Blake Stone: Technical Planning Offices

E1M2:
This level starts off much smoother than the first. As most levels will start out in the elevator, this isn't a difficult task. The area after the elevator is no less smooth, a door and a few one way doors. Another interesting choice on the developers part. More in light with a puzzle game than a action game.

I choose the normal door. This leads to what I assume is a office hallway, hence the area's name. The scientists stuck here give me plenty of opportunity to kill them before turning aggro. I even get the first strike on occasion. Enough of that, the outer hallway proves more of the same at first.

Here I meet the first of the middle security range. They have the laser rifles but they don't have armor. He's guarding the wrong end of a one-way door. Strange choice. A computer room and then a big door north.

North is just a swarm of enemies, thankfully all the scientists here are enemies, or I'd be in trouble. To the west, a locked door. To the east, a crate...area. I bet Jim and Mike are glad they beat iD to the punch on that one. Naturally it has the required secret areas, but not as much as they could possibly jam in...oh, that's a pun.

Past some guards lies a key. The first real key, the level key is kinda weird. Two mutants hide out in barrels. This room is attached to a...plasma sphere hallway. Naturally this hides a secret. Revealing the final weapon...The Neutral Distruptor. In practice, this is just the chaingun from Wolfenstein. Given the nuclear option, its not very helpful now.

Before I go check the locked door, I naturally check the walls for secrets. This is considerably easier than in Wolfenstein, as Aliens of Gold's map actually works. Its not long before I uncover a series of secret tunnels, something I actually wasn't expecting. Full of pod aliens and ammo. The pod aliens have an interesting design and the holes in their slimey bodies look nice as they die. Well I say that, but it isn't long before I start encountering gold. And at this point I break the half million mark and shoot up to 1.5 million. Thanks million point bonus.

Further in this secret area there's what I'd call a secret monster chamber. The way these mutant barrels work is that something attacks them, or possibly just moves by, and then they get out. In some cases you can get away with not killing them. As I'm going for 100%, I can't do that. I run out of ammo halfway through. How's that for a sentence, I run out of ammo in the secret room, so I run out to get some. There's nothing actually in there, its just monster killing for points sake.

As I get back on track I enter the locked door. My dear friends alien security are already there. I say I'm not using the space gatling gun, but in practice it doesn't seem that's true. Exit key acquired. That's right, the one-way doors are entirely points related...or more correctly a beginners trick.

Well, I say that, but after killing yet another sphere, these guys are tricky, real tricky, I see a crate. The crate contains a laser rifle, safe, easy to get. Easyish. Good luck killing anything in the red key room on the first floor though. Further there are some mutant guards and drones. The drones are kamikaze enemies, and are probably in some Doom wad somewhere. The whole area is designed to make the lack of secrets obvious.

The next room...is a fun one. Turrets, ceiling turrets to be specific. They're not too tough but they seem to shrug off anything weaker than the laser rifle. And they don't get hit by the PDU. There's the area to the other one way door, but getting back requires a gold key. But first, a secret.

Wow, final boss already. Unlike in some games, where the picture of the final boss is just window dressing, Goldfire's portrait is a terrible sign. Be it that he either watches through it, as some informants say, or just that he pops in, each area its in has Goldfire randomly teleport in. I don't know if there's a limit, I don't really care either.

Taking the door that isn't locked, is just more monsters. More or less every actor has shown his face by now, and its just more funnily shaped corridors and one-way doors. Imagine your office having one-way doors. And secret walls.

The exit route is just some mutants. Speaking of weird job experiences, imagine walking down the wrong door and having to walk past these gents. I'm still missing points and monsters, so I wander around until I find the one monster I didn't kill the first time around. Yeah, monsters are counted under total points.

Ah...peace. The reason why I'm already at 50% completion is because of informants, in case you couldn't figure that out.

