Rejection: There and Back Again

It's weird getting back into a game after leaving it since last entry. Oh, yeah, I have four weapons I wouldn't logically think would be together. I really feel like I'm min-maxing despite that not technically being true. It doesn't help that now enemies leading to Nagano and the Keep Off Area mostly don't hurt me.

Reaching the war college first, since that's simpler and that had a locked door, it's a straight shot to the door. Which has nothing inside, no enemies...and it turns out it was simply just the boss fight against the dude who had clones of himself. So I wasted my time. To the east. I've looked in here before and I've been dreading it.

Because it's a sewer section. Technically this isn't as bad as a regular FPS sewer section, because mapping something yourself helps you remember it, but psychologically it feels worse. I have to map the sewer myself? YEUGH. We got eels, or...inters? What does that mean? They're odd, because they're far easier than previous enemies, probably due to my advanced level, but their hitbox is the shadow on the ground.

I wonder what happened here.

There's also body. Which doesn't attack you and just has a lot of health. These two are the first real encounter, with a ton of eels in a big area. I think they have a high spawn rate, its like cutting through a jungle and shooting them is wasteful, since I don't know when I'm getting back. But it might be IF I'm getting back. This forces me into an awkward position where I force myself through, but end up with the eels behind me and a mouse in front of me.

This leads a small room full of enemies from the first sewers. Not stronger ones, just the same ones. This goes on for a very long hallway, until I finally drop my guard expecting nothing new.

Floats, ranged water enemies. They don't seem to hit too bad though. But the problem with these water areas is that it's easy to get bogged down in an unending number of enemies. Doubly so here, because they do respawn too fast for me to kill them, and they're just strong enough to be trouble. The minigun continues to be useless as it can't damage anything. But the door I'm looking for is just here, so I can rush in.

Inside, we have another suspiciously empty area. Outside of the spider thing that doesn't attack me but moves. Like the last few special places, this area is straightforward. Go through until you find a door to a small room, and then the enemies show up.

The enemies in this area are SWAT in black ops clothing and various space marines. Feels really unimpressive after the last section, nothing about them seems special. The Minigun can even hurt them, though it runs through bullets far too rapidly for my taste.

I get another option soon, the FAMAS, the weird French assault rifle, which uses a 25 round magazine and only 3 shot burst fire. Well, originally, anyway. It's a curious choice that I assume only came about because of the French being the French. There's nothing special about it here. It seems basically useless because every enemy takes no damage from it. It also just fires automatically. The game drops two of them, so they really want you to have it and ammo for it.

Deep inside the area is a path leading to a desk. It's a video call with a government official, asking for a Major Takagi, and he's surprised when K-Ko answers. He wants to hear the status report on the operation to purify Tokyo. K-Ko says that isn't true, he's the person who ordered the slaughter of refugees and the medical tests involving Kusomoanfitamin, the zombie virus. He then figures out that K-Ko isn't a member of the purification squad. K-Ko goes on a rant calling this guy a horrible person...

...And he doesn't know what she's talking about. This is a genuine shock to him, because he thought they were making a cure. K-Ko doesn't believe him because people like him sell out his own country and love war. He's genuinely confused. He thanks her for clearing up what the military have been doing. K-Ko then says that it was awful that they deceived him, and for that she'll kill them. Glad to see K-Ko is being her usual self. The conversation ends here.

I go out the way I came...and there's this guy, dubbed monster. The second thing he says is an insult, so we're off to a good start. He recognizes K-Ko as Kirihara and refers to himself as Major Takagi and gives the usual badguy speech. (This puts some holes in the official's story) K-Ko calls him an idiot robot. He just laughs it off and mocks her old battle suit, saying he's more powerful.

I believe him. This guy is a pain, he hits hard, but the problem is that he's just so fast. I can't hit him with the grenade launcher and everything else isn't cutting down his massive amount of health. This presents a considerable problem. Because I don't really have a good way of grinding in this area. If I grind here, it's going to be insanely risky. I can grind elsewhere, but that's going to take hours. So, I decide to just tough it out.

Trying again, the grenade launcher does zero damage. Yippee. Guns, all deal single digit damage; Knife, same deal. Well, there's one last solution. What if I try to lose this fight? No, normal death, I.E., the game crashes. As I've said before, I dislike the practice of forcing you to fight your own level by making enemies slightly higher than you basically invulnerable, but a boss is slightly more tolerable than a regular enemy. So I need to figure out how to grind effectively here. I'm going to gamble that the MG-42 respawns, and just hope I don't have to rush out to get more ammo from the camp. Enemies drop ampules, which should be enough.

This does present an interesting problem. Are the FAMAS and the MG42 what I think they are, or is it a level issue? I can't see any reason why I would get rid of any of my other weapons for it right now. Making the matter more interesting is that enemies sometimes, as in, not a guaranteed drop, the M60 in here. I'm wondering if this is the developers rewarding a careful player or if there's more to it than I think. Since I don't have anything better to do, I'll compare them.

