Mark another one on the "I should really check games from prominent authors before dismissing them out of hand" board, because Mike Singleton is back with another early-FPS/strategy game. I hope it hasn't come off like I've been ragging on him too hard in the past, since outside of Midwinter 2 being a spy game where you gun down an entire army, he's been very interesting. Outside of the credit we give him for Lords of Midnight, he hasn't gotten enough.
I'll set out the long version of the story in the summary, because it's truly complex, but the short version is that you're the not UN, United Coalition forces commander of a vague nature, going into the recently destabilized Confederation of Syndicalist Republics, which is like if the Soviet Union had Yugoslavia's ethnic tensions. Your job is to stabilize the country before radical elements of the CSR's rapidly failing government decide to deploy nukes within their own borders. To do this, in each of the five republics, you need to perform four tasks, called Building, Demolition, Pacification and Ethnic Harmony. This is, I should point out, before things in Yugoslavia got truly dicey and the UN's peacekeeping attempts were seen as a joke. This game was released in either 1992 or 1993, so this was some timely game design.
There is a wealth of introductory materials. A manual which has over 140 pages, not sure the exact number since nobody actually digitalized the whole thing, a reference card for commands and a VHS tape serving as a tutorial. Like you'd get in games proper just a few years down the line. There's a lot to break down here, but to make the story short. You need to complete all the aforementioned tasks in a province to pacify a republic. The manual straight up says you have to complete all the tasks, no doing part of it. To pacify a republic, the capital and two other provinces need to be pacified. All five republics need to be pacified to win, within a time limit of 150 days. Because the CSR isn't above nuking itself and the nuclear tension rises every 50 days.
These are not entirely related to their name. Building could involve you having built some of the buildings you're supposed to build, or just capturing existing ones. Demolition, meanwhile, doesn't count as finished if you capture the building. Even though there is no reason for you to destroy a building you control. Pacification is just ground combat, force enemy military units to surrender by shooting them. Ethnic Harmony is all about collecting votes, which is done by convincing professionals, wandering NPCs, to join with you by giving them stuff. Professionals are doctors, generals, engineers and administrators. They can also be used to make up the special teams. As these seem to be a highly limited commodity and most professionals provide incredibly useful things, like votes and destroying buildings, this is kind of hard to work for.
Then there are commodities, which you can use to trade with people for their services. Gold, diamonds, food, wine, goods, tools, medication and clothing. Along with vehicles, because you don't get unlimited anything unless you find it in a province. Everything is airdropped to you, but you can't do this if you don't have fuel. There's also papers, movement, which means enemies won't shoot you if you don't shoot them, interdiction papers, which allow you to enter enemy controlled buildings. There's also fire fighting teams, who fight fires saboteurs set, emergency medical treatment, which saves you time, and power cells, a ground attack which allows you to capture enemy vehicles.
The game is very dense when you start it up. You get a long, text introduction about the events that have resulted in you being called in. It repeatedly makes a point about these events not being very good. They're all incredibly grim, real-world things that games today try not to touch. The Adlib music, honestly, feels incredibly...off to such dark things. The game automatically loads your last save or starts up a new game.
This looks more like the bit of Russia that borders the Baltics, specifically Estonia.
The proper in-game stuff is more fitting. More frantic. It works when you first start it up, but it plays throughout the game. There are a few other tracks, but I hope you can get used to aggressive Adlib music. As you can read, I need to pick out a border providence to start my operation in. I choose Moldenia, because it looks small enough to start with.
This game could do with a bit of "We do not reward failure", right about now.
The situation is grim. Very grim. I'm really not sure how much time 11 days is. It seems like a low amount of time to stop a famine, but at least I know how to stop it, supplies. I need to build certain amount of buildings, of which I am not yet clear on what I need to do that, but I see I have to destroy certain buildings and destroy certain people. That much I can do. I'm sure that convincing people to vote for...me (?) will follow once I make the trains run on time or whatever it is we're doing.
"You may have saved us from dying...but that's really only worth 20 bars of gold."
And here's what I get if I can save the province. Seeing as I have a rough time limit in each republic of 30 days, currently 21 to pacify the republic, that's not that helpful. Gold and diamonds are goofy to see, though one must admit, having money to pay people is oh, so, important.
Soon to be filled.
So the map, this screen is incredibly obtuse. You automatically start here and have to go get other information through the function keys, I got the situation that way. There's seemingly nothing you can actually do here, just find out what your surroundings are. Right now I'm just focusing on the reference card and none of the buttons are for doing anything on this screen. Clicking somewhere gets options of viewing this screen differently. Which is...not helpful. There's an auto-move I have yet to figure out, but doesn't really seem like I need it just yet.
Into the golden void...
Most of the game is played via the main screen. And memories of Midwinter come flooding back. Memories of flying around in chaos and not hitting things. Because the aiming sensitivity is way too high. This time I solve that by just lowering my system's mouse sensitivity. Now it's just a question of flying and hoping you reach someplace. Because all you get to find something is the map unless something is really close, and it's slow switching back and forth. Later, I did discover you can open an expanded version of the radar map, which usually makes things easier.
Not pictured, civilian vehicles in the distance.
Eventually I find a town and some vehicles. Blue vehicles are friendly, dark red dots are buildings. So I approach the town, slowly set myself down, get out and enter the radar station.
