Rejection: Sewers and Submachine Guns

I start exploring from the start again, going dead south. I curiously find myself ending up in strange dialogs like this, that I saw before finding a gun last time. Hmm, that's a strange sign because the area this was in has nothing in it. Wait, there's absolutely no exit out of here except through the area I was exploring last time. Guess I need to explore that some.

But first, let's see that camp in more detail. There's the camp leader again...and there's a medic. I found two medikits connected to the start area, so I think that health isn't a problem if I can untangle myself from the zombies. I just need to survive. Considering the level design here is on the mazey side, that will be tricky.

Testing out the knife some more, I see that it has some decent range, which means if I should probably rely on it more than I have been. Enemies tend to back off when you hit them, but not run away, not that it matters when they respawn. So you can fight them this way. Activating the menu to switch weapons does cause the game to pause, which is nice.

 

I reach Shinjuku again, and there's another new enemy. Metal zombie. He's only the toughest zombie yet, capable of killing me in three shots, about 90 damage to my 210 health, not survivable. The shotgun is actually a crappy weapon, since it deals less damage than the revolver somehow and the pellets aren't guaranteed to hit. Enemies are moving around a lot more, they actually get a fair bit of space, a lot between and in the middle of tiles. How odd considering they basically have two sprites, one standing and one attacking.

I guess "bodcon" is this zombie lady. "Body conscious"?

Oh, wow, there are two more enemies, a redane, which I don't know what it is or what it means, and a woman in a red dress. The revolver kills everything in Shinjuku, but accuracy is in question, since they move around a lot and the revolver kicks. There's also just a ton of enemies. This path is clearly wrong. And when I'm dying the game is freezing for some reason. Oh, well.

At this point I get stuck. I have no problems with the zombies in the first area connected to the camp, but I can only find this section of Shinjuku, which is odd because I distinctly remember another entrance, and more importantly, I found an area that wasn't Shinjuku, full of enemies that were not these. Right, so I need to make a map. Time to fire up Gridmonger. I'm not sharing them, because they're not really accurate, not that I think it matters, there doesn't seem to be any secrets. At least there's no way to figure out there are secrets, nothing happens when you move into a wall. Movement is so sticky once you get going that it would be a problem if it did.

It turns out that I was missing one fairly obvious door by simply misremembering that it was a dead end. That's it, there are three doors, where I came from, Shinjuku the hellzone, and then the actual path forward. Strange, but accurate.

The south door is the one I want, the one I entered before, and the area I find myself in now. I had hoped that I could just walk normally at this point, but alas, the game isn't that generous. The wall sprites were nicer than usual at first, but there are only two variations. Door and not door. I quickly find myself lost and in my hastiness to fight zombies, dead.

Proceeding more carefully this time, I'm rewarded with a level-up. Apparently I got hit several times, because I'm at less than half my new health total. Otherwise its slow goings. The north side of this area has two of the guns I mentioned last time, the 92F and the P.38. I decide to save the P.38 for later, dumping the shotgun now, despite its less than useful nature, seems unwise. I might actually need it.

Levels seem to be relatively small, and despite the doors making things awkward, I do appreciate the game breaking itself up like that, both from a mapping perspective and a playability perspective, enemies can't go through doors. There's one door further south, and three areas with a single enemy. And the door south leads to the enemies that were too tough for me but still killable. So my assumption that the game wasn't really level gating itself was both right, because I could go to Shinjuku if I was insane, and wrong in that this is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.

This isn't an actual enemy, it's blocking the way out and can't be killed.

This brings up several questions regarding the intended playing style of this game. I can grind, but it's not fun. The game's dialog seems to be telling me I shouldn't be trying to fight the blue guy, who is called Halycon, but I keep mentally thinking Frost Giant. I can't really deal enough damage to him, the magnum kicks far too fiercely for me to ever reliable hit something with it. I wonder if that's the point? No, I just wasn't fighting hard enough. All right, whatever. Bones that were guarding the way out disappear.

Welcome to Meguro, everyone. We got giant rats. I mean giant mice. And here I thought this game was going to be off-the-wall. Though I guess rodents of that size isn't typical. And then giant alligators that look like Killer Croc. Fish too. Guess these are the mutants. Why am I getting Operation Bodycount vibes? When you're promised one thing and then you get a maze full of random wildlife? I complain, but enemies are stealthy in a way that works, you have to follow the shadow, then have your cursor at the right height to attack them when they attack you.