The MG42 is an improvement, since it takes out regular enemies here in 2-3 bursts...and on the other hand, the M60 also takes out regular enemies in 1-3 bursts. It's kind of an outlier, but not that much of one. There's not really a noticeable difference. Which means you only carry around two at the same time because the developers understand that you need the additional firepower. This is the sort of thing I think about when I have to get two levels. Better than talking about the effort they had to have put in to make these pixel art grey walls.

The problem is I'm examining this on a small sample size since in the heat of getting somewhere I only vaguely care. It's when I first get one that my curiosity gets going. I know that the M11 was stronger than previous rapid-fire weapons because it was so bizarre. More importantly, do more enemies with guns drop guns, and I've only noticed now because my previous grinding attempts were against other targets? As annoying as the mechanic is, I understand why from a balancing position. You can't just give players defacto unlimited ammo if you intended it to be limited. But...respawning guns in places like these are clearly intended as a way to avoid annoying the player with constant back and forth trips.

Two more level ups, is it enough? Not, I'm just sort of where I was. Maybe a little better. Man, how many levels was I supposed to get last time and this time? In theory, I could grab a rocket launcher from the war college, but that would take as long as going for another level. I'm going to try once more, this time, with the FAMAS. I don't really have a better choice, since the Minigun isn't really working out, even if the FAMAS has already proven itself to be ineffective. Nah, not even hiding it, it does nothing against the blue guy.

The game was rigged from the start.

So I backtrack, I need to pick back up the Minigun, since it's better than the FAMAS and they serve the same role anyway. Then, get a rocket launcher. The grenade launcher helped me, sure, but maybe it, like the Deringer, is supposed to be against that one boss. All the way back to both previous areas, then back here. There's a lot to complain about in the Far Cry series, for instance, there'd never even be a situation where you'd need to consider your loadout this much, but I sure could use that game's quick weapon change at base. Heck, I'd be happy just to get a single sniper rifle.

This gives me a good opportunity to see if the FAMAS is as bad as I really think. Well, yes and no. Yes, because it does have less shots that deal less damage than the LMGs. No, in that it moves around faster, which because I'm used to the heavy weapons means I struggle to hit things as accurately. But, because there's little advantage to this, fast or slow, turning around to shoot something is a pain, I might as well replace it with the Minigun again. Which is actually better than the LMGs, in certain situations, namely, clearing out weak enemies. If the only thing you need to do is spray bullets, more is better.

Now, level 17, 1 rocket and 4200 bullets. The rocket doesn't hurt him, and the Minigun does nothing. It's down to the LMGs. I run out of ammo, but I track my average damage against his total health. He has over 900, and I do an average of 7 damage per 12 bullet burst. I have 1200 LMG bullets, so I'll be out when he has 200 health. Assuming I hit every time. Right, another level-up to 18 seems to be 6000 or so XP, two guys drop over 200, so 30 more times before I get to 18. I suppose it's my own fault for rushing through the sub and here. I do learn something interesting which will help me though.

Where you hit matters. Headshots work really well against general soldiers, but not against the boss. So, how do I take him out? Answer, his left shoulder, the one with all the weapons. Like a Tyrant. This is the edge I need to take him out. The rocket still doesn't do anything. I take all my ammo and knife him for the last 40 points, but I do it. I take him out.

Now, how does the plot advance? Why, I get another ID card. I...wasn't expecting that, because I was expecting to say that the game teleports me somewhere. Also, a suit upgrade, this increases my damage, which will be useful for knifing the enemies I need to kill to get out of here. Wait, data disk? I better check the computer again.

This allows me to check the Major's e-mail. It's from the department of defense, or presumably whatever the Japanese one is called.  The Kusomoanfitamin experiment is going smoothly. The Osaka provisional government is opposed to their work, without success or disguise. The Minister of Home Affairs announced their purification campaign. They should quickly go to the next stage and eliminate any traces that could be reached. However, their rescue operation is working, albeit lukewarmly. A special division of the air force is being sent, the commander is Colonel Kirihara. The big factor is apparently the leaking of official secrets. They'll crush every obstacle in their way. That's the end of it, K-Ko then says that the mastermind has been exposed, but where is the division?

Before I end this, I head back to camp. Knowing last time, I'm worried. I get another level on the way there, and as luck would have it, they survived. I get a full refill. K-Ko explains the events that happened in the base. There's nothing really interesting there, just "my father isn't a hindrance" and "protect and show". Nothing about where I should be going at this point.

This is where I'm going to stop off for now. I nearly ended up not advancing past the Major this week. I'm not actually any better off now than I was before, since while I know I have to do something, I don't know where. It could be anywhere, from somewhere on that base I missed, to the war college, to the submarine to a long trip back to the place I first encountered the soldiers. Where ever I go, I don't know what I'm doing. You'd think they would offer a little more direction than this...

