Xenomorph: On the Other Side

I've cleared out the upper levels, so now we're at level 3, and holy crap, if I thought the previous levels seemed elaborate for a DM-clone, this is like those Islamic geometric patterns. I'm exaggerating, but it's a strange example of artstyle over art quality. This is a maze by the looks of things, but no necessarily in a bad way. I'll probably change my mind.

I find some more grenades quickly, bringing me up to four. If this keeps up, I won't need to worry about fighting anything tough. This makes Galactic Empire look like...uh...a game with one grenade. Then a green keycard. These choices are, from the start of this level, respectively, left, and right, then left, and those are the only things in those rooms. Odd. A stroke of bad luck could have prevented me from grabbing those, though.

The way this level is going to play out becomes quite nastily apparent. The blob creatures roam this level, not that tough, though two take 60% of my gun, no, the big problem is that it seems this level drains my health. I'm guessing that I'm missing a helmet that can work in a zero oxygen environment or whatever and what I actually have on is a combat helmet. If only the manual had spent time telling me what defense equipment did, because I didn't see anything about it.

I find a red gun. It has three settings, which are either what power setting its on or what frequency its on. It looks like its some sort of sonic gun, that is noise waves, but your guess is as good as mine. I recheck the manual again, its a stun gun, which I guess is supposed to have some purpose beyond junk. I can only imagine because an enemy is invulnerable to my usual weapons or invulnerable in general. Probably just flavor though.

What, is this ripping off The Terminator now too?

Wandering around, I get lost and die to some random slime. Really lame death screen here, barely even worth mentioning. But I do eventually find my way out, somehow, and pick up some mines and another battery to go with it. I have three guns, four batteries for my primary, two for my secondary and a full mag for the third; Two rockets, two mines and four grenades. I really hope I need this stuff for something, because right now I feel like I'm picking this stuff all up for nothing.

I get a real helmet, meaning now I can actually explore this level without having to worry about dying. Or not, as I quickly discover my health is still going down, just slower. Worse, now some of the slimes are invulnerable to my laser gun, the green gun and grenades. Guess that's why they gave me the stunner. Or not, because it doesn't work after shooting them. Maybe I was supposed to shoot them with the stunner first, but I'm probably thinking too much about it. There's nothing I can do now except bait them out of the way if I have to.

This is actually going to present a considerable problem later on, because the way down has many, many slimes, and I can't afford to take any hits. Sure, it'll only cost me half my health bar to get down there, but that's not a great amount. I hope, I really hope, that one of these weapons kills off the slimes because otherwise I'm completely screwed here.

Level 4 of the base starts off quiet. Too quiet. The corridors are winding, but open-ended, I find the usual machines, but no items I can use. Lots of doors, thankfully.

Then I find a room full of these things. I guess the next evolution of the alien creature or something. Looks like it was taken from Shadow of the Beast. There's a corpse in the corner with plenty of items, none of which I can grab without fighting these things, so I'll leave that for later. I just need to find a recharge room.

Finally, I find some stuff, the game is beyond generous with it, more mines, grenades and another battery. Its at this point that I realize I left my ID card in the upstairs recharge station, and thus I've put myself in a walking dead situation. Fortunately, I did something unintended, I copied a save from earlier to somewhere else, and can place myself back there. I need to render these slimes inoperable somehow.

Grenade doesn't work, stunner doesn't work, maybe the mines? No. Well, permanency is out of the question, so I'm going to have to hope the stunner won't result in the situation I'm dealing with. Testing it doesn't seem to show it resulting in anything unusual, but that could just be how it works. I.E., it seems to be killing them, not stunning them. Fortunately, I can test it right away because I forgot to get the ID card, AGAIN. Nope, stun gun's legitimately useless.

This leaves me with one option, mad dash through, and hope that when I'm on the other side coming back, shoot them. This of course, relies on the lower levels having enough ammo, likely, and no weapon that can kill the slimes, unknown. I must admit despite my problems with the game it is nice that it is producing problems like this, makes the solving of it more interesting. I just need to hope that I don't have to be the developers to win.

At least I found the second recharge point quickly. Also a nice little scene with these cocoons, you know they were going for it. These guys are not very tough at all. Even better, it's right next to the ladder down, I check there a bit and find more floppies, containing information I already knew about the slimes, and telling me about a life pod. And when I've returned, the...uh...crab/goat aliens are gone, no resurrection for them.

There are a lot of vending machines on this level, including a first for the regular drink vending machine. These cost money, you don't know how much you have, so when I run out is a mystery. I'm keeping my money since its not necessary and the medical and recharge machines may require money. They are important, this is not. I ran past slimes with zero stamina, I'm not worried about it.

What I am worried about is how many items they're giving me, look at this, two rockets, three guns, six batteries, with the newest one being blue for some reason, four mines and seven grenades. (One of the batteries is in the radio, possibly one is in the scanner too, didn't check) I have had zero reason to use anything beyond my regular laser gun. I haven't tried out the green one yet, I think it's actually a bullet gun and not a laser gun.

Now to take out that big area full of the crabs. I don't know why I thought they looked like goats, turns out when you shoot things quickly you don't pay attention to what they look like. I didn't say this regarding the enemy sprites, but they look great despite the limitation animation and poor choice of palette.

Anyway, the big area had a full suit of armor...and why am I telling you this when you are looking at the unholy Cylon/Stormtrooper knock-off already. What the hell is with the helmet and hands, seriously? I look like a robot. I also don't know what the cause is, but after putting on this armor, because I'm sure its better than what I had, I lose health consistently, usually if I run out of stamina. Bizarre that it would be a problem now.