"I'm not going to help you if you don't give me stuff, but I am going to help you anyway."
Much like Midwinter 2, people want favors in exchange for doing stuff for you. The game advertises 665 professionals who move from town to town, but the true number is much higher. Domenico here is a regular civilian who is just working the town radar station. I just need to get him to join the side that isn't about to start the events of Midwinter, and to do so I need to give him a barrel of wine. Which I have and can easily give him. This is done with the barter icon, simple enough. Or you can try to persuade them using the icons below.
"We grant you the title of doctor, but you can't introduce yourself as Doctor Marceline."
Using the lion-shaped door knocker, I can switch over to the other building, a hospital. Marceline, meanwhile, is a bit greedier. (well, a hospital needs that stuff more than a radar operator needs wine, but this is quibbling) I see no reason not to give it to her, and then have to ponder if I should wait for the surgeons or try to track them down. I mean...It already took me 2 hours to reach this place, by the time I figure these places out they're likely going to be back here again.
Quality aside, Midwinter 2's faces were better, simply because they didn't look goofy and move around like crazy. That's a caricature, not a face that belongs in a serious war game.
So I wait for Fokine, a name which makes me glad I'm not a video reviewer. Fokine offers a significant amount of stuff in exchange for bringing him 20 cases of medication, 20 sets of interdiction papers and 20 sets of movement papers. I apparently don't have this, which isn't surprising since that's a lot of stuff. On the other hand, he is willing to give me so much in exchange. I then wait for Nahhas, who is known to be a Ruzakh. He asks for something I can easily give, a military team and some of what I need for Fakine. The manual says something about either getting resources or getting their services as a professional. Not sure how that's going to work out, but whatever. I decide that I'll do it, I still have one, having 2 of each type of team I can have and I can check out how effective they are as allies when I actually see some combat. Since they cost resources to use I can't afford to use them willy nilly.
I guess it's a caliber issue, but it feels just so abstracted away in a strange way.
With the radar station obtained, the map shows a lot more stuff, including a town with some nearby soldiers southwest of my location. I go there, occasionally checking my map, and find the two offending vehicles. I start attacking them, with bullets and bombs. They don't attack back. I burn through my entire supply of bullets and most of my missiles and nothing happens. I quit in disgust at this and check the manual. No, those were hostile vehicles and yes I'm supposed to shoot at them. Copy protection poorly removed? Or is this going to be one of those annoying games where you can only shoot something when you have the proper style of vehicle? I'm in a VTOL/plane and they're in armored cars, so that could be it. Combat is given lip service in the manual. Hey, you wrote a manual that's over 140 pages, do you think we could find out how to shoot something as opposed to how soon the people will be dying of hunger in the streets? I like story more than the next guy, but you need at least playable gameplay to go along with it!
Time to fight fire with fire!
So, I check the instructional VHS tape, and I'm really not sure what I'm missing here. The tutorial just has it as point and shooting, but noticeably, he never shoots a ground vehicle despite being in a plane. Curious. The next day I start up the game again, losing some progress, but technically making it up by just rushing to the town. This time I get to the Ruzakh before he leaves and secure his services. I also discover that your vehicle disappears if you enter a building with it, but you can also airlift a vehicle to you. Basically any vehicle. And it turns out that it's probably just mismatched attack types. VTOLs can't shoot armored cars, but armored cars can shoot armored cars just fine. In my case, I eliminate the armored cars with a few shots. Heck, yeah!
Every town looks like this, the difference is in the icons down below, a Professional is in the middle building.
First order of business, meet with random house owner in Frelgorsk. He wants quite a bit for a few extra days and some wine, if I wanted I could negotiate with him, but more impportantly, there's a nurse here. In exchange for 5 sets of interdiction and movement papers, along with 5 cases of medication, he'll give me 5 courses emergency medical treatment and 4500 Ossian votes. Emergency medical treatment being a way of recovering from injury faster. You can't truly die unless you run out of time. I unfortunately, don't have the resources right now. Fortunately, I can perform parlor tricks to convince the housekeeper to join me, anyway. Since you can only save by pressing F9 and reload by F10, one could engage in a bit of savescumming. It's the only chance you'll get since there's only one save. I'm not desperate enough yet.
The rest of the town has a fort and a depot, which I believe are vital to my war efforts. The fort comes with unlimited amount of ammo, assuming I can find a mine. The depot meanwhile, adds vehicles to my overall pool. I use resources for the former, food and wine is an easy way to a man's heart, but try the persuasion system on the later. It's intentionally Russian Roulette with 8 chambers. Get the right option and you win; Get the wrong option and you lose time. The Fort is something I'm supposed to capture, yet the depot I'm supposed to destroy. Not much point in destroying something I own, but the objective isn't to capture them. Hopefully I don't need to completely solve the objectives before winning, because I would be oh, so, annoyed at having to do that.
I wonder how you discover towns without radar?
With that done, I decide to go southeast, to Spitchagan, which has some Professionals, but more importantly, a mine, which I think will prove quite useful. Driving around in an armored car is quite bouncy. You get every single bump and crease as you drive along, which is a lot, so high speed travel is quite...disorienting, not just to the player but to the actual direction you're going in. There's also a radar station, some resources and a little negotiating later and I have unlimited ammo, but not unlimited fuel and air vehicles. Anyway, let's see what I can now see...
