Operation Scour: Against Impossible Odds

Starting off this session, I did something I really should have done when I first started the game years ago. Last time when I said there wasn't a side-step option, I was just working off memory. Which happened to be wrong, because I simply never used it back when I originally played the game. Nor the whole rebinding keys thing. Since the side-step is tied to a key which toggles left and right from turning to walking, I simply rebound the key to one near the movement cluster and now I can side-step. This doesn't make things perfect, but it does mean I can handle a bit more than I could previously. Assuming I can remember to do it every time I start the game.

The fourth mission's briefing has the black major dude tell me how he wishes he was here to join me in the assault. I have to disable the security system, in fact, the same kind of Watchdog system they keep disabling on our bases, at a work camp the evil AI has in its grasp. This, so that the actual forces can later assault and free the prisoners. To this end, they've given me the codes to two elevators I will no doubt be forced to use. My secondary objective is to find a radioactive isotope, one that only my armor can survive. Why I have to do this in the middle of a firefight is best left up to your imagination.

Right away, the mission lets you know how it's going to go. Stay still near the entrance to the level and enemies will spawn in. Not Resistance members you can accidentally kill and who might be mixed in with a few T-800s, straight up enemies. Go east and you'll never get enough spare time to avoid getting gunned down by the respawning T-101s and walkers in order to start taking out enemy defense. Go south and...the game crashes. Say what you will about how casualized Bethesda became since, but better to have an easy barely functioning game than a hard one.
 

The path forward is easy, likely to just rush past the guard towers and head straight for the elevator. Running and hiding has proven to be the most effective method yet, which makes me wonder if there's some secret path I'm supposed to have been finding to avoid enemies. Because I apparently found it when I got into the bunker, it was relatively quiet until I got near the watchdog system, at which point some, not an insane number, of enemies started popping up. Once I cleared them out, it was now easy pickings to use...ten grenades to take out the system. That left my secondary objective, the rock. Which the in-game orders implies is actually non-optional. Fine.

This is harder. There's only one entrance into the area it's in, and you better believe that they're spawning in a good number of enemies now. Most of these aren't wide open areas, so it's actually easier than it has been. The question is...how do I get out? And I look for a second elevator, since I know the first doesn't have the location I want. There is one...which actually takes me back to the first area and I should be headed for the second. A few close calls and I manage to make it to the designated area. Huh...that was...I think I only actually died once. That's suspiciously easy.

The end briefing has everything be a-okay. The base has been cleared out, the prisoners are free. One of the other units took out a bunch of Hunter Killers transporting superconductors, which I heard about in the opening briefing. Between that and the radioactive isotope I found, they've managed to discover that it's the same time of stuff that Skynet used to make the time travel device. (well, TDE, don't know what the initials are for) They're going to send someone else back in time. Bethesda managed to figure out the plot to almost every Terminator movie sequel just after the release of T2.

Yes, the green line does keep going in on itself, this is supposed to indicate where I'm going on a mission, for all that matters.

It takes a few steps before I get a new enemy on-screen. Sure. New enemy, but the only new weapons I get are improvements to my grenade carrying capacity. They're quite nasty, but the game's strategy has hardly changed. Avoid anything that I can get away with, rush the objectives. And with that in mind, this level is a literal breeze compared to past levels. I barely had anything happen on the surface. The game gives you the password as soon as you hit repair, so basically, get damaged, then advance.
 

The enemy base doesn't add in anything new. I forget that on my first objective that I need to use a recorder on the communications array rather than grenading it, which costs me four grenades. I'm really not having any trouble now, well, I'm not getting killed. I guess I've managed to build up a nice little loop of managing damage. Even the target I have to destroy only gives me trouble because the way I approached was the wrong way to attack. It's just navigational issues overall. I make it through the entire level without dying once. Which is...suspicious.

The end briefing, after congratulating me, tells me that the enemy is building some serious hardware. Forgive me for not quoting the exact details, but they're throwing around some sort of fancy X-rays and frozen hydrogen as equipment. I suspect that the writers know as much about it as I do, but it sounds cool, and that's what's important. Whatever it is, they're building up something, and it's building up to an epic battle here in DC.

It's time for another defense mission, in fact, the very base I'm supposed to have been in all long. No build-up, only Major Merlin talking to me. Talk about serious. I haven't been dreading another mission like this, simply because I didn't anticipate that there would be another one like this. There's also something about a spire I need to take out, which I didn't realize until the actual mission started was something I needed to do.

There are a lot of enemies on this level and a not very favorable layout for reaching the objectives. It's a literal up and down zig-zag. The sort of thing you'd design as a joke in an intentionally unpleasant level. To say this gave me a worse feeling about the level is an understatement, I fear another endless session of death and...well...dying.