This Session: 7 hours 00 minutes

Total Time: 26 hours 00 minutes

Project Firestart (1989)

Name:Project Firestart
Number:223
Year:1989
Publisher:Electronic Arts
Developer:Dynamix
Genre:Survival Horror
Difficulty:4/5
Time:3 hours 30 minutes
Won:Yes (94W/70L)

Here's a game I've been looking forward to for a long while, which to my mind is one of the most interesting Commodore 64 exclusives. What's odd about this particular aspect is that it's American, and entirely exclusive to a non-DOS PC. I'm showing my age, but I think around this time it's an oddity that something made by Americans would not be on any other computer. Considering that in 1989 Dynamix released mostly DOS games, with only one port to another computer released in America, it is odd. Especially since this isn't the B-team, this is Damon Slye and Jeff Tunnell themselves.

Before we even begin, I'm in trouble, because this is a pain for me to get started. Every rip I find for a while just won't go past the EA logo. In both emulators I have. This is not the kind of game I'm willing to just give up on, this is something I was looking forward to. It's really even an issue I can go and point, yep, that's the problem, because I eventually just got lucky with one rip.

Slowly, you see something approach, but it's just a shadow of the thing.

The story is, the research ship Prometheus has been performing genetic engineering to create dumb, durable laborers to assist in the mining of precious resources. The ship is no longer answering, and you've been assigned to clean it up. Unlike a lot of C64 games, this is actually important to know, because the story is important in how you play and how you win this game. In-game, this was really easy to accidentally skip, which is unfortunate since it's actually really nice. So, I watched it afterwards.

Our objectives are specifically, to find the logs from the science lab, then, because we can't risk contamination, set the bridge to self-destruct...but if you don't get off within two hours, they'll set it anyway. Um, why don't I just go in and out and then they set the self-destruct without me having to potentially put myself in a worse place? And contact them via radio if I need to. A map came with the game, I don't have a clean copy, so I know a few places contain death, but I'll just have to live with it.

The game begins with the player just standing in the dock between the player's ship, Exis (?) and the Prometheus. This whole intro sequence is kind of on-rails and kind of not. You get used to the controls in a controlled area, then go a few rooms until you reach the interior. Note the clock, we're looking at 15:07, not that you could ever reach that without specifically going for it.

Go up the elevator and uh-oh, there's a dead guy.

Whatever it is just ripped off part of his arm, oddly.

You even get a nifty close-up. This is certainly a weird setup here, something tore off his arm, but then just left him, giving him enough time to write danger. I'm not going to complain because the "N" trails off, he was probably just in a lot of pain then.

Left of this area is the rest of the base, while the right side leads to a security station. A monitoring room which doesn't really show anything and can't be interacted with, a prison cell, complete with laser beams, and an armory with more lasers. That last one is important.

The manual plays up checking every corpse no matter how damaged...but there's nothing here or on basically all damaged corpses.

What I'm supposed to do is head to the labs straight away, which basically means, left from the entrance, one door left, then up the elevator to the third floor. More corpses, which seem to be empty. A suspicious silence. Left from here, another empty corridor.

Every room here is filled with corpses. The observation room shows that the observation has clearly failed. There's a guy with a loaded laser rifle here, clearly it didn't save him, and the other guy has an ID card. Nothing else I can really do here. Which I have to say, is kind of a positive and kind of not, each room feels constructed even if there's no purpose to it. Which, oddly enough, is fairly consistent with survival horror games.

Okay, this damaged corpse has something, but he isn't that damaged compared to the others.

Left, we have an actual lab. There's another guy with an ID card, the game sure is generous with these. I can't help but be reminded of something Ahab of Data Driven Gamer said, in that a manual can function as copy protection without actually having copy protection by the game requiring knowledge from the manual. I wonder if that was intentional here. Because as I discovered later, you aren't getting anywhere without coming here.

I expected this guy to jump out at me, but he never did.

I can look up close at one of the monsters, or mutants as I've seen them called online. I imagine in 1989 what's about to happen would be shocking to many, but being probably the first real survival horror game does come with its drawbacks.

That was just the messages, the notes tell us that back in February they started. Their target is to create a creature that is strong, docile, capable of working in low oxygen, and survive in sub-zero temperatures. At least they were aiming for something that was unable to replicate itself...which I presume means breed. Anyway, what they did was take ox DNA and some asteroid fungi and mix the two together. More notes talk about the process of creating it, and the Latin name of the specis is A. Promiveriate, which I'm sure sounds ominous in Latin.

Earlier this month, the event that set the creatures off reveals itself. They began a stress test on their first specimen, nicknamed Fred, and he died at a higher temperature than they were hoping for. Their other specimens, unfortunately, turned out to not be as docile as they hoped. So they started sedating them. These things are apparently quite weak, because further tests resulted in one dying in a higher oxygen environment and slightly high radiation killed another. The log ends with the sedation gas proving ineffective, and the writing informing us that A. Promiveriate can replicate.