Judging by the rate at which enemy vehicles seem to drain the Pacification Programme, I'd have long accomplished my goal by the time I finish with that area.
Yikes, that's a lot of guys. Almost all ground vehicles, guarding effectively a hospital. I decide that it's best to go north first, since there's a control tower there, a vital building to take, and more importantly, not thousands of vehicles. Though I must admit, that the game is willing to go this hard this early on is a sign that this is going to be very difficult. I'll also start exploring around the place.
My guy must be really ugly if she isn't looking at me. Then again, I'm not looking at her, either?
Celestine doesn't want much for her services, but now I'm suddenly not concerned about her. Rather, I'm more interested in this Medical Coordinator. There's a system in this game where if you recruit someone's superior all his subordinates join up. I don't know if it's conditional, or if it automatically happens, but either way I think I need this guy. Possibly gal. Either way, I give resources to the kind air traffic controller and then look around at the rest of the town. There's a bombproof factory here, which gives unlimited aircraft in this province. Well worth what the director is asking for, one article of basically everything I can give. Muahahaha! Now, to the place he is said to be.
"I, an important member of the community, am going to travel all the way to the very important random farm in the middle of nowhere."
He's gone a significant distance over many towns. That's quite the trip, not sure how he's doing it in under 6 hours, but that's game logic for you. So I head there, making sure to stop on every town along the way that I can. First stop, Vidalsk, complete with another control tower and...a Commandant regularly walks around here. So I try to charm this person, eventually succeeding, and walk over to the barracks, another target I have to take out, where the Commandant is.
In retrospect, I'm not quite sure if I'd do this, since that is a steep price.
That's a pretty high price, since I haven't gotten anything to replenish them, but I can't deny that these services are of vital importance. More assault forces means friendlies for my eventual assault south, and that's one set of buildings I just don't have to worry about. Not quite, but I'm not sure how to destroy them just yet. The administrator is in the opposite direction entirely, back west, the opposite of where I'm headed at the moment. So more east.
My next destination is Krenomsk, which has a vault. With gold. I really don't think I need the gold. I would just pass over this place, but he mentions an Administrative Coordinator, so I should stick around. So I look around the rest of the place, there's a windmill, which has a power cell but is otherwise unimportant, a mosque, nothing special, and the final control tower I need to have one third of the construction requirements met. The Administrator proves useful, because he offers plenty of Moldene votes, and more importantly, where to find an engineering coordinator. He just wants diamonds, gold and wine. Nothing too valuable.
I end up in combat with another group of enemies a bit further east. I find out some interesting things now that I'm on the ground. Firstly, enemies are not obstructed by your limitations. Planes can shoot ground vehicles just fine and ground vehicles can usually shoot planes just fine. Seems like there are limitations to what vehicles can do buried in the manual, and I just overlooked it since, hey, it's Midwinter set in the Soviet Union, why do I need to know that? I reload and instead come here in a tank. It seems like the better option even if practically everything in this game is torn apart like tissue paper. This seems to give me a little more protection, though it's mostly just using missile to take out enemies before they're within range.
Bagrolsk, one of the last places before I reach the place I want to be, has a power station, which is completely irrelevant outside of giving me power. I don't actually know if I need power yet. I'm sure I'll find out when it's needed most. In the meantime combat is proving interesting, fights aren't luck, but it feels like you have no proper way of countering everything, you will always be under threat from some enemy force. The only real anti-plane vehicle is the fighter, but that leaves you vulnerable to ground fire. It's an intentionally screwy game of rock-paper-scissors, with the consequences being two hours of your time.
Finally, I make it to Dokenko, where the Medical Coordinator isn't actually at. Well, better make the most of this. There's nothing of value here, except a cache of building materials, of which I need someone special to make use of. I just have to wait for the guy. He knows where a surgeon is, gives more medical treatment and some Moldene votes, but the real prize is that he'll win over all CSR troops with 50 kilometers. As an American, I am legally obligated to not know what those are, but I'm pretty sure that's a suspiciously high number. That seems like more than the entire distance I've gone. The speed and distance I've gone is clearly not that amount.
Looking back through my screenshots, I'm not even sure that missing dot west is one that got removed by it, I just took them out.
Lo and behold, the game is not quite to scale. 50 kilometers is akin to at most, 15 seconds of flying at top speed. Which in reality is quite impressive for how fast I'm going, but in the game world means I've been cheated. At least I get a few groups in case I need support. Military teams and in-combat teams are two different things. My next plane, get some of these more important people around. Two of the more important guys are in Smetajan, right in the center of those remaining teams.
Like an eagle in the sky.
The only group I end up encountering are groundhawks, which are planes, which I didn't quite get until I spotted one. I went there with a bomber, so I wasn't able to take them out...and also somehow crashed it. Which is quite impressive. Unfortunately, I crashed it, seemingly into air. Guess I hit the hitbox of an object which isn't boxy shaped. The town has some interesting stuff. A processing plant, which, when I get a pump head, will give me unlimited fuel. The manager wants some stuff, but since I have some time before the two big boys come back, I just haggle with her. Eventually while trying to negotiate for a fuel dump, more fuel, the engineering coordinator will tell me where to find a constructor general, and some goods and tools, all for 10 diamonds and gold. Sweet deal. Unfortunately, when I eventually meet with the surgeon, he wants a ton of stuff, which would be a stiff sell if I had 50 interdiction and movement papers, but I don't. Also, Surgeons are titles, but sometimes generic civilians are also surgeons.
