Sunday, March 17, 2024

Elm Knight: Introduction

It's time for another episode of "Early Japanese FPSes we never got, and aren't really much better than the ones we don't play." This time its Elm Knight, from Microcabin. I had a debate about this one, it's technically a mech game and I divide mech games from regular FPS. Still, better now than later.It's another one of these Dungeon Master-style games, grid-based, but you can be in-between spaces.

We went to all the trouble of doing a FM Towns release for these graphics. Hey, at least the music is pretty sweet! And it actually plays while I'm playing the game, I don't have my media player awkwardly going on in the background. Huzzah! Anyway, training is a lie, because this just goes through the entire character data of every character in game, I presume. No skipping, god help you if you accidentally press it. I guess character introduction must mean training then. No, it crashes the game. Goody. Maybe. I have no idea, this menu is the jankiest thing I've seen in a while.

Anyway, it seems as though the protagonist is a Rick Chandler, he has a brother named Roy. That's about all I'm going to get from the "training", there's a lot of text and a lot of characters I lack context for at this stage in the game. I don't know who Rodia Baahamu is and I'm not reading a wall of Japanese text to find out. The basic gist though, is that Rick is in some kind of military school, and its found out that he has magic powers. Back to that menu, it's very broken, it seems, moving doesn't properly register and pressing a button seems to do nothing.

Training teaches you movement. Basically you get the numpad, 8 goes forward, 7 & 9 turn left and right, 4&6 move left and right, 4 moves back. A trick of the game's movement is that the player will automatically move left or right if he's going forward, over one tile differences. This is fairly simple, and the game has its tutorial quite well, making sure you understand what it is you are doing. If you fail it teaches you it again.
Until we get to the afterburner. The concept is simple, what the game is asking of you is bizarre. The text is a just slow enough for me to understand, which makes it crap when I press the A key again and the game STARTS THE TEXT OVER AGAIN. I eventually figure out, more through trial and error than reading the actual text, is that it wants you to try to cut a precise path through a sidepath rather than just slamming into the trees. This follows up with silent mode. Press S and you move silently. I hope there isn't a stealth section. I'd hate a stealth section.
Shooting. You have two attacks, Z & X. Z appears to be any number of weapons from a fist, to a heavy cannon to various missiles. X is just a light machine gun. There's a nice firing rate to it all, perhaps too aggressive, its very easy to run dry if you aren't careful. Enter enters the weapon menu, and its still janky, but as long as you make sure you're on the right item by pressing left or right before pressing Z or space, it works.

After the missile training, things get weird again. It wants me to pick out a weapon consisting of some four kanji, a landmine after checking. Fair enough, but I have five options on the weapon menu, none of which have kanji. Which is also weird, because I have six weapons. I have no ammo either. None of the names sound like a landmine.

I discover the issue, I'm missing a key that a FM Towns would have, which is a "transformation" key, translated from Japanese. See, something I didn't notice before now was that you could switch weapons with some function keys, because they're labeled P*F keys in-game and in the manual. At first I tried another emulator, Tsuguru, but that didn't work. Then I noticed that Unz has the option to rebind keys even if its a bit hidden. Ten minutes later after having figured out how to change the region and language in WINE, and I have it set up how I wanted. (Because by default it shows the same thing every non-Japanese computer shows, despite having said fonts installed on my system) Turns out it was the convert key, which I definitely don't have.

Discounting the fact that I don't have the key, this is actually pretty badly thought out. The HUD in its present state can only show three items on each side, of course, but the weapon menu has no such excuse and neither do we for just selecting a weapon. We have 10 numbers on the keyboard, use them. Anyway, mines work like you'd think, they're clever, but knowing me this will have been completely useless outside of situations where it really hits the fan. This is followed up with a stunning mine, another mine which I guess damages radar, and finally remote explosives.