I'm not really surprised it went south. Oxen are docile compared to most animals, which isn't saying much. There's a cherry-picked fact about cows that point out that more people die to cows than coyotes in the United States. Herbivores aren't the friendly little things you might think, since they have to scare off their predators somehow besides running away. Cows in particular tend to have a somewhat violent temper, since bulls are known to be violent. Bullfighting didn't start because the bulls were too friendly. I'm not sure if I'm just falling for a meme, but I think a capybara would have been a good point for docility. But I admit, this is sidestepping that the real problem is that Project Firestart didn't have a fire-based method of extermination. At the very least, you shouldn't have more of them than you can manage.

Shockingly, nothing happens here, I can just leave. There's another lab, but it's purpose is later. Keep walking to the right and...

...It's one of them. That sure doesn't look like a cow or fungi. It looks like a troll, like it was made from wood. Eh, guess that's a bit like a fungi. This is how you're supposed to meet the mutants/creatures/Promiveriate. This is a great time to bring up the controls.

While I've never really thought about it, this is exactly what you would expect hearing the phrase "C64 survival horror game" without any context. Maybe a different perspective. The game is controlled entirely through the joystick, one singular joystick. Were it not for the ability to move up and down, this would basically be a typical side-scroller from the era. The high-end graphics, meanwhile, divide it from the usual Speccy-style weird wireframe stuff you'd see in something like The Great Escape. The button is context sensitive, meaning it only activates something when it's in front of you, and that means looking over everything hoping for something. And also a lot of opening and closing doors.

A lot more of that C64 survival horror game observation comes into combat. You shoot whenever you aren't able to interact with something, and only left and right. There is one enemy type, the mutant/slime thing. Nobody gets any hit collision, no animations, no sound, just slowly draining health when you touch and their health drains when you shoot. You can even walk straight through them. It turns combat into a question of whether or not you really need to take the guy out right this moment. You can find additional lasers in various armories, and according to the manual you can carry up to two at a time.

It is disappointing, because I keep expecting one of these 2D games to have some clever gameplay mechanic that ties the survival horror aspect into it quite nicely. Now, I should point out that "disappointing" is not the same thing, necessarily, as "awful". In this case it's bland. It's mozzarella and turkey on white bread, not mustard, peanut butter and mint on brioche. It doesn't matter if the rest of the game is good. And this is very interesting. This is a fairly impressive bit of tension building if you do it the right way. Resident Evil had the better reveal, but by the time you've seen it, you've already seen a cutscene in which a member of your team dies horribly.

There's a special elevator from here to the bridge. That's too easy, so what's about to cause me trouble? More mutants than seem possible pop out of the bridge to this uh...whatever this room is. There's not even anything in here that I can interact with, must be where the staff goof off. Seriously, enemies sometimes just appear from somewhere there's no possible way they could appear from, they're not even bothering to show a vent system they can go through.

The bridge has some surprisingly unmutilated corpses. Nothing on them, but they're intact. More importantly, the radio is here, I'm told to continue my mission as stated. Then another mutant. Man, in some of these rooms it's a pain to set up a shot on them. I guess this is the only real way the game can hurt you, force you into combat in unfavorable conditions. Another message log, cryo room working as intended, the lead-glass thing again. This computer also functions as the self-destruct. Well, I see no reason not to activate it. I've got 25 minutes to return to my ship.

As I'm just about to return to my ship, the screen goes funny and mutants appear. I kill them, only, uh-oh, my ship has been destroyed. Fortunately, there's a shuttle on this ship, as I currently have no other way of escaping, this seems like the logical answer.

But then I get a meanwhile and it reveals someone waking up in what looks like a cryo tube. Survivors? That's marked on my map, so it seems wise of me to head there first. I got time. So, the Cryo area is on the first floor, directly left of the main elevators.

Now that I'm here I can see that the first person is probably dead, seeing as there's a mutant here and a ripped apart door. No corpse, which seems odd. Another one pops up behind me. After dealing with them, and taking a moment, I can wake up survivor number 2, lady with a noticeable figure. She's injured, so you know what that means, escort mission. Right, well, let's go right. "Jon, you're going the wrong way!" (This is the character's name, which has been so unimportant I forgot to mention it) Um, I'm the guy with a map of the station and it's simply easier to go this way...

...Damn, some people really can't stand someone going a different way they planned on. This actually breaks the game, since my guy now breaks into four pieces when standing around. As do the mutants. I'm okay when I'm walking though. This consistently happens, so I'm guessing that just none of these rips are in complete working order...or this was just something they didn't notice.

After retrieving another weapon, because I was nearly out, I head to the shuttle, which I probably should have done to begin with. There's a medikit outside and once I'm in the elevator...

I get attacked by some mutants while still in the elevator, and then I get a picture of an egg hatching. That really helped right now, can't see squat and the game is distracting me. I die, naturally. So much for any sense of mercy. Let's talk about a really big issue with this stuff, namely, that the way the game is set up makes this more difficult than it should be.