Either way, I look around, and spot a Pump Head south, located away from anything I know to be important. I end up stopping at that town west, which has some vehicles guarding it, natch. And lucky me, I find out that the Captain of Works hangs out around here sometimes. And the factory here will give me unlimited underwater craft. I don't see much water here, but it couldn't hurt me. When I eventually meet with the Captain of Works, whose name is Giulio Agricola, which sounds suspiciously Italian to me, he offers me a lot, all for a military team. The important thing is that he gives four processing plants, one of the buildings I have to build.
I'll leave things here, as I'm starting to get something of a beachhead. The basic gist seems to be, it's one of those games where you have to spot your enemies on the radar first, shoot first and ask questions later. Everything comes down to time. Your vehicles can be airdropped in, but you have a usually limited number, and airdrops cost fuel. Everything can be gotten by either wasting time negotiating or giving other resources. The latter will eventually run dry if the player doesn't negotiate. I'm not sure that I'm doing too well, but I'm not yet sure what I could be doing better. This Session: 1 hour 20 minutes
Name:Strontium Dog - The Killing Number:237 Year:1984 Publisher:Quicksilva Developer:Channel 8 Software Genre:Top-down Shooter Difficulty:5/5 Time:1 hour Won:No (104W/75L)
Put another point for the '80s being the era of weird licensed titles. Strontium Dog is a series by the creators of Judge Dredd about a mutant named Johnny Alpha, who is a bounty hunter with the ability to see through objects and read brainwaves/telepathy. It's not weird that this is adapted, since frankly guy with gun who commits violence is the perfect form of media to adapt, rather that it seems to me to be a blip on the radar in terms of popularity.
The Killing is one of two Strontium Dog licensed games that Quicksilva made in 1984, and was released only on the ZX Spectrum. The game has a bit of story, which is just that Johnny has made it to some contest where the galaxy's most vicious murderers are in a contest to the death. Kill people, get money. Surprisingly, there's quite the epic introduction. Let me show you what I mean.
With the man on the slab, it looks less like an organized competition and more like a cult.
This is animated, and shows three figures crossing before the king here states that the killing has begun. Now, this would just be a cool, short little screen before the game proper were it not for one thing, this is an awful lot like the opening screen of Zelda II. It's amazing what coincidences you find sometimes.
Controls are the usual Spectrum nonsense. QA go up and down, OP move left and right. M shoots, one bullet on-screen. I must be getting used to the crap factor here, because it seems better than usual. You stop on a dime and move quickly, and shooting is fast. So much that it took me a while to notice it was one on-screen at a time. Johnny dies in one hit and has no real sign that he has any abilities beyond good with gun. I imagine if I read the story beforehand I would be ticked off. It's always disappointing whenever you play a game based off some superhuman comic character and you might as well be playing as a random guy.
Note the multi-colored electrical field, it shifts quite rapidly.
The oddity of the game continues when you reach your first opponents. You've got to kill 93 murderers, and it's not just simple slaughter. It's puzzley slaughter! I'm not saying I dislike the idea, but I'm pretty sure these guys were going for Robotron 2084 and were severely hamstrung by the ZX Spectrum not being built for that. On this first screen, which becomes a reoccurring room design, there are two guys who pass by behind the electrical fields. They shoot shots which go diagonally, bounce off walls and just sort of hang around in an ever tightening circle. So you can't just camp out hoping to hit one.
Nothing says the future like a short Elvis impersonator.
The other common type of enemy room is a series of doors. Like ye olde light gun games from around this time, but in a way that I don't think anyone really finds fun. Enemies pop out, sometimes they shoot down, sometimes diagonally and you just have to get lucky. This, along with just moving through a series of corridors, seems to consists of 90% of the gameplay.
Now of course, these corridors aren't always free of trouble. Often the walls kill you on touch, but just the glowing ones. Then there's this rainbow barrier. It's just sort of there, it's not tricky to avoid. As I've said, I haven't read the comics, but I know that British comics tended to have gritty, black and white illustrations. This feels like the exact opposite of it. Really, this is one of the reasons why games tended to suffer until the Amiga/VGA-era. Because if you're limited in the colors you can use, but not to the degree that it's pure black and white, you tend to overcompensate rather than just drawing better.
He certainly looks like he needs medical attention.
The big thing breaking up this are the Medi-Centres. Here, you throw a flare in with X, lest you get shot and die. Throwing a flare in causes a bunch of shots to ring out inside, and then a two-headed creature pops up and just shoots in a triangle pattern. Constantly. Your bullets don't take out other bullets, so you just have to get lucky. Did I mention you only have three lives and no saving and loading? I really can't imagine getting too far in this without save states.
That is likely where most, if not all players gave up. The Medi-Centres are chokepoints in progressing through the game, and you aren't getting much higher than 10 kills if you don't go through there. But afterwards, it's more of the same. Kind of. At first there's a sign that it's getting more difficult, more enemies, but then it just sort of eases up. Enemies shoot slower, and more and more rooms are just empty. I think, because enemy appearances are random, sometimes quickly popping up, sometimes taking forever to appear.
