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.

Black Crypt (1992)

Name:Black Crypt
Number:258
Year:1992
Publisher:Electronic Arts
Developer:Raven Software
Genre:RPG
Difficulty:4/5
Time:9 hours 50 minutes
Won:No (115W/86L)

After finally getting around to Black Crypt after years of meaning to get around to it, I must admit, I have mixed feelings on it. Not just because the game crashed and I couldn't continue it, but because as a game this comes off as a bit of an oddball. There are a lot of things this game is trying to do, but some of these felt like they really counteracted one another.

This also applies to the game's development process itself, since given the 1992 release date, you'd expect that this for some reason just appealed to whoever was greenlighting games at EA back then. An Amiga dungeon crawler? In the US, that was on its way out then, even if the message wouldn't be fully received until this year. No, this was started in 1986 and the publishing deal was made sometime between the two points. This was just an unfortunate victim of bad timing and a strange unwillingness to not make a DOS port. Which made it the only game they made until X-Men: Legends to not be on DOS or Windows.

The premise is your usual Dungeon Master-clone idea. There's this evil bad guy, Estoroth Paingiver, who took four champions from the past to kill, and now he's about to take over the world again. You have four lousy amateurs, go survive in his dungeon where dozens have died in vain. Go through thirty levels of dungeon, while moving in a blob through a grid-based movement system. Go fight monsters in a circle, solve puzzles, eat meat that's been on the floor for god knows how long, and try not to get screwed over by spinning tiles. If you don't really know what that is, go play Dungeon Master, it's got a free port and everything.

Despite considerable room for improvement, this genre is ultimately just "is this still as fun as DM, despite being worse". The answer here is complicated, while that's true, whether this is playable really depends on your skill with Amiga emulation and having an idea of how to install a game to a hard drive rather than just using save states and hoping it doesn't kill itself. I didn't quit willingly, the game just stopped registering disk changes after the third area transition. If you can avoid that, it's worthwhile.

There's no control over party selection, you just choose the name and which portrait they get from a selection of people who look like they just got out of fantasyland jail. What matters is you get a fighter, a cleric, a "magic user"/magician and a druid, and attribute selection. This feels very Dungeons and Dragons derived at times, with classes which seem taken from the game, armor class and attributes mostly taken from the base six. Stats go up to twenty and you have no real knowledge of what they do beyond assumptions you get from previous games.

The fighter is more or less a straight copy of the class from DnD. At first the most useful character since he can actually fight, until your spellcasters can actually cast spells, at which point he acts as a meatshield while your druid brings down the forces of the four planes. (Ice, bees and chaos) He is useful when you need to fight in melee, of course, like when you've just cast fifteen attack spells at someone and they're still moving. Melee is just a lot less effective than the always hitting spells, since he'll be trailing far behind in damage and ability to hit.

The cleric is an oddity. In four character crawlers like this, it's tradition to have two melee fighters and two spell-casters in the back. The melee guys soak up the damage, the spell-casters do whatever, then use their bows. The cleric is also a straight copy of the DnD class, good defense, good variety of offensive and defensive spells, and a class aversion to hitting things with bladed weapons. Violence with a mace is okay though. For a while, this guy functions weirdly. He does less damage than the fighter, which should technically be augmented with spells, but outside of healing, he only has one effective attack spell for a while, which makes him the least useful character in the party until he gets his third spellbook.

The magic user, or wizard as I called them, is well...like a wizard in DnD. Not fully like, since the magic system here doesn't work like DnD and this has a strange selection of spells, but it's the same archetype. At first, somewhat useless. You can have him use throwing weapons or a bow, but ranged attacks from the people who will use a ranged attack are useless. He doesn't get an attack spell until the third level, and until then all he gets are a map spell and a defense spell. But when you get that second spellbook the wizard becomes the sort of universal problem solver, getting stat boosting abilities along with being able to remove glyphs and magic barriers.

The druid is the strangest class. It fits the usual druid DnD class, but the spells you would think to be lower level are sprinkled throughout later spellbooks, and what you get at the start are odd utility spells and the only starting attack spell. He also doesn't get another spellbook for a while, leaving him as the worst character you have, since it takes a while for that starting spell to get useful. It takes a while for him to get more attack spells, but boy howdy, does he start hitting hard when he does.