Next up is flares and chaff. F and D respectively. They work like in flight sims, missiles heading towards you, press both keys and hope you didn't just screw up. I still don't know how you're supposed to know which you're supposed to use.
Use the "Non-conversion key" to detect mines. Good thing it was bound to the non-existent non-conversion key on my computer or I'd never find it. Its a toggle, so I can show you what it shows. Movement is fast, so it is tricky avoiding them...at least until I discovered you could punch the mines. Cool.
Now jump over some missiles. You jump by pressing space. You can't jump over the walls or anything, at least not yet. Something tells me if the game expects me to do this on the regular I'm not going to make it to the end of the game.

After this there's a game of chasing three enemies with your fists, then a regular fight. Before all enemies were weaponless. First observation, don't get close, being far away is key. Hit them with missiles, never be within their sight. And that ends the training.

Let's not talk about some of the frustration going on here. The GUI is very effective, telling you everything of value at a glance. Half this stuff I didn't even need the training and manual for, its just that intuitive. We got a compass, energy draining on the right of the game screen, and a timer on the far right. Flashing lights indicate where enemies are if you missed them on the mini-map and radar. Oh, it looks very nice. Only problem is occasionally keys stick.

Now, the game itself starting with the intro. Wow, this has some smooth animation. Almost takes me away from how long and unbearable this opening cutscene is. So, yeah, let's talk about that. It's basically just a series of sprites over backgrounds, with said sprites probably being larger than what you can see on-screen. Sometimes it goes as fancy as to have three sprites on-screen at once, on background, one primary and on over-screen.
The intro is divided into three parts, an animated sequence showing two characters entering a cave, Rick in a mech, and another one called Serena coming in through another way. It's not exactly clear to me what's going on outside of Serena getting chased. They seem to at least be friendly to each other considering it ends with them pointing their guns at one another without shooting. Then we get a credits sequence, much like a typical anime. Finally, dialog returns.

After Roy and another character talk about something related to what Rick and Serena seem to be searching for, we get a mysterious character and we return to Rick and Serena. I have no idea what they're talking about. I can read most of it, but it isn't on-screen enough for me to comprehend. They introduce themselves to each other though, that much is clear and then the game begins. I'm kind of not caring that much since this story doesn't strike me as particularly important, it's trying to be one of those animes with the goofy comedy bits to break up tension. You probably know what I mean.

The game starts up rather suddenly. Serena talks before it starts, saying something about escaping from and possibly fighting the imperial army. I was under the impression that Rick was with the imperial army, I don't know why he isn't when his brother clearly still is, and I don't know why I'm going to do anything at all for a woman who just called me an idiot. And then they start arguing about it. What the hell, game? I don't mind playing some kind of traitor to some evil empire, but not for some woman who comes off as a total bitch. This goes on for a good few minutes. And then someone named "Efuru" joins in. Elf? Based on the manual, it's a magic voice inside him.

I've seen games criticized for taking less time to get to the gameplay taking too long to get to the gameplay. This is seriously annoying. Getting to regular combat is such a relief. You start off with fairly low stores, most missiles gone and relatively low ammo, along with being seriously outgunned. Training helped a great deal, using the missiles to safely take out enemies, then switching to a heavy gun, to using the mines and finally just the afterburner and taking a tactical retreat. This game can easily screw things up, but that was fun.

More dialog. I've played this for little more than an hour, counting practice sessions I didn't write down, and I already hate dialog in this game. Something about a magician.

Quite possibly not that far off from my face at this time.
Another animated cutscene. A scientist lady and another military dude are talking, and then they call in a mercenary. The game returns. I move a little, more dialog, another person in my "in-game" view, Sami, this is the mech's computer. The mercenary, Doug calls us up. Blah, blah, blah, you will die, there is no escape. Sure there isn't, just give Serena and Rick twenty minutes to converse over this shocking revelation.
I don't have a lot for this fight, just a couple of mines and the hope that I can shoot the guy enough times before he missiles me to death. Quickly, a conversation starts, he asks us to stop. Rick is shocked by this. Damn it, Rick, don't make me like you. Doug seems to like the cut of Rick's jib. And then the screen switches to a cutscene with Serena. She thinks he could be convinced to join the rebel army. Rick says maybe with a threat. I keep seeing MPS in this game and I have no idea what it actually is. Doug adds in that Rick's magical powers are great, and he either understands it or is joining up.
Another cutscene, Serena's sister, Sofia, talks to us, along with a guy named Rondo Aima. She's glad that he could make it. She calls their group the "Rebels of Riidaa", your guess as to what Riidaa means is probably better than mine. Rick is the first of what she hopes are many pilots who will join up with the rebels. At least I think so. Something I noticed while she was talking was that Serena, her sister, kept making funny faces because her character is to be as obnoxious as possible. Rick is smitten with Sofia because Sofia's the beautiful one, at least by this game's anime standards.