The second Medi-Centre is no different to the first. It's appearance does not mark anything positive. I know the number of kills I must make and the number of Medi-Centres I must go through, three, yet the two don't seem anywhere close to what they should be. Is the game just really backended? Or is it just really slow on some screens?
This is actually quite the annoying screen, when it has enemies on it.
Eventually I find some new stuff. There's another door shootout area, this time the doors are not flat but sort of criss-crossing. The first two don't have enemies to engage with, but I might have killed one the second it appeared because my kill count went up on one of these screens. Although later I discover another phantom increase, so maybe someone else is killing others?
I didn't know Strontium Dog had a tarot motif!
Then there's the hanged man. At first, you might think, oh, forboding, and mindlessly walk across it. Yep, it's another trap. He's hung himself or something. Just get lucky when you shoot him. The manual actually mentions him, just saying you need to shoot him. Which, to be fair, if it didn't say so, I would have genuinely assumed it was impossible. Now, you might think this is some sort of thing blocking off further progress. Yes and no, since there's a Medi-Centre not long after this. And the area opens up after this. Which considering the maze structure of the game isn't nice.
At around this point I just lose interest in going any further. It's no longer a case of just going to the side roads then returning to the main path, no, it crosses off in a large way, two massive areas past a crossroads. Then enemy groups start getting massive. Like 5 at a time. I applaud the game for having that many on-screen in a Spectrum game, but it's just another stark reminder that this game has limited lives, you have no way of getting any more, and you had to complete the whole thing in one sitting.
Weapons: Basic blaster, one shot on-screen. 1/10
Enemies: There seems to be a dozen different types of enemies but I can't tell if there's much difference. 2/10 Non-Enemies: None.
Levels: Make a map of a seemingly endless number of the same room which display no regard for geography or logic. The more puzzle-inspired levels that the manual implied are a blip in comparison to just dodging enemy shots. 1/10
Player Agency: It's solid. You need a light touch to move small distances, which you kind of don't need but is somewhat annoying when you do. But, this at least comes with the boon that it's very smooth to play. 5/10
Interactivity: None.
Atmosphere: The game certainly makes an entrance, but quickly loses it thanks to constant padding. 1/10 Graphics: On one hand, I can tell they tried. On the other, they ended up with a very garish looking game. Animation is surprisingly nice though, which is something that's struck me as beyond the capability of the machine. 3/10
Story: I don't think "kill everyone" can be said to be a story. 0/10
Sound/Music: Typical blips and bloops. 1/10
That's 14, seemingly quite in the middle for the year.
This is an odd game. It's not good, but it shows that it had potential as an idea. I would not be adverse to this if the game was just not as strict as it was. It shows that the Spectrum can be made workable as far as action games go and isn't just the cheap computer that barely functions. It isn't the game that shows that it will work, but it shows that it's possible. And that, despite a quite lackluster design and performance, is what strikes me as interesting about it. There just needed to be someone with a better idea of how it should be balanced rather than just throwing more crap at the player.
I know I said I was going to do The Dam Busters, a WWII flight sim but I could not figure out how the game operated even with a manual. I mean, I could go around, shooting stuff, but in a game where you have to drop a bomb on a dam in a specific way, not knowing how to drop it is a pretty big problem. Which, if you haven't seen the movie, involves lowering the plane to a certain height. In the movie, one person looks down while the pilot lowers the height. This is a game that you take all the roles at once, which presents a problem.
Next time, I think it's time I finally bite the bullet and get on with Ashes of Empire.
Said by some to be a FPS, I must admit I felt unconvinced going in, but felt like I could use something a little bit simpler to ease myself into the nightmare that is undoubtedly going to be Ashes of Empire. A Japanese FPS on the Game Boy is a combination that makes me think this will be quite easy to tackle.
The reason why I was unconvinced is pretty obvious, the game constantly shoves planes in your face. I know that technically there's nothing saying that a flight combat sim isn't a FPS, but it feels wrong to me. In a FPS, you can occasionally be in a plane, but mostly, you're on the ground shooting other people. How can a game where you chose one of three planes, and are in that plane all the time be a FPS? Because you never go off the ground.
Nothing gets me more excited for a FPS than picking out a plane.
This is such a weird game on the face of it. You're in a plane, just driving along shooting things. Underground. It's such a counter intuitive set of ideas that I feel like I'm not actually grasping it. It's an action that happens not because you're in an incredible situation in a game that has both planes and ground combat, not a game where you're always in a plane. Shouldn't they just be tanks?
You're given a choice of three planes, with varying power and speed. One with more power than speed, one with balanced stats and one with more speed than power. I went with the balanced one after trying out the more powerful one and the faster one. Oddly, the more powerful one feels more crippling to use, but perhaps this is just my usual abilities shining through. I think these are supposed to be power and special, since later on you get special attacks, but then that doesn't explain why the more powerful one moves slower.
An enemy in the distance, looking like it's a comic book character teleporting in.