Surprisingly, this isn't the end of the level despite seeming to, there's still a ton of it left. Including a ;adder up, which completely ignores the sewer area with the slimes and is just straight back to facehugger central. There's also a ladder down, which I don't thoroughly explore, it has another floppy talking about the deadly slimes. I feel silly now. Wait, that might mean I've put myself in an unwinnable situation in another way. Crap. On the other hand, health lowering only happens on the lower floor. So, I need to restore my stamina without risking my money. I hope this isn't timed.

It takes about an hour, which I didn't count for the session's total, stamina seems to regenerate much quicker at the extreme lower end, probably due to some programming quirk. Which I have to say, objectively, is the worst resting time I have ever seen in a view game, and I want to make clear, I HOPE is the objectively worst resting time I will ever see in a video game. Really hope this isn't timed.

I find something else that looks like a rocket. I can use it though, its some kind of homing mine. I activate it and it runs off, but if I run into it, it explodes and doesn't damage me. Either this armor is great or this is crappy. But this does present a problem, because now I have no space anymore. It's seemingly unimportant because I can presumably win most fights through sheer attrition now, but it does present a few issues.

Somehow, this area still goes on. It seems to mostly be one path continually in one direction, not exactly great design, but I'm not going to be fighting slimes on the way back and I can navigate it, so complaints are mostly quibbling. I find another fuel station. So I take a jaunt back to the ship, also taking another floppy with me.

That's more slimes, but I can take this opportunity to see what I've managed to gather and put it all safely in the ship. Still seemingly no change in fuel, I'm going to have to hope that's an intentional error, that is, because I haven't fixed the computer and restored the OS, it still thinks there's no fuel. Or there's no buffer between "fuel depleted" and "fuel full".

The Cylon Stormtrooper outfit is turning out to be a constant health drain, even back up here, which means its very good news that I'm probably not going into the area I dubbed the sewers, which after further research is clearly supposed to be interior ducts. I also take out some of the chips in the CNS I found before, but this causes the doors to stop working, so I'll save that for the very end.

I return to the crab monster floor again, somehow finding the level still has more in it, but, its just barely, and the most important thing of all. This level's CNS, which even has a CNS chip in it. As I just said, I'm going to hold off on touching these until the end, but I do take the opportunity to ensure I know where to go to get to everything important, except the other ladder down, which I originally entered and now for some reason cannot find.

I'm enjoying this, but it is not without considerable flaws. Its hard to describe my feelings precisely, it has things about it that are very good, but the actual game feels like a beta from before the final polish was put in. Like finding the unreleased beta of a game that's nearly complete, not worth it for your average player, but someone more into what they're trying to do would find it worth it.

This Session: 3 hours 00 minutes

Total Time: 7 hours 00 minutes

Xenomorph: Introduction

Xenomorph, presumably named after the Alien from Alien, is another one of those Dungeon Master-style games that aren't technically RPGs, but get labeled as them simply because they're Dungeon Master-style. I wonder how Terminator 2029 avoided the label?

Side note, I'm on a different computer than usual and had to replay some of this to get screenshots, there are much less than I'd like, sorry about that.

The story is, my ship is crippled and I need to land at Atargis Mining Station. There's nobody here, so I have to figure out what happened while finding parts for my ship. No intro sequence, but a kickass tune, lots of voice samples. I'm playing the DOS version, the DOS version doesn't seem to have any downgrades outside of PC Speaker, and unlike the Amiga version I wasn't fighting constant disk swaps. (This is how I heard a tune with voice samples, but quickly changed) According to Wikipedia, the Atari ST is broken. There's also a C64 version. At this point in time, that sort of thing's a weird novelty.

The belt there actually serves as another five item slots, just for specific objects, gun and ammo.

After the modest intro screen, I'm greeted with this. How...charming. This feels like one of those creepypastas where things are described as being ultra-realistic, those hands have had too much effort put into them. The cursor's a hand too, which is as terrible as it sounds. I find it amusing, though not entirely a coincidence, that I've been working on a sci-fi RPG whose main character is named Griffith. That's about as far as the coincidence goes, but I think I'll play this as if I'm playing as her spiritual descendant.

That was just the pack, Griffin is actually wearing clothes, in order to see something, I need to right click and hope for the best. This must be an outdoor view. There's nothing in my inventory outside of a keycard. You'd think Griffin would have a gun. The arrow keys function as duplicates for moving the mouse a certain distance. AKA, you have to do everything with the mouse. Crikey.

Griffin starts in the cockpit and can turn around to see a ladder down and a computer screen and slots for computer boards, all filled up right now. I suspect something bad is going to happen later, but the computer screen tells me everything I already knew, I can't get off this rock.

Either my ship is incredibly small or incredibly big, because down takes me to a massive area with tops of ladders up. I find a lot of stuff I have no understanding of yet. There's a red suit and a red keycard. The inventory is utterly crap by the way, you can easily hide items. I find vending machines, which if Griffin owns this ship is just so incredibly dystopic that I'm impressed.

Actually, the blue keycard seems to be a credit card or something. I get coffee, and now I have to figure out how to drink it. Aiming in this game is just absolute ass, I shudder to think how bad combat is going to be. That said, I can safely say this isn't a RPG. Unless drinking a cup of coffee somehow increased my XP. I'm not sure what I increased, even if I know logically I sated my thirst. Health, breath, ???, ???, ???. Maybe blue is food.

I find more stuff downstairs. I get a helmet, which means I should be able to leave for the surface. Some sardines, and some...things which are electronic in some way. I'm guessing one of these is a scanner and one is a jammer. They need batteries, which I find shortly, along with a gun. Unfortunately I only have two batteries. There are a lot of items here, including what seems like a suspiciously high amount of clothing in a game like this. What's happening here? Do I need it or is it just odd flavor?