She then has Rondo escort Rick around. During this conversation they talk again about MPS. I don't know what MPS is, and at this point I assume I'm not going to find out, besides it either being magical powers or something important we have to find. And this is the end of the intro cutscene. Next time, base camp and playing as Rick on foot.

I am not particularly worried about finishing this one, I'm just interesting in making my way through enough of it to make a fair judgement. I like the general concept, but Japanese titles make me nervous, they're either pretty good or pretty bad. I don't seem to be able to save in-game, so as long as save states work I'll probably keep on trucking.

That said, based on how this goes, it may be hard for me to keep track of things. I'm going to have to read the dialog after the fact, it's just not feasible for me to do so in the middle of things. I'm going to make the assumption that the story is roughly as follows, Rick leaves the imperial forces at the start, meets with Serena, then fights his way out. The guy I called a mercenary, is actually a member of the resistance, and his fight with Rick is actually proving that Rick can join the rebels.

Further recap, imperial is in the sense of empire, no language trickery. Basically Star Wars, but with mechs and anime stuff.

This Session: 2 hours

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Conan: Hall of Volta (1984)

Name:Conan: Hall of Volta
Number:209
Year:1984
Publisher:Datasoft
Developer:SE Software
Genre:Side-Scroller
Difficulty:5/5
Time:2 hours
Won:Yes (85W/67L)

Conan the Barbarian is a character who needs no introduction. Despite having a pop culture presence that mostly just apes a fourty-year-old movie, Conan is well-regarded as the archetypical barbarian character, strong, fearless and violent. This is in contrast to his book character, who is both smart and strong, only barbaric because he is foreign.

It was only natural that games would be made involving the character. Especially since, due to a weird quirk of US copyright law, he was technically in the public domain long before he actually should have. Once upon a time, you had to renew things so they remained in copyright, and Conan's original stories weren't. (Lovecraft has the same issue) Trademark is a different issue, but considering the fast and loose nature of early games, who knows? Unlicensed Star Trek games were common up until the '90s. I'd guess it was official, that logo is from the movie, at that point you're playing with fire.

Hall of Volta was originally released on Apple II, and was ported to Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64, along with various Japanese PC ports. I'll be playing the Atari 8-bit port, the C64 one is apparently quite poor.

Playing the game, Conan controls smoothly but not perfectly. He moves at a nice pace for a screen of this size. Sprite size is good, small is better in something like this. Animation is a bit janky, but captures the barbarian feel. Jumping has a very meaty feel to it, I like it. You do need some windup to get any real horizontal reach though. For a weapon, Conan gets swords, which function like boomerangs. Left and right only. If it returns, you don't lose it, if it hits anything its gone. Conan starts with 10, in addition to 3 lives. Conan dies in one hit.

The first screen is a nice introduction. Moving around, especially climbing up ladders. The sole enemy is this bat...possibly eagle, flyer. It goes in a set pattern, and it dies with one sword. The bigger question here is this big jump. I keep falling down just before the ledge. Eventually I assume I'm doing something wrong and check a video LP. Wait, he just jumped past it. Oh, I get it, I'm hitting the little jutting bit, I have to give it a bigger wind-up.

Second screen. This is simpler than the first. Clouds roll by, but they seem to do nothing. A creature flies, but he doesn't get in my path. Conan doesn't get hurt by fall damage. Nice. It was basically a straight shot for me, get the key on the right, then some careful jumps. When's the other shoe going to drop?