This causes trouble in multiple ways. I don't exactly know where I'm headed and the objectives are in three different sections of the level, and one of the sections you go through is just there to screw with you. Oh, did I miss something? No, it's one at the start and one in the fourth section, then you go to the surface. Still, at least this mission is only hateful in that the enemies constantly murder you, not that they force you to juggle with non-hostiles who sit around and do nothing. Seriously, the defense targets are right next to section transitions, you can just exploit how these despawn enemies when you move between them and allow you to instantly repair your armor.

On my third attempt I make it to the surface, where the target I have to blow up and my extraction point are. It's a dense section, with plenty of cover. Unfortunately, the game also decides that here it was playing fair before, and now just spawns endless hordes of enemies even if you think you've gotten to a safe enough spot. Run far enough away that the old ones despawn? That's nice, new ones will spawn in when you get out of range of the old ones. Run back, new ones spawn in place of the old ones. And the game is stopping the run past and repair when you can strategy, by having so many enemies on-screen that you can't just run past them.

I dislike blaming failure on the game itself, most of the time. Because there's always some method to beat a game, the developer had to, after all. Even in the cases of absurdly hard games and mods designed for people who think Dwarf Fortress is for babies. This does not feel like that. The game is cutting off every reasonable avenue of dealing with the difficulty, past a certain point, you just have to get lucky. There are certain points I can breeze through now with zero damage, but others I'll get horrifically damaged on. I'm not even sure there's a way to get through those without getting damaged.

If the intended way of getting through the game is to stop for every encounter, then take out the enemies, the high rate of spawning enemies is detrimental to that. If running past them is, then the high rate of spawning enemies is also detrimental to that, since enough spawn that you can't get past them. It's starting to feel like I was right with the whole right path which doesn't spawn as many enemies I thought of earlier.

My successful attempt doesn't really go as it logically should. In that, I really only win because I took advantage of how my grenades work. They have an arc, and a wall which normally blocks shots...doesn't block grenades. Lob them over a wall, and the tower doesn't know what hit it. Don't mistake this for being anywhere near easy, not dying was a nearly impossible task, and it wasn't helped by the sound suddenly getting staticy. I swear this game just gets more and more unstable as I go along it.

The end briefing expresses some relief that I was able to handle it, they thought that they wouldn't be able to defend the base. The reason for the assault? The technician with the thin shirt thinks that it could track the armor thanks to it being built by Skynet. Either way, we've lost the element of surprise, but hopefully that won't cost us the war.

Next mission is about heading towards a shipment, believed to be a Cyberdyne computer chip, a group of HKs dropped in a radioactive area. They're concerned that what they're building, which could result in the total loss of forces in the area. My objective is one of support, I have to open up the bunker for the nearby group of soldiers being sent to recover the believed chip. Unfortunately, I have to wait for them to send me the access codes to the watchdog system. Once that's done, I have to grab any resistance who got hurt by the radiation, all in a neat little sixteen minute timer. No pressure. No pressure at all. 

There's new equipment, I'm shocked. Nobody mentioned it in the briefing. First, armor, which as I remember from last time, is not very useful. Then, a laser heat sink, useful, but I feel like I have a better option. A target tracking system. The little bit of info makes it sound very helpful for the inevitable battle, and I really only need one grenade launcher when I'm packing twelve grenades a launcher.

For the record, this is almost right after I started the mission, note the heavy damage on both arms.

And you know what? It's very useful, it even tells me if something is an infiltrator or a resistance member. Which would have been useful LAST MISSION. Since this one is just a timed level in which you have to go through ten thousand enemy units, but at least now, some of them fly instead of sticking to the ground. This is not all useful, because the game also expects you to go to a communications array which is guarded by a tower which takes twelve grenades. Oh, and when you step next to the tower to use your keycard, a million enemies spawn. I swear, the game just arbitrarily decides that you should be damaged more as the levels go by.

Once I get inside, it's not much better. There are turrets on the ceiling which I feel no desire whatsoever to destroy, but damn if they don't hurt to get shot by. There's one survivor of the friendly squad, and I now have to pick him up. Somehow. See, the area in the bunker doesn't seem to have any side pathways, it's just one straight shot upwards. Which would be fine if this lead to anything but a random piece of equipment I have no reason to destroy. I actually got annoyed enough at this point to see if there was a walkthrough for this game online...and the closest thing I found was my post from last week. Sometimes I really hate being the guy who uncovers a game.

The next day, after I've had some time away from the game, I manage to get it right perfectly. A stroke of luck, I'd say, because I don't know if I could do it that well again. See, what I've been assuming is that my orders are giving me the location of the last guy's body. They aren't, they're giving me the same extraction point I've had since the beginning. The guy is literally just on the ground in front of the random piece of equipment. Part of this the issue this game has is that it's simpler to just have your eyes glued to the radar and the minimap rather than actually looking in front of you.

