Nova Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance

[Kipa Crawn]

NO.V.A. Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance is an action-adventure video game for the iPad and other Apple products made for Apple by Gameloft. It was released on December 17, 2009, for iOS, WebOS and is one of the games containing the Gameloft Live online gaming service. It was later released on the PlayStation Network for the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 3 on December 21, 2010, just five days after the release of N.O.V.A. 2. N.O.V.A Legacy, a remaster of the original N.O.V.A. developed by Gameloft Madrid, was also released for Android on the Google Play Store in 2017 and on iOS App Store in 2018.

N.O.V.A. is primarily a first-person shooter, with one on-rails driving segment. Throughout the game's twelve levels, players fight against alien enemies known as Xenos. The game takes major cues from sci-fi console shooters, such as the Halo and Metroid series. The player can use eight weapons that resemble futuristic versions of weapons found in one of Gameloft's previous works, Modern Combat: Sandstorm.

In the distant future, Earth is no longer able to sustain life, and humans live on artificial satellites called near-orbitals. To protect themselves, the near-orbitals jointly formed a military organization known as the Near Orbital Vanguard Alliance (NOVA).

The protagonist of this story is Captain Kal Wardin, a retired soldier who is forcefully returned to active duty to investigate a missing transport. He is supported by Yelena, a newly created artificial intelligence, and later a starship AI known as Prometheus. He battles against an alien army simply referred to as the xenos, who begin to attack military facilities of NOVA across the planet New Ceres. After multiple occasions of Kal not following orders, the leaders of NOVA delete Yelena and attempt to kill Kal with a hit team, but Kal escapes through a portal to the xenos homeworld to end the invasion.

Upon reaching the planet, Kal learns that the xenos are actually caretakers of an omniscient race of aliens known as the Judgers, whose leader, the Controller, deemed the human race as a threat when the sister ship of the transport vessel entered a portal and crashed into the world below. Kal defeats the controller and confronts the Judgers, who judge him based on the player's actions.

If Kal is committed to saving others, Yelena is restored to life, Prometheus becomes the guardian of mankind and the Judgers' messenger between the two races, and the NOVA leaders are erased from existence for their actions to save themselves rather than the rest of their race.

If Kal doesn't commit to saving others, he is haunted by those he would not save but impresses the Judgers to let him and the rest of humanity live by showing the courage to save others. He is given the title of "Hero of Sagittarius" for his heroics but retires soon after.

The game was well received by critics and has a Metacritic score of 94/100 based on 9 reviews.[1] Levi Buchanan of IGN awarded the game a 9.0/10, calling it "the best first-person shooter on the iPhone right now."[4] Pocket Gamer gave the game a 9/10 and a "Gold Award".[6] Pocket Gamer also awarded it Best Action/Arcade Game for iPhone in 2010.[7] Slide to Play gave a perfect 4/4, saying "Fans of FPSes shouldn't let this one slip by. Halo ripoff or not, it packs a lot of great content into a tiny, modestly-priced package."[8]

A sequel to N.O.V.A. was developed and published by Gameloft and released in the iTunes App Store on December 16, 2010, titled N.O.V.A. 2: The Hero Rises Again. The game innovated on the many designs created by the first N.O.V.A., and added many new features such as 10-player online multiplayer matches, retina display and gyroscope support for the iPhone 4. Later, on May 10, 2012, N.O.V.A. 3 was released on the App Store, also developed and published by Gameloft. It added new features such as two-man cars in multiplayer and updated graphics after working with an in-house editor.

NOVA is well known among moderately high ranking officials in almost every faction, Protoss and Terran alike due to their efficiency and success rate. But even more so, they are well known to other mercenary teams, such as their close ally ECLIPSE, and their bitter rival Helix.

Its founding members are Aurius Willowbane, NOVA's commander, Roger Wyllen and Joseph Martin. Since its founding as a mercenary team the Alliance has recruited Raphael Hanani, Tristen Smith, Kal Wardin, Xaa, and Jal.

The Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance was initially formed as a paramilitary defense force designed to protect colonies on the fringes of Terran controlled space that were usually left to fend for themselves or given up as lost causes during large scale conflicts. It masqueraded as an independent faction in service to the UED. But in truth, it was a project created by Cerberus to act as a strike force against non-terran populations near the fringes of Terran space.

It was advertised to the public as a proactive defensive deterrent in service to the colonies. However Cerberus command greenlit the project with the intention to use it as a covert strike-force that could effectively and simultaneously eliminate entire chains of command, political structures or rogue factions that stood in the way of Terran expansion.