I guess that was Griffin's ship. Gotta say one thing, this game actually amps up the graphics several tiers above your usual DM-clone. Usually they're quite rigid in making things look like tiles, this actually feels like a place other than a dungeon. It's not a great color palette though, perhaps its just my monitor.

First enemy. Doesn't seem to hit hard, but it takes about about a sixth, I think, of my battery. It seems like some sort of stun robot rather than a real threat. I'm just using my imagination with everything, I have nothing else to go on. The area he's guarding, or rather the two of them, but they're stupid, just has a gun with a magazine. An actual gun by the looks of it. It looks like it was designed by someone intentionally trying to make the worst gun ever.

After shooting my way through way too many stun robots, I find myself further down. Don't tell me I've been shooting my own robots. That would be fitting for this game. A door says Essen, no idea. I see this, not that I can see it while standing on it. It's what you think it is, but instead of a facehugger, its some kind of weird leech. Nasty-looking. I'll give them something, they sure know how to design something I don't want to be near.

You know, I think the second bar is a breath meter. I wonder what the ideas behind these all were. I'm guessing now that food and drink is supposed to play some role in things, but so far it hasn't mattered. At all. Health regenerates if I stand still, and breath doesn't seem to stop me in the slightest.

I find another set of computer boards in their slots, so I grab them. I figure there's something wrong with them, because you wouldn't make it this easy. Along the way I realize that these strange things might just be a place for these floppy disks I seem to be finding. I assume, I don't know what the deal with these things are, but they don't work at all. I also find what alleges to be a recharge station, also no dice.

Finding my way back to the ship, I realize I have no way of knowing which board goes where. Uh-oh. I start dropping them in, hoping I can figure it out...and then I think to put one of them in my hand as most have been replaced. Oddly, it's better and worse than I think, I just have to take out the chips and put in the right ones. I'm going to start over, since I wasted a lot of ammo for seemingly no reward in some sections, but at least I have an objective.

Before I end I finally decide to check the manual. It's for the Amiga version, so the controls are useless here, but it does explain a lot. The bars, for instance, are health, stamina, food, drink and radiation. Health is only supposed to be healed by drugs, which it obviously didn't, stamina somehow manages to heal more slowly than health but didn't seem to matter too much. Food and drink don't matter at all.
Two of the objects I was curious about were a motion detector, not really useful, and a communicator, of which I doubt there will be any living people around. I missed an atmospheric analyser, of which I doubt is that important. Or maybe I missed the motion detector.

It also explains the machines, curiously, I should have gotten something out of that obvious floppy computer, it seems to be badly put in. Shocking, I know. The good news is that as far as the "C.N.S." or Central Nervous System, the maintenance thing with all the computer boards? Placement of chips is apparently locale agnostic, I can place it anywhere I so desire. Even replacement chips.

There's nothing else of note in the manual, though they do mention that a biologist and ethnologist were recently added to staff. Clearly this wasn't an accidental find. There's a novella, but it just reveals that the cause of it all is mysterious. And that the name of who I'm playing as and who is in the novella is different. I don't think that's important though. Let's start over and try again.

My objectives, are more closely, find chips for the computer, find anti-matter fuel, and find navigational data. Hopefully the chips solve both the problem of the computer's central nervous system and a missing OS.

The floppy reader back on the ship, which I simply neglected to mention the first time, actually works, though the information I get is not. It's the expected warning, and talking about a radiation leak.

This time around, I'm avoiding combat, at least with the drones. Unless you get next to them, they don't go after you, just forever patrolling one path. I can exploit this behavior in some cheap ways, if the drones are blocking access to a room that contains nothing, I can just reload. I figure this game has limited resources. So much for playing like a spiritual descendant.

If I weren't though, this game would be infinitely frustrating, especially since there's only one save slot. A floppy was guarded by two drones in a big room that has nothing else in it. What's on the floppy? Nothing.

Finding my way down again proves quite tedious. I don't have an issue with Dungeon Master or Wizardry-style games which require me to map, I mind action games which have no reason to not include an automap. This is better about it than Rejection, but I found myself lost here. Not helped by how despite having an in-theory well-thought out interface plays like something that was just started. For instance, I'm not sure if I hit something until it dies. There's no feedback beyond shooting and getting shot.

Finally, downstairs again. Why, hey, the facehuggers seem to move like the drones, in a set pattern, ignoring you unless you unless you get close. I wonder if this is all enemies or just the little ones? Despite technical issues this game does have something going for it. I hope that something isn't a Trojan Horse.

Finding myself somewhere new, just going past the facehugger east of the ladder down, I find another floppy and another card, neither of which tell me anything at the moment. It's a keycard, which I only figured out by hoping it would work. Nothing much inside, only a coffee machine. I need about 6 or 7 coffees to fill up Griffin's drink meter, which is probably a dangerously high amount. Okay, there's also a nearly dead battery, two suits and two facehuggers, but none of that is really useful, is it?

I never thought I'd see a game that alternates between giving the player too much at one time and then nothing at all. Another room with a coffee machine, and hey, a computer. It's just world building, and excuses for why this place looks so empty. I wonder if it's going to be an actual plot point or if this is just an excuse? Are we going to find chair xenomorphs?

Then I find some mines. It's another thing you have to figure out by design and context, they're just on the ground, so maybe someone tried to set them up? I'll try it. I see two facehuggers and I use it. Whoops, it's a grenade. Boy is it ever effective. So effective that by the time I want to risk using it, its probably going to be useless. Unless there's too big a concentration of these things. What I will do right now is sneak these guys off into some room I can close. Facehuggers haven't evolved hands yet. I wonder if this behavior was intended?