Another mission completed, another end briefing where the briefers express relief that I made it back alive. This time, Technician Sterner is informing me that there was nothing I could do for my fellow soldiers. Since I wasn't the guy who shot them this time, I believe her. I'm going to stop here, since I'm in a good mood for once and leave the final...five missions for the final entry.

This Session: 4 hours 10 minutes

Total Time: 8 hours 40 minutes

Terminator 2029 - Operation Scour: Introduction

The intro cinematic cut down to one line.

Welcome back to Terminator 2029, after nearly 5 years and 200 games. To put this in perspective, this was released one year after the game. This is a good reason to just play an expansion soon after the original game. Otherwise, you forget everything. Even if you've been reading since then, I wouldn't be surprised if you forgot about this game, I've got to get back up to speed as well. You'll also note that this is an introduction, not just one entry. This is what we call foreshadowing.

The gist is, a major in the resistance broke into a facility containing a set of experimental power armor, which by coincidence, works for humans. You, under the command of John Conner, used this armor to perform various missions in California until Skynet was taken out. Since Terminator as a franchise is all about pulling out the rug on any hope that humanity will survive, this isn't the end of it, there's something funny going on in Washington DC.

More or less how I was equipped for the game.

Gameplay-wise, this is a Dungeon Master-style FPS, you are given six weapon slots before a mission, divided into four categories of items. Plasma Rifles, rechargeable weapons which shoot lasers at things. Missiles, more damaging, but takes time to lock on. Grenades, most damaging, useful for the many stationary targets, requires you to hold down the attack button and pay attention to where it's going on the radar at the bottom of the screen. Other defensive items, like an autodoc. You can use two of these six at a time, one for a left mouse click, one for the right. 

The start of the training simulation.

The GUI is mostly straight forward. Various important items can be accessed on the lower right with the indicated keys. The armor shows where it's been damaged and if you've been hurt. The radar in the middle shows where enemies and targets are, and the top part is your weapons. Left click and right click select, you can have two active at once. Assuming they aren't always active, like autodocs.

Fully animated characters, which means that taking screenshots makes them look funny.

The team we get is the same as the one we had in the original game, because it's easier than making new characters. Block One, a secure research and operations base in DC. We were supposed to head there, but despite the base having incredible defenses, somehow the machines managed to defeat its defenses in ten minutes. Since the data there could turn the tide of the war back in their favor, it's important that it be removed. Unfortunately, the method they'd use to extract the data has been stopped by an above ground tower. My objective is to destroy that, then using an access code, reach the part of the bunker with the database and destroy it. We're certainly hitting the ground running.

For purposes of this mission, I've chosen two 100 watt plasma rifles, two sets of fusion grenades, an autodoc and one missile launcher. I doubt the effectiveness of the missiles, I remember that much, but maybe I'm wrong. Grenades are useful for stationary targets and everything else should be taken out by the plasma rifles. I have done a bit of testing in the training section.

All right, first to make my way towards where the tower is. I'm surrounded by enemies, which freaks me out. I start shooting them, and they don't seem to be shooting back. Uh...hang on, is one saying resistance? Uh...restart. Friendly fire isn't exactly what I want on my record if I can help it.

It all comes rushing back as I play through the mission. The hordes of enemies I have to run away from until I reach my objective. Stationary targets which I have to snipe with my lasers to take out, lest I run out of grenades. The sheer uselessness of missiles. Seriously, by the time they lock-on, you've probably been shot half a dozen times. And of course, sound cutting out halfway through the mission.

The mission goes very poorly, as in well before I reach the bunker or the target, I use up my repair kit. The mission succeeds, somehow, but I'm just limping along by the time I find the place I'm supposed to scan. That's right, scan, not destroy. I forgot that was a thing. And now I have to find the other thing, which I now have to destroy. Somehow, I managed.

Mission 2, the nuclear power plant is under attack, and since this building is providing power for half the resistance on the eastern side of the US. What my job is to protect the technicians and the reactors itself. There will also be friendlies around. Since it too, used the same defense system as the other base, afterwards, I should head to it to find out what happened.

So, the whole defending the power plant part is tricky. Because enemies respawn infinitely, how that'll work is an interesting point. Just shoot things until the game decides I'm good, I guess. The first time around I get shot to bits just finding my way around. There seems to be only two ways to the first one, it's not obvious that it leads to it, and it's the long way around. The first time, I die. The second time...I might as well be dead, because my menu is damaged enough to frizz out and I can't repair it.

On my third try, I manage it, but I'm not sure how. It costs me my repair pack, which surely won't be a problem even though I have four more places to go to, right? Of course it doesn't go well, but I make it to the uplink badly, badly damaged. They're already throwing the toughest enemies at me, and I'm just barely holding on. If only...if only I had another way of repairing myself. I ended up in a dead end and press R out of frustration...only for it to start working. I can't believe I forgot that worked. Which turns this level from a frantic mission to defend our base to a slow but tense set of moments waiting for my armor to repair itself.

