Elite (1991, Acorn Archimedes)

Name:Elite
Number:267
Year:1991
Publisher:Hybrid Technology
Developer:Hybrid Technology
Genre:Space Simulation
Systems:Acorn Archimedes
Country of Origin:UK
Difficulty:5/5
Time:8 hours 10 minutes
Won:No (118W/92L)

The original space trading simulation, at least as far as British audiences are concerned, on the best possible system for it. A large, technical marvel which has eight galaxies to explore each with a couple hundred planets. A whole universe for one to play around in, just as soon as you can figure out how to dock with a space station.

Elite is one of the legendary '80s games, so popular within a certain section of the industry that its influence can be felt outside any genre it touches. A game so popular at the time, that one copy of it was sold for every BBC Micro, an impression task considering that the system was intended to be a classroom computer, and it really isn't that educational. And I still don't like it after trying to actually make it work.

Take away every important factor about the game and what are you left with? A space simulation that doesn't work like any other space simulation in a significant number of respects, and with gameplay depth that really doesn't warrant going past those. There are what, two, maybe three other games that use the same control systems this does? The freeware remake of this, and two of the sequels. I'm assuming that Elite: Dangerous is using a different control system.

In contrast to just about every space sim I've played, left and right don't turn left or right, they rotate left or right. This makes it so that you really only move when you go up or down, with your rotation determining which direction is up or down. There are a lot of games which also have rotation, but the difference is that these usually also have turning or they're halfway between rotation and turning. That this is the only thing I can do is where the objection lies.

The thing about space flight in comparison to ground flight is that there really isn't anything like aerodynamics to worry about. Space ships will keep moving until something stops their speed, barring sci-fi technologies like FTL drives. It makes sense that ships would have small engines to adjust their rotation, because otherwise they could come into a space station upside down. But it also makes sense that they would have the ability to go left or right, since that makes space flight easier.

Elite doesn't do rotation for any realistic reason. It's still as arcade-styled as any other space sim of the era. Your speed is not tied to anything real, it's tied to how fast your engine is going. Turn your engine down and you go slower. It's doing it so that it can add in a tricky situation where you dock with a rotating space station.

Docking with the space station is arguably the game's greatest challenge. You have to match your ship's rotation to the hanger just as you enter it. For many, this is where they quit. After several hours of sometimes making it in, I have to say that the quality of this is overhyped. Yes, it's challenging, but that's because you can only rotate and go up or down. It doesn't really work with the player's view, instead the player's view seems to be slightly above the point he needs to enter the hanger.

And honestly? This hides that the rest of the game really doesn't have that much going for it. Yes, there might have been something to the combat in 1984, but, as much as I hate to say it, it isn't really doing anything over any popular later space sim. At no point was I really able to use much strategy. If I could run away it was because someone wasn't chasing me. Otherwise, I would just do my trip from the jump point to the space station, chasing after any hostiles that shot first. Yes, I could shoot someone chasing me...but do you want to try that with reversed controls for this game?

Of course, there might be weapons I'm missing since I didn't cheat to get any of that. I got fuel scoops, a docking computer and more powerful lasers. Of these, I noticed that the fuel scoops were most useful, since they could pick up discarded cargo. Could, since more often than not I crashed into what I was trying to grab. Yeah, turns out even when you're chasing after an object heading in one direction at a set speed that trying to catch it can be tricky. It also catches fuel when you go near the sun. If you don't want to pay 2 credits and want to go through like ten minutes and five groups of enemies.

I should also point out that there's illegal cargo in this game, which if you buy or sell, causes you to become a criminal. I also never found the cargo jettison function, if there is one, which means that if you pick up narcotics with your fuel scoops, I hope you enjoy becoming the space police's most wanted or keeping it in your cargo hold forever.

This sort of leads into the problem with Elite, it's impressive what it can do, but it often feels like it's missing something important. Yes, it's very cool that there are eight galaxies with 256 planets each, but every planet of the same type is much the same as every other planet of the same type. There is nothing special about any random planet in the universe. There is at most, a handful of missions that involve a particular planet, which you need to destroy a lot of ships to reach.

And this is the expanded version, which is supposed to be the best of all possible Elite versions. I'm not sure the exact list of improvements, but better graphics, missions and are the noticeable aspects. The AI most noticeable of all. I'm not actually sure how smart it is, but the game, in comparison to how it was before and likely a number of its 1991 contemporaries, has a lot of ships at one time.

The breadth of the types of ships you can encounter is something that seems wasted here. Sometimes there are singular ships flying by as you make your trip to the space station. They fly by and nothing happens. Sometimes there's a ship destroying asteroids. Other times, there are large groups of ships. Usually pirates, but shooting first might result in you accidentally killing a group of unaligned traders. Hope you enjoy getting shot by the space police.

But none of these ships really matter that much in the here and now. Sure, there are probably a thousand different configurations going on, but if the two of you pass by, does it really matter? Does it matter what configuration a pirate ship has? If it's one or a half a dozen, it's not like they're going to have a radically different setup. I never had an enemy use ECM measures against my missiles. Of course, I rarely got them off, but someone should have had it.

The real problem with combat is that halfway through a battle, it's entirely possible for a second group of pirates to come in, decide that you and you alone should be killed. In theory, you can also come across a group of space police coming in at the last minute or a battle between pirates and the space police. It's a nice touch, even if it always results in me dying. It was the one time the game actually felt alive rather than me doing a bunch of stuff I was allowed to. 

I have really been overselling how much this game has going on, because most of the time, nothing is. You leave one space station, select a destination star, usually which has favorable prices on a trade good you just picked up, travel to the jump point, and then take a five minute trip to that space station, where you'll dock. If you can that is. There are maybe three encounters on this trip, and while frequently there will be one pirate encounter, it isn't a guarantee.