Third screen. Damn it, I hate when I'm right. So this one, this one is tricky. Conan can't hurt the scorpions assuming he can aim at them. He also can't jump over the lava. Examining the area, I can spot a gateway briefly appearing a couple of times in the upper area, then a couple of times in the lower area. A gem (key, basically) is up there. Figuring it out is the easy part, because this is a tricky bit of movement. You can't just go up there, because between the two portals there are two scorpions and a bird constantly stays up there. You'll die if you reach there while the two are up there. So you have to get lucky while they're downstairs.

Fourth screen. This changes the game away from its previous find out the trick bit. Because you can just jump through the waterfall to the key area, but without some gems, you can't get the key and can't get out. This one has some animation to it. A platform falls quickly, and a platform rises on that geyser. Land on it without the platform there, and Conan dies. This is all about getting any items that randomly spawn here, while dodging what appear to be mushroom men. More swords drop, helpful, but more importantly, gems.

This proves to be a bit more difficult than I was imagining. Its easy to end up in a loop of just avoiding the mushroom men. If too many end up on-screen, the game starts slowing down. Personally, I would have thought that you'd design a game so that didn't happen, but meh. I'm also not really sure what the randomization process is here, but sometimes it takes a long time for a gem, others it doesn't. If I had to guess you need a certain number of swords.

Fifth screen. There's a massive pile of gems one floor below, but no easy way to reach it. You need one to get out of here. Oh, why didn't I grab a spare in the last room? Its shifted entirely into a matter of luck in getting past here. Fire pops up and goes in random directions on the bottom floor, and now jumping and shooting is sticking in bad ways. Dragons continually spawn in, which makes it all worse. They shoot fire, and while you can shoot it down, its a losing fight.

Eventually, I take them all out, they don't spawn indefinitely, only five. Swords respawn and you can get a second gem at least if you need it. But the top floor provides a difficult puzzle, because I have no idea how to get past the lightning going between the two orbs there...and it turns out the first "door" isn't actually door. Not a good move. This is more generous than I thought, but if I weren't using save states this would be incredibly frustrating.

Sixth screen, a boss fight of sorts. An annoying bossfight. Its tricky, but there is something to it. Two kinds of enemies spawn, with the central orb there being invincible. Shadowy cloud creatures, these are invulnerable too, and an eye. Kill some eyes, and a ladder appears to the very top, where you can shoot the rope holding the chandelier, destroying the orb. Swords respawn at the bottom until you take out the orb.

Seventh screen, unfortunately I didn't take a screenshot. Gems fall into the upper left area, something turns them into birds. The birds then go in through the hole on the right, where you come in, and follow a path in the bottom area. Not just any birds, because some are invincible, the ones that turn red/pink. Do this a couple of times and a neat little animation plays of the bird up there getting freed, dropping that guy off in the lava, and then carrying Conan to the exit.

The end. Abrupt but hard fought. Even using save states I wasn't sure I was going to win this one.

Weapons:
A simple, boomeranging weapon. 1/10

Enemies:
Rather simple, often functioning as an extension of the level itself. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
The game gets a lot out of seven levels, each requiring you to do something clever to advance. Nevertheless, this is very much a game you need an emulator for, without save states some of these levels are immensely frustrating with only a chance of figuring things out before going back to the start. 4/10

Player Agency:
When it works it works, when it doesn't it is frustrating. Jumps can stop for no apparent reason and while I understand the reasoning, this was not the game to give a standing jump zero momentum. I never got to the top of a ladder without jumping, so it has that going against it. 4/10

Interactivity:
Simple item placement. 1/10

Atmosphere:
Its not very Conan-esque, but it lives up to the ideals of the 8-bit era. A simple action game with a subtle character that just spending five minutes on would never reveal. In this regard this belongs with the greats of the era. 4/10

Graphics:
If you take Conan out of the equation, everything is nice, but simple. Well-animated. Eye-searing colors, sadly an Apple II staple even in a port like this. 2/10

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
Your usual bleeps and bloops, with a background track. I should hate this, but for some reason I don't, but its still not very good. 2/10

That's 20. Respectable, but not amazing.

Most reviews I found were for the C64 version. Curiously, despite this one being inferior, it still mostly rated highly and everyone seemed to beat it. The issues are mostly the extreme variation between screen difficulty and the short length. Outside of flickering I didn't have to deal with. That's a fair observation, especially the former, in a time when you only had one game for months, but I think the less is more approach works better at a time when that's not really a problem anymore.