After a long time repairing my armor, I head out, to find where the second power plant is, only to immediately get so damaged I need to crash back into the hole I just came out of. Sigh...Oh, and then I realize that a significant chunk of the T-800s I've been taking out are actually resistance members. I don't know if I'm going to get blamed, but anyway, attempt four. This time, I actually make it pretty far, but get killed again.

This is what I remember the last missions of the base game feeling like. The game can effectively spawn unlimited enemies who, in a single shot, will completely shred one part of your armor. There's not really any way you can dodge this, no side-stepping, and the only way you can counteract this is with pure attack power. Grenades and missiles take too long to fire, so just spam lasers.

This is from him chewing me out, you can tell because it looks nearly exactly the same as the last one.

Somehow, I eventually make it through the mission. Barely, just barely. Worse still, you get a warning for hitting resistance troops. Yeah, that's why the game puts a whole bunch of T-800s next to them. I can advance, but screw that. Reload. This time I'm cheating, because trying to do this any other way is going to be extremely tedious.

The easiest way to accomplish this is to change my location, as health is divided into about seventeen different variables, armor, two arms, two shoulders, two legs, two waists, chest and head. Six weapons and then the underlying health. Unfortunately, the movement is a single variable. For instance, 2,1 is 65538, which means that the second number represents a full 65535 places of a 32-bit integer. So, it's something like the second number times 65535, plus the first number. Kind of, because my math keeps messing up. Please feel free to correct my math if I'm wrong, math isn't my best subject and in the case someone actually wants to play through this, having some way to bypass the worst of it is going to help him.

Naturally, when I actually get it right and end up next to the tower, it spawns a dozen tanks and resistance fighters. Even after I get the tanks, someone's still shooting at me. I shoot who I think is shooting at me, and he explodes in a pile of meat. Oh, good, it's time to rage quit again. The next day, I decide to try the missiles again. Since I don't need to destroy any stationary objects this level.

Somehow, despite being able to teleport however I please, I still get killed. Frequently. The only thing this is changing is making it so that I don't have to go through a million enemies to die in the middle of an open area surrounded by more enemies. Huzzah. And the one time I get tired of it all and record a video showing how bad the game is, it just goes smoothly as silk. Even when I'm winning, I can't win.

This still means I'm the first one to win this level since the '90s though, since I highly doubt anyone else bothered to finish this nightmare if they had the ability to do anything else. Though I must admit, this has some tension that I rarely get from other games. There's nothing like the fear of losing an hour of work to bad luck.

My success means that we have the location of where the signal that deactivated the defense system. The area I'm being sent into has three towers where I have to place three tracers...or rather viruses. Which I have to potentially use depending on the tower? The briefing makes it clear that the three viruses do different things and they might just depend what I get as orders in mission. They might hurt me too if I use them too many times. At least I won't have to worry about friendly fire.

There's a couple of new items in the defensive category, most importantly, an item which improves the repair system. It says x2 the repair rate, which I'm going to assume means I'll be spending half as much time repairing things. Everything else has a capacity upgrade, though since missiles are useless, I'll only be taking advantage of this for grenades. Fortunately, I get a good test, since the game practically spawns a whole bunch of flyers on top of you at the start.

When I say that the game spawns a whole bunch of enemies on you, I mean the game spawns a whole bunch of enemies on you. It's an unrelenting barrage, and the unfortunate thing is, sooner or later you're going to need to stop to take them all out. Unless you abuse your ability to reset things via the section transition tiles, but that's just for that section. It's easier than the big areas, thanks to so much cover, but don't mistake that for easy.

Especially since, as the briefing alluded to, the viruses hurt me. Not if I use them twice, if I use them. This isn't just normal damage, either, if you get hit, it will only be fixed if you can make it to an area which will cause the "repairs initialized" screen to show up, the aforementioned area transition or a few lucky spaces. This got me on the first attempt and took out my faster repair on the second. Fortunately, attempts three through...oh...twenty were just me dying to regular enemy attacks.

This happens at such frequency because I change up my tactics. Well, if this is going to result in me taking damage no matter what, why bother fighting and instead rush through and get an easier result? I still don't really understand the way I'm supposed to be doing this, but this kind of works. There are two big stumbling blocks here, beyond the high number of enemies. One, there's a single corridor to the third tower, which spawns a whole lot of enemies which can block my passage through. The second is that when I made it through and back again, the exit despawned. Since there were no more orders, I took a gamble and used the mission abort, thankfully, it still counted.

The end briefing, after Conner notes that I got hit a lot, goes into details on metanodes, basically, the individual blocks of Skynet which I guess are make up the bigger AI. There are a bunch all over the world, and naturally, there's one in DC which is giving us big trouble. If we don't keep it in check, it has the potential to be as bad as Skynet. Considering how many units it has at its disposal, I'm not sure we need to worry about it getting as bad as anything. We'll find out how we're going to deal with that next time.