It's also a fairly simple level, at least at first. There are no doors, despite the massive number of pipes around, so you just have to carefully advance, most paths at a crossroad lead to a dead end. The enemies make it annoying, but they're not so difficult to deal with as to be unfathomable. Guns feel useless here, since enemies only appear when they're close. At this point, I also realize that my character is in fact, carrying around a medikit, seems to heal a quite low amount of health, currently 52. Not...great.

Then the path I was taking leads to a dead end, and I have to find a way back. Despite slaughtering a metric ton of enemies, I am somehow still level 2. I take well over 1200 XP to reach level 3. Which will present a problem for me eventually if I need to grind. There's not really a lot to talk about, since every RPG of this style has these twisting corridors with the occasional big room. It's decent level design, but not quite suited to more of a straight action game.

Curiously, most of these enemies can't hurt me if I'm quick on the draw, I suspect there's some system in place to cause more damage to K-Ko if I get hit in the behind. It's a good thing to ponder as I get completely lost, not finding any way forward or any way back. I hope this is solving my grinding problem, at least short term. I could fire up Gridmonger again, which I stopped when I reached the Frost Giant, but I at least vaguely recognize everything at this stage. In the sense that I recognize that I'm not where I should be.

Monster art looks great in screenshots, but don't be fooled, it's mostly static.

And then as I make my way back, I realize there's little hope of that working out now. I have to hope against hope that I can stumble my way back. The corridors all look the same. Perhaps I could remember it all if I really focused, but mapping this area feels like it would have less of a point than if I just memorized it. Though I say this, and when I finally make it back, I spot that the way back out is another pipe, indistinguishable from any other. Guess I'm going to have to bite the bullet. The comparison to Isle of the Dead is complete, the only thing missing are a few rule breaking puzzles and a mad scientist at the end.

That said, while the game doesn't drop ammo as you go along, you can get a refill from base. And from the doctor. I really hope these aren't limited. I'd rather not have health and ammo be a completely limited resource. I also take the opportunity to figure out exactly what each of my skills is. Life power, body power, defense power, quickness, level and experience. Quickness is a thing? Why? I haven't noticed anything. I'm also not sure what the difference between body and defense power is. Is body power offense? If so, why didn't they just say offense?

Rather than do this all by mapping, I just do it by the old reliable of following one wall, in this case the left, and paying attention to any and all pipes, hoping one leads somewhere else. I'll be screwed if some part of the area is on an island, that is, going left or right exclusively will never lead you there. It turns out that while I might have missed it, it still follows the usual game logic of door that's in a dead end/recess is enterable but the others aren't. God forbid you design two doors per level, one you can't and one you can enter.

I have no idea how I seem to have hit him first for that much and my proceeding difficulty.

Shinagawa, we've been looking forward to seeing you. I see I've been misspelling your name all this time. There's a hot second before I spot my first enemy. Practically looks like a bandit rather than a zombie, but he's a hell zombie. Hell's Angel, presumably. He's...he's immune to my knife. Great. He's immune to my pistol too. Wait, am I even hitting him? Is he tough or is his hit box broken? Using the Python tells me he's tough. So there is some level gating going on. He's guarding some more portable medikits, which I don't need right now. Let's explore elsewhere.

Right, another new kind of zombie. Tobi. Which off-hand means flying, but apparently serves as an abbreviation for several different kinds of workers, construction, firefighters. Hey, he's guarding a box. Does it have a weapon? Yes. YES! It's a FN P90. Belgium's most important contribution to humanity. I take back everything bad I've ever said about this game. It says its in 9mm, but who cares? It's not sharing ammo with anything. I'm also pretty sure this is the first video game to include the P90, at the very least first FPS*. Let's see if it lives up to my hype.

*The IMFDB says so, in that there isn't anything before the late '90s but they also don't mention Jagged Alliance, so I don't know how reliable that is.

This strikes me as a perfect place to pause. Solved a nasty maze, got myself some kickass firepower and have a nice section with which to grind myself some experience if need be. Even that trip back is going to do nothing to dissuade my good mood. They've earned themselves a lot of good will here. Level design is somewhat mazey, but you can shred zombies with a P90. Turning is a bit janky, but when you do, you shred a zombie with a P90. Not enough games do that.

This Session: 3 hours 10 minutes

Total Time: 4 hours 10 minutes