Each laser is a self-contained weapon, each pick-up is a new laser. You can only carry two and you drop empty ones automatically. You seem to be able to shoot about 2-3 mutants a laser. And you can't really run past enemies because you need that health for the final stretch. That means a bit of luck. You can run away, but nothing prevents the game from then deciding to have an enemy in the direction you're running into.

I decide that even if I'm not going to get the best ending, I am going to get one in which I escape alive. As I have no stated reason to go after the cryo chamber outside of the game giving me a cutscene, so I ignore it. I head straight from the bridge to the shuttle, fighting my way through the mutants. I make it there...and I die in a shuttle slowly running out of oxygen. Okay, I should tell mission control beforehand.

Something like this will always impress me. Sure, you could have as much FMV in your game now as you can, but back in the day having an animated person feels like witchcraft, even looking at it now.

The mission control dude gives me a spiel about how they can't send a ship to dock with a ship that's about to self-destruct. And you know, informing me about the shuttle as if I didn't already know about it. I guess you could beat this without the manual, it would just take a lot longer. Fortunately, I do get what I actually wanted, which was for him to send a ship to the general area so that after I escape in the shuttle I can survive.

It's entirely possible for you to get here without knowing who this guy even is.

I make it, and the hairs on my back stand on end. It's the guy I thought died, Annar. Not that I have any way of knowing that or he of knowing my name in this playthrough. He's going to kill me because I have the lab notes and he can't let me take them. But before I do it, I get a brief chance to control myself again.

Beating him is as simple as just walking into him. When not faced with genetic freaks, my guy is quite skilled at hand-to-hand combat, and either knocks the dude out cold or kills him. Either way, he's not going to be a problem for now. And that's it, I've won.

The chief congratulates me, and I get a vacation. Considering mission control was on my case with my ship getting destroyed, this must have been a good job indeed. Now, let's see if we can't save the lady. Let's see how we can optimize this.

Remember all those cards I got at the start? Well, those are what you need in order to get into the cryo room. The front door is locked and while there is a backdoor, even if it isn't locked it's right next to an area full of constantly respawning mutants, so you aren't getting in. This is apparently where they made their nest, because opening one of the doors is instant death. So I need to find something I can use to solve some of my problems, and that means exploring.

Technically I already have some idea of where I need to go, since the map I was able to find was not fresh, but written on. There are three rooms of note on the 1st floor, a room with a medical kit to the right of the elevator. A locked room in the upper right, which I didn't have the key for, and a laser gun in the lower right, which is filled with so many mutants that it's a waste of time.

In engineering, which you enter by going to the third floor, then right, then down to the second floor again, there's the power room with the faulty shield, the power switch and a storage room with a plasma laser. The power switch is interesting, because it turns the game dark, which I suspect means I will need to turn it back on at some point in the game.

So, my plan forms, focused on minimizing the amount of movement and time I need to do. I suppose this is cheating you out of seeing some good stuff...but the amount of combat I might need to do over that is very unappealing to me. I've figured out what the tricks are and think I can work around that. That said, there is a certain order the game expects you to do things and you can't really work around it.

Now, I can't really do anything different until I call HQ telling them that my ship is destroyed, except I take a laser from the armory at first rather than picking up the one in the lab. So I'm not completely screwed if I get stuck up there with one laser. More importantly, I try not to engage in fights I don't need to, since everything is about time. Time spent in a room is time ticking down for an enemy to spawn. Which is unfortunate, because you need to wait for certain events to happen.

My attempt at optimization, unfortunately, doesn't really help me much, instead I'm stuck waiting around for the room to be unlocked. I charge in, shoot the enemies, then escort her to the waste disposal room. You shoot her into space rather than escort her to the shuttle. Hopefully that has enough oxygen for her. This also breaks the game's sprites.

This means a trip back to the lab to eject the waste pod, then going to the med lab since I've taken too much damage getting away from the monsters. Seriously, hiding in any room with an active enemy outside it will result in them camping outside the door. Change levels? You're safe, since I guess it only saves enemies in active memory whenever it's on the same level. You can only rarely exploit this though.

It's just over sixteen minutes left when I eject the waste pod and finish healing in the medlab, which should be plenty of time to win. I kept expecting time to either trigger an event or the game to just wait for me to try the shuttle before something happens...and nothing did. I actually waited in engineering for something to happen, since that's where the power switch was, but nothing happens.

The endgame proceeds as last time, I take out Annar, but this time I pick up the waste pod. The hero gets a kiss from the lady. Nothing else changes. Feeling somewhat disappointed, I look up a longplay. Turns out I just didn't wait enough for the event to happen. After a few more moments the pod the game cuts to will completely hatch, revealing a white version of A. Promiveriate, who is completely psychotic. As in, killing its fellows and chasing after you psychotic. It won't die to laser fire, instead you need to take it to a gimmick room to kill it. Basically, you need to be paying attention to those notes you find around the area.