The magic system uses spellbooks and levels to indicate what spells you can use. Your wizard can cast Shield at the start of the game, but not Fireball despite both being in the starting magic spellbook. In contrast, by the time you get his final spellbook, Libram of Darkmagic, chances are both Deathstorm (9th level) and Detect Traps (2nd level) will be available to him. I have no technical issue with this, except that the progression is odd, in that a druid went a lot longer between spellbooks than a wizard or cleric. Otherwise it's simple memorization, click on a spell in the spellbook section, it pops up above, then you can cast it. Once memorized, you can memorize it again after a set period of time which is reduced if you cast said spell first. Meaning, you can have multiple casts of the same spell at once.

Control-wise, the game is more or less what you expect from a DM-clone. The arrows move, and you turn with delete and page down, which kind of works. Spells are in the upper right corner, each caster can have five at a time, including multiples of the same spell. Switch between them with the symbols. Left click on a character's portrait and he uses his primary function, usually sword against monster, right click activates a secondary function, which is a spell with some enchanted items. Never really used that in combat, just accidentally whenever I meant to open the inventory. The bars are health, the row of six dots are status effects and that gold dot is indicating who the leader is. This only effects things like what plaques you can read and if someone with magic sight can direct the party. If you have your druid lead, he isn't going to be in melee combat. If you click on the skull, a little menu will open up allowing you to save your game or sleep in-game.

Right click on the character name and you open the inventory screen. This is more complex than it really needs to be. There's the armor, weapons and spellbook, but the bottom part seems odd. These are your packs, bags which hold stuff in them. You can have up to five, though in practice I just kept two/three per character. The manual says encumbrance is a thing, but I've never found out. As the game goes on there are more of bags you have to put in these slots to search through. You can't attack on this screen, so do so safely.

The icon below the shield is the class icon, in case you forget. This is actually a clue for later, because you can pick up smaller icons and give them to any character and get a small stat boost. I didn't notice a difference, but I'm not complaining. The three bars on the right are health, sleep (because magic just happens) and food/drink. So many meters the game had to combine one. Clicking on that will give you the hard numbers of your stats along with any status effects you have.

But there's one thing you can't pick up from context, it's that you have multiple sets of clothing. Yes, rather than doing so in an elegant system where everything is on-screen at once, you instead get a confusing inventory system where it takes in-game hours before you realize you can equip belts and rings! And also shirts. Which implies that if you take them off, that you could fight demons and goblins dressed up like the Celtic warriors of legend. (And probably die too.)

I clown on it, but it isn't that bad. Just click on the torso icon in the upper right. It's what seems the logical course of action the second you pick up something. It's just unnecessarily large and complicated, but it isn't that complicated. I get the feeling it's there to account for the whole bow and arrow/dagger ranged attacks, you put those in a quiver or bag and they automatically pop out. It's just less elegant than it could be. I really only dislike the combination food/drink meter, because that one just feels needlessly obtuse. People know if they're thirsty or hungry. These aren't really that tricky to fill, since usually every section has a water fountain early on and you get enough food that by the time you get a food summoning spell you won't end up in trouble.

Combat is very typical of the sub-genre. Click on a spell to cast it, click on whatever items you have equipped to use them, and sooner or later someone will be dead. Trade blows or engage in the usual combat waltz. Where it differs, I feel is that spells reign supreme while physical attacks feel weak. As I've mentioned, spells always hit and most spells scale with levels, while physical attack damage is more esoteric. Throwing weapons might as well not exist since they never seem to actually hit.

While I did have fun with it, the added depth of having multiple attack spells at the ready trivialized most of the combat I got through. The problem is that the game really encourages this route, because in the second section you fight against enemies which steal the items out of your hands. Right next to enemies which can poison you, when you have a limited supply of cure poison items. There is no way to deal enough damage to one of the item thieves without spamming a few spells. After this, you get enough spellbooks that you'll never run out of attack spells.

The most definitive characteristic of the game in my mind is that sometimes scrolls will tell you information that is outright false. For instance, in the opening section, you have to fight a giant, two-headed ogre to go further down. One scroll tells you that to beat it, you need to get the Ogreblade. Another tells you that said sword drains the lifeforce of the holder. The game includes the option to figure out if a scroll is real or fake with a spell, but I felt it added so much to the game I never used it.

It's a very clever idea that makes the dungeon not just a series of stuff that makes everything better and tells you the truth. Too many games will just constantly tell the truth to the player about whatever it is they're about that adding in something that lies to you is a breath of fresh air. I wish the game did more with this. Have some of the plaques tell you lies, have items be traps of some sort. Why is a random piece of meat I found next to a corpse still edible? Why are all these potions of cure disease what they say instead of something like bestow diarrhea? This is a dungeon, act like it instead of making the whole thing one endless prize parade.