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Tomb Raider - Anniversary: Won

I'm not really sure how this one's going to go. To begin with, Natla's Mines was a weird level. Even if Tomb Raider really shouldn't focus on combat, it was kind of weird how little combat it had. Natla's goons just sort of came out of nowhere and died as they came. Larson is one of them now...for some reason. This is much the same, just with an exit hole you can't actually get out of and objects which Lara should be able to move, but are solid as a rock.

Under the waterfall, which I remember being somewhere you couldn't go, but that might just be The Lost Valley, then up here. Bit weird seeing the obvious ledges as distinctly man-made objects as opposed to erosion on man-made objects. There's a secret in one corner where I think there was a fuse last time. Regular path is just to the left.

Same deal as last time, three fuses, though colored now, and it drops something on the area with the pistol rather than it just falling. Whether this is because of realism or because they couldn't do something like that is an intriguing question, but for now I'll be satisfied with finding some fuses. Two obvious paths, and one of them is blocked off.

The second has what was once a joke enemy. Rats. The jokes write themselves, I don't even need to show anything other than a screenshot of it. Still, the red fuse is here. I wander around the area for a bit until I just put it in the machine and press the button next to it. So much for three puzzles you can do at your leisure, its just a series of them.
This leads to an upper path, first some walking then across some ledges. I like this area, while the game is still obvious with its usage of ledges, in an area like this, it blends in unless you know you have to go across it. The area with the second fuse also has the third, but I can't safely get it yet, so I have to do something with the crane. Turns out there's a crane puzzle now, which I figure out after getting the second artifact. The third one actually has a pretty good platforming puzzle to it, incorporating machinery. Perhaps that's what they should have made to begin with, a game where you platform through some weird machine. Now, to get the guns.

Lame. I can't really advance through the dead end, instead I have to break open into a control booth to adjust it so Lara can take a driller to the dead end.

Even for Larson, this sounds incredibly stupid.
Looks like Larson is in Lara's way, having put the crate in her path and taken the blue fuse. He says Lara isn't going to kill for it. Well, this is Legend continuity, where she gunned down easily a hundred people, so this feels about as worthwhile as Duke Nukem musing about the horrors of war. QTE fight, a joke, press up three times. Even for Larson that feels like a joke, come on. Lara grabs the fuse and then does an overdramatic, blood is on my hands, gesture. Talk about pretentious twaddle.
Afterwards, I move the crate away and pick up Larson's shotgun. The breaking of the wooden barriers is kind of underwhelming. Now, this, this is interesting. Its the same old sort of stringed together stuff over certain death, but its more than holding down grab and occasionally jumping. Or it would be if it didn't put a checkpoint halfway through it. Anyway, there are two secrets here, an artifact I thought would be tricky, but you basically just stumble onto, and ammo you can only get after you make it to the other side.
Wait, how do you get up here? Oh, I see, it took you all game, but you finally did the whole jumping off a ramp trick to advance. I spot one of Natla's henchman as I make my way up.
Cutscene. This guy talks about how good killing feels, while Lara gives a goofy look that I think is supposed to be regret. Are you seriously trying to turn this into a thing? Skater dude who no longer has a skateboard shows up, and the two attack. QTEs, I accidentally failed one taking a screenshot and it just restarted the QTE part. Lame. Not as lame as the cutscene itself. The goons spend as much time fighting each other as they do Lara, even killing each other. Anyway, the one dude drops uzis, no magnums yet.

This area is actually pretty cool too, because this time ledges aren't glowing neon signs. It actually feels like Tomb Raider for once. I can climb up anything I can reach. Sure, I can't reach much, but I can climb it. The objective here is for Lara to point stand on several points, make obvious by how they look different than the others, which slide into the ground/slide. I'm distracted by an artifact in one corner catches my eye. How do you get there?