But this happens just before the power actually goes out, which I didn't find despite hanging around for a good amount of time before just reloading and going for the shuttle anyway. Apparently you can't exit to the shuttle while it's off, but that just seems like a weird gimmick. Oh, and sound, which is off by default for some strange reason.

I could reload to try this, but Project Firestart is best when you're figuring things out, and not when you're waiting around for death. I got the best possible outcome without encountering these things, and I didn't know anything about this game before starting. I thought the monsters were some sort of Xenomorph knockoff as opposed to cow fungi. I didn't even optimize that much in the end, my first plan of action was the same as my last plan of action.

It's also not that fun to actually play the game, rather than take it as a first time package. Discovering things, figuring out how best to do them, that's fun. Constant loading between rooms, switching disks between most floors, waiting for timed events to happen; these are not. Actually shooting the endlessly respawning enemies is incredibly boring too, you just shoot and hope they die before they reach you, or just run past them. There's no figuring out combat here, you just get lucky or you don't.

In the end, we still have a lot of questions as to what's going on. Did Annar sabotage the ship after the fact or did he sabotage the development of the creatures? Why does he not want us to have them? Is it because he's plotting on wiping humanity out or that he doesn't trust people to restart the experiment? If it's the latter, I can't blame him, because there's no sign of any containment measures beyond knocking them out and blowing the station up. One would hope that this would be a wakeup call, but you never know. That's even assuming the people being given the logs are trustworthy.

I was actually disappointed that the big gimmick was that they were creating a new stronger cow fungi rather than finding out that the cow fungi laid spores on you, and you need to stop them. But admittedly that would probably clash with the game's general feel as a small, well-crafted package if you needed to do something for another 5-10 minutes. And with that, let's see how it rates.

Weapons:
You have one, it's extremely boring. 1/10

Enemies:
Three, but one requires a bit of effort to reach, albeit effort is required to defeat it. Another is a puzzle. The last is quite generic. I want to be generous, but I know I would only do it out of pity. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
A lame escort mission doesn't get points. 0/10

Levels:
The ship generally succeeds at being both a real place and a fun place to explore, but does rely on backtracking to the same location a bit too many times. 7/10

Player Agency:
Unfortunately, janky. You need to hold down the keys just enough in order to perform an action, but if you want precision, you need to get good at doing it just right. It's better than most games, but it's the weakest link by far. 3/10

Interactivity:
I must admit to being impressed by the computer interface, just like what I use...just with a joystick, and the occasional depth of what you can do, but for the most part it's opening and closing doors so you don't get chased after. 3/10

Atmosphere:
The game does an excellent job of imitating a horror movie. Sometimes to its detriment. I especially thought the intro to the introduction of the monster was well-done. 8/10

Graphics:
Clearly pushes the graphical capabilities of the C64 to the limit in both static visuals and animation. That said, it so dearly needed more combat animation. 5/10

Story:
Basic but well-done science experimentation gone wrong. I do dislike how in the game you're not actually given a reason to go for the best ending. Since at most you hear the cryo room unlocked message. People also know each other's names despite nobody mentioning them in-game. (I had to look up that my guy was named Jon Hawkin) 4/10

Sound/Music:
Surprisingly little, it swells during creepy moments, but without enemies on-screen its silence. At least I got silence, sound effects were turned off and I just thought they weren't any. There are at least basic sound effects. 3/10

That's 35. No additions or subtractions, the special ones I'd do balance out. Pretty good. Obviously not perfect, they just needed to work a little more on making combat fun. I don't need to read the reviews, since they're all positive last I checked. I couldn't blame someone in 1989 for doing so, but looking back this has to be the effect swan song for the American C64 market. The last big and impressive game. Europeans lasted longer, as I have Newcomer in mind for that continent, but I admit I'm no C64 expert. (Check out that company name too, an amusing coincidence)

Despite Dynamix never following up at all on this game, someone made a remake of the game, just called Firestart. I'm sure it plays a lot better, but looking at the screenshots it looks considerably less polished. Without that polish, its just another horror game about exploring a space station.

And that's it for the special Halloween games this year. Next month will be more Rejection, the no doubt exciting sequel to Pharaoh's Tomb and some more Japanese PC games from 1984. It hasn't been that long since I made progress on the latter, but it sure as heck has felt like it. It's been a slow couple of months, mostly a consequence of real life issues forcing me to slowly make my way through a long Japanese RPG at a somewhat slow pace.

Rejection: In a Zombie Apocalypse, the Important Thing is Heart

Something odd happens this session when I reload my save. The girl we briefly met last time talks to K-Ko. She asks if she's going somewhere again. Mariko, as I don't think she was properly introduced, it just sort of happened. K-Ko explains our current goal again, we have to go to the nuclear power plant. Mariko is lonely, and K-Ko just tells her not to worry. I can then walk out to her in-game, but this causes the same text. Only this time, her name is girl.