This Session: 4 hours 30 minutes

Spear of Destiny (1992)

Name:Spear of Destiny
Number:260
Year:1992
Publisher:Formgen
Developer:ID Software
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:4/5
Time:8 hours 40 minutes
Won:Yes (8W/1L*)

Spear of Destiny, as if you don't know, is the first sequel to Wolfenstein 3D, made in an incredibly short period of time in order to capitalize on the massive success of the game. The story behind this one is much the same as the story behind Commander Keen 6: Aliens Ate My Babysitter, probably because it's the exact same company. Formgen was a company that published shareware titles in real stores, so naturally they would try to reach out to the companies providing them the best games in order to sell originals. Commander Keen 6 must have done well for them to want to publish another Wolfenstein 3D game.

Wherein there's a problem. They already killed Hitler, and nobody else really has the same romanticism in killing them. Stalin gets close, but Wolfenstein wasn't getting that alternative history yet, just into the more fantastical elements of the real world. Emperor Hirohito wasn't really the guy you could paint all the country's evil on, Petain came off as a stooge, and nobody cared about Mussolini after the war was over. (See, Alessandra Mussolini) So, they were stuck with more Nazis. Except, rather than setting it after Wolfenstein, it's instead set before.

So Spear is a prequel, in which Hitler has acquired the Spear of Destiny, the mythical spear that pierced Jesus's side during the crucifixion. Shoot a bunch more Nazis and wonder how they got anything done considering one guy killed like five thousand people between these two games.

Befitting what is effectively an expansion pack sequel, almost everything I said about Wolfenstein 3D applies here as well, the important differences is that there are some new ammo pick-ups with a higher amount of bullets, and a few new enemies. I'm going to be playing this in ECWolf, since I like having an actual automap and on Bring 'em on, because I am insane. 

Floor 1:
A technically competent opener, but I didn't really feel like I was having fun going through here. Plenty of ammo, and the SMG here is held by a SS you can cleverly get the drop on if you know what you're doing, but this really falls into the "wander around until you reach the exit" style of Wolf levels.

The real big change is in how it looks, a lot of the wall textures are now scanned images. Before I objected to them and I still dislike them. It's just odd-looking. Some walls are realistic and others are the more cartoony style and it doesn't work. A lot of later games do have scanned textures with pixel art enemies, but those do so in a more consistent way where even if a wall actually is made using paint tools on a computer, it tends to blend in better.

Floor 2:
It's the second level, they're not going to try anything crazy yet. Try being in a starting area with dozens of guards and a dozen hallways they could come out of. You shoot, a dozen guards wake up, and their AI won't make them head straight to you the entire time, sometimes they'll try to go behind you. That means you'll hear a lot of doors open, and when you fire, whoops, more guards are alert. Hey, was that a SS shouting?

This is a genuinely tense level, and it took me quite a few tries before getting past the opening slaughterfest. It feels different than a Doom slaughterfest, everything tends to die in a few hits, so you aren't going to be gunning down the exact same monster for a minute. That said, the level gives off some serious signs that they gave up afterwards. There are two keys right next to each other and the doors they open are on the other side of the map.

Floor 3:
My god, this game loves ambushes. I swear every single niche has a guard or a SS in it. It was kind of annoying in the last level, but this level is driving me up a wall. It could be my imagination, but it feels like they have larger hitboxes, which means I often touch them, awakening them and causing them to become alert a moment before I realize they're there. It's also one of those where if you go the wrong way at the start, you'll be halfway through the level before you realize there was stuff at the start you probably would need if you were pistol starting.

Floor 19:
The first secret, entered from the fourth floor. While I do generally feel that forcing the player to find secrets to win a level is bad game design, doing so in a secret level is forgivable. What isn't forgivable is that in an area with three obvious secrets, the actual way forward is to find one particular block, in a diamond shape no less, that opens a passageway.

This level adds mutants/zombies to the mix, and boy howdy, did I forget how nasty these guys could be. Especially when the level designer, say, makes them become alert behind a door, and since they're completely silent, the first time you'll notice them is when they're opening doors on your flanks. This level does that sort of thing a lot, to the point that you could probably reach the exit about 20 minutes sooner on a lucky playthrough. It got to the point that between that and the constant corner checking I was sick and tired of the level by the end of it. Unfortunately, I got the impression that the game was just getting started.

Floor 5:
Our first boss. It's just another of the Grosse siblings, this time he's green. This, amusingly enough, is treated as such a serious boss that most of the level is actually done after him. Unless you already know what you're doing. Pistol starting these levels may be technically viable, but in practice, good luck if you don't have a map. There are twelve secrets on this level and only one is before you enter the bossfight, but don't worry, there's a million medikits in one!