Another note, this time telling me that there's a motion detector for some blob creature. Either it's the facehuggers or the game is probably overhyping something. I find it later. Things are looking up, I've even found the stairs down, though I still have a lot to do here, since I haven't found the boards again.

But I do find an antimatter generator, which I can take antimatter out of. No guesses if you can figure out that this is what increases my radiation level, fortunately at such a slow pace that I could realistically take several such journeys if need be, but the medical machines do have anti-rad drugs. Oddly, I need to use my ID card there rather than my credit card. The game doesn't tell you what drug does what, so I tried them all until something removed my radiation, number 6 then reloaded. I'm going to hold off on using it until I have a good chunk of radiation meter.

This turns out to have all been for nothing, because my ship seems to have no more fuel than before. Whether this is because I did something wrong, it was a tiny amount or what I got was already depleted, I can't say. There is a device I'm supposed to use to carry the fuel, but I haven't found one. It'll probably be somewhere really annoying.

It's a good thing too, because I can't find my way back to where I was. Better news is that I quickly find another gun, green for some reason, which uses a different kind of battery. Now I have three guns. I also find something I can't use but I think is a rocket. No matter for now, it'll take a while before that's useful.

Quickly, I find what I want again, even better, I figure out how to recharge my batteries. Now I shall have no trouble at all with enemies, I don't even need to spare them now. So much for playing this like a survival horror game. I guess now I can play like I wanted to originally. What else is here? Oh, another floppy.

Project Xenomorph, and despite what it sounds like, they're dealing with this as best as they can. They put the facehuggers in an area where they wouldn't get hurt, so the could track them, and they found out they're connected to the floaters in the caverns. What floater? I know about blobs. Interestingly, this is some hard sci-fi, they note that it'll take two years for a reply, no doubt from someone with the authority to send a ship out here. Another floppy I picked up earlier details a crystal entity of some sort.

I decide I'm going to hold off on taking the computer chips, I don't know if that's going to affect anything. And that's everything on the first two levels, well, I do find another rocket on the first floor, but that's not major. This is a good place for me to stop, since I seem to have removed all challenge from this game now, leaving only tedium. It's fun in some places, boring in others. When we get back I'll have eliminated most of the drones on the first floor.

This Session: 4 hours 00 minutes

Rejection: Sewers and Submachine Guns

I start exploring from the start again, going dead south. I curiously find myself ending up in strange dialogs like this, that I saw before finding a gun last time. Hmm, that's a strange sign because the area this was in has nothing in it. Wait, there's absolutely no exit out of here except through the area I was exploring last time. Guess I need to explore that some.

But first, let's see that camp in more detail. There's the camp leader again...and there's a medic. I found two medikits connected to the start area, so I think that health isn't a problem if I can untangle myself from the zombies. I just need to survive. Considering the level design here is on the mazey side, that will be tricky.

Testing out the knife some more, I see that it has some decent range, which means if I should probably rely on it more than I have been. Enemies tend to back off when you hit them, but not run away, not that it matters when they respawn. So you can fight them this way. Activating the menu to switch weapons does cause the game to pause, which is nice.

 

I reach Shinjuku again, and there's another new enemy. Metal zombie. He's only the toughest zombie yet, capable of killing me in three shots, about 90 damage to my 210 health, not survivable. The shotgun is actually a crappy weapon, since it deals less damage than the revolver somehow and the pellets aren't guaranteed to hit. Enemies are moving around a lot more, they actually get a fair bit of space, a lot between and in the middle of tiles. How odd considering they basically have two sprites, one standing and one attacking.

I guess "bodcon" is this zombie lady. "Body conscious"?

Oh, wow, there are two more enemies, a redane, which I don't know what it is or what it means, and a woman in a red dress. The revolver kills everything in Shinjuku, but accuracy is in question, since they move around a lot and the revolver kicks. There's also just a ton of enemies. This path is clearly wrong. And when I'm dying the game is freezing for some reason. Oh, well.

At this point I get stuck. I have no problems with the zombies in the first area connected to the camp, but I can only find this section of Shinjuku, which is odd because I distinctly remember another entrance, and more importantly, I found an area that wasn't Shinjuku, full of enemies that were not these. Right, so I need to make a map. Time to fire up Gridmonger. I'm not sharing them, because they're not really accurate, not that I think it matters, there doesn't seem to be any secrets. At least there's no way to figure out there are secrets, nothing happens when you move into a wall. Movement is so sticky once you get going that it would be a problem if it did.

It turns out that I was missing one fairly obvious door by simply misremembering that it was a dead end. That's it, there are three doors, where I came from, Shinjuku the hellzone, and then the actual path forward. Strange, but accurate.

The south door is the one I want, the one I entered before, and the area I find myself in now. I had hoped that I could just walk normally at this point, but alas, the game isn't that generous. The wall sprites were nicer than usual at first, but there are only two variations. Door and not door. I quickly find myself lost and in my hastiness to fight zombies, dead.

Proceeding more carefully this time, I'm rewarded with a level-up. Apparently I got hit several times, because I'm at less than half my new health total. Otherwise its slow goings. The north side of this area has two of the guns I mentioned last time, the 92F and the P.38. I decide to save the P.38 for later, dumping the shotgun now, despite its less than useful nature, seems unwise. I might actually need it.

Levels seem to be relatively small, and despite the doors making things awkward, I do appreciate the game breaking itself up like that, both from a mapping perspective and a playability perspective, enemies can't go through doors. There's one door further south, and three areas with a single enemy. And the door south leads to the enemies that were too tough for me but still killable. So my assumption that the game wasn't really level gating itself was both right, because I could go to Shinjuku if I was insane, and wrong in that this is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.