Instead, this is basically an excuse to sit back, and listen to music. The sound mixing is going to be crap unless you listen to classical. I mean, you could listen to Creeper or something, but "pop" music, in the non-classical sense, is mixed so that you'll never hear the sounds of the game over it. (Anything that involves spoken word is going to be tricky, the second something interesting happens, you'll be ignoring it) Classical just works better with it, and I'm not just saying that because I needed an excuse to listen to some.

While I never realized it at the time, most of what I was actually doing was...space trucking. I was a space trucker. You know, like a less glamorous version of the people from Alien...and without the interesting things happening to them. I'm just a dude transporting furs to one planet and computers to the other for a small bit of profit, listening to the radio so I don't nod off.

In that sense, I could recommend it...Except that this week, I didn't have power for a while. This would normally not be relevant, except that the part that was the most interesting, flying between stars while listening to classical, can be done a number of other ways. Like sitting in the dark, listening to a classical station because you don't have any other option. Actually, I'd recommend it, because something about it feels more powerful in that situation.

Which means that the most interesting part of this game...kind of is completely outclassed by just turning off all your lights and then listening to music without any distractions. Pirates probably aren't going to break into your house halfway through a piano concerto. The space police aren't going to be upset with you for listening to a small piece of a Wagner opera.

There are a lot of systems in this game which I feel like I've only scratched the surface of, but they weren't that important in the eight hours I played of the game. That leaves space trucking and pirate hunting, which you do just to do because there's barely anything else to do in the game. So many things about the game are clever...and yet none of it truly matters when there's a whole lot of nothing out there to do beyond it.

Weapons:
Lasers you can install forward, backward and sideways, along with missiles and possibly other things which are too expensive and clunky to use in the heat of most battles. 2

Enemies:
A decent variety, albeit because of the mechanics of the way the game works, are hard to distinguish between one and another, outside of obvious outliers like aliens. 3

Non-Enemies:
An impressive array, even if it seemed like the only ones I ever encountered were either people I passed by or those who soon became enemies. 3

Levels:
Eight galaxies of a lot of stars of some limited number of types. They're not very interesting. 1

Player Agency:
The controls were a bit too loose for me. It felt like a struggle to just right my ship, let alone chase after someone. Of course, being an Archimedes title, the mouse and its three buttons are used to the fullest, but I did get used to adjusting speed with the mouse buttons. Launching a missile feels too involved. 3

Interactivity:
If you have the right attachment and ram the right things, you get stuff. If you don't, you crash. 0

Atmosphere:
Nothing quite like being a space trucker in the absolute emptiness that is space. This must be the Total Perspective Vortex I've heard so much about. 3

Graphics:
Filled polygon 3D. Crude, but often there are clever effects going on, like suns doing that line thing, and planets having dots move across them. You can actually feel the 3D space with it. 3

Story:
There was a novella distributed with the game, but this is just flavor. Arguably, this did a lot to enhance the game's mystique and by not reading it, I've ruined the game. 0

Sound/Music:
Useful, but not particularly memorable. No music, but considering this has a reasonable playtime of a hundred hours, this is appreciated. 3

That's 21. Not particularly special for 1991, but pretty high up for 1984.

Yes, there was something to this and what it did was incredible, especially on a system which wasn't that powerful, but there's not really that much to it beyond the surface level. Yes, there are missions and eventually you can get to some huge ranking by killing a ton of pirates, but man, there's not a lot to fill that massive amount of time you'll spend getting to those points. It doesn't matter how clever you make a game if there isn't that much going on in the short term.many clever little touches you add if there's not that much to actually do.

I'm slightly altering up my plans going forward. A lot of vehicle simulations, basically all from this time, are nearly indistinguishable from a FPS game, so I've decided to add a focus on those. Which means we're about...60 games away from finishing the early '90s FPS part of the program. Depending on how these feel, I may just take these as an alternative to playing whatever I have left from 1984. Next time though, Star Cruiser on Sharp X68000, or whichever release has the English translation.

'Allo 'Allo - Cartoon Fun (1993)

Name:'Allo 'Allo! Cartoon Fun
Number:268
Year:1993
Publisher:Alternative Software
Developer:Alternative Software
Genre:Side-Scrolling Shooter
Systems:Amiga
Country of Origin:UK
Difficulty:4/5
Time:4 hours 10 minutes
Won:Yes (118W/91L)

It finally happened. After a day's search of over half a dozen games, I broke down and decided to play a game I previously decided, with absolute finality, I would never ever touch. This is not the only one of course, but this one is different. I thought I knew that it wasn't something that qualified here, but it kept showing up, taunting me whenever I looked up Amiga games...because it was the first game on the system by going A to Z.

Some of you are wondering what's so strange about this title. Others are already asking why someone would make a shooter about this, a few years after it ended. For the second group of you, I have no answers. I could understand a graphic adventure. That would fit the style of the show, be a bit like a British Leisure Suit Larry. Good ideas are hard to come by in the licensed game industry sometimes, as is it wont to be when you're staffed by people who were recently released from a lunatic asylum. 

The cast from about the final series. Note that Herr Flick, the guy sandwiched between the girl with the beret and the guy in the suit, is played by a different actor in this series than the one depicted in this game.

For those of you who don't know, this is 'Allo 'Allo, a British sitcom parodying a show about helping shot down British pilots escape back to Britain. Everyone speaks in a deliberately over the top accent, because that was easier than having a bunch of people speak French and German on a weekly basis. The protagonist, Rene Artois, is a cowardly cafe owner who is trying to profit as much as he can from the war by whoring out his two waitresses/mistresses to the local German officers. He is then forced into helping two British airmen escape by the French Resistance (who are all women) and to hide a painting the local German officers want to sell after the war. Complicating things are the local Gestapo, and his wife, who cannot sing. Much hilarity ensues. I suggest looking up something on Youtube just to have some idea of what I'm talking about.