Gameplay is your typical Dungeon Master-style FPS, except the developers felt like they needed to make it more fancy. So instead of turning around instantly or swiftly enough, you slowly watch your view rotate as you are helpless to defend yourself. It's a nice effect, but I would prefer just turning. I don't understand first-person Game Boy games feeling the need to overcomplicate your ability to view the game. It gets worse because pressing down does nothing but cause your view to mysteriously bob down and up. This is bad, but at least I'm doing this on a keyboard, the Game Boy had a D-pad which was easy to accidentally press two directions at once, so this would be unplayable there. I suspect this may be related to how I have to constantly fight with the game to get actions to work sometimes.
A shoots, you get unlimited ammo as far as I can tell. You only get one shot on-screen, but it's a short enough distance that it doesn't matter. B shoots your special attack, which presumably does more damage. There are multiple special attacks, I'm not sure there's a difference. Start might pause, because I remember it working, once. Select opens a map. The game isn't paused when the map is open, because that would be easy. This game does not want to give you any advantages whatsoever. Select closes it, whenever it feels like it should be closed. Speaking of which, the game has a soft time limit, moving uses fuel. There are pick-ups, in addition to repair items, which restore it. Being a bit conscious of it, I never ran out.
The map screen, showing everything important about a given level.
Your objective on each level is to kill all enemies and gather all parts. Dunno why we need the latter, but I'm sure it's very important to the backstory. It does something for the gameplay. I'm not sure if it's good that this isn't just mindless shooting. There are also various wall opening and teleport objects, which are seem to be invisible on the map, but you have a fairly decent amount of visibility, 3 tiles. Nothing really holds over between levels, it's all passwords, so it's not like you need to hold off on advancing levels to recharge.
A mine enemy, which you have to kill if you want to win.
The strategy boils down to, am I facing an enemy? If I am not, he hurts me. If I am, there is nothing he can do but run. Shots can be shot, and you have a faster firing rate than the AI, so enemies quickly fall down. It's just a matter of positioning yourself so that enemies can't sneak up behind you, which is entirely what level design is about. Enemies have some distinct behaviors, but it all falls down to simply putting yourself in a situation where you won't get snuck up on. Don't run into them either, because that hurts you quite a bit. You can use that as a strategy, but it's not reliable.
This guy is more intelligent than some of the other enemies, but in this situation there's little he can do to harm me.
On stage 4, I figure out how the levels themselves are designed. They're randomly generated, probably based off a few templates. I don't ever see a level that's impossible to win, but I can't be sure I didn't just have good luck. Power-ups are certainly randomized, but level design is too, because this level is primarily based around just going down a series of cross hallways shooting enemies as they pop up. This, oddly, seems to break the shooting mechanics, as I can't consistently get off shots.
Parts, needed on most levels they appear.
The game is trying to do dungeon crawler design, but does so in a bizarre way. There are traps, which are manageable, but then most of the things that would be objects or reusable are powerups. Things like walls opening or teleports are one-use. Level design means that these are often one-way to areas which contain parts and enemies. It seems like sometimes teleports are one use, sometimes not, just one of those things that comes off as odd about the game. I guess it isn't too bad in theory owing to the shortness of the game and easily starting over, but man, way to hit on every single possible bad design choice you could.
To nail home this point, there's a set of levels (Stage 6/7 if memory serves) that I found used these mechanics in ways that would be ridiculous to play in any other game. First, a level full of mines you have to navigate around, featuring the usual enemies you can't see. You can shoot them beyond visible distance too, but good luck hitting them. Then, a level using teleportation, not one-time use, to prevent you from going down a hallway. So the objective is to find the one gap in these teleporters so you can reach the other side.
Shooting something or another.
I skipped ahead to the end, Stage 21, to see if there was anything new or special there. Well, to start with, you get a series of blocked off blocks which gradually open up thanks to various wall openers. I like it, it's mostly just hampered by the game itself. Then it opens up to these enemies which look like corrupted sprites. Not sure if that's intentional or not. They're tough, and actually move around somewhat intelligently, but assuming you know what you're doing, they're easy enough to take out. It's a longer level, but feels good, not like memorable, just the kind of filler level I don't mind in other games. Here, it seems like the highlight.
It's a flying tank, I guess.
And that's the game. There are the credits, odd considering they were before the title and you see your ship flying over a city, which I presume I was defending, but will never really know. In the end, you're usually defending some city or another, even if the game never says it.
To not completely crap on the game, while I think the game is trying too much to polish a turd, I think it's easy to fall in the trap of throwing good development time after bad, especially when it's your meal ticket and it probably came off as incredible just for the sheer novelty factor at the time. This would have been the only game of it's kind during development, so why does it matter if one of the levels is some annoying minefield?
Weapons: It's weird being in a first-person game with shot limitations, and the special weapons feel like they're just there to take out tougher enemies quicker. 1/10 Enemies: There's a surprising variety, some more intelligent and some simpler. But because you're often shooting at the limit of your weapon range, which is longer than your sight range, you can frequently end up not having an idea about what it is you're shooting until it's dead. 3/10 Non-Enemies: None.
Levels: On one hand, they really tried. On the other, this was so unbelievably boring I couldn't bother to finish most of them despite how easy they were. Still, those randomized elements got on my nerves and the game doesn't really have anything to make up for it. 1/10
Player Agency: I never thought that an emulated game would remind me of how frustrating it can be to use an actual Game Boy, which is an accomplishment. That said, it was usable enough that I had no trouble going through the levels I did, and likely would have no trouble through the rest. 3/10
Interactivity: None.