This Session: 1.5 hour

Total Time: 3.5 hours

Blake Stone: Star Institute General Operations

Back in my misspent youth, I had a big shareware CD that I spent most of my time on. It had the big shareware shooters before Duke and Quake, plus some smaller ones like Depth Dwellers and Isle of the Dead. I've talked about Isle before, its crap, and young me was wise not to play it. Blake Stone is not the best Wolf-clone, that would be Nitemare 3D in this gamer's humble opinion. But Blake Stone takes a not-so-rough second. Now, unlike other Wolf-clones, Aliens of Gold is actually made in the same engine. I'm not sure how close it is under the hood, but above the hood, its got little visual touches, resurrecting enemies, projectiles, automap* and actual non-enemies. This is a first for the more traditional FPS I'm used to, Galactic Empire beat this to the punch, but that's one weird game. Flight sims and Ultima Underworld too, but that's to be expected. Its also designed by Jim and Big Mike who worked on the three Catacomb games.
Blake Stone is a British secret agent in a semi-realistic near future setting. Colonies have been made on various moons and planets, terraforming underway on some of those. He is to be sent to the STAR Institute in order to uncover whatever it is that one Dr. Goldfire is doing. The story doesn't mention what it is nor do the instructions. Which is told mostly in-universe, by a R.E.B.A. voice interface. Its not actually a secret, but whatever. There are 11 levels, 8 regular, one boss, one after that, and a secret level somewhere in the first 8. There are four difficulties, which I do believe control how many enemies there are, but I've never beaten any of the episodes on Veteran, so I'll be picking the next one down, Expert.

E1M1:
The intro text is something about Goldfire being aware of our entrance into the building, yatta, yatta, yatta, he's fleeing, kill the Spider Mutant. Thanks for that helpful tip, game. So much for the secrecy.

The opening area exposes you straight away to an enemy. I don't start with a gun in a certain sense. Its the weakest weapon, the game's no ammo weapon, but it is ranged. Its silent, no activating enemies, and self-charging, so it takes a while between shots. I always thought of it in my mind as like a self-charging flashlight. Imagining Blake furiously shaking his gun before popping off another shot.

Anyway, the weapon the standard guards drop is a "Slow-Fire Protector". Semi-automatic. This fellow is a scientist, some of them are friendly, some of them are not. The friendlies just don't shoot me. There are three ways of detecting which is which, talk to them, stand in front of them or look away and shoot. Shooting them brings down the score. If he's an enemy, he'll attack. You can't just predict which ones will be which. There's a random chance at the start of each episode.

The starting area contains the elevator, which I can't use yet, it requires a red card. It also contains some kind of containment area and a cafeteria, with more guards and an evil scientist. This thing is a food dispenser. There are two kinds, beverage and sandwich. I need food tokens to get one and each thing has a limited supply of items as well. Its an interesting addition, and one I'm sad to see didn't get more use.

The containment area has two mutants. Good job hiding these guys! They can't shoot me through the bars, so I have to push a wall in order to enter, at which point we slug it out. Secrets are not necessary to get a full rating. Being that they don't, of themselves give points, and its points that are of interest. They eat a good chunk of my health, fortunately, there are some steaks on the floor. Hmm, floor steak. There's a little computer room south with two evil scientists. Now, some real secrets.

On the southwestern corner of the map there's an entrance into a room full of ammo. Also inside, two of these orb things. Plasma orbs, I'd guess they're called, but I'm not looking at the message screen while shooting at them. Full ammo, nearly perfect health, time to look for a weapon.

I don't remember this level as well as I thought. I forgot there wasn't a rifle guard in this hallway. Just a pistol guard, who nearly manages to kill me. No, the rifle guard is in a secret passage. Before I do that, I'd like to say there are two kinds of barriers, the ones by the mutants, which are merely solid, and these, which are also damaging. Both can be defeated by turning the power off. The barrier to the mutants on this level can't be changed.

Inside the secret area is a whole bunch of secret areas. I think this is some kind of torture chamber? The guards here have body armor, and will fake being dead in order to throw you off. I think this is planned in a way to surprise the player, but I can't confirm this. You can tell if they're fake dead or real dead. Unsurprisingly, I get shot. Blake Stone runs on a live system, which is seemingly built to easily game over you. You can only get like 2 extra lives after the starting 3. That's what saving and loading is for. Now...to find a way to get weapons without getting shot.

After a few failed attempts to advance...I remember the last difficulty being this hard, but I must just be out of practice here, I finally decide to go straight for the red card. So I enter the brick room, see a scientist, fire a warning shot. Nothing. I talk to him, he's an enemy. Fine. I open the door to the red card room, see some "plasma spheres", and a friendly scientist gets in my way. Good. I am just not hitting what I want to hit.

