A.G.E: Monster Hunter

With the key I found earlier, and the key I got from the alien inside the bar, I now have two keys. I don't remember which is which, Tecnos is probably the new one. It does present an interesting problem if keys don't disappear. The whole thing turns out to be moot, because the game turns out to display the symbols on the gate. It's never occurred to me, but that's better than the color system.

I explore elsewhere first, because the factory is the next location and I need to find some restorative place. Instead I find a place I can deposit my weapons. I can't imagine I'll ever need this, but okay. Then I find out there's a prison, with a guard in front of it, another combat and survival dose, and then another guard tells me about express service. Nothing I didn't figure out last time, it's fast travel, but I need a TK from the administrator. This is actually playing out a lot like Strife will a few years from now. I wonder if they played this?

More complex than Resident Evil, not that complex, but it's early days.

As I examine the express service, I back up and something talks to me. Only one triangle is the TK? So this is some weird puzzle. Guess which triangles are telling the truth and which are telling lies to figure out which one has the TK I need. I didn't think it was possible, but Coktel Vision got weirder than Inca. This also seems confusing, clicking has the triangle talk to me, how do I pick one up? I get distracted by my Formec running out of oxygen and while trying to find a station rather than using my held items, die.

The actual puzzle.

Straight down the road from the above leads to a guard who gives you an audience card, which seems to allow this to show up, which is the opposite view of the above. Thus this is the administrator? The green triangle says it has the TK, the white triangle says the TK is elsewhere, the blue says the white one is correct. Now I didn't quite figure this out at first, because the hint that only one triangle is lying just registered in my mind that some are lying and some are truthful and I got confused. That said, I really should have figured that the red one wasn't right. The correct answer of course, is the blue one.

The express service, which I now realize means an express service teleporter, like a train, does things somewhat cleverly and somewhat annoyingly, depending on what you have in your inventory you can select a multiple amount of destinations, in this case, to the administrator's office. The game loads here.

I didn't realize this at the time, but this is the ruler of the planet.

So this weird sphere is the governor, who knows I'm an imperial agent. I don't actually know if I'm supposed to have cover, but in a different game I would be very worried if my cover was this blown. He basically tells me everything has gone to hell, there wouldn't be a game otherwise. Interestingly, he tells me not to contact the General, he's plotting against him. He has his police looking out for my friend. I would question if I should trust him, but the last game went nowhere near where I was suspecting it would, this could go anywhere.

More importantly, this actually changes the context of the Galactic Empire duology. Before it seemed like a weird Coktel Vision game series that didn't sell as well as they hoped, and now it seems like a series they genuinely believed in and continued the same vein with Inca. With this one, it no longer feels like that oddity, it feels like an integral part of, at least Coktel Vision's adventure game history.

Now to go to that factory. The game continues to be generous, I get what I'm just going to call night vision. I'm not liking how everything has to be in the use slot though. (Shields work automatically, which is the one good thing) It just turns the screen green. After another turret, I spot this android lady. She just asks if I have a pass, I say yes and she lets me through. Guess I do. Another guy, one of the weird-looking ones, upgrades my laser. I didn't realize that Laser E referred to its grade, now it's a Laser D. I wonder if that's an indication of how long the game will last?

There's another android lady who asks the same thing. I get past her, but after her she starts shooting at me. Guess she wasn't fooled. I blast her, use my items to restore health, and then ponder how to get past the blockage. I guess I should just shoot this thing. And it works. After this, I find out my restorative efforts were wasted, there's a healing station and a teleport just past here.

Past this is the factory, guarded not by a Tecnos, he just lets me in, but by two crabs who can't be hurt. "I had to use grenades to kill a crab" is not a sentence I was expecting to say on this blog, and for all I know they do nothing, because I'm not wasting grenades on them, I can run past them. Only I can't, because I don't actually know how to open the door. Aha, I realize, I can crank up my weapon power. Now how do I get in? Just a lucky click.