I know people probably expect me to make fun of this, and I kind of already did with this entry's title, but goofy as it is, it kind of works. Sure, it's annoying that we're focusing on the struggles of one single girl, when camps full of people have been tortured or killed by soldiers, but this is a small, easy to deal with problem. Zombies and soldiers are for practical purposes, impossible to fully eliminate outside of a small area. Unless you're taking out a town of 1,000, that's a lot of work and I think I've barely reached that in-game. This is Tokyo, which does not contain 1,000 people. Speaking of which, I guess I better get on lowering that number.

Now, where do I go next? I ponder this for a moment, before I joking think, yeah, the keep out area, that sounds right. Nuclear power plants certainly are keep out areas. Then I realize that might not be a bad idea. Last time I was coasting a bit at the end because where I had to go was straightforward, so I need to reopen my map and calculate my route. West of the camp, then down.

Wait a minute, these aren't zombies! Well, I need the XP anyway and...wait, this guy dropped a Beretta 93R. This is basically the burst fire version of the 92F, I think. A lot of games ignore this and make it autofire. The game stops while I try to ponder what I should replace this with. Ah, screw it, the Colt's not very useful at this point and I have the rocket launcher for special occasions. Let's test it out.

I made the right choice. It shoots short bursts, and it has no recoil. It has the usual range problem, of course. More interesting, I now have a rangefinder. I'm not quite sure what it exactly means since both numbers seem to jump around without necessarily corresponding to damage. Defense and offensive strength, maybe? Since I seem to do better damage against guys with lower first numbers. I realize it later, my rough damage and how much health is left.

If you look closely, the foregrip is up, which is incredibly rare in a video game.

In the next area the game stops again. Because one of these guys dropped a Steyr AUG. The question with this is what I'm going to give up for it. If you've seen Die Hard, you've seen this one, it was the gun the guy who was trying to avenge his brother was using. Generally speaking, despite getting close to being able to collect a pension, it's a futuristic-looking weapon, at least here in America, though that might not be as true as I think anymore. (Let me know if you want me to link information about real weapons whenever they come up) Let's hope there's not another new weapon, I think this is like the 5th new gun in two hours. Give me a chance to enjoy something.

I drop the Skorpion for it, let me tell you, it was a wise choice. The AUG here has no recoil and only uses six bullets per salvo. This is going to be great. Even if I do get hit more than I'd like against the mutants I find in the next area. They're still alive, apparently.

Now, the Keep Off Area, this is fairly straight forward, you start north and then continually go south with the occasional side tunnel, with nothing of value. A lot of enemies, who seem to mostly be at a fair pace with what I'm at now. A lot of cybernetic guys. So I keep going deeper without yet starting a map. This is unwise for reasons which will become clear. Nothing really threatens me, but I'm very aware that I need ammo now and can't just knife my way back. Everyone has a ranged attack now if they didn't before.

Somehow, I make it to the area I need to. It's just saying this is the nuclear power plant in a tone that says she's impressed. Or he. It doesn't sound like K-Ko. There's a voice so low under the music that I wonder why they even bothered. This is a weird area.

So, it's not a nuclear power plant apparently...it's a submarine nuclear power plant. I wonder if this is a misunderstanding that there's a difference between submarine and substation...but that would be confusing too. There are also these things that don't actually go after me, but are blocking me a bit. They're hard to hit too, but if you do hit them, you've just caused them all to get angry with you, so don't do that.

More enemies, I guess K-Ko really isn't that unique if everyone is running around with power armor. I don't notice anything special about them. The 93R doesn't really hurt them and the AUG doesn't work much better. The M60 all the way; Until...

I find a minigun. Actually, THE Minigun. The General Electric Minigun, the one they put on tanks and helicopters. 3000 ammo, but it seems to be a burst fire at about 24 with some being more. I definitely burned through a lot more than that rate would dictate. I'm not actually sure it's an upgrade over the M60, because quickly I find myself up against...

A tank. This tank is, unfortunately realistic. The guns I have are useless, I need to use the rocket launchers. Oh, and the LAW doesn't kill it. So I wander around the previous area, it's set up quite simply, I don't need a map for it since it's straightforward, four side rooms in a square hallway with one hallway seperating the halves. I then find a grenade launcher. It's basically a weaker rocket launcher with multiple shots. Still functions on launcher rules, run out of ammo and K-Ko tosses it, even though you can actually get more ammo for it. Weird.

The tank is just a mini-boss, because there's an elevator up and an ammo box. (And a levelup) There are more floors to this place. Which is unfortunate. These Coatwall guys, they don't take damage from a lot of guns, including the Minigun I just picked up. The M60 was damaging them, so that means that the Minigun isn't actually that good, but for now it also means the only gun I can use to take them out is the grenade launcher...because I gave up the AUG for that. Trust me, I'm reloading after some of these decisions.

On the second floor, I find this guy, and he has a lot to say. This is Lieutenant Colonel Misaki and he knows K-Ko's father, Colonel Kihara. He knows that she's been fighting a war since the meteor hit. A group of officers are dissatisfied with the current government's state of affairs, he's one of those officers. Originally, the plan was to not entangle ordinary people, but they should have known about the others intent; To blow up the nuclear reactor and probably use the nuclear arms on the submarine.