Atmosphere: Clashing design choices and a lack of interesting...well, much of anything. 1/10
Graphics: The developers could clearly draw a nice, shiny big screen picture, because the enemy sprites look nice. It's just that you see the title screen, your fancy ship, and then maybe a full enemy sprite once every few minutes. The rest is bland walls and objects chosen because the artist could draw them. 2/10
Story: None.
Sound/Music: In addition to the usual bloops and blips, there's this odd ambient walking sound going on. It's not distracting, but it does feel a bit odd. 2/10
That's 13. Feels fitting. It's bad, but not offensively so. A big factor in this, is that while it is bad, it's never a struggle to play. Even when I was fighting against the controls I was generally winning. It's just a novelty that's been surpassed by other games on the system. Of course, today, considering you can play the biggest games of today on your phone, the novelty is considerably...less.
Next time, we see a psuedo-adaptation of the film The Dam Busters.
The game is not quite what this title screen suggests it will be.
Mystery Manor, huh? That's probably a reference to Mystery House, because on the first screen, literally just a plain corridor with a sign, I'm told my goal is get the deed to the house. Also to bring along a pencil and paper, and remember to explore everything. The only thing we're missing is "save often." But since the game just gives me 200 health, some assumptions can be made.
Imagine playing a more realistic game and there's just some massive lake full of sharks like this.
North of the starting area is a crossroads and a locked red door, inside there is ammo, a centipede and a green key, guess I'll be coming back later. East of that is this. The water is just freaking saturated with sharks. The woman, however, is the woman of the lake, tells me that if I can find her the staff of the serpents, uncapitalized, she'll help me to pass. She then gives me the red key. Huh, the golden key there must open that door here.
Getting the stuff from the last crossroads, we get another crossroads. Only this time, it's full of bears. Not as difficult as it seems, since you simply just alternate shooting up and down until you have enough breathing room to just take them as they come. North is a hermit's house, requires another red key to enter, so further west it is. Here there's a white door, a couple of tigers and a man who offers me a medikit. For 50 gems, which I don't have, and the second I stop talking to him, he disappears. One more west is...I'll get back to that, there's a blue door there and a yellow key, which it turns out is what the hermit's house needs.
I guess they already dealt with Goldilocks.
More bears, quite easily dispatched, and a centipede with not much reason to fight. The ruffians are more tricky. Bad luck when you grab the ammo blocking them in can really hurt you, but if you're quick on the draw you can stop them in their tracks. North requires two green keys it seems, hopefully I'm just mistaking green for cyan. So, east it is.
I don't know what it is about ZZT, but compared to a lot of other games, there's a big tendency for levels to have text telling you things you should already know.
Don't get caught, huh? There's a premade save where the player is stuck in a wall here, for some reason. The walls move around and bullets appear out of thin air. And by thin air, from places it obviously shoots out of. So once you get the pattern, it's just waiting for the walls to slide just right. East is a charming scene, where you have to stop slime masquerading as a toilet overflowing so you can enter the door inside it.
Why is there ammo inside a toilet? Well, let's just say that for a while the human body was a key component in the gunpowder process.
The inside of the toilet is a dark room. I like how this game was pretending to be all mysterious and adventure-esque, now I'm fighting centipedes inside a toilet. Slowly going around because of the distance you get with a torch, I eventually find the key on the upper right. Okay, where's the other one then? Let's back up to the first room inside the hermit's house. We have three labeled objects, one of which has nothing, another of which can't go anywhere and another suspiciously close to the edge. That's right, there's a fake wall in the fireplace. Cliche, but because you have to check every time, oh, so annoying. Inside is another room with a centipede, a cyan key and more ammo. Man, if I run out now I'm going to be so annoyed with myself.
Do people actually say that? I always thought it was high-pitched screaming or grim resolve.
And the following screen is worth it, because it's one of the most tense ZZT screens outside of one where you're getting chased by cannibals in a dark cave. Instead, you're being chased by spiders in a dark cave. Though they do die in one shot and blindly chase after you, but somehow it's better than most encounters. Unfortunately there's not much here, just some gems in that thing in the middle of the area. And there's nothing else I can really do. I look around the areas I've so far reached without darkness enabled and don't really see what else I can do. Checking a walkthrough, it doesn't have much to say about where I'm at, since apparently the path into the manor isn't supposed to be as difficult as I've made it look.
I didn't even consider that this would even happen, let alone that you could be around to object!
It turns out that I was just foolish, because in order to advance I simply had to walk out the door. South, because you can actually walk up and get stuck at this point, because the hermit appears and locks the way back into the cabin. He's upset because I took the gems in the pipe, and will only allow me to take them if I can bring him the Shield of the Underworld, which is in the manor. So he gives me the key.
I guess the previous owner accidentally dropped all his green keys here.
Now it's finally time to explore the mansion. I wasn't expecting so much time spent outside. That scroll there warns me that I need to find some hidden torches or I have no chance of getting the secrets of Mystery Manor. The door opens, lets me in, then turns into a purple door. I only took a look in the bottom right before, but man, there are a lot of green keys here. A lot. At this point, the game opens up a lot. So let's go over this roughly in the order I went through them.