On the northeastern side of the level there's what can be described as a containment area with gold bars and mutant guards. A secret door let's one collect the gold, after killing the mutants of course. Unfortunately, the guards take a ton of shots from my protector, nearly killing me and my ammo supply. This isn't actually accomplishing anything, I don't think I have anything to gain here. There's a pair of medikits on the end, good thing, since there are two human guards hiding behind the pillars.

There is a secret, which leads straight back to the area with the body armor security guards. All roads lead to Rome. Okay, I didn't want to save-scum, but its clear I have no way of getting past here without it, and my dear friends are protecting what I recall is a rocket launcher. So I take advantage of the two different entrances, open one, thus bringing them towards that, then enter via the other. Only, it doesn't work out that way. I only woke one, and he stayed inside the area. But I did manage to just barely get the rocket launcher and blow them away.
They drop "Rapid Assault Weapons" and the rocket launcher is the "Plasma Discharge Unit". Generic space weapons, whatever. This whole thing was done stupidly on my part, as if I remembered, I could have just gone through the back door and pushed into a different secret, then behind the guards, into a prime spot to grab the PDU.

One of the interesting things the western electrical barriers do is give you an option to kill yourself. Just a switch for the barrier your standing on. Weird. At this point, I encounter the most obnoxious enemy in the game, the High Energy Plasma Sphere...or something like that. In this room, there are three scientists, two of which are enemies, but there are too many of these plasma things. They fire non-stop, they don't take much damage, but they will get the drop on you. And later on these guys have respawning pits. They can't open doors, which would put the cherry on the chocolate sundae.
They're in a sort of...money area. There's a robot too, who cares at this point. Some treasure, more in a secret area. Only one place left to go.

The final battle on this floor proves interesting. Just interesting. There are more robots. Now I did say who cares, but I should also point out that I didn't get hit. They're not any nicer than any other enemy. I have to be careful to avoid killing the informants. 100% enemies dead, which means bonus points. Ah...crap, I missed some of the treasure. This takes more time than I had anticipated, and checking to make sure I didn't miss any secrets. Another 50,000 bonus points, followed by the bonus for keeping all the informants alive. That really doesn't get given until the treasure is full? Whatever.

Ah, full completion. 100% everything. Next level...and I've been here for two hours. Oh, that bodes well. Hopefully the next level is going to go by faster.

This Session: 2 hours

Total Time: 2 hours

*To show how much I remembered this, I didn't even realize this was a first until I started up the second entry, and looking for a date comparison realized that was not a thing already.

Flames of Freedom: Groundhog Day

Last time I had freed the island of Lobos...in a simulation. Something that makes this entry less interesting. On the other hand, I beat that partially by taking advantage of equipment given to me by the game. Since my mode of transportation should be the same I can not make the same mistakes I did last time. There's another small problem, I've got to start a campaign, which apparently takes a fresh floppy, something I have no experience doing in an Amiga...or much of anything. This turns out to be less difficult than I give it, and soon enough I start the imaginatively named Operation Eden. I say less difficult, but naturally the game doesn't wish to cooperate. If I didn't pick out the right floppy going into the screen, I'm screwed over and have to reset. And while I possess the means to create a blank disk, I don't have the means to format it. Back...to DOS...
I'm starting to understand why this game is so unloved, considering how difficult it is to start a proper campaign in Amiga and how crap the DOS version is in comparison. At least loading times should be shorter. Oh...god, does this mean I can't just quit in the middle of a mission? Oh, if it does we'll be ending this play session right here. Right, Lobos, I know the story, and so should you.

Because I know what I'm doing, I'm heading straight for the mountain region, hopefully to knock off some enemies. As I advance more and more, I begin to wonder where the enemies are. I check my map and when I return I remember why I stopped playing the DOS version. Awful static. But at least I know where I should be looking.

The one leader of an enemy squadron I know of quickly loses his two helicopters, but enemy balloons and biplanes join the fray. As my ammo runs low, I jump from copter to another copter, then finally a plane. And let me tell you, flying a plane in this game is terrifying. I jump into a jeep at the first opportunity I get. Hopefully I can drive off the enemy planes with this. I also suspect the static issue is something in the music failing to turn off as modes are changed. This is basically confirmed as I start up autoroute.

So I handle the talking as I did the first time. My contact takes me to his master/serial killer, who takes me to the resistance fighter, who tells me of the secret base and takes me to the island's nurse. Here's where things change up a little. When I'm at the nurse's little island, the name of the island I'm on changes as do my objectives. Interesting. I guess this means I can actually hop islands? No matter, the nurse heals me and tells me of enemies nearby. I think its a target at this time, but I can't actually check.