K-Ko is shocked at the nuclear arms bit and wonders their aim. (Do we really need to wonder about this when we thought they were blowing up a power plant?) He sort of ignores this to say that their opposition was put in confinement. K-Ko explains that she just came here after that. One of the things she overheard was that they were leaving after the explosion. He says he can't tell her the code, it's engraved in an artificial tooth. It'll have to be cut out. She says that's not necessary, she can destroy the handcuffs and they can go to the control room together. He says he can't, because they infected him with Kusomoanfitamin, and in a moment he'll change. He might be too powerful since he's an officer, so this is is last chance. K-Ko says she can't bear to do that, and he keeps insisting that she kill him.

Then he is killed, I presume by K-Ko and I get his Deringer, those old west self-defense guns which could have up to four barrels. This reminds me of the Resident Evil remake, except in this case you don't kill the guy, he kills himself and the gun doesn't suck there. Here it shoots two bullets at a time, and you only get six bullets. It doesn't really shoot that well either.

His desk has a memo. I don't know what it reads, but it's apparently from a researcher. Seriously, it's one massive string of nothing but Kanji at one point. Which gives me that feeling that I'm not missing anything by not reading it...except that it also says that it can be used to mind control people.

Moving onto the third floor, I don't find much until I meet this blue guy. I'd call him a blue oni, but once I start shooting him, he's a loser. That's his name, really. Might as well call him Blue Loser. He's a soldier, which is how he knows that K-Ko is wearing power armor. He's curious about how she got it, since it belongs to his organization. He also threatens to use the virus to bring her back to life. Naturally, K-Ko has an issue with that and it's boss time. I didn't catch it at the time, only later, but he mentions something odd, "You've come from Ichigatani", a name. Either hers or someone else's.

It's at this point that I've put myself in an unwinnable situation. I can hurt him with bullets, but by now I don't have enough ammo for him, and knifing is too weak. I'm not really sure how I can get past him because I need too many weapons and to hold onto too much ammo. Unless...I drop the Beretta for the grenade launcher, and pick up the Minigun after the tank.

So I reload a save back at the camp and decide to find an alternate route into the nuclear section. Because I don't want to get into a gun battle, which doesn't work out like I had hoped. Instead, I get a Calico M.100, which I didn't recognize at first since the only Calico I recognize is the pistol variant. In real life they're basically novelty items, because its cylindrical magazine is quite annoying to reload and has the rear sight. Which if you don't understand, means that every time you changed the magazine you didn't actually know where you were going to be shooting. Here, it's about the same as every SMG at this point, reliable, short bursts and low recoil. Not actually worth the change.

My only other real aspect to this plan is to get another level, possibly pointless, but every little bit helps. At least that's what I think until I fight the tank again at a higher level than before and barely get hurt. Still costs the rocket launcher and most grenades. It then occurs to me, well, the Deringer isn't going to help me...why don't I go back to where the soldiers are dropping free guns and pick up another AUG? Because K-Ko won't let me go out. I don't need to translate it to know why.

Finally I return to the Blue Loser, with full ammo. He takes the entire Minigun, all six Deringer shots, and most of my M60 ammo. Some weird messages popped up and he seemed to last a lot longer than he should have. What I think happened is that I missed something about the Deringer bullets being some sort of super anti-zombie weapon I should have finished this guy off with, but I managed to do it with the knife. Guess that level up really helped.

Now I can use the codes to deactivate the reactor or whatever. Which is what happens. I get another ID card, guess that leaves the third exit I saw back near the camp or maybe that room in the war college. Which means a trip back to the camp against ranged enemies while I have limited supplies. Also to see Mariko I guess. Goodie.

Only, on my trip back I can just use my knife, because the enemies here are only rarely hurting me. Consequently, my XP gain has fallen dramatically. Which I suspect is intended as an indicator that you shouldn't be wasting your time here anymore, much like with the sewers way back when. Instead it's the enemies in Shinjuku that cause me trouble. Weird.

The camp leader has more dialog. K-Ko tells him that she stopped the explosion. He congratulates her, but K-Ko can tell something is off with him. The army is starting to track down the camp. That means they can't gather supplies anymore, but they're okay on bullets. K-Ko decides that she should attack their base. K-Ko asks about this Ichigatani fellow. He was someone with the first army group sent in. There's not any more dialog with Mariko, oddly.

I'm not really sure how much longer this game is going to be, but logically we should be near the end. Mind you, my normal logic is a bit wonky here. We're getting endgame stage weapons, I'm about 5 levels away from level 20, a common endgame level, and it doesn't make much sense to have another hub at this point, and I only have two places left to go. Dunno which one leads to the army base I presumably need to take out, but just following the usual logic of going past the areas with things I can now successfully kill should work.

This Session: 3 hours 30 minutes

Total Time: 19 hours 00 minutes