This isn't an actual enemy, it's blocking the way out and can't be killed.

This brings up several questions regarding the intended playing style of this game. I can grind, but it's not fun. The game's dialog seems to be telling me I shouldn't be trying to fight the blue guy, who is called Halycon, but I keep mentally thinking Frost Giant. I can't really deal enough damage to him, the magnum kicks far too fiercely for me to ever reliable hit something with it. I wonder if that's the point? No, I just wasn't fighting hard enough. All right, whatever. Bones that were guarding the way out disappear.

Welcome to Meguro, everyone. We got giant rats. I mean giant mice. And here I thought this game was going to be off-the-wall. Though I guess rodents of that size isn't typical. And then giant alligators that look like Killer Croc. Fish too. Guess these are the mutants. Why am I getting Operation Bodycount vibes? When you're promised one thing and then you get a maze full of random wildlife? I complain, but enemies are stealthy in a way that works, you have to follow the shadow, then have your cursor at the right height to attack them when they attack you.

It's also a fairly simple level, at least at first. There are no doors, despite the massive number of pipes around, so you just have to carefully advance, most paths at a crossroad lead to a dead end. The enemies make it annoying, but they're not so difficult to deal with as to be unfathomable. Guns feel useless here, since enemies only appear when they're close. At this point, I also realize that my character is in fact, carrying around a medikit, seems to heal a quite low amount of health, currently 52. Not...great.

Then the path I was taking leads to a dead end, and I have to find a way back. Despite slaughtering a metric ton of enemies, I am somehow still level 2. I take well over 1200 XP to reach level 3. Which will present a problem for me eventually if I need to grind. There's not really a lot to talk about, since every RPG of this style has these twisting corridors with the occasional big room. It's decent level design, but not quite suited to more of a straight action game.

Curiously, most of these enemies can't hurt me if I'm quick on the draw, I suspect there's some system in place to cause more damage to K-Ko if I get hit in the behind. It's a good thing to ponder as I get completely lost, not finding any way forward or any way back. I hope this is solving my grinding problem, at least short term. I could fire up Gridmonger again, which I stopped when I reached the Frost Giant, but I at least vaguely recognize everything at this stage. In the sense that I recognize that I'm not where I should be.

Monster art looks great in screenshots, but don't be fooled, it's mostly static.

And then as I make my way back, I realize there's little hope of that working out now. I have to hope against hope that I can stumble my way back. The corridors all look the same. Perhaps I could remember it all if I really focused, but mapping this area feels like it would have less of a point than if I just memorized it. Though I say this, and when I finally make it back, I spot that the way back out is another pipe, indistinguishable from any other. Guess I'm going to have to bite the bullet. The comparison to Isle of the Dead is complete, the only thing missing are a few rule breaking puzzles and a mad scientist at the end.

That said, while the game doesn't drop ammo as you go along, you can get a refill from base. And from the doctor. I really hope these aren't limited. I'd rather not have health and ammo be a completely limited resource. I also take the opportunity to figure out exactly what each of my skills is. Life power, body power, defense power, quickness, level and experience. Quickness is a thing? Why? I haven't noticed anything. I'm also not sure what the difference between body and defense power is. Is body power offense? If so, why didn't they just say offense?

Rather than do this all by mapping, I just do it by the old reliable of following one wall, in this case the left, and paying attention to any and all pipes, hoping one leads somewhere else. I'll be screwed if some part of the area is on an island, that is, going left or right exclusively will never lead you there. It turns out that while I might have missed it, it still follows the usual game logic of door that's in a dead end/recess is enterable but the others aren't. God forbid you design two doors per level, one you can't and one you can enter.

I have no idea how I seem to have hit him first for that much and my proceeding difficulty.

Shinagawa, we've been looking forward to seeing you. I see I've been misspelling your name all this time. There's a hot second before I spot my first enemy. Practically looks like a bandit rather than a zombie, but he's a hell zombie. Hell's Angel, presumably. He's...he's immune to my knife. Great. He's immune to my pistol too. Wait, am I even hitting him? Is he tough or is his hit box broken? Using the Python tells me he's tough. So there is some level gating going on. He's guarding some more portable medikits, which I don't need right now. Let's explore elsewhere.

Right, another new kind of zombie. Tobi. Which off-hand means flying, but apparently serves as an abbreviation for several different kinds of workers, construction, firefighters. Hey, he's guarding a box. Does it have a weapon? Yes. YES! It's a FN P90. Belgium's most important contribution to humanity. I take back everything bad I've ever said about this game. It says its in 9mm, but who cares? It's not sharing ammo with anything. I'm also pretty sure this is the first video game to include the P90, at the very least first FPS*. Let's see if it lives up to my hype.

*The IMFDB says so, in that there isn't anything before the late '90s but they also don't mention Jagged Alliance, so I don't know how reliable that is.

This strikes me as a perfect place to pause. Solved a nasty maze, got myself some kickass firepower and have a nice section with which to grind myself some experience if need be. Even that trip back is going to do nothing to dissuade my good mood. They've earned themselves a lot of good will here. Level design is somewhat mazey, but you can shred zombies with a P90. Turning is a bit janky, but when you do, you shred a zombie with a P90. Not enough games do that.

This Session: 3 hours 10 minutes

Total Time: 4 hours 10 minutes

Rejection: Introduction

Rejection - Dennou Shoujo (Rejection - Computer Girl) is a game that I couldn't find much information on. It's something of an enigma, even in the realm of Japanese FPS. It's from Sur de Wave, a label of the company Takeru, and that's about all I know. So, without ado, let's see it.