Floor 7:
Even if this is not an interesting level, I appreciate that not all these levels are insane endurance tests. It's just some big corridors with the occasional enemy jumping you. You can tell this was balanced around a pistol start, starting with full ammo gives you a lot of leeway, even if you don't find any secrets. Find one, and suddenly everything is in your favor.

Floor 8:
There is a secret right next to the start which just has five SS hanging out in a small, featureless room. Otherwise, it's more of the last level, except now the parts which were nice and simple have turned into the same old, same old full level adventure in dodging the guy you alerted at the start. If you were allowing yourself to fully restart after dying, it's getting to the point where yeah, technically you can, but you need to know where the secret is which has the gatling gun.

Floor 10:
The second boss. This is just a boss in the middle of a normal level. By this point, none of the things this level is doing is really interesting, and together it's not breaking that. All aspects of this level have been done to death by now, and just because the boss shoots rockets and bullets at the same time doesn't mean there's anything new here. The boss arena otherwise falls into the same template we've seen for a while now, down to a secret with health and a secret with ammo.

Floor 12:
They started using the mutants the last level, which wasn't that interesting despite making it blatant that you were to go through the opening section just sidestepping and shooting a guard in a niche. It's odd how many levels here follow the same formula with a few differences thrown in. Secret near the start with the gatling gun, long winding corridors, at least one secret you will never, ever find without pushing every wall on the map. Hey, here's a section where enemies are behind barrels on both sides of a passageway, better be quick or be dead. But the mutants, man, the mutants are just so quick on the draw, it's infuriating.

Floor 20:
The second secret floor. The name ECWolf gives me for this level is Pushwall Panic, I don't know if that's the official name or something ECWolf just gave it, but it's fitting. You start off in a hallway with only the entrance elevator. Fine, it's a secret level. There are thirty two secrets, and it's basically a pushwall maze. Only, it's a pushwall maze you can accidentally cause huge chunks of the level to be blocked off. I'm sure it's even possible to screw yourself over. To start with, this is displaying the worst of Wolfenstein's secret design, random walls lead to the secret. No real method of figuring it out short of just spamming the space key. Fine, whatever, this is just the best of Id's capabilities here. The worst of this is that most of the health and ammo is in a place where you can easily block off without even realizing it. Going for the gatling gun is also tricky. Hope you weren't playing on a pistol start. At least it plays like a secret level.

Floor 14:
I hate zombies/mutants. It feels like unless the game positions one away from you and you're facing them before they become alert, you're getting shot and for quite a bit of health. Naturally, the level does everything it can to make this situation impossible to end up in, so every encounter is practically a guarantee that you'll lose health. It's really helped by the game's insistence on making every single level have a maze.

Floor 15:
Take all of what I keep repeating, now add in a section where you have to rush between doors because there are wells on each side of a corridor, which allow a bunch of mutants to attack you from both sides. It gets a little better as you go along, but even as the game showers you with ammo, health is getting tighter and tighter.

Floor 16:
It's time to fight the Ubermutant. Assuming you can reach him. Because right outside the entrance elevator are, a group of various Nazis to your left and right, more hidden behind walls with strategic pillars so they can snipe at you before you realize what's going on, and the only ammo you get is what you came with and a box in front of the elevator. There's some off to the side, but this is next to even more guys behind pillars. Which, if you go around, you can actually be next to one group, but if you're careful, you can avoid them all together. The only way forward from here is a set of doors, which is within sight of the pillars, hope they can't snipe you. This leads to a set of rooms, which the second you fire in, alerts more enemies. Once you take them out and head further in...there's another set of rooms with a whole bunch of enemies. Then you can do a normal level.

Once you've gotten the first key, you can enter the area behind the pillars. The Ubermutant is inside the room inside this area. I hope you've saved some ammo and can run straight out of here, because there's no cover inside this area. Sure, the Ubermutant is basically another Grosse sibling, but with no real cover, this actually makes him a bit trickier. A bit, I still made it through handily.

Floor 17:
Not exactly an easy level, but easier than the last one. There are two SS outside the starting area, shoot one, and every guard on the outside hallway around the castle becomes alert, but there's more to it than that. They'll open little doors to small rooms, each containing either mutants or keys. Only one key is useful, and you'll know none of which doors were opened. It sounds tricky, considering how quick mutants are on the draw, but opening the door then backing off works in your favor. I actually got killed more by the officers waiting in ambush for the player next to purple walls. It's strange.

Floor 18:
This floor has the Death Knight, the most obnoxious bossfight by far. To start with, the game just puts the gatling gun outside the elevator. Because if you die you will need it. There are no SS on this level, just some officers outside and some mutants next to the Death Knight. He's one of those bosses who throws everything at you, bunch of bullets, then two rockets just to cap off your likely death. In order to actually survive, you need to rush past him, hopefully to a safe corridor, then go outside where all the ammo and health is and use that to slowly wear him down. He drops a key and the Spear of Destiny is in front of a picture of Hitler.