By now, those of you who have not seen the show before probably got it into your head to question why this game exists. If not, I look forward to your first-person shooter adaptation of One Foot in the Grave. I know why the show's producers did it. Money. After all, this is the only Britcom to have a full season of 26 episodes in an attempt to get on regular America TV. I don't know why a software publisher would think that a show in which the lead character is a coward who is trying his darnedest to get out of violent situations is the perfect protagonist for an action game, but I'm guessing alcohol was involved at one point. (Alternative Software has released a whole bunch of strange licensed titles) Was anybody really clamoring for an 'Allo 'Allo game? Hey, at least player two is playing as Michelle...of the Résistance.

In case it isn't clear, I am approaching this from the position of someone who likes the show, I've seen it twice. There are many things you could actually do with an adaptation. That adventure game idea, a management game where you manage your finances as well as the opinions of the local Nazi and resistance, or a game where you play as Michelle, doing French Resistance things. Of course, the thing about that last one is that unless you're dedicating your game to exclusively having female resistance members, you might as well just make it an original game. God knows that new wave of boomer shooters has a rather large slice of female protagonists. Just hire a woman to fake a bad French accent and have her scream and laugh about how much she loves burnt sauerkraut while napalming a Nazi barracks.

The game opens up with strange techno music with an accordion at the forefront. I feel like if you bought this back in the day, you're probably not feeling positive about it at this moment. There's a simple menu, where you select if you have mono or stereo sound, along with one or two players. After that the game loads, and there's a very bad sign. The game does not care that I have two disk drives and demands that the second disk be put in the first drive. In 1993.

There's a little note giving me my objective. Find the fake paintings of the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies. This is the thing in the show that everyone wants and wants to sell to make money. The Germans to make money after the war, the Resistance to be able to make money during the war, Rene to make enough money to leave his wife. During the course of the show, a lot of fakes are made, but I don't think there were that many at once. Ah, darn, I was hoping this game would be so accurate to the show.

I'm actually playing in two player mode, by myself. I wanted to see how it would work, and it turns out it's very strange. I assumed it was going to be like an arcade game. Swap out the characters after a death. No, both on-screen at the same time, except the camera only follows Rene. Michelle can get stuffed. The only other time I remember a camera like this was in Sonic 3...in which player 2 was literally just a side character and oh, unkillable. Technically, I'm not going to be playing as both, unless Rene dying causes the camera to go to her. I was messing around a bit, and this camera following tracks across rooms. Hope you don't get lost in a different room, or you'll never meet back up.

The game starts at the front of Cafe Rene, where there's only a bird off in the distance to threaten you. Although I think the peeing dog hurts you if you touch it. The bird is one of those which weaponizes its off-spring, which is very difficult to dodge in this game. There are weapons you can pick up above and to the right.

This game controls weirdly. By default, it's the usual up to jump, down to crouch and the button fires type of joystick game which you would have thought would be out of style by '93, but as per usual, the game has to do something to counteract being an action game which needs a joystick. Down is your use key, enter rooms, pick up items or activate secret switches/objects. Nothing obvious, everything is seemingly a secret. It's not bad for what it is, it's just that what it is is too busy.

Inside we get Monsieur Leclerc, or at least we would if we could see him, next to Edith, who is starting at a Nazi jumping up and down like he's on a trampoline. I do believe she would be similarly inclined if that happened on the show. Actually, he's only jumping because he's matching my jump. First real enemy of the game and he's deliberately copying my actions? Hey, at least he walks back and forth instead of towards me. Since he's in front of a staircase, if I time it right, I can jump over him, but I'd have to throw him to get back. Note, throwing anything at anyone is just temporarily stunning them, unless they're birds or bats. You can't kill anyone human. You take damage, represented by beer bottles, healed by beer bottles.

The house is a rather strange representation of the main building of the show. The British Airmen aren't there and neither is Edith's mother, Fanny, but everyone else is somewhere in the building or the nearby sewers. Lieutenant Gruber is in the basement, ready to chase ceaselessly after Rene. Otto Flick is at the counter, ready to throw bombs at Rene for existing in the same space. The rest of the named Germans just act like the usual Nazis.

Yvette and Mimi are more interesting than the others. They act as a sort of distraction. I say sort of, because you need to shoot them to activate them, at which point they just bring whoever is wandering around to them. Useful if a Nazi can't be hit with a block, otherwise entirely useless. Interestingly, some of the otherwise unhurtable Nazis, who jump when you jump, can be tricked by having the other player jump. Even if they aren't in the room at the time. I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but I like it. 

There are actually only two or so paintings inside the building, most of it is just for flavor. Instead, most of the paintings are in the sewers. Yeah, there are sewers here, it's only natural in a show which had everyone going through the most embarrassing situations possible had a few episodes in the sewers. Why the game stacks most of the level's paintings here is beyond me. Sometimes they're rationally placed, other times they're hidden in strange ways. One of the unusual is that Officer Crabtree is hiding in the sewers, and to get one, you need to shoot him. (The manual does explain that this is a good thing, but still)

The way out of the level is to enter one particular sewer room containing a dummy which looks like Hitler dressed in drag. I do not remember this, but I'm pretty sure there was a blow-up doll at one point. At first, I thought I did this wrong when I just brought Rene here. Ah, of course, I need to bring Michelle here too. At this point, I checked the manual, since the GUI seemed to indicate that I could change character view points. You can. After a few lucky dodges, I brought her here, at which point the two heroes stare at me like this is a creepypasta. When you get down to it, this is a similarly deranged idea... 

Now, Rene and Michelle need to collect all the money on a train in order to get the conductor to stop the train. I've just realized that a train level in a platformer can be worse than a sewer level anywhere else. You're going left or right, with two floors broken up by occasional bottomless pits. This level is not really adding anything else in. I feel like you really need 3D to make this sort of level actually work, since otherwise it's just nothing.