Ah. I think I see why they didn't make more areas grab whatever you can reach, they can't do it very well. I'd make less fun if I thought they knew what they were doing. Anyway, reaching the artifact is entirely dependent on one point that slides into ground, once that's gone you reload or restore by some means. That's this level. I missed the relic. Oh, well.
The Great Pyramid. I joked about Stargate last time, but this does feel very Stargate influenced. Yellow instead of blue. Granted, I realize both take influence from the same concept, but this feels a bit more than that.
Eggs. Eh...this looks blander compared to the original. This is less the biomechanical horror that the original was and more Zerg-like creature infesting Ancient outpost. Gotta find that ZPM and then everything goes to hell. I walk through the room and nothing happened. This leads to the big lava shaft.

Yeah, this just isn't the same. The original didn't come off like this at all. I mean, with some areas you could say they intended any big black blocks at the top to be sky, but this is a big shift in design. Anyway, Natla activates the Scion and now Atlantians pop out of the eggs. Back, up a now opened door via a ladder, and to the shaft properly.

Shoot the target, which causes a ring for wall running to pop out, and a creature. Kill that, and you realize the ring is on a timer with just enough time to get past. Failing, you have to deal with the annoying cutscene activating it, as if you could miss what happens. This just comes off as annoying. I do it again the next level up, and then again...wait, is THAT THE ENTIRE LEVEL? Are you kidding me?

At some point, there are these ledges, which, after Lara is on them for a certain length of time, burn her, not hurting her, but knocking her off.

There's this section. Two flying Atlantians. You know, its funny, I could do something like that in a space like this in Tomb Raider, but here its a troublesome pain to deal with. Because the target that activates the rings and poles is a target in combat too. Then there's the section you have to cross, in the time limit on the target. Jump on a slope, unto a pole and then another pole. Switch the direction you're going, jump, shimmey across a ledge, across two rings and hope you have enough time to make the final ledge. Irrespective of my thoughts on the original Tomb Raider, this is just a poorly designed level in general. The only artifact in this level is in an obvious side area, another winged Atlantian spawns after you get out.

Checking Tombraiders.net afterwards, I discovered that no, I'm not alone in thinking this is some...bull excrement. Its apparently much easier on Playstation, which makes me think that the PC version is extraordinarily crap. I hope so, based on what I've seen some people's statements about this version are very perplexing based on what I've played.

Crushers. Merciful crushers. There are things you can shoot to cause them to stay open, but assuming you get the sequence down it really isn't necessary.

This leads to the doppelganger arena. First taking out three regular Atlantians, glad they remembered they showed up again. The doppelganger looks nice, at least. For a meat puppet. To kill her this time, you have to rotate a central wheel, makes me wish there was an actual puzzle that involved this idea rather than just whatever this is, climb up one end, pull a lever, turn the wheel again and jump into an area which tosses the doppelganger in lava. Then she makes a joke about it. Really, after the dramatics with Larson, you thought this was a good idea?

The bridge room. It wasn't exactly very interesting originally, and now its very lame. To the left, you just dodge things that push Lara into the lava. On the right you jump on the same things. Both switches on each end reveal a flying Atlantian, and introduces a mechanic I didn't see before, getting grabbed. Which you have to press the movement keys in rapid succession. If you just button mash, nothing happens. Somehow. The relic on this level is "hidden" by a rock you can shoot after crossing the bridge, I thought I missed something, but no, I didn't realize this would be that easy.

Cutscene. Lara reaches the top and the Scion. We see a giant...uh...ballsack. Lovely. Natla congratulates her, and does the usual badguy spiel about joining her. The Scion is very powerful. Immortality has its price, but what are a few lives? Lara looks at her hands dramatically, apologizes to her father and shoots the Scion. Natla charges after her, knocking them both off, Lara escapes and Natla falls into the lava.

I dunno about this plot "twist". Old Lara would do this, but less because she wouldn't like it and more because she does everything the hard way. New Lara doesn't seem like the type. The only reason why she hasn't killed four humans in addition to the dozens, possibly 100+ humanoids is because three of them did things that ensured she didn't actually have to kill them. Since this takes place in the Legend continuity, where she has zero problems with killings hundreds of people later on.