Floor 21:
This leads straight to the final, final level, with the Angel of Death in a quite creepy situation. There are thirty five wandering souls who can only temporarily be knocked out with some bullets. The Angel is a lot less tricky than previous bosses, he just shoots one shot and it's an actual projectile you can dodge. It's not a one-hit kill or anything, so you just have to find him and then try not to get hit. It two me two tries, and the only reason why I died the first time was because ctrl+alt on Ubuntu shifts windows.

Two things, this level has a whole bunch of stuff unique to it in addition to the enemies. Various sprites, including several statues of the boss. There's also a unique music track, which is very nice. The other is that the majority of the health items on the ground are the chicken dinners, which when you think about it, is very strange.

Killing him results in a slow transition to an animation of BJ falling down, then an end text box, an image of BJ getting a medal from FDR and then the credits play with various pictures of the bosses. The end.

Weapons:
The game showers you with so much ammunition and spawns you practically next to a gatling gun on every level that any other weapon usage is practically pointless. Still the same rating though. 2

Enemies:
There's really not much change here despite the new bossfights. 4

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Wolfenstein's roster just was not designed to last for eighty whole levels. Patterns quickly emerge among the levels, so that while they aren't just the exact same thing over and over again, in practice, they're more or less generated along the same theme. It becomes quite tedious if everything feels the same. 3

Player Agency:
Same as Wolfenstein. 6

Interactivity:
Same as Wolfenstein. 1

Atmosphere:
So much of this comes off as running out of ideas and just trying to put in as much as possible to extend the playtime of a game that didn't need it that much. I shudder to think how much you'd have to play this in order to be able to handle most levels without dying once. 2

Graphics:
The contrast between the old pixel art and the newer scanned image based stuff is annoying, but after a while it tended to fade into just another set of wall graphics. 3

Story:
I feel like the better end animation should get some more credit, but there's basically nothing outside of it. 1

Sound/Music:
Oddly, I felt like the music here was a lot better. Most of it wasn't exactly memorable, but nothing got on my nerves outside of the bossfight music. Some of it was even quite pleasant. 5

That's 27, two lower than what I gave it the first time, and two lower than the improved rating of Wolfenstein. Oddly, I seem to have given it a 2 on story last time, which feels quite inflated for what it is.

It's pretty clear that halfway through the game, ID just ran out of ideas and just threw whatever they could to get this one over the finish line. While I don't think the general design of this style of FPS is bad, it's clear that these guys were just doing it because they didn't have much other choice.

With that, I've finally finished 1992. I'm thinking before I finish the year entirely I should look over the expansions to games I've covered. That leaves expansions to this, Wolfenstein and one for Terminator 2029. I'm not really sure I'm going to do the ones for this and Wolfenstein, simply because most of them are either compilations of user levels, and the ones that are not are infamously terrible. I've heard real bad things about the Spear expansions, and I feel like we'll all probably be better served if I just play some fan games instead. Next time, more Terminator 2029.

*For those that care, I'm not counting it as a win again, this is what it was during the first time around.

Sky Ranger (1984)

Name:Sky Ranger
Number:259
Year:1984
Publisher:Microsphere Computer Services
Developer:Microsphere Computer Services
Genre:Flight Simulation
Difficulty:4/5
Time:1 hour 50 minutes
Won:No (115W/87L)

I occasionally pop in some of these titles I've never played before but don't actually cover it the week I first play it. The reasons are numerous, sometimes they're for games I don't feel like playing that week, sometimes I'm in a cutting mood, others I'm just looking for inspiration to strike. Sky Ranger has been the unfortunate victim of this for a good chunk of the game year, and as there are five other games in 1984 besides this one, it's time to remedy this.

The backstory is that The Watchers, robots created to enforce the law, have gone mad and it's your objective, as a Sky Ranger, to take them out. Travel along the city and use your radar to track down and shoot them as you. Remember, it's an action strategy game, because your skill as a pilot and split second decisions are important.

The controls aren't the strangest I've ever seen, but they are weird. There are a lot of buttons which do a lot of things in ways that don't make any logical sense. For instance, the arrow keys move you to the left. I'm not saying that just the left arrow key moves you to the left, the entire stack does. For simplicity's sake, I settled on speed controls, Q & A, increase and decrease respectively. V & B turn, left and right. O and L go up and down. 0 shoots. It's not that unusual for a Speccy title, but good god, having so many duplicate buttons annoys the hell of out me. If you press buttons you see on your HUD you're very likely to just crash and die.

I struggled for a while with these controls before I realized something I've been mentally skipping over at the start. Rebind controls. It's a bit janky to change, but once it's changed, it works flawlessly and so does the helicopter. Perhaps too flawlessly, making it less like a copter and more like a hovercraft with a five minute fuel supply. You can painlessly cruise over a building at the height of your ability to go higher as opposed to scraping it with your landing gear.