That said, this level is actually three floors...because the ground is a floor. Rather than killing the player right off, it instead hurts the player and it's like Rene or Michelle is trying to catch up to the train. Every so often, they get hurt again, and when they finally get back on solid ground, they stop to catch their breath. Annoying at first? Yes, absolutely. Funny, and more importantly, less annoying than constant death? Also yes. You get knocked back when you get hit, and if this was instant death, I would be padding this review out as a full description of the first level.

Level three is a forest filled with Nazis. Both characters are in quite bad shape at this point, possibly because I keep getting hit by sucker shots, also possibly because I'm trying to get two different characters across the level. Here, the objective is to find Crabtree, shoot him, then grab his black orb, then find eight explosive squirrels. Remember, get the explosives squirrels after getting Crabtree's black orb. Why? I don't know, ours is not to reason why.

The forest is fairly nice and non-linear. The annoying bit is that some of this is done via doors, which need an arrow to find, some of which lead not to new sections but different sections of the same level. Since most seem to be one-way doors back to earlier sections, this means there's a lot of going back to the same area you went to before. At least it's fairly easy to find the squirrels on this level.
 

That said, there is a bit of obnoxiousness here. There's a secret containing one of the squirrels. The problem is it seems less like a secret and more like the game accidentally broke the game's collision. I also only discovered this by sheer accident, so great job. All the other ones are in simple to find locations, so I guess this is the one they go crazy on. 

Level 4, enter the dungeons and free the prisoners. Well, shoot Crabtree in the first door, get the keys, then free the prisoners. This level is almost entirely mundane. The birds here are extremely annoying, but you know, that's the cost of having birds, I guess. You can't have flying enemies without them being annoying. At least you can kill most of them.

Surprise! Ghosts stalk the halls! The local Nazi garrison is so evil that the spirits of the dead remain behind to hurt those who walk the halls indiscriminately! They've all been driven mad by the horrific torture Colonel von Strohm has been a party to. Also, one of the prisoners is in the starting area, but if you're just on your own, you'll have an annoying trip back.

The final level is just about replacing the real painting of the Fallen Madonna with one of the fakes. But first I need to find nine...parts of the code? Nine numbers in a code? I suppose that's one way to stop people from breaking the code manually. This level is a lot less straight-forward, and requires several "well, I'll try anything" to proceed. Like more than one situation you have to find a floor that breaks and then go down it.

This level also asks you to do a lot of "jump over the enemy or eat a point of damage", which has been around quite a bit, but before this wasn't that egregious. Here it's to the point that several parts of the code and the safe itself requires you to deal with this. Or rather, you need to jump on a disappearing crate to get over a guard who can't be shot. Well, I guess we have to do something for this final level.

At the end, the duo escape from the castle in a giant wooden duck. Rene then elopes with Yvette on the escape plane, a move made possible by him holding onto the Fallen Madonna. The end, just like the series regular ending.

Weapons:
A bomb, Helga's bra and a cupcake are the exact same. 1

Enemies:
A basic variety. Shooters, flyers and pacers. I appreciate that none of them actually go after you, though the whole "jumping as you jump" and only shooting when they can see the player is somewhat annoying. 3

Non-Enemies:
I suppose they're more like various pieces of equipment in practice, not in the spirit of things, but there were three other characters, Yvette, Mimi and Alfonso, who distract enemies when hit with a bomb, Helga's bra or a cupcake. 0

Levels:
Nothing special, but it is nice to see locations from the show represented in a video game. 4

Player Agency:
Nice for what it is, but the use key should really be different than crouch. I also don't care for how there's a delay between entering and changing screens, which can result in Rene/Michelle getting hit. 5

Interactivity:
Of the typical "basic" platformer design this game has going on, it sure expects you to explore the entire floor of some places. So many disappearing floors, things you can hit to get something out of it, or just plain things you can mildly interact with. 3

Atmosphere:
I can't believe I'm playing an 'Allo 'Allo game. That's the entire mood. 3

Graphics:
Simple, effective, not terribly interesting. Everything is as it should be, but nothing stands out to me after playing. 4

Story:
Take an episode of the show, make it so there are eight of whatever item was important there, and turn it into a level. Practically doesn't exist in the game itself though. 0

Sound/Music:
Some nice sound effects and then various techno-French songs. Techno-French as in electronic music imitating French accordion music, rather than anything else. 3

That's 23.

I got a better experience than what I expected from this, but there's really nothing special about it. In the realm of Amiga platformers that I've only played because I blog about them, it's better than Linus Spacehead. In the realm of games you should actually play, well, there are worse, far worse, but I wouldn't suggest this unless you really liked the show.

Next time, the review part of Elite...probably.

Elite (Archimedes) - Going Around in Circles

I've made progress. Both in the legitimate, I've actually done something sense and in the sense that I broke down and modified my money so I had enough for fuel scoops. This means I'll have slightly less trouble than before, since I can now pick up debris, which will likely be some ever so lovely stuff. Probably not, but depending on what that is, I could be making 10 credits of pure profit on each random encounter.

The problem now is that I've gotten a slightly better combat rating last time. Which means that now every pirate in the universe knows that I'm not incompetent in combat, and has given me a wide berth unless they're in a big pack. Which is unfortunate, because I've found a docking computer for 1500. Considering that I just cheated to give myself 525 credits to shave literal hours off my playtime, I'm going to be doing a lot of trading jumps.

Still, there's something I can do to speed things along. I can buy slaves at Lave and then sell them at Disco for a large profit. Call me pretentious, but I don't like doing such things even in video games, but we have to get this done within the century, so, we'll do it. Assuming buying them doesn't count as a crime and...oh, I'm an offender now. Reload...wait, I'm still an offender. But I didn't buy them yet? Did I actually make it that time I picked up some narcotics from a destroyed pirate? Huh. Guess the space police are finally getting around to stopping the opioid epidemic. Took them long enough. If I'm a criminal, I might as well actually earn that criminal record.

