The Enemy Within Review

[Gliptal]

The Enemy Within is a DLC campaign for the A-10C module for DCS. It is arguably the first real campaign available for the Warthog, considering the less than stellar quality of the free Georgian Hammer campaign.

 

As the DLCs pitch itslef states, it comes with full voiceovers (most of which are well acted and of good audio quality), plenty of documentation in the form of FRAGOs, and well written briefings that try to describe the atmosphere of a briefing room rather than simply list the mission objectives. This is done by presenting a number of different military professionals, although amidst all the colonels, lieuteneants and majors the standouts are only a few. Still, the world building really helps with the immersion, and it thus becomes easy to feel invested in the overall story told by the campaign.

 

This revolves around a supposed small terrorist group threatening Georgia, that forces an A-10 flight wing to relocate on one of the country's military bases to aid in the Georgian military COIN (COunter INsurgency) operations. A couple of other countries join the fight as the campaign progresses, on both sides. The rare geopolitical liberties do not hinder the narrative arch, that is well told and remarkably engaging. This is probably due to a lot of the main events happening during the missions, rather than being simply recounted in the briefings.

 

The missions themselves are diverse in structure and objectives, and never feel out of place or unrealistic. The player never faces overwhelming odds, but most of the operations still manage to pose quite a challenge. The overall feel really brings home the COIN aspect of the whole campaign, something that really lacks in most other available content, that seem to focus more on big armored clashes. If a real life analogy is to be made, the missions in The Enemy Within are much closer to the modern Afghanistan employement of the A-10C than they are to an all out war like Desert Storm (although the A model was in use back then).

 

Regardless, the missions are still complex and require a certain dose of skill to complete successfully, especially on the first try. Notably though, there is close to no trial and error mechanichs. The way the author approached mission building makes for very stable and hard to break situations, barring a couple of very event heavy missions that may show some weird behaviour in fringe cases.

 

The campaign makes full use of most if not all the capabilities of the A-10C and its weaponry. The player is expected to be able to handle the airframe with a pretty high degree of confidence, given how nearly every single weapon and system is used at least once during the 21 missions long campaign. One notable exception is the lack of laser targeting, although this may very well be a workaround in regards to the current fluid state of DCS, that seems to intermittedly break certain gameplay elements. Luckily enough, the missions are so well structured that single events may (silently or not) fail without forcing a restart; the rare times something happens, the mission can still be completed in an organic fashion.

 

Support by the campaign creator himself Baltic Dragon is quick on the forums, meaning any problems are added to the public bug tracker and fixed for subsequent updates. Right now these are on hold until DCS 2.5, although the current iteration is already mostly bug-free, and completely bug-free of any gamebreaking bugs.

 

For 15€ (or your regional equivalent), this is a must buy for whoever owns the A-10C and is looking for a structured, story-driven challenge. The campaign may also ease in less than experienced pilots, provided they are content in replaying some of the more difficult missions more than once.

Edited April 21, 2016 by Gliptal

[kontiuka]

Thanks for the write up!

[Jowen G. Bruère-Dawson]

I also think this campaign is great. Good job

[Yurgon]

Great review, couldn't agree more. :thumbup:

[Zarma]

One of the best campaigns.

[Mango]

Halfway through, this is certainly one of the best campaigns I've ever played in DCS. Good job!