Xenomorph: On the Other Side

I've cleared out the upper levels, so now we're at level 3, and holy crap, if I thought the previous levels seemed elaborate for a DM-clone, this is like those Islamic geometric patterns. I'm exaggerating, but it's a strange example of artstyle over art quality. This is a maze by the looks of things, but no necessarily in a bad way. I'll probably change my mind.

I find some more grenades quickly, bringing me up to four. If this keeps up, I won't need to worry about fighting anything tough. This makes Galactic Empire look like...uh...a game with one grenade. Then a green keycard. These choices are, from the start of this level, respectively, left, and right, then left, and those are the only things in those rooms. Odd. A stroke of bad luck could have prevented me from grabbing those, though.

The way this level is going to play out becomes quite nastily apparent. The blob creatures roam this level, not that tough, though two take 60% of my gun, no, the big problem is that it seems this level drains my health. I'm guessing that I'm missing a helmet that can work in a zero oxygen environment or whatever and what I actually have on is a combat helmet. If only the manual had spent time telling me what defense equipment did, because I didn't see anything about it.

I find a red gun. It has three settings, which are either what power setting its on or what frequency its on. It looks like its some sort of sonic gun, that is noise waves, but your guess is as good as mine. I recheck the manual again, its a stun gun, which I guess is supposed to have some purpose beyond junk. I can only imagine because an enemy is invulnerable to my usual weapons or invulnerable in general. Probably just flavor though.

What, is this ripping off The Terminator now too?

Wandering around, I get lost and die to some random slime. Really lame death screen here, barely even worth mentioning. But I do eventually find my way out, somehow, and pick up some mines and another battery to go with it. I have three guns, four batteries for my primary, two for my secondary and a full mag for the third; Two rockets, two mines and four grenades. I really hope I need this stuff for something, because right now I feel like I'm picking this stuff all up for nothing.

I get a real helmet, meaning now I can actually explore this level without having to worry about dying. Or not, as I quickly discover my health is still going down, just slower. Worse, now some of the slimes are invulnerable to my laser gun, the green gun and grenades. Guess that's why they gave me the stunner. Or not, because it doesn't work after shooting them. Maybe I was supposed to shoot them with the stunner first, but I'm probably thinking too much about it. There's nothing I can do now except bait them out of the way if I have to.

This is actually going to present a considerable problem later on, because the way down has many, many slimes, and I can't afford to take any hits. Sure, it'll only cost me half my health bar to get down there, but that's not a great amount. I hope, I really hope, that one of these weapons kills off the slimes because otherwise I'm completely screwed here.

Level 4 of the base starts off quiet. Too quiet. The corridors are winding, but open-ended, I find the usual machines, but no items I can use. Lots of doors, thankfully.

Then I find a room full of these things. I guess the next evolution of the alien creature or something. Looks like it was taken from Shadow of the Beast. There's a corpse in the corner with plenty of items, none of which I can grab without fighting these things, so I'll leave that for later. I just need to find a recharge room.

Finally, I find some stuff, the game is beyond generous with it, more mines, grenades and another battery. Its at this point that I realize I left my ID card in the upstairs recharge station, and thus I've put myself in a walking dead situation. Fortunately, I did something unintended, I copied a save from earlier to somewhere else, and can place myself back there. I need to render these slimes inoperable somehow.

Grenade doesn't work, stunner doesn't work, maybe the mines? No. Well, permanency is out of the question, so I'm going to have to hope the stunner won't result in the situation I'm dealing with. Testing it doesn't seem to show it resulting in anything unusual, but that could just be how it works. I.E., it seems to be killing them, not stunning them. Fortunately, I can test it right away because I forgot to get the ID card, AGAIN. Nope, stun gun's legitimately useless.

This leaves me with one option, mad dash through, and hope that when I'm on the other side coming back, shoot them. This of course, relies on the lower levels having enough ammo, likely, and no weapon that can kill the slimes, unknown. I must admit despite my problems with the game it is nice that it is producing problems like this, makes the solving of it more interesting. I just need to hope that I don't have to be the developers to win.