This opening section is something that tripped me up, if you saw the end of I, Robot, you'll know that I actually asked people for help on this one, I got the information from zwanzig_wwoelf on RPG Codex, the only other person I actually knew played this. Turns out the problem is that it expects you to move with the joystick...though I could have solved my initial problem by pressing my mouse wheel. Sigh. I know he had trouble with it thanks to the game being too advanced in terms of language for him, which is another compounding problem for me. I'm going to use an imitation N64 controller for this one.

I think it's safe to say that even if I like this one, I'm not going to recommend this one.

We get a shot of something before it's destroyed by a meteor, and the opening turns into a crawl of text. The music playing during this section is some bizarre frantic stuff, fast techno or something, not at all appropriate here. Thankfully, someone already uploaded the intro, and even translated it for us. In the description, anyway.

A giant meteor hits Tokyo bay, in an instant ruining the city. The meteor claimed 7 million people. Entire instutes destroyed. Kansai places a provisional government, Tokyo dispatches research team who are astonished. People have become zombie-like creatures.

The meteor has a virus attached to it, which has special characteristics. Called 'Kosumoanfitamin'. (Crap Vitamin? Nah...) It causes death in living cells, transforming them. Then the infection takes place, their existence is harmless but, after death they start moving again, changing into zombies.

The truth is known to the provisional government, but the zombies don't become a wide phenomena outside of Tokyo, so it's decided to quarantine Tokyo.

With the quarantine, many people become refugees, within the Tokyo metropolitian region every place builds underground facilities, the government supplies them with weapons to fight the zombies with.

It's been one year since the meteor.

In the refugee camp, the young men balance zombie fighting and going on supply runs, while forming vigilante groups. In the middle of this one person, a teenage girl called K-Ko in a vigilante group from Shibuya. Her father is in the army, doing a mercenary training drill in Shibuya, teaching them how to fight.

On that day, K-Ko finds a message on her arm from someone called Alice Paku. The existing government is rescuing survivors, Colonel Kihara, is dispatched to find survivors that are immune. They do some kind of relief effort, before making an announcement that the refugees should appeal to them for guidance.

Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the first time we see the flesh-eating kind of zombies in a FPS, maybe the first zombies in general. It depends on when in the year this came out, because Catacomb Abyss has necromancy zombies and Wolfenstein has the flesh golems. I'm also guessing that some of this is supposed to be more sinister than it comes off in writing. The first one I can remember of flesh-eating is Isle of the Dead.

I also note that I continually refer to the main character as K-Ko. It's written K子, which even before the audio I knew was pronounced Keiko. They're clearly going for something off-kilter about her name and '90s cyberpunk name feels like the best fit to me.

Ah. This feels like that artistic sweet spot between amateur and professional. Suddenly, I hear voices. Ah, crap, I'm not very good with hearing Japanese yet. And this part isn't subtitled. I'm going to assume they're just celebrating K-Ko's return, with some narrator explaining something I don't care about.

Look at that perspective, it's terrible, I love it.

Then we get a conversation between K-ko and Group leader. Still voice acted, but this time there are subtitles. Whatever the decree is, they're worried about how it would affect K-Ko. This guy talks about Shinakawa harbor, a lot of zombies there. They're weak now, but there's a danger they'll get bigger. So, take them out.

Controls for this are weird, despite being a system with a keyboard and a mouse this is more like a console game in practice, because you're using a joypad for everything. Shooting is done with the gamepad, the A button, changing weapons is done with select. All the menus are done through there, status, saving and loading. It also functions as pause. Right now I have a knife, a P08, a Colt Python and a M870 shotgun. Nice, though seemingly a random selection. (And while you can't see the menu, I noticed later there's a level system)

Aiming is simple, move the pad around. To move or turn, you move to the edges, the B button seems to do it quickly, but it doesn't always work and it just moves you, not turn. No combat waltz for me. It's a bit rough around the edges, to say the least. I hope if I need to run somewhere I'll have figured this game out by then.

You can actually talk to people outside of cutscenes. He doesn't tell me anything new, just what he already told me. Let's go exploring then. I have no context other than Shibuya. The HUD is not helpful. I'm not entirely clear on which direction is north. When the red bit is straight up? I guess the lower left is health, pretty cool, but it gives a constant chirp, like a smoke alarm, very annoying, and the music isn't playing anymore. Whether that's good or not is to be seen. I assume S is south.

I eventually find an arrow into a door which presumably means I should go here. Oh, it's just a medikit, can't pick it up, you just use it. I guess arrows are showing which doors you can enter and which are for show, which is annoying but does tell us the developers are going for realistic level design but don't want to put in everywhere they don't want to be important.

Yep, it's another game with that anime design of complex clothing and simple body parts.

After some more wandering, I find my first enemy. Zombie girl, looks like the vampire lady from Tsukihime. Let's line up a shot and...Holy crap, K-Ko's gone apecrap! Constantly shooting and turning in one place, what the actual heck. Why is this happening? I'm not that badly damaged, but my controls aren't responding. I genuinely don't know if this is a fear mechanic or if my control glitched up, because when I reloaded an early start, the problem was no longer happening. The second time around I just kill her with no trouble. Weird.

I reach a dead end, I have no map, and fight another on my way out. I realize three things. Firstly, S does not refer to south, it's just general information, you're in Shibuya. Two, the fire button sticks, dunno if that's controller, game or emulator, if it's the game it's my fault. Three, voice clips play as you attack and are attacked. It's nice on a theoretical level, but I'm not sure I appreciate hearing "GANBATTE!" when I'm killing some poor girl clutching her teddy bear.

There are no weak spots that I can tell. At least not the most obvious one.

