Uploaded August 2014 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Mission Critical was developed and released in 1995 by Legend Entertainment known for Star Control 3, Gateway II and other first person adventure games. Full motion video combined with scifi setting is always interesting enough combination to try a game.
Atmosphere and music are nice. Story progression is interesting enough and actor performances have good standards. No poor attempts at humor is a huge plus in my book. On the downside, item puzzles would make the gods weep without a walkthrough. There's very little interaction with characters in the game. Granted, the setting is set into an abandoned spacecraft, but IMO the interaction with characters is an important part of an adventure game unless (item) puzzles is your thing. Lack of interaction and NPC progression increases the static feel of the game world. There are full motion videos and audio logs to be triggered at certain points. These are sparsely spread across the game and often very long. In few places you can select from dialogue options. Essentially these conversations have same purpose as full motion videos: to progress the story and to offer clues.
I didn't look many objects as there should be enough stuff to read anyways. Documents and such are browsed quickly and the video can be paused in these points if desired. There's an RTS minigame where you can control drones to attack enemy vessels. It didn't seem very interesting to play and controls are bad so I let the computer do the combat. It still takes a long time to get through all battles that are required to be completed. I think interface could be optimized. For example you can't use keyboard shortcuts for commands as in many other point&clicks. Often it's sufficient to just double click to execute a command, but sometimes you need to drag the mouse to up/left corner of the screen to select a command you wish to use. Then there's this huge black block at the bottom of the screen where text appears and few screens fill the screen completely. Audio mastering is also lacking. Sometimes music and cutscenes get loud while some FMV scenes are more quiter than others. I find it awesome however that it's possible to separately control voice, music and SFX volumes, but there should be separate control for cutscenes as well.
00:11:57 Hull damage
00:25:40 Radiation leak
00:37:40 Antimatter bomb
00:48:32 Repair communications (FMV)
00:52:13 VR system (nonessential Lexington orientation and background info about the war)
01:01:54 Lengthy inquiries with ship's computer (nonessential)
01:25:56 Contact admiral Decker (FMV)
01:40:26 Prepare departure from Lexington
01:52:40 Hype/Telecon minigame
02:04:24 Departure from Lexington and alien planet
02:18:04 Earth
02:25:00 Life forms
02:49:50 Time travel
02:59:23 Ending + Credits
mobygames.com/game/mission-critical
Mission Critical was developed and released in 1995 by Legend Entertainment known for Star Control 3, Gateway II and other first person adventure games. Full motion video combined with scifi setting is always interesting enough combination to try a game.
Atmosphere and music are nice. Story progression is interesting enough and actor performances have good standards. No poor attempts at humor is a huge plus in my book. On the downside, item puzzles would make the gods weep without a walkthrough. There's very little interaction with characters in the game. Granted, the setting is set into an abandoned spacecraft, but IMO the interaction with characters is an important part of an adventure game unless (item) puzzles is your thing. Lack of interaction and NPC progression increases the static feel of the game world. There are full motion videos and audio logs to be triggered at certain points. These are sparsely spread across the game and often very long. In few places you can select from dialogue options. Essentially these conversations have same purpose as full motion videos: to progress the story and to offer clues.
I didn't look many objects as there should be enough stuff to read anyways. Documents and such are browsed quickly and the video can be paused in these points if desired. There's an RTS minigame where you can control drones to attack enemy vessels. It didn't seem very interesting to play and controls are bad so I let the computer do the combat. It still takes a long time to get through all battles that are required to be completed. I think interface could be optimized. For example you can't use keyboard shortcuts for commands as in many other point&clicks. Often it's sufficient to just double click to execute a command, but sometimes you need to drag the mouse to up/left corner of the screen to select a command you wish to use. Then there's this huge black block at the bottom of the screen where text appears and few screens fill the screen completely. Audio mastering is also lacking. Sometimes music and cutscenes get loud while some FMV scenes are more quiter than others. I find it awesome however that it's possible to separately control voice, music and SFX volumes, but there should be separate control for cutscenes as well.
00:11:57 Hull damage
00:25:40 Radiation leak
00:37:40 Antimatter bomb
00:48:32 Repair communications (FMV)
00:52:13 VR system (nonessential Lexington orientation and background info about the war)
01:01:54 Lengthy inquiries with ship's computer (nonessential)
01:25:56 Contact admiral Decker (FMV)
01:40:26 Prepare departure from Lexington
01:52:40 Hype/Telecon minigame
02:04:24 Departure from Lexington and alien planet
02:18:04 Earth
02:25:00 Life forms
02:49:50 Time travel
02:59:23 Ending + Credits
mobygames.com/game/mission-critical