It takes about three tries. One try I actually clear out a whole group of pirates. I assumed they were pirates, since it would be strange for me to get credits for taking out police. Unfortunately, during that attempt I had a full cargo of slaves, and on the attempt I succeeded, I had no such luck and actually lost money on the trade. Man, I can't even be a bad guy without losing money. I'm getting the trick down to getting into a space station, but there are still a lot of deaths where I seemingly do everything right, only to die anyway.

The fuel scoops are weird for cargo. Because of the way that ships explode, this means that every time you get a chance to use it on cargo, it's going to be flying away at great speed. And if you thought that you could just ram into cargo to pick it up, you haven't been paying attention to this game. You have to ram it in a certain way. Because if you don't, you crash. Add in how you'll rarely get one enemy ship alone and when you are fighting enemy ships, more seem to keep joining in, this makes it somewhat useless for this purpose.

Of course, in order to use the fuel scoops for their stated purpose, one must head to the star to scoop up the hydrogen needed for the fuel. In order to do this, one must first get past the planet and its rapidly spinning moon. It does a complete revolution of the local planet in about ten seconds. Basically just go along the side of the moon's orbit. Now, it's time to dodge the ten thousand pirates between the planet and the sun. Apparently this strategy is popular with people who can't enter a space station, who knew?

And you want to know why there are so many pirates? Because you're going between a planet within habitable planetary range and a star. This isn't like five minutes between stations, this is a haul. Considering that the amount of credits I need to spend after a jump has never gone above 5 credits and the fuel scoops cost 500, this is not a good investment. I can't make it to a star without dying and I can't get any cargo without smashing it against my ship, I cheated myself the most useless equipment possible.

I find a better trading route between Lave and Reorte. Computers to Reorte, furs back to Lave. This makes it so that I can afford to buy that autodocking system sometime within the century. As I made a successful trip into Lave, I noticed that I have offender status again despite doing nothing that would warrant it. What, are furs illegal in the far future? Is the government run by militant vegetarians? I guess what actually caused it was shooting someone in a group of pirates, but that seems unlikely. In practice, I think this ups the amount of times I die between successful journeys, but otherwise nothing has changed.

At the four hour mark for this session, I break down again and cheat myself the docking computer. Which results in a lot less relief and a lot more emptiness. Now what? This doesn't make it so that I have the easiest time of things, but basically 90% of each trip is just waiting now. Leave, hyperspace, travel for five minutes, possibly using the J key, an encounter is something now, then press C to activate the docking computer, then go see if something else in the house needs done. This is just so boring now.

At this point, I've found myself with nothing new to say and do, so I decide I'm already in a situation where either I quit now or actually get something done when I get the money, so I just give myself a boatload of credits and upgrade my ships weapons. With a few thousand credits to spare, I now have a front facing beam laser and a rear facing pulse laser. I'll still be trading, but now it's time to hunt the pirates.

The beam laser is just an increase in damage. That said, it isn't going to help me against a group of more than four, since I'm not going to be able to take down more than four enemies in time before I take enough damage that I'm dead. There's also an increase in laser temperature, but that's not a problem with short, controlled bursts.

A rear weapon is interesting, but not as effective as you'd think. Because you're still dealing with someone shooting at your butt. The view is reversed, and since it's already tricky to aim in this game, this makes it tricky to aim with. It'll probably help at some point. I could have, but didn't get guns on the sides, simply because it's unlikely that there'll be a situation I can use that. I should be able to handle most situations now.

At which point, every encounter becomes the rare other situation. I try to take a full cargo of furs to Leesti, and I encounter a half a dozen pirates and die. I try to take a full load of furs to Zaonce, I encounter the same. After a few tries, it occurs to me that maybe this isn't because of the destinations, but because my cargo is full. No, it's because I have six grand in the bank now, and that makes me a target. I can't win, apparently.

While being able to buy as many missiles as I want and having better guns is a boon, none of this actually helps me against these odds. Missiles take time to lock-on, meaning you need to be right on the money when it comes to these guys approaching. Better guns reduces the amount of shots you need to kill something, but you still need to successfully hit them with your lasers. Perhaps this is because of my default attack pattern, don't attack if you aren't being shot at. Which makes the fact that I have a bounty all the more frustrating. I'm getting slaughtered out here.

Unfortunately, this is the situation as I leave this week. Stuck in an awkward place where I have the illusion of progress and the actuality of being stuck in a rut. I'll try to make more progress, but I'm probably going to be keeping another game on the side so I have something to talk about next Sunday when I inevitably don't make much progress here. There's only one thing I can do at this point, and that's somehow manage to deal with a horde of pirates.

This Session: 5 hours

Total Time: 8 hours 20 minutes

Elite (Archimedes) - Reintroduction

Welcome to the return of the first great open world game, Elite. Return, as in, this isn't the first time I've tried to tackle it. Before, I tried the BBC Micro original, because sometimes I don't quite go for what's the smartest option and I often regret it. What happened is what usually happens when one is presented with a wire-frame 3D game with no real guidance to the player, nothing.

This was a bit trickier to get running than I'd have liked. Normally, I'd use RPC, an emulator for later, post-Archimedes Acorn computers. It comes with an installation of it, even. Except...it wouldn't start. Okay, we'll find a floppy and use Arculator. That's easier, except that the major Archimedes website went down when I wasn't looking, which is honestly horrifying to me. I eventually find it...and it has manual copy protection.