Now, I'm not saying this is something universally good, but outside of a few cases like this it doesn't come up. To the point that, in an odd way, a game that does this has it worse than a game that did in back in the day. If a game doesn't actively draw attention to the fact that it lied, then it's far more reasonable to assume that something wrong is happening on the game's end. Rather than necessarily saying we're all dumb sheep who trust what games tell us too much, game developers are just too stupid to pull it off. Which in turn, makes players look like dumb sheep for trusting what the game is telling them. It's a no-win situation.

Black Crypt is very mixed on difficulty. At first we get a situation where the game is building up to an encounter with a deadly monster who can only be killed with a certain weapon...which may kill you as well. Then a section where the only reasonable recourse was to spam spells at a monster so it wouldn't poison you or steal a weapon. Then for the rest of my experience it was more or less a smooth experience.

There's not really a lot this has over Dungeon Master. Most of the puzzles are odd. I liked having to consult the manual to find out what the answer to a question was, but the rest were not that memorable. The worst was one had seemingly no logical answer beyond brute force, and was designed in such a way that you couldn't quite figure it out through that either. Even map design wasn't much of a challenge, the game gives you a map spell which means you don't need to make one, you instead get one as you go along. Since by the time the usage runs out, you can cast another, there's no reason not to use it.

It's a shame because the game has a very nice mood to it starting out. Raven had a really good run in these early days making these dark, dying worlds and then just...not doing much of anything with them. All the mood disappears for what is basically Dungeon Master with nicer-looking graphics and a different spell system. Right down to the only ambient sounds being the footsteps of your enemies. This isn't necessarily bad, but knowing future games, it does paint Raven Software as only being capable of making nice, simpler imitations of other games. There are of course, gaps in my knowledge of their games, some of those non-FPS titles from the '90s, for instance, but it does feel like Raven is always following, never leading, in what they do.

Weapons:
A selection of weapons you can only figure out the damage of by trial and error, ranged weapons which never hit, attack spells which function more or less function the same except for damage, and various magical items which feel to valuable to ever use. 3

Enemies:
An interesting selection, where puzzle enemies still require standard combat, and a ton of enemies have one annoying thing about them which makes fighting them feel incredibly risky. 4

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
For what I got through, I always felt like I was going for some goal or another in the short-term in addition to my long-term goal. Most moment to moment stuff was just fluff, but in a fun way. 5

Player Agency:
No complaints for the most part, it's a Dungeon Master-clone and doesn't screw it up. The scroll system is mildly annoying, because it's difficult to use in combat, but that's also true of the inventory screen in general. That's why you don't do that stuff in combat. 6

Interactivity:
Nothing special, puzzles, the usual buttons and switches. 3

Atmosphere:
Starts off dark and moody, especially with the constant darkness, but soon enough just starts feeling more or less like your typical fantasy RPG. 5

Graphics:
Very nice-looking, even if it's once again the same wall texture for...thirty hours. At least this game shifts it up occasionally by...turning the walls blue or red. Enemies look properly sinister, but there isn't that much animation. 5

Story:
The backstory is referenced all the time during the game, but we're not getting much more depth that using various bits of it for puzzles. 1

Sound/Music:
There's one really nice intro tune which sets the mood, then just combat and ambient monster sound effects. They're nice, but since there's no sound when you've killed all the monsters, it can get quite silent for long stretches at a time. 3

That's 35, about what I expected. Good but below Dungeon Master.

You can sum this one up with one sentence. Do you know how to install Amiga games and like Dungeon Master? Though I feel like if you said yes, you've probably already played this one.

Most of the reviews are overwhelmingly positive, doing nothing but praising the game. So, I looked at whatever was actually critical. There was one, which...said mostly the same things I did before calling it incredibly difficult. Eh, I kind of get where they're coming from, since in one section you basically have no recourse but to savescum or be quick on the spell draw, but once you get past that it's quite smooth sailing.

The next Raven Software title will either be CyClones or Heretic, since I think both are '94. There's not going to be any particular order or anything. Just the whims I get whenever I finally reach that year.

Next week, I've unfortunately got a bit of stuff to do in the real world this week, restricting the time I have on this. Chances are I'll be doing a 1984 or 85 game which won't take too much of my time to cover.