The HUD is mostly straight-forward. Fuel is fuel and rapidly depletes as you move forward. If you hover in place, it stays where it is. The ceiling refers to the ceiling of the fog, which throughout the day goes up and down. Altitude is how high you're up. The heading is your typical compass, and the radar shows the Watchers in your area. Speed is depicted in knots, which I actually didn't know was used for airplanes, shows how many games have used something else instead. Low ammo flashes if somehow, you start running out of ammo. The little copters are lives and the letters below your score refer to refueling stations. If one is blacked out, that means you can't use it.
 

These refueling stations are not just the only way you can continue a level, they're also the only actual features in what is otherwise an endless series of cross streets and skyscrapers. There's a wall at certain points, but otherwise, there's little but your own sense of space to know where you are. Much like TerraHawks, it runs smoothly and at a reasonable pace.

Watchers are your enemy, and they take the form of floating orbs. They wander the streets, sometimes going up or down, and patiently wait to be shot. They don't do anything to you, not unless you crash into them. Shooting them is easy, wait until your GUI starts flashing, and shoot. So, where's the problem?

As I alluded to, fuel runs out quite quickly. To the point it comes off less as a measure of anything approaching realism and more artificially extending the game. It works oddly too. Float in place and you can do so indefinitely, something you can exploit against Watchers near you. Going up and down seems to do nothing, it's moving forward which costs you. I'm not sure if going faster drains it faster or if it's just a distance thing, but this thing runs down incredibly quickly. Five minutes is not an exaggeration, that's what you can expect.
 

Time means nothing, since night falls and dawn breaks independently of your fuel. That's right, there's a day and night cycle. It doesn't mean anything, it just turns into night after a set period of time, then day after another period. What actually does affect the game is that there's fog. Throughout the day, it goes down to the ground, then back up to the sky and repeats. If you're above the fog, you can't see anything. This is more a time waster than a serious bottleneck, since it's a sign you need to slow down and wait for things to fix itself.

The second interesting thing the game does is include damage to your windshield. Crash, and a massive crack appears along the screen. Land too quickly, and so does another. Hitting a Watcher causes a nice little crack. It certainly is a cool effect, but as you might be able to gather, it quickly turns into something annoying. As long as you aren't running out of fuel, this isn't a problem, just fly carefully.

Winning a level is more difficult than you'd think considering how simple this plays. Since enemies are randomly placed, it seems logical that you only go as long as you can stomach. But, the game has level codes, so what gives? The answer is that you have to take out a set number of enemies before you advance to the next level, sixteen to be precise. Losing a chopper results in that counter resetting.

What changes? That's a good question. Because the only thing I can detect that's changed is now the Watchers give me 200 points. They don't start attacking me, the layout hasn't changed, and things don't feel anymore difficult. The total number of Watchers I need to take out is still sixteen. Once I'm on level 3 the score increases to 300 a kill. Out of curiosity, I decide to check level 8, since there are thankfully codes for the game online. They just start whizzing around, which to a certain degree does make the game harder, but also makes camping a much more valid strategy.

I don't really see a point, since we're retreading ground that didn't need to be gone over again. It's a shame, because this is a well-constructed game, it just needed something more than being a target hunting game.

Weapons:
This is the most pathetic laser I've seen. Fire, the screen lights up and your target disappears. It is a gun in the most abstract sense. 0

Enemies:
Basically, moving targets. 0

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
It'd be wrong to say I'm in love with the city, but something about it feels oddly compelling. Not on the gameplay level, but in just flying around it. Most games with cities aren't just endless skyscrapers and that's a bit novel to fly around in. 2

Player Agency:
Once you rebind it, it works almost flawlessly in an arcade sense. Almost, there's no pressing two buttons at once, which is just something I had to work around. On the other hand, no pause button that I could tell. 5

Interactivity:
The cracks on the windshield add a little to the experience, as annoying as they are. 1

Atmosphere:
Despite not being much of a game, there was an incredible amount of effort into creating this strange little world...shame that the only way you could properly immerse yourself in it is if you turned the sound off. 2

Graphics:
Simple wireframes and a few neat drawings. 2

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
Very annoying, like the PC Speaker of my youth. There are various mutilated versions of classical songs, a gunshot that only happens when you shoot an enemy, and the constant sound of propellers. 1

That's 13, somehow.

Reviews are mixed, but nobody is really bringing up anything I didn't. The harsher ones have trouble playing this, which is absolutely fair if you don't rebind the controls. Another says that there's not much content, which...yeah.

I skipped over a game called Gumshoe, it was a strange little private detective side-scrolling shooter which felt like it might have something interesting worth talking about, but didn't come across in gameplay. Otherwise, 1984 has six games, which was going to be five except I finally got around to checking Quest of the Space Beagle's predecessor. Next time will be Spear of Destiny, finally.