Anyway, I just swim back. Its not that hard. I can rest up to full health while swimming. However, going full speed tires my guy out real fast. So it takes most of the night to reach the "mainland". Upon which I encounter hovercrafts. Sure would have been nice if you boys were out last night. Anyway, I grab one and start blasting. Now, despite my enjoyment of all this combat so far, I need to figure out where the other two objectives are and I don't have a boat or sub. I don't know if hovercrafts will give me scuba suits when I leave them.

What continues is mostly uninteresting. My autoroute is interrupted twice, once by a need to rest, and the second by some trucks. With those, and a rearming out of the way, I meet the farmhand my contact knows. Unfortunately, this guy needs persuading. Fortunately, he tells me of a traitor. Knowing me, I'll mess up somehow and end up talking to her. He also tells me of someone he knows, someone I remember screwing me over last time. Oh, well. Not everything can work out to my favor.

At this point, I saved and quit. Despite what this seemingly irrelevant act seems like, it is important. Saving going wrong would just be another headache, but fortunately it goes well. I go back to a town I passed on my way down, whereupon I succeed in getting someone to tell me about the people she knows. A very helpful act, but I am no closer to my objectives. I return to my previous plan, but encounter some enemy troops on the way. Bringing me to the street musician. She just offers me more information, the location of a belly dancer and a teacher. Something tells me this tangled web of thieves, whores and farmhands will give me little practical information. I guess I have to bite a bullet and get something out at sea.

One contact is near the sea, the side I think I need to be on, anyway. The lovely person stabs me in the back. I think so anyway. When I check my pictures later, oh, this was the traitor. I thought my pilot friend blew up the resistance center? After a couple of days, I break out. Leaving me on the northern side of the island with no weapons and more importantly, no transport. Transport shows itself soon enough, but I still have no weapons, and no way of traveling on the sea. And this transport isn't even moving anyhow. Time to start swimming.

My efforts pay off. I quickly get on a boat and shoot other boats. Submarines appear and I can even capture them from the boat. Unfortunately, subs are still easy to destroy deathtraps. Eventually I secure myself one, save from the prying hands of the enemy. And I begin to destroy underwater buildings. There are a ton of them. Well, two. This is going to take a while, isn't it?

This Session: 2 hours

Total Time: 9 hours

Game 38: Space Vikings

Name:Space Vikings
Number:38
Year:1982
Publisher:SubLogic
Developer:Mitchell Robbins
Genre:Space Sim
Difficulty:4/5
Time:Under 1 hour

Elite is commonly credited with starting the open-world space simulation as we know it. Wander around, shoot things, trade cargo. Like so many things, it was not because it was the first to do this thing, but rather because it was the first to do it competently. Space Vikings is the first, as far as I can tell. And it quite effectively shows why Elite was such a marvelous work of engineering. This game is not Elite to say the least. Its not a completely fair comparison, as this is more of a war game than Elite's trading-styled game. You're supposed to go from planet to planet, destroying enemy spacecraft, sending ground troops down, and generally being the best general the Galactic Federation can be. That's hard...at least today.

See, the problem with old computers is that when the programmer screws up coding their game slow isn't measured in frames per second, like with most badly done modern games. No, its seconds per frame. Now, the game isn't exactly an intensive dogfight simulator or anything, but seconds per frame made the game nigh unplayable. Say what you will about other slow games I've played, but such problems were usually loading screens or still FPS. I got as far as shooting something at nothing, which caused the starting planet, my own, to attack me. They launched fighters, which my automatic defense system took care of.

Weapons:
Lasers and missiles, generic choices, generically fired. 1/10

Enemies:
I can't rightly say I saw any real ones. But a point for sympathy anyway. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
They exist. 1/10

Levels:
Simple patterns of enemies. 0/10

Player Agency:
Well...nothing much. 0/10

Interactivity:
None. 0/10

Atmosphere:
None. 0/10

Graphics:
Very simple wireframe graphics. Uh, planets look weird. The ships look nice, but that's about it. 1/10

Story:
You are a part of the Galactic Federation, conquer other planets. 0/10

Sound/Music:
Obnoxious Apple 2 sounds. 0/10

That's 4 points. Not bad for an unplayable game. It has a nice concept, but reality hits like a brick, and the lead's desires were not to be met by an Apple 2. Or would they? Elite was on the Apple 2 as well. Looking at Youtube videos of Elite AII, reveals it had a much better framerate than this. Looking at Space Viking ones, well, the control issue is unknown, but the framerate is worse than mine.
SubLogic will return many times, at least until Sierra buys them. Robbins will not, as his only other game is a space simulation that takes place on a completely flat plane.