Semushi? Hunchback? Huh. He's tougher than the girls, not surprising, there's also an oyaji or someone's dad. Wait, is this just Isle of the Dead, but not as a joke and competent? I'm saying competent, because the atmosphere is pretty creepy here, and despite indications that the game is maze-like, I'm liking it so far. Allegedly, it's a RPG too, but I've seen no indication of that so far, beyond the MC having statistics. Having statistics doesn't make it a RPG. (Obviously this was before I saw the level stat)

You can spot the hit icon here I describe later.

I figure out the issue, it's somewhere between the emulator and the joystick, sometimes it just locks up, doing whatever it was I was doing last. I need to quit the emulator and reload whenever it happens, which is great. I do note I get a burst of music whenever this happens. I'm not sure that the music is improving the game. Maybe this is a WINE issue, I'll try Tsugaru Towns instead of Unz.

The controller's a bit more jank since I can't select my controls, but otherwise it seems to be better. Also, music. That makes things more annoying when you're trying to listen to somebody, but it works well otherwise. All screenshots are retroactively from that, since it's easier than cropping screenshots taken by my OS.

I dig the short draw distance.

That music loop is kind of annoying with the beeping on too. It doesn't fully loop. I'll see if I keep it on, it's useful for enemy cues at least. I find myself in Shinjuku...which...uh...crud. Okay, I don't know if this is cheating or not, but I'm going to look up the wards of Tokyo real quick...and I've gone in the wrong direction. Actually, if this is any indication I shouldn't have gone in this direction to begin with. Well, I can find my way back. Probably. That does tell me that the red direction on the compass is the direction I'm going in.

On my return trip, I find that all the enemies I killed have returned. Wow, this really is Isle of the Dead from Japan, isn't it? I also notice the beeps get more frequent as I take damage, which means it's going to get very annoying when I'm in bad shape. Weapons also have a few interesting quirks, which I noticed by switching to the Colt. The area you shot turns inverted, so with the Colt you get a pretty big area. It also moves the cursor up when you shoot it. That's an undeniable first, recoil. Neat, but could get annoying.

And if you die, the game resets to the opening cutscene. That wasn't well thought out. Unfortunately, I died before I could test the shotgun and the knife, so I'm trying again. The Colt's basically a straight upgrade over the P08, but the other two are quite different. The knife still has recoil, and works like you'd expect a knife to, it's even a slash as far as hit area. The shotgun is actually quite clever, it spreads the area out, which does mean you could hit someone dead on and miss them.

As I'm exploring the area I got killed in, I get this. Basically, something's wrong here. Or I'm going the wrong way like I know I am. Then I spot a crate which gives me another gun! Okay, clearly I'm coming back this way when I'm serious. Beretta 92F, baby. Which I'm really only happy about because I've been using a "weaker" handgun for my primary.

And then I find another gun. A P38. This in of itself is not impressive, I'd place it between the P08 and the 92F myself, no, it's impressive because of what it represents. I have to drop one of my guns, which means that the number of guns is going to be exceedingly generous. This...this is the best news I could have possibly heard.

There's something off in the corner I can't see, because I'd need to turn and that's a bad idea right now.

And then I find these freaking guys. There's like three of these bones dudes, the guys in the suit, and the frost giant guy shoots at me. I make a valiant effort, but I get killed. There's two things to note about it, I killed some of them, so this is clearly possible, and this game is willing to let you waltz into hell and doesn't stop you from killing the demons. I like that in a RPG.

I could see this one going either way. This has the bad ideas from Isle of the Dead, an entirely unique aiming system with shooting mechanics I'm deeply interested in, and signs that it could go even further off the rails. I think, regardless of how this goes, this is going to be better than Elm Knight. This is going to be a great disappointment or the greatest FPS before Doom.

This Session: 1 hour

Cloak & Dagger (1984)

Name:Cloak & Dagger
Number:217
Year:1984
Publisher:Atari
Developer:Atari
Genre:Top-Down Shooter
Difficulty:5/5
Time:2 hour 30 minutes
Won:Yes (89W/71L)

As I was putting the finishing touches on I, Robot, I was quite eager to consider Atari's arcade games over and down with. Indeed, that was to be the last arcade game I covered this year too, but of course, it turns out I missed something important. The movie tie-in Cloak & Dagger.

I say tie-in, because it's not a license like we think of them, it's supposed to be the game inside the movie. From what I'm reading, it's a spy thriller loosely based off a crime short story and has the dubious honor of being one of four films based off said short story. The game's relevance solely seems to be that the main character wishes that he lived in a world like the protagonist. We think about such things today, but for something like this, that seems downright quaint.

Why would you think that would work when you've been chasing him for a while?

Cloak & Dagger was released as a conversion kit for Robotron 2084, because this was just before I, Robot, and Atari was doing quite poorly. The movie doesn't seem like it did much either, which could not have helped. The story is that you're chasing after Dr. Boom inside his bomb factory.

You already sort of know how this one's going to play like, Robotron 2084. It controls the exact same way, one joystick shoots, the other moves. The focus is quite different in how you're supposed to do that, rather than a hundred or so enemies on-screen, often there are a handful, with a ton of boxes everywhere. Or rather, explosives. You get points for shooting them, but the inactive ones you get more points for taking. To actually encourage players to do this, there are objects you pick up which are maps and power-ups. Preventing you from just taking everything are active explosives, walk into them and you die.

The actual enemy list is pretty basic starting out. Starting off there's dumb enemy who just kind of shoots back. He gets more aggressive as the level goes on, but he's not very troublesome. Later, Dr. Bomb hangs around for a moment to throw bombs at you. There's an eye thing, not too troublesome because it stands still and has no range.