There isn't a manual for the Archimedes version online anymore. At least not one I could find on the Internet Archive or with a few searches. Of course, internet searches have somehow gone more downhill than usual thanks to AI, but if I started complaining about that this playthrough of a game would never get there. Suffice to say I eventually figured out that I could just copy the Elite files from RPC to Arculator because both filesystems are just folders in my real world OS.

For those of whom this is the first time hearing about Elite, well, Elite is the game that put the open world space simulation and trading genre on the map and the genre has been trying to get around that ever since. You have a nice ship, now go across the universe, do whatever you want. Trade goods, trade people, fight criminals, blast other traders. Find your own fun.

As a result, I've kept bouncing off this in the past. Every time I've played Elite, I'll mess around with it a bit, then go do something else. Every time I've played something in the genre, if there's no real objective to go for, I'll eventually bounce off. Archimedes Elite changes that, because we have an objective, the evil alien empire Thargoids need to be stopped. For some reason. Come to think of it, that is a fitting story for a game originally from 1984.

At least, that's what I was going to say. Because as I was looking up the game's missions I found out that isn't quite true. Those are for the Amiga version and Elite Plus on DOS/PC-98. Probably in the case of the PC-98 version, since there's not the usual "floppy and hard drive" rip for easy playing for most PC-98 games, there's just a loose floppy. I messed around with the DOS version a bit, but decided that the Archimedes was the only way I was going to get any semblance of anything done. Hopefully those four missions are just exclusives and we actually get to stop an invasion here too.

The way this works is unusual. Open up the game executeable and you get the default state, but when you save your commander, you get the option to save it as a different name, at which point you open that file. Both saving and loading is done through the OS, which is a quirk of the Acorn 32-bit line, but one that feels charming when you get used to it.
 

You start with a Cobra Mark 3 and 100 credits. By default, the Cobra comes with a set of front-facing pulse cannons, three missiles and a radar which tells you where other ships and objects are. But it isn't a true IFF system. Ships are green and objects are blue. You go through the menus with the function keys, F12 minimizes the screen and returns to desktop. The rest are context sensitive.

 

Controls are strange. This version uses the mouse, mostly for good effect. Up and down turn in that direction, but left and right turn counter-clockwise and clockwise, respectively. I believe this was done to be realistic, yet the game still uses a traditional thrust mode of transit. Which is hardly realistic in space. I appreciate the idea in theory, but between that and the looseness of the controls, I've never gotten that far. This version uses the first mouse button to fire, second to decrease speed, and third to increase speed. This...eh, it kind of works.

In order to travel between stars, you need to first open the local or galaxy map, then click on the star you want to go to. Then, when you find it appropriate, press the H key to initiate a jump. After ten seconds, you'll travel to where you selected. Now you have to travel to the space station by getting the dot on that small screen on the lower right to be both yellow and at the center. It's several minutes, real-time. No, you can't just pull out a book, if you don't fancy looking at a screen doing nothing while nothing happens for that time, you'll need music or something. For now, I've chosen an opera by Johann Georg Conradi...because I'm not going to listen to a three hour opera in one sitting otherwise.

Every so often, or when you press J to go forward, another ship appears. These range from other traders/random ships, which just fly across you. Hopefully not THROUGH you. Sometimes you'll see a mixed group, hostiles, randoms or space police. Sometimes space police. Once I saw what I can only describe as a triangle of things in space. Then there are hostiles.  

Sometimes they come alone. Sometimes in small groups. Other times in massive groups and at that point, you might as well just reload, because you aren't getting away. You can tell when someone is hostile, because of the sound of laser fire and your shields getting lower. Possibly even a hostile missile being launched. The radar only tells you if something is a ship, not if it's currently shooting at you. Which doesn't matter, because I found matching someone to a radar signature to be risky in the heat of battle.

At first, I have missiles and a pulse cannon. I'm not using a missile against some randoms, at least not at this point, so I'd just eat that reload. The pulse cannon is your basic laser cannon, hit someone a few times and they explode and leave behind debris that someone with fuel scoops could pick up. That is, if you can hit them.

The controls are fine for just noodling around, but in combat they're weird. You're spinning and then moving up or down all the time, and the AI is no different. That means the mere act of finding them is, at first, tedious and annoying to do. Until you get on someone's rear, this results in a strange form of space jousting, almost literally. If you're lucky, you can crash into them, and the problem is over if there's no one else fighting you. If there is...uh...hope they decided to flee.

What's annoying here is that the AI is pretty good. You can't outrun them, they can't really outrun you, so they've started a battle of life or death. Hey, they might have a bounty on his head, and 2 credits really helps a lot! 

The problem with Elite as a game specifically is the real opening loop of the game. You can't really live off bounties starting out unless you fancy grinding a TON, and you can't scavenge debris without a fuel scoop. That means trading. Since you can't find this out without first traveling to a solar system, and taking hyperjumps costs fuel, which costs money, this means that you're constantly reloading earlier saves. Since there are multiple encounters on each flight, that means just figuring out how to get beyond grinding out hostiles is going to be somewhere between five and fifteen minutes depending on whether or not they're hostile. There's no automating it.

I hit paydirt on a route on my second trip to another star. Well, in as much as paydirt can be had, anyway. From my starting planet of Lave, I can buy one ton of firearms at 77.6 credits, then sell it at 78.7 credits. Very low profit? Yes, but on the way back, I can buy a considerable amount of food at 3.2 a ton, and get 3.8 a ton for it. Which is a profit, assuming I can manually fly into the station.

One of the features of Elite is that docking stations, I.E., where you go to trade and get new equipment and fuel, move. This is realistic in the sense that they do that, but also very annoying in the sense that this is not entirely automatic. You have to move with them. Angle your ship in such a way that you slide in through the hanger. This is a particularly nasty example of it, since it's so very easy to crash into the station. I had about a 10% success rate. You can pay for an automatic docking computer, about 500, or pay for a one-time use of the station's docking computer, 40.