Mylk

It is hard to think, twenty-seven years, but effectively centuries later, that Myst was as big as it was. It is often joked upon that gaming journalists have no memory, after all, they are the ones to made the claim that violence is the only answer in video games. But they are not interested in looking too deeply at things, and what is the surface of this hobby? People shooting at each other. People crushing each other. People punching each other. Nuclear warfare, magic, globs of poo flung. A game where violence is not only discouraged, but not allowed? Ha.
I leave others to discuss Myst itself. It is like a summer home to me. We can watch the stars in here, over there is where we can watch the waves. We got to close the door first, just touch the painting. And don't worry about those scorch marks, they've been there a while. Over here is the forest, one of the trees is an elevator. I should get a carpenter to install a staircase next to that elevator, I always think I'm gonna get trapped down there.
Mylk, as you can tell by my talking of Myst, is a parody of it. Unlike Pyst, it has neither money nor stupid '90s humor behind it. If you want to know about that, I'd suggest watching Brutalmoose's video on the subject. You can find it on the winds of the internet, but its not worth your time to actually "play". Its not really much of a game, more like a Power Point presentation of how crap the authors were at Myst.

In contrast, Mylk is actually a parody of Myst. By the name, you can tell its going the "everything is dairy" route. Books are instead cartons of milk, ages revolve around cheese. The cast of characters are farm inhabitants. Cows replace Atrus and Catherine, and a chicken and a farmer replace the brothers. The humor manages to be moderately amusing. The Atrus-figure, whenever he brings one of the brother-figures into an age, constantly suspects them of wrong-doing. The farmer is more interested in one age's liberal banking policy, I kid you not. The chicken's so much of an obvious villain that the only thing you ever read about him is him being nuts. Its not a great story, but its amusing for the amount of time the game took to finish.

Now, graphically, this game is quite...uh...shall we say, very bad. I haven't seen much worse than this. Ironically enough, because of the author's use of noise in the artwork, it looks much worse than if he just did flat colors with edges. I'm not sure what two of the ages are supposed to be parodies of. The cheese island could be anything, and the solid blue one is...something. I don't know what. The tree age is the tool age here. I'm not sure I get the joke there.

In terms of gameplay...its okay. Puzzles are less Myst and more...eh...eh...eh...Because of the game's design, sometimes things you activate don't feel like activations at all, and its mostly easy to cheese through things when you figure out what to click on to activate it. Why do these things work this way? Who knows. Its not very fun to actually play, but its over so quickly it doesn't matter. And true to Myst form, once you get the final code, you can finish the game quickly. Here its like a minute.

Would I suggest it? Do you have a Win 3.1 DOS installation lying around and twenty minutes to play a crappy Myst parody? Its above Pyst, but that's like saying...its better than Pyst. Pyst isn't even a game. This is a game, and one that amused me despite its failings.

Flames of Freedom: Hopping Islands

All right, last time I had found out where to hit one of my targets. Now to hit that target. Plus, now I've figured out how to make screenshots in-game. That's gonna solve some of my problems. Now, where am I...?

...Sigh...No boat, a ton of swimming enemies. I might just have to restart anyway. I see another problem. Underwater base. I can probably get a boat assuming I can find a stupid pilot, but a sub or a flying sub isn't going to be easy. I'm seeing why this game didn't get a sequel.