Instead, I think Lara would take it. If she's forgotten her guilt when she's mowing down Atlantians by the dozen, she isn't going to remember it now. In the ambiguous new world that Natla was creating, Lara would not be the morally ambiguous figure that a theoretical hero would try to sway, she'd be the one sentencing people to swift and painless deaths as opposed to public torture. From a story perspective, you haven't really shown enough reason for Lara to not do this and plenty that she will.

Out comes the giant Atlantian and its Final Conflict. What a lame name. The big Atlantian is weird. He functions like basically any other enemy with the usual shoot until enraged, dodge at the right time, knock down, but he doesn't take damage. Instead, what you're supposed to do is enrage him off the cliff, then enrage him inside it so you can shoot his hand off. Then enrage him off again and shoot his other hand. Off he goes into the lava.

Another hallway, this time there's lava. This leads into a nice and fancy room with a path up. Sadly the only path I can actually take is forward, after pulling a switch. More pointless fighting, and then a room with a pool in addition to a hidden way up to reach that path up in the last room. Pull an underwater lever, get an annoying cutscene and then climb up and back. Oh, wait, this is actually the path forward. An artifacts here on in the hidden way up.

Anyway, this reveals a crate, which I can use to get another artifact, and to go the actual way up. Slightly unclear advancement for once, and then I'm behind some rocks in the room with the pool and this does nothing. Maybe these weird reliefs on the wall are climbable? Oh, they're the sliding things. I feel like this game should have had the player have to use one of these before its suddenly relevant for a puzzle?

Now there are things that shoot flame. As per usual, that's not what I'm fighting against. This is actually pretty good. I didn't find it immediately obvious where I have to go. I note two things here, there's an artifact immediately below me, behind a lavafall. Can't get through there, and if I try to go around the lavafall, Lara doesn't her falling into lava animation while in mid-air. There's another artifact on the other side, which is much easier to reach.

Boss fight, Natla. She talks about the blood on Lara's hands and how Lara's heart is as black as hers. Yeah, sounds about right. Natla is actually interesting, which is just a complete shock as far as boss fights in this game go. She has multiple attacks and moves around in ways that aren't just chasing after Lara. Its not that difficult, like always. She has multiple targets, I go after the wings, no idea if it matters.

About halfway through her health bar another cutscene happens. Sooner or later Lara's going to run out of bullets. Damn, someone at Crystal Dynamics is really happy they came up with that one. The second phase here is...not so interesting. Get Natla to rage at you, then shoot her in the back. Unfortunately, her attack does not allow you to do the usual dodge roll easily, and any other method won't work. At this point I struggle to figure out what to do until I restart the fight and discover that Natla stays down afterwards for as long as you fire on her, you only hurt her if its in the back. Lame.

As per usual, it ends with some QTEs. Natla says she'll never die, so Lara knocks her out with a pillar. I don't really remember Underworld, beyond some stuff relating to Norse mythology and Lara's mansion getting destroyed, but something tells me Natla is back. She survives a nuke and some dinky pillar kills her. Uh-huh.
Lara rides off into the sunset, doing her blood is on my hands gesture again, making me question why I stuck out for this.


Final Time: 18 hours 30 minutes

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Ankh (1984)

Name:Ankh
Number:208
Year:1984
Publisher:Datamost
Developer:David van Brink
Genre:Top-Down Shooter/puzzle
Difficulty:5/5
Time:1 hour 30 minutes
Won:No (83W/67L)

Ankh is a game that seems to have just appeared one day in Datamost's catalog. Its author, David van Brink's only other credit is an Apple II Tempest-clone. You can tell because Ankh is one of those games that comes from a misunderstood genius or a crazy person. This is no Egyptian-themed game, this is pure surrealism.

At the start of the game, you are given a choice between two options, left or right. Left is...uh...what seems to be a weird snake game or a strange paint option. It looks like a creation tool, but the way its implemented makes this awkward at best. This is the start of the game's weirdness.

Right brings you to the main game. You are a strange...uh...pyramid...? You move by nudging the joystick or arrow keys in any direction, you don't stop until you press or hold space. Touching anything drains your health. As there are many things in the game world to interact with, you naturally shoot them instead. Three shots on-screen at a time. Shooting anything that isn't a wall, in addition to killing hostiles and activating switches, also increases your health. Once, anyway.