As the first large all telepath orbital preemptive strike force they were to be highly respected and well equipped. Slowly the members were selected and recruited from the top independent ghost operatives across the galaxy. NOVA's founder and director, Anton Divan was an ambitious man now in charge of a massive number of elite NOVA Ghost operatives with a ton of Cerberus funding to back him up. He set his team to work and deployed his operatives against several small pirate fleets. and an Eliksni colony uncomfortably close to Terran space so he would have good reports to give back to Cerberus Command. wever, Anton's ambitions did not stop at simply securing expansion opportunities for Terrans, and he began using the operatives under his command to kill rival Cerberus agents who threatened his position, telling his NOVA operatives that the men they were assassinating were working with the Confederacy. One of the NOVA operatives he assigned to do these covert hits, was Jeremy Schrull, who recognized one of the targets he was assigned to kill and pieced together what NOVA really was and Anton's ambitions with the help of his fireteam, but for the moment he kept quiet about the situation.

Anton, emboldened by his successes against his rivals had several NOVA operatives sneak into classified Cerberus labs to steal several secret projects and technologies, again, telling the NOVA members that they were fighting Confederates. However on this mission, Jeremy Schrull used the opportunity to fake his own death and defect to Cerberus. Jeremy told Cerberus what Director Divan was doing and Cerberus was furious. But since they used false pretenses to recruit the NOVA operatives in the first place, they couldn't blow the whistle on Director Divan.

Jeremy told Cerberus that Director Divan had been indoctrinating the NOVA operatives with anti-Cerberus sentiments and that they were preparing to take out the Cerberus chain of command in a coup. Jeremy advised Cerberus to destroy NOVA, and he proposed a plan as to how they could do it.

Cerberus pretend to be oblivious to the Director's murdered rivals and to say they had a high-priority mission for NOVA. But when they gave NOVA their mission Cerberus came aboard the NOVA flagship, The Supernova and brief every operative in NOVA individually. The operatives were told that NOVA was compromised and because of this they would need to keep strict secrecy around their assignments, especially from other members.

In fact, Cerberus had one half of NOVA assigned to defend a factory on a remote mining moon called Versalite, and the other half assigned to attack it, each side being told they would be fighting a terrorist group trying to use the mine's old reactor as a power source to redirect the moon's orbit and destroy the colony on the planet below. The moon's volatile atmosphere and iron-heavy wind storms acted as a naturally occouring Tac-Com jammer, making communication impossible even if the operatives learned of the rouse.

Each team was deployed and the best of the best independent Ghost operatives of NOVA killed each other at the battle of Versalite, both thinking they were fighting to save the colony on the planet below. While this was happening, Jeremy himself led a team of Cerberus agents who snuck aboard the NOVA flagship and killed Director Divan, securing the Supernova for Cerberus.

However, Cerberus had chosen too well when picking commanders for the defense and offensive teams on Versalite. About halfway through the battle The offensive commander, Roger Wyllen recognized the tactics of the defenders as the tactics his comrade and friend Aurius Willowbane would use. Because of this, he checked the identity of a fallen enemy and realized it was another NOVA operative. Roger knew something was off and quickly guessed that NOVA was fighting itself.

Roger found his friend, Joseph Martin amid the battle and got him to the com tower to boost their radios so he could broadcast a signal telling everyone that this operation was a lie. By the time he got the word out though, 283 NOVA members had already been killed in the battle. Unorganized and battle torn they were ill prepared for when Jeremy and Cerberus used the Supernova to send a missile bombardment and a small battalion of soldiers to kill what was left of them. It was at this point that Aurius Willowbane rallied the remaining NOVA members. As he was leading the defense force, he knew the mining quarry's layout and lead the left over NOVA operatives as they defended themselves from the attack.

Aurius knew that the orbital strikes were the real threat, and the ground troops were just a stalling tactic. He got Joe and some other ghosts to scramble some of the Cerberus dropship landing coordinates to be closer to the mine so the NOVA members were able to board and hijack the drop ships and return to the Supernova. From there the remaining NOVA members infiltrated the Supernova, successfully overpowered its skeleton Cerberus crew and retook the ship. Moments before the NOVA operatives stormed the bridge, Jeremy realized what was happening and he set the supernova to self destruct before he escaped. However, Aurius was able to reach the bridge and disable the self destruction protocol, saving his remaining allies and the ship.

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