At least I found the second recharge point quickly. Also a nice little scene with these cocoons, you know they were going for it. These guys are not very tough at all. Even better, it's right next to the ladder down, I check there a bit and find more floppies, containing information I already knew about the slimes, and telling me about a life pod. And when I've returned, the...uh...crab/goat aliens are gone, no resurrection for them.

There are a lot of vending machines on this level, including a first for the regular drink vending machine. These cost money, you don't know how much you have, so when I run out is a mystery. I'm keeping my money since its not necessary and the medical and recharge machines may require money. They are important, this is not. I ran past slimes with zero stamina, I'm not worried about it.

What I am worried about is how many items they're giving me, look at this, two rockets, three guns, six batteries, with the newest one being blue for some reason, four mines and seven grenades. (One of the batteries is in the radio, possibly one is in the scanner too, didn't check) I have had zero reason to use anything beyond my regular laser gun. I haven't tried out the green one yet, I think it's actually a bullet gun and not a laser gun.

Now to take out that big area full of the crabs. I don't know why I thought they looked like goats, turns out when you shoot things quickly you don't pay attention to what they look like. I didn't say this regarding the enemy sprites, but they look great despite the limitation animation and poor choice of palette.

Anyway, the big area had a full suit of armor...and why am I telling you this when you are looking at the unholy Cylon/Stormtrooper knock-off already. What the hell is with the helmet and hands, seriously? I look like a robot. I also don't know what the cause is, but after putting on this armor, because I'm sure its better than what I had, I lose health consistently, usually if I run out of stamina. Bizarre that it would be a problem now.

Surprisingly, this isn't the end of the level despite seeming to, there's still a ton of it left. Including a ;adder up, which completely ignores the sewer area with the slimes and is just straight back to facehugger central. There's also a ladder down, which I don't thoroughly explore, it has another floppy talking about the deadly slimes. I feel silly now. Wait, that might mean I've put myself in an unwinnable situation in another way. Crap. On the other hand, health lowering only happens on the lower floor. So, I need to restore my stamina without risking my money. I hope this isn't timed.

It takes about an hour, which I didn't count for the session's total, stamina seems to regenerate much quicker at the extreme lower end, probably due to some programming quirk. Which I have to say, objectively, is the worst resting time I have ever seen in a view game, and I want to make clear, I HOPE is the objectively worst resting time I will ever see in a video game. Really hope this isn't timed.

I find something else that looks like a rocket. I can use it though, its some kind of homing mine. I activate it and it runs off, but if I run into it, it explodes and doesn't damage me. Either this armor is great or this is crappy. But this does present a problem, because now I have no space anymore. It's seemingly unimportant because I can presumably win most fights through sheer attrition now, but it does present a few issues.

Somehow, this area still goes on. It seems to mostly be one path continually in one direction, not exactly great design, but I'm not going to be fighting slimes on the way back and I can navigate it, so complaints are mostly quibbling. I find another fuel station. So I take a jaunt back to the ship, also taking another floppy with me.

That's more slimes, but I can take this opportunity to see what I've managed to gather and put it all safely in the ship. Still seemingly no change in fuel, I'm going to have to hope that's an intentional error, that is, because I haven't fixed the computer and restored the OS, it still thinks there's no fuel. Or there's no buffer between "fuel depleted" and "fuel full".

The Cylon Stormtrooper outfit is turning out to be a constant health drain, even back up here, which means its very good news that I'm probably not going into the area I dubbed the sewers, which after further research is clearly supposed to be interior ducts. I also take out some of the chips in the CNS I found before, but this causes the doors to stop working, so I'll save that for the very end.

I return to the crab monster floor again, somehow finding the level still has more in it, but, its just barely, and the most important thing of all. This level's CNS, which even has a CNS chip in it. As I just said, I'm going to hold off on touching these until the end, but I do take the opportunity to ensure I know where to go to get to everything important, except the other ladder down, which I originally entered and now for some reason cannot find.

I'm enjoying this, but it is not without considerable flaws. Its hard to describe my feelings precisely, it has things about it that are very good, but the actual game feels like a beta from before the final polish was put in. Like finding the unreleased beta of a game that's nearly complete, not worth it for your average player, but someone more into what they're trying to do would find it worth it.

This Session: 3 hours 00 minutes

Total Time: 7 hours 00 minutes