Looks more like I inherited an industrial factory rather than a big mansion.
What I presume is the entrance into the mansion is left of the gate. Let me tell you, I am loathing these tigers. Fighting them at such short distance, such as that entrance, I just don't have the reflexes to take them out consistently. Especially since I'm having to go back and forth to get keys to advance more. This is basically one big 3x3 tile with this being in the center.
"You want to get HOW many sharks?"
South of the mansion is this place. Gaze at the number of bears and sigh. So much for effectively infinite ammo. Also, sharks in the water, because there's nothing more fun that unavoidable, immortal enemies. Go get the keys in order and do the surgical movement of dashing in then dashing out and hoping you don't get too hurt. You'd think by now I would have mastered this.
If I get the mansion, I don't have to keep all the spinning guns, right?
Lower right. Same old, same old, now with spinning guns. The actual blue key is easy enough to get too, it's just that it needs a red key, which is of course, guarded by spinning guns. The intro very specifically talked about how you get points for each gem, but spinning guns don't shoot gems for some reason. Perfect excuse to block it off, allowing some quick in and out for the key.
After all the green keys and two blue keys, entering the central room causes my guy to stop appearing on-screen and lock the game. I think I caused it by using the ZAP cheat at the edge of the screen. (I didn't want to walk all the way around, clearly my impatience has cost me something) Most of the blue key rooms are basically just things we've seen in previous parts, nothing special.
Can't let these tigers get out, they might join up with the other tigers and start a revolution.
This one was a bit odd. There are four things that look like saplings, guarded by spinning guns. The answer is probably elsewhere, but you have to grab one of them to open up a seemingly shootable wall in the middle of the screen to get the key. By coincidence, guess what? The guns aren't really that troublesome compared to the tigers. Those guys are getting on my nerves. Now I need a purple key to finally enter the manor.
Surprised they just let the dead lie.
To get it, I need to head to the upper left, then north, where there's a crypt. The guy in the center there will allow me in if I can answer a riddle. "What did Frankenstein say to his bride?" It seems I need to figure that out, as touching him just has him demanding the answer again. The guy running around gives me ammo in exchange for 50 gems, which I take him up on for obvious reasons.
So the answer to the riddle is "I finally met the ghoul of my dreams." You get this correct by running around and touching tombstones in the correct order. Some of them are just your usual graveyard puns. This takes a bit, and makes sense as to why the intro told me to bring a pencil and paper along. There's also a perfectly functioning save system.
Inside is a puzzle room, starting with a block puzzle. It just takes a few tries to decipher. Move the block under the key, then the blocks above, move the key down, then left and slowly get the rest of the blocks out of the way. The next room is less complex than it seems, wall moves towards you, so grab key and rush through in order to not get crushed. You won't actually die, just lose health, because this was done kind of badly. This leads to the colored number section. Which requires you to move the blocks out of the way using the buttons. They only go in one direction, so you have to do it without the whole thing breaking. The black room is an invisible wall maze, not like it usually is, they're black walls, not ones you can see after touching them. That would be too easy.
More riddles, the guy tells me I have to get 10 questions right in order to get health, If I don't I lose gems. It's a series of "guess the next number" puzzles. I won't bore you with the details. It's not that I can't do them, it's just not something I find fun. This leads to a multi-colored shifting wall trap where you get past spinning guns. It's fast enough that it can be tricky to do right. The place with centipedes is weirder than it seems, I can't shoot in this section and you have to guess at which wall contains another key. Secret wall maze and then another block puzzle. At least I finally have the purple key.
Inside is another set of mini-rooms. The door opens and I have to find another purple key to get out. Because of course I do. Those are red doors, not yellow, so the yellow keys are just more busywork.
West is whatever this is. Don't be fooled by the red coin objects in front of the centipedes, they aren't centipedes. They're blocking them from entering the main room, touching them causes the coins to disappear, then you can kill the centipedes. At first, it isn't clear how you get into the key room, it's locked, but nothing seems to open it. I assumed I just had to get lucky with the coins until pushing the sides of the end of one tunnel caused of the doors to open. This is starting to be less annoying puzzle game and more the memetastically bad adventure game I keep insisting is a rare phenomena.
Further west is a mess of enemies, so I return to the entrance and head north. I take one glance at it, save and then quit. I return, sometime later. It can't be as bad as I thought right? No, it's worse. I thought it was four red keys, and then back and forth bringing green keys here to go further. No, it's twelve red keys. I clear out the nearest one, just to start bringing back the keys. No, it's four red keys and a bunch of tigers. I'll just take this back to the entrance and...hang on, what am I even getting out of this room but keys? So I open the door and realize what the other rooms are for. The firing rate of the spinning guns is such that you need cover, and there are blocks in the other room. That's right, I need to bring those blocks into there. Through the oddly designed room, because things apparently weren't difficult enough!
Going for the next green key, I decide that I've had enough of ZZT's Revenge, they got it. I'm getting quite tired of ZZT and the way that every time I think something unabashedly fun is about to happen I end up only getting busywork. We'll call it 5 out of 10. I know I still have another board left on the game, but I simply haven't the desire to play any more ZZT for a while. Which is unfortunate, because even if I skip Best of ZZT, there's still Super ZZT to go through. But hopefully being more officially minded, those will be less tedious to go through.
