some undead get blasted to smithereens
Cheers
//Edit
I totally forgot, you might also still want to think about editing those
Press Enter to Open Door messages, along with the ones for buttons, it was only thanks to
Starmind inquiring about that did I know how to get through the first door
Life would be much easier if I had the source code.