This is one of those things that shatters my immersion in the game world. You're telling me that the people running these stations are okay with ships occasionally just smashing themselves into them just to save on docking fees? It's a pure game-ism. Between that and the opening reloading to actually get any real funds, it feels a lot like work. In a sense, this blog IS supposed to be work, but man, this one's a heck of a lot like it. 

After what I guess was over twenty tries and two hours, I make it back where I started. After filling up my fuel, I had 118.9 credits. Which in the grand scheme of things, is one more ton of an item at 60 credits. I need about thirty more trips like that to afford Fuel Scoops, wherein I'll be able to pick up cargo after taking out a hostile ship, which means I won't have to deal with the whole pesky buying of goods and can now go straight to selling.

Let's see, thirty times two means...well, looks like I'll be able to actually play the game at the sixty hour mark. Akin to a full time job. Assuming of course, that prices remain stable and goods replenish after every hyperjump. Don't be surprised if next time I mysteriously find myself in possession of more credits than I left this session with. In the meantime, I guess I better start practicing docking.

This Session: 3 hours 20 minutes 

Wolfenstein 3D - The Second Encounter (1994)

Name:Wolfenstein 3D - The Second Encounter
Number:266
Year:1994
Publisher:Macplay (Interplay's Macintosh arm at the time)
Developer:ID Software
Genre:FPS
Systems:3DO, Jaguar, Macintosh, SNES
Country of Origin:USA
Difficulty:4/5
Time:5 hours 10 minutes
Won:No (117W/91L)

As is usually the case with best-selling PC games, someone will try to port it to consoles. Technically, we've seen it before with Star Cruiser...even if I have yet to actually play the computer version, but this is the first one we're all familiar with. Normally, this wouldn't rate much of a glance, since most FPS are in some regard inferior on consoles and there's no real getting around that. Wolfenstein 3D though, isn't exactly better, but it is different.

The first console port was to the SNES, roughly comparable to some DOS machines at the original release. Which, in theory, should mean that the game plays similar to the original...mostly. The change is that the SNES is not quite as powerful enough to handle the proper experience, so corners were cut. Let's just get to that, shall we?

Oh, sweet lord, that's hideous. At the expense of having a decent sized viewing port, everything is a blur. This, in of itself, is not enough to warrant another playthrough. There are a dozen versions of Doom with similar issues. No, what warrants another playthrough is that there are thirty new levels, played concurrently, not in episodic chunks. New should be in quotes, since they're supposed to be simplified ports of various DOS levels. On the 3DO version and on Macintosh, these are alongside the original six episodes for...uh...some reason.

I eventually went for the Macintosh version. I tried the 3DO version, which is supposed to be the best, but it had no side-stepping and the emulator ran slowly on my system. Macintosh, despite some hiccups with a new version of Ubuntu, worked better. Even if there was still some slowdown with having a decently sized game window. Yeah, turns out running a Macintosh version in 320x200 you're running in a window on 1600x1080 is a recipe for not seeing anything. 

This controls a bit differently than you'd expect. Oh, there's the usual use, shoot and move, but the movement is awkward. This may tie into the whole slowdown bit, but aiming at someone was very awkward. I probably should have tried to find a port of this to ECWolf or something, but I was in too late before I realized it. There's a different sound effect when you use a wall, and nothing afterwards. I wasn't actually sure that this worked the same way as DOS.

 

Z and X sidestep. Aha, you may think, you can turn and sidestep, like a proper, modern FPS. Well, maybe, on my machine, side-stepping and turning results in nothing or turning in a very small circle. The Nazis haven't seen such incompetence in battle since they last fought with the Italians! Rounding this out is / for automap and esc for pause...which then allows you to open the menus, which are in the program menus like any well-designed game should have.

The GUI is changed. It looks like an AI upscale for some reason. Items are the treasure items you've found along the way, which now have a Quake sound effect when you pick them up. After about 40, you get another life. BJ looks weird, but is otherwise the same. Not shown, the ammo for your rocket launcher and flamethrower. Yes, there are new weapons here.

The returning ones are mostly the same. The pistol is no longer a Luger, but is instead some weird heavy metal monstrosity. The other two are almost the same. They shoot with 100% accuracy, which in this particular version can be annoying. Precise aiming is tricky, so you can go back and forth over an enemy while he gets free shots in. 

The rocket launcher is more like a railgun. Shoot it at someone and it goes through them. This was hilarious the first time I used it. I'm sure that's been done somewhere, but I've never seen a rocket which wasn't explode on impact before. It does explode, but only on walls or bosses. Not a lot of ammo, but oddly, more ammo than you'd expect.

Then there's the flamethrower. Rapid-fire, no decay in attack. Basically, a machine gun with solid projectiles and more damage. Anything it hits, well, it dies fast. Basically a plasma rifle without a cooldown period.

Every looks and seems just a little bit odd. It's not quite like that one image of a fan-made HD upscale of a game, but it is close. Guards, SS, officers and mutants all share the same lines, only the mutants don't have an alert sound. So there's no distinguishing them if you end up the wrong way down a fork in the road. Dog food also gives a dog barking sound effect, so this is distracting. Hunting for secrets is strange, because you can't hold down the use key here, instead you have to hammer it, while hearing BJ grunt continuously.

Levels seem to be simplified forms of more complex levels from the original. The first level, for instance, is a version of E1L1 with no side paths and a few side areas. Others, if they're based on a level, I couldn't really tell. Some levels are just more forgettable than others, so Second Encounter is working with that. Oddly, it kind of works. Wolfenstein was best when it was short levels you burned through quickly, and every level here is short and to the point.