Playing this a few times, I find myself wondering where the heck to go after a while. This is clearly leaning in on the top-down shooter design because of the era, this is a puzzle game through and through. Enemies respawn whenever you leave a room and the only threat they seem to pose is in numbers. Eventually, I search for the manual. I find it. Its worth a read even if you don't play the game, this is a trip. It also reveals two aspects to this game that I didn't know about. There are items you can pick up and by pressing Shift lock, or caps lock on a modern computer, you switch to a touch mode. This is, of course, vitally important, because shooting things and touching things are entirely different actions.

After some introductory areas you are given a choice between east and south. South is the tutorial area according to what I've read. Somehow. There are a series of rooms, each containing a button, a door and something inside that door, usually another button. Find the button outside that works, which then opens a door. The button inside activates another button, activate that one and so forth until you get a triangle. What is the triangle? I have no idea, but they seem to be important.

East leads to another fork, north and east. I go north first. Firstly, you get a map room, which isn't obvious at first. Obviously rooms fill in as you go through the game, but what isn't obvious is that this is a map rather than an indication of where you've been. Further north is a button and an object, press the button and a bullet heads north out of the gun, a great way to shoot yourself. Then one east of here is a weird door, which requires you to press the button on this side, find a way to the other side, then find a way in to get another triangle. No triangle reachable from here though.

East is a weird maze of doors. What's tricky about it is that whenever you go east or west you return to the center, so you can't go around either outer corridor. This is where I got stuck before I figured out the whole touch trick. Further east is another fork, south are enemies. A lot of enemies. This leads to an ankh room with a switch which does something, but not here. Doors further south are very locked.
East back from the fork. Another north/east fork. North leads to some kind of gun spamming bullets, can't get past here yet, so east again. (I later discover that this is the path to another triangle) A room full of bombs and another fork, this time I go south. I open a door with a switch and pick up something I later discover is a shot rebounder, shots bounce off it at 90 degree angles.
Now we have this. This is a remote controlled, well, to quote the manual, other, as the PC is an other of the actual player. Use the touch mode to activate everything. The first room is easy, you get up, down and stop. The second removes stop. The third removes up. So you only get one chance at it. I failed. Back east leads to one last fork, now one leading west/north.

West leads to a clever room, a door that moves when a tape is shot, only you can't get out in time if you shoot the tape. At first you think its a case of movement, but back north there are two shot rebounders that you pick up. Place it down and you have enough time to grab the second triangle.  Further north are two locked doors I have no idea about. I would try, but seeing as I have to restart the game for that one area with the remote controlled other, and that isn't going to be fun, I decided against it.

Weapons:
Simple, three shots on-screen. 1/10

Enemies:
Every enemy is the same, it wanders around and it shoots. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Interesting design, but marred by poor execution in some areas. 4/10

Player Agency:
Nearly the best you could expect out of pure keyboard controls. Shoot in one direction, move in the other. What is annoying is how you either constantly move or move one pixel at a time. It is annoying that you don't get to chose where you drop items though. 6/10

Interactivity:
Mostly clever puzzles, but just not enough ideas to fill up 64 rooms. 4/10

Atmosphere:
Very weird. The introduction animations set the scene, while the game world feels suitably bizarre as a followup. I'm still not sure what's going on with the GUI, since it seems to change constantly. 4/10

Graphics:
Unappealing and crude. 1/10

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
A variety of weird, albeit not unpleasant, sound effects occur. Some are very useful, as you always know when something activates something even if it isn't on-screen. Shots in particular continually make noise until they hit something, and it isn't actually that bad. 2/10

And that's 23.

1984 continues to rise above past years. Reviews all describe the same things I did, and the only exception seems to be more modern players finding the game too weird.

These days, Mr. van Brink is working on another game in the same concept...which has been worked on since 2016 if not earlier. Occasionally, I clown on games for taking forever to be developed, and this definitely seems to be another case of it, but I can't help but hope that he succeeds with this one.