Look at this, they're even at the doorstep already...and he's just as slow as I hoped. Now, boat combat. Boat combat is horrible. You can't hit targets under the water. Your missiles explode if they touch the water. Now I'm not an expert in aquatic warfare, but I'm pretty sure that's the stupidest thing you could do. So much so that I'm pretty sure this is a result of in-game incompetence. No military that has survived WWI would not do that. Here, nobody must have ever thought about it since they have flying subs anyway. So I have a valiant fight with a boat. Takes a lot of damage, good thing too, since dodging seems impossible and turning is slow.
After my inevitable loss of the boat, I start to consider how badly I'm screwed. Open waters, low energy, tons of enemy vehicles that want me dead. Dunno if this game is going to break how the first did it, I'm not going to hold my breath. Another boat acquired, but I'm running on fumes. I thought I rested at the end of the last session? Does hiding out not rest me up? Checking my map to make a route, and I can definitely foresee I'm about to get screwed. I've made a grand total of very little, there's still seven boats, no subs though, must be more confusing crap here than I thought.  Well, might as well kill them all. I'm already screwed.
More fighting ensues, resulting in me losing another boat. This is going to be a long game. As I stand still, hoping to regain some strength, I just how my health is doing. Apparently I'm only down some 33% and some minor injuries. Not bad for someone who doesn't know what he's doing. But now there's not a boat nearby, and my injuries prevent me from reaching my top speed. So I do the only thing I can do, autoroute to land.

As soon as I arrive, I encounter a neutral NPC. Fortunately, I think I can persuade her. This turns out to end badly for me. As soon as I try to seduce her, I am captured by the secret police. Imagine my luck when I find out my prison guard is also a woman. At which point I am beaten. I'm not entirely sure, but I think I screwed up during character creation. Well, guard number two looks like a dweeb, so I'm sure I can beat him up. I'm right, shocking. Now, where am I?

North-western side, nice, nice. Not too far from one of my objectives. Unfortunately, I don't have a craft capable of going underwater and I'm sure I'm not going to enjoy finding one. So I walk back to Patrick Wilson. He doesn't have a boat, but he does offer me a hiding place. I guess I'm going to be swimming.
Ah...good, they've found me. Thanks a lot bud, see if I show up as a character witness in your trial. They've got tanks, which means poor offense from yours truly. Multiple direct hits, dumb-fire. Of all the games to have realistic tank combat, its the one that moves slowly. Right, take the tank to the see, then flee to the enemy base and hope I don't screw up.

I am interrupted by boats. Getting out of autoroute in the middle of combat is annoying. You are kicked back to the regular screen, followed by entering the map and then clearing your route. Now I'm on a boat. This is going to be fun. Somehow I managed to kill most of the fleet I was engaged with. As I'm doing this, a new color appears on my radar. I have yet to see a light blue icon recently. Not a good sign. But as quickly as it appeared, it disappears. Must be something on land, and that's of no concern to me right now. Nevermind, to the secret base. Hopefully a sub takes some bait.
I'm shocked there's nobody here. What kind of defenses are these? Just the one set of boats that fled from my superior boating skills? What kind of crap is that? Spoke too soon, now to capture something...I hope. The boat lets me leave with a scuba suit. I think they're called frogmen. Doesn't matter. Underwater, the enemy has a flying sub, which is too fast for me to capture for once, and a regular sub.

The sub, as I didn't notice during my first test drive, is confusing to boat. You don't see up and down like every other vehicle, you go up and down. After some misses due to the missiles on a sub being useful, I hit the building. Score. Now to drive off my enemies. Or get shot. Underwater, enemies seem to be able to hit you almost non-stop, with little change of dodging or counter-attacks. Swimming speed underwater also doesn't help, so you can just quickly change together a series of captures.

Curiously, during this quite long combat, I manage to eliminate a whole squad of flying subs. Takes a ton of missiles, not to mention taking the boat in reverse a good chunk of the way to land. I finish off this grand combat by escaping the enemy subs to land, the boats having broken off. My final capture is some speed boat. It is faster, and it has the same arms, but can also go on land. Which makes it 1 out of 3 objectives, seven hours in.
Which, obviously, leads to a minor problem. I still have no idea where the other two fellows come in, and I'm not entirely certain anything I do here is permanent. So, I'm going to take advantage of the special equipment the game gives you. First item, Black Widow, which targets my next target and kills them, after 40 minutes. Second item, Flying Fox, which destroys the next building or village on my list, after 2 hours. In a long game, this gives me very quick, very simple results, should I be running low on time. After a short period of driving around, it starts loading and a new tune starts up. Lobos is liberated. Is it just a theoretical thing or is it real? A return of the intro cutscene happens. The island turns pink, two others liberated...Each island gives me something material and a secret weapon, no doubt due to my selection of difficulty. It then returns me to the main menu. So, that's a good test run then. Next time, the real thing...and I'm going to have to play this mission over again. This is going to reach 80 hours isn't it? Right, next time, Morpheus tries to figure out how an emulated empty floppy works.

This Session: 2 hours

Total Time: 7 hours