To recap, the ideal for Wolfenstein, since each level has a limited amount of space, is that this forced limitation requires the level author to be clever in his use of enemies and space in order to make something short and fun. Which kind of worked during the original levels, but as the game went on you could see this idea start to disappear. By the end of Spear of Destiny, we had reached the limit and that game's expansions just spammed stuff at you because there was no other path forward. (This reasoning tends to be why I like Wolf-clones more than Wolf itself, because they tend to keep this feeling going for a bit longer or don't drag themselves out as long)

Second Encounter doesn't fool itself. No, by the third level, you'll have gotten your first non-secret gatling gun and found your first boss. But at the same time, the game loses the snappy gameplay, at least in how I experienced it. Enemies always seem to take a dozen bullets, aiming is awkward and enemies don't seem to do that much damage to me. Even Hans takes a few salvos to take me out. Doors also can only be closed again if it's midway through opening and only if you were the one to open them. I feel like the inevitable mod for Wolfenstein 3D that added in these levels probably fixes this, but in theory, I am testing something else.

By the time I have enough ammo for all weapons that I can go through a level more or less as I please, it feels even less like Wolfenstein 3D. Unless I miss or get ambushed from behind, I am under no real threat. Bosses die to several rockets, but those are easier to aim and they like to get close. In complete contrast from other expansions/sequels, I am now far too powerful for the game. I barely need to worry about secrets, to the point that I didn't even know there were secret levels until I stumbled into one.

Even when I do occasionally bite it, it's not that much trouble to get back to where I was. Even when it does get to the harder levels, I'm not constantly spinning around to take out guys hiding behind corners...because that's something this one can't effectively do. Oh, there are some, but the game doesn't overuse them this time around.

At least, until you get to 5-1. Now there are the usual amount of enemies. So you have to carefully clear out a level room by room, over the course of ten minutes, with controls that don't let you turn around quickly or aim accurately, when the game often expects you to do both. And we're back to what made Wolfenstein bad once again. But for a while it was the manageable kind of bad.

Then 5-5 happens. As I've banged on before, one of the expected principles of good level design, as in, so obvious we shouldn't have to explain it, is that levels should not start with the player about to get shot with no chance of escaping some damage. 5-5 not only ignores this, but practically throws the player into a nearly lethal situation. You don't start in elevators, so you're out in the open. Where a SS and a couple mutants are.

5-6 repeats this with a SS RIGHT IN FRONT of the player. This is a boss floor, incidentally, complete with fifty or so enemies, and a boss who, when you fire a shot in his room, becomes alert. Which is good, because there are about a dozen enemies in there. The first time I got there, I killed him and then got taken out by some guards who waited for me to enter. This level certainly encapsulates the Wolfenstein 3D experience.

I had already decided that I wasn't going to finish the last "episode" of Second Encounter beforehand, 5-6 solidified that, and when 6-1 opened up on another group of hostiles I just laughed as I quit the game. There's nothing quite as ironic as a game I thought was actually going one way start to end to the point that made the others bad.

As I was making it to those last few levels, I was starting to have a bit of trouble with ammo. Not 5-5/5-6, which had plenty of bullets, but I was actually getting into the double digits for that. I also noticed that as the levels wore on, I was finding less and less flamethrower and rocket launcher ammo. To the point that if I were pistol starting each level I would be having significantly more trouble than I already was.

Weapons:
The flamethrower, for the most part, feels like an unnecessary addition. Since the base weapons now all have perfect accuracy, a sprite projectile weapon isn't that useful. It's basically an additional 99 shots for risky situations or if you think you can anticipate where an enemy'll be. The rocket launcher, meanwhile, is quite possibly the most useful rocket launcher in any FPS, simply because the only situations it isn't useful is against a single guy. 4

Enemies:
Unchanged from the original. 4

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
As a greatest hits version of Wolfenstein, I have nothing to complain about. Most of what I enjoyed about the game is here and that which wasn't...well, we didn't lose anything. That said, since the game has lost the opening elevator, and several levels had enemies outside the elevator...and now they aren't balanced around that, this is actually worse. I will say that this version's way of using mutants and officers together more felt nice compared to the either or of the original. 3

Player Agency:
Sure, this version has smooth side-stepping and a map feature, but it also has strange turning, no holding down use, and it's hard to hit anything. Plus that side-stepping comes with a cost of working awkwardly with turning. 4

Interactivity:
Unchanged. 1

Atmosphere:
Somewhere between frantic action hero movie, the life or death action of the original, and sometimes the tedious slog that was the Spear expansions. So, very mixed. 3

Graphics:
There's something uncanny about it all. None of the enemies have side or even back sprites now, so everyone is just going straight for you. The walls seem unchanged, but I can't help think they have and I don't like that I couldn't figure out why. 4

Story:
The SNES version added in cutscenes between "episodes"...which was not present in the 3DO or Macintosh version for...some reason. Now there's nothing, not even the vestige of what the DOS version had. 0

Sound/Music:
Higher quality sound effects, some of which sound weird. This is discounting the use of a Quake sound effect for picking up treasure. The music is odd, it's all this really energetic pseudo-heavy metal stuff. Less Doom's...well, doomier influence and more the kind of stuff that would influence power metal. Very happy, very energetic, but there are like 5 tracks. 4

That's 27, along the same lines as Spear of Destiny.

Were it not for the sudden shift into gotcha moments, I think this version would have been the best. It almost did exactly what it needed to do...and then it screwed it up. I wouldn't even have complained if it kept in the hardness of the later levels were it not for enemies being right next to the start. All other issues pale in comparison to that. I know Wolfenstein is about being a quick shot, but you can't be testing me the second I start a level, I make my saves there.

This should be the last time I cover anything directly connected to Wolfenstein for a while. Any other expansions I could find are just compilations of random levels, which could be worth a look as a lark, but not anytime soon.

Next time, I continue having to manage real life issues, but I think I'll either try out the Acorn 32-bit version of Elite or pull out something completely random out of a hat.