It's another interior screen. Talking to the person, not robot, on the left here, tells me that the robots have taken over here, and I'm guessing I don't want to talk to them. They're making the people work like animals! So I have to play a game of which person is...a person. Or not, a screen pops down. It's Karin Gestalt, Teknopopesse. Translated from French, Teknopopess. No, I have no idea who it is, she just appeared. I wish this game had the nice dossier that the original had. She'll give me a Gravitik Bomb in exchange for fixing the robots for them. Since she has the lofty title of Teknopopess, I'm guessing fix means blast. No, just bring them the DARC (Anti-Robot weapon, I forget what that actually stands for) from Saar Soufi. As soon as I get it, I'll go to Tekno City, anyway, I now have a fusion gun.

Apparently, Imperial Agent is tattooed on my forehead.

I don't have any other location to go, so I return to the bar. That's right, it seems. Man, this setting is wasted on what this game actually is. They know I'm an imperial envoy, man, I have no cover story, everyone just knows I'm an imperial agent. He's a Teknos and doesn't actually have any information for me. The woman is Mother Lio a member of the local church, the Rachnou, I forget the exact game. She gives me a pass for her church, where the DARC is.

So I go back to the various express stations. There isn't anything that corresponds to the church in any. Then I spot a garage for formecs, where I can change formecs for some reason. There's no sign I'll need it yet. Past that, however, is a tunnel that the new key I got opens. I meet a church member, who tells me to watch out for the mine, Konrad, the local despot put it there. I'm thinking that it's a safe bet that I'm not going to be friends with Konrad at the end of this. Fortunately, I can shoot that, unfortunately the flying octopi after it are less killable, and the path back has been removed. I have also run out of inventory space, in the sense that the game won't let me pick up anything more, not that I'm out of spaces.

Another interior scene. We get a nice animation before we see a priest through a long range communication device. They're willing to give me the DARC, but the priest who had it, Saar is missing. Instead, I have to find a hermit, on his island in the desert where he and his pet octopi live. (That must be a language quirk that didn't translate properly) I foresee this is going to end poorly.

NOT A SKUNNY GAME!

I'm brought to the island via a map...

And now I'm here. This is an extremely dangerous situation to be in, because I have practically no way of restoring my meters here. I'm just running off supplies, which is a dangerous game to play. The game has a grenade dispenser nearby, which I take advantage of, because I don't have the firepower to deal with anything else. I meet a person who tells me to find the hermit in the desert with a tracer he's given me.

This guy's a hunchback who immediately attacks me.

The area is far more open than the endless pathways that made up Shade, but it's not that much more open. You get a big central area with one pathway leading into the smaller central area. Once you talk to a priest you get the pathway to another big area that works the same way. There's no service station, so I'm fearful of running out of something.

This fear, while not unwarranted, is not entirely correct, soon enough I start finding restorative items and now the game becomes a question of juggling this all. I haven't dropped anything outside of empty restoratives just yet, a major problem. And it's at this point that I accidentally drive into a river and die. Because I spotted the hermit on the radar. Well, I can fix this...sort of. The weapon I can drop off, items that aren't important right now I can place where they are important. It turns out I don't even need the cards for travel, they're just for some doors.

The second time around I notice that my oxygen sure is dropping fast. I reach the hermit and find out why, the damn aliens are draining my oxygen with their attacks, and there are no visible sources. Worse, the hermit is as foretold, surrounded by octopi, and grenades don't seem to work. Nor does the stunner or the laser C I somehow acquired. Apparently Jeremy Clarkson had a hand in this game, because the answer is always more power. At least when I finally get rid of the hostiles, Monh the hermit is friendly, but doesn't have the DARC. He does tell me that Konrad, the despot, probably kidnapped Saar and I already met him, he's the governor. When I go back, the priests tell me that I should break him out of prison.

Before I end, I just want to note that just past the church I found another service station, curse my luck and another thing that seems to require a decompressor. Still, at least I'll be able to kill those octopi floating around, but it looks like I'll actually need to grab some of those floating oxygen items, since I used my last one surviving the desert island. Gah...

Further observations, I should really be paying more attention to names, because I didn't realize that despot/governor/ruler Konrad were all referring to the same person.

This Session: 2 hours

Total Time: 3 hours 40 minutes