The blue things are forklifts, the tube in the top left is an explosive armer.

Other hazards aren't really enemies. Forklifts kill you. They move boxes between places, and reflect your shots. Explosives Armers are...exactly what they sound like. Also on every stage is a bomb in the center. This functions as a timelimit and as a bonus, you get an "igniter" button, which throws something towards the bomb. If it lights you get mega bonuses, just don't get caught in the blast. It also lights after a certain amount of time anyway, but slower.

There are three distinct kinds of levels, the first are the conveyor belt levels. These have a bunch of crates on conveyor belts. This is the most common level type, and most of the focus is here. The real problem, outside of not keeping an eye on each enemy, is just fighting the belts. Getting something of actual value off these things can be annoying. They don't quite work the way you'd expect.

Then there are the cave levels. I have no problems with these. You get to shoot the walls and for once the game isn't focused on overwhelming you with random crap. Sadly, there are only a handful of these.

This only briefly flashes, so you can't just abuse this to advance.

For three levels, you need to find maps to a minefield, and then on the fourth, you use that map to figure out the path through a minefield. You could, of course, just manually do this, since you have a mine radar and it periodically lights up, but this is risky, but not entirely worthless. The path is not always the quickest one, and finding the map can be tricky on some levels due to the sheer number of crates there are.

This goes fairly well for a while, it's easier than most of its contemporaries, but this is more because instead of throwing a thousand enemies at you, it throws a thousand crates at you. Something that is sometimes deadly is always better than something that always is, but it's not a cakewalk either.

It's helped by a generous amount of the game allowing you to skip to later levels, both at the start and a between level skip, which forces you to stop on minefield levels, without the map, but you should be able to figure out where to go if you're paying attention.

That said, once you get into the teens things ramp up. Eyes start appearing in non-cave levels, and most annoying of all, there are box crushers. You have to time your way past them, fine, but they work wonky as far as shots getting past them go. It's not clear where you can and cannot shoot past them. It takes until the twenties before it truly gets bad. Something I found amusing was that after I decided to play this with save states, the next level goes with a "Careful, these next levels are tricky", as if it wouldn't have taken me thousands of quarters to get to the point I just was.

As these were the final stretch, this would be more shocking if they weren't. They were still all better than Level 28. I don't know what it was about Level 28, but I could just not get any luck there whatsoever. Either I got lucky on the final stretch, or they just aren't as hard as the game credits, but I died in these less than I did Level 28. They just weren't that hard after what I went through.

The red pool is an acid pit. I don't know why it's red.

Well, except the final minefield, Level 32. You're basically pinned down at the start, there's plenty of spare room to get past the eyes, but they shoot down your shots, and you have to deal with all the robots. I know what I have to do with the eyes, but I can't seem to do it properly here. I need to get lucky with them. Now, here's the reason why this game isn't fondly remembered, practically every level has conveyor belts. Every level is the level that moves you around whether you want it to or not. Further, the game also doesn't like you moving and puts as much danger in your path as possible; Basically, the conveyor belt is putting you on a path towards death.

Something I waited to mention was the between level elevator rides. These are honestly just cool as hell. Depending on the level, he acts like it was no sweat, or if he nearly got blown up, freaks out. It's not quite accurate, but he plays out like a proto-Build protagonist, no voice clips, but the badassery is still there. Also, hints and ways to skip past levels you've already played.

The final boss fight is actually kind of mundane. It's not easy, of course, but compared to some of these minefield levels, it's easier. Dr. Boom goes down in one hit, so the real threat are the robots. My character's hitbox is completely bizarre, I don't understand what it is at all. To get past here, you just shoot the stars guarding the secret plans, and go through the next elevator.

Right, I've won...and the elevator is going up to Level 32...and opening. It's the same, except there's no bomb. This game is kidding me. Fortunately, I don't have to play Level 32 again, I can play Level 31. Now the reason why you don't stop are Node Monsters and Superguard. The Node Monsters appear in the ruins of a bomb, they bounce around and take three shots to hit. They're annoying, but you probably shouldn't be staying around for too long. Superguard chases after you if you stand around for too long, and fighting him is technically possible, but not very wise.

Okay, not that impressive.

You win the game, definitely a win, since the game ends, by making it back up to the ground floor. No second boss, you just escape. The game congratulates you and then shows you the blueprints you recovered. For all we might expect such a feat to be worth some grand ending cutscene, I think that in of itself, there is no other reward for completing this than completing this. Which isn't as bad as you'd think, even in the dirty way I won.

Weapons:
Fairly basic, I think you had about 8 shots on-screen. 1/10

Enemies:
The actual enemies, as opposed to hazards, is quite low, about five enemy types, most of which depend on the level and some aren't even there until you've nearly beaten the game. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Some interesting ideas at first, then devolves into endless conveyor belts. 3/10

Player Agency:
The igniter button is a bit wonky to figure out, but that's emulation issues. It's otherwise mostly fine, but it handicaps itself too much. 5/10

Interactivity:
You can shoot pretty much anything that's on-screen, but most of it is boxes. Still, points for effort. 4/10

Atmosphere:
The whole spy theme feels at odds with the strange game world. Cool, I'm some super spy, why does every level look like it was taken from a Looney Tunes game? 3/10

Graphics:
I dig the between level sections, but otherwise it's mostly just functional stuff. 3/10

Story:
An excuse. 0/10

Sound/Music:
A nice little intro theme, then blips and bloops. 2/10

That's 23, which would tie it at number one for 1984, but that doesn't seem right, so I'll remove a point, so 22. Still higher than I, Robot.

Next up, Rejection, yeah, I actually got that working.