Inca II (1993)

Name:Inca II
Number:220
Year:1993
Publisher:Sierra
Developer:Coktel Vision
Genre:Space Simulation/Adventure
Difficulty:3/5
Time:5 hours 20 minutes
Won:Yes (91W/71L)

I don't understand this game. Why it exists, what they tried to do with it, and what they expected people to get out of it. We're four games deep into Coktel Vision's space action games, and while we're slightly better in combat than we were in 1990, we're just getting to, well, it's acceptable, while the rest of the game has been suffering more and more. Galactic Empire had an excuse, it was 1990 and nobody knew what the hell a first-person shooter was, Inca II does not.

My best guess for all this, is that the people assigned to do a game with space combat were not fans of space combat games. They had a list, and had to stick with it. Of course, they didn't put any effort into the adventure game portion either, but we expect adventure games from Coktel, not space sims. The attempts at making the plot more shifting feels like it was taken from space games, since Wing Commander is the only game of this era that actually managed to do something like that.

Which goes all out the window when I look at the credits and see names that were the previous games, some even worked on E.S.S., so they believed in this idea. How are they six games deep into this vague concept and nowhere near being better than when they started? I realize that outside of E.S.S., it's all been downhill score-wise, but that hides that Galactic Empire and Inca were both more about the experiences than the actual gameplay.

He's spying on you!

Inca II is not really about the experience. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the game has the balls to treat its characters like people and to kill off a main character, but it doesn't keep itself going after that. When I started, I kept thinking about Krull, a visually interesting movie with an unimportant story. Inca treated its world of a resurrected Incan figure in space as completely sane despite being, well, crazy, and I thought Inca II was trying to make the story grounded, the forces of good are just Incan-inspired, the bad guys are just Spanish-inspired.

These space combats are the only place where the story choices matter, you get more if you chose certain actions, which may make the last one easier.

The plot goes off the rails when the main character, Atahualpa, dies and we're forced to play as the main character from the first game, Eldorado. Despite the promises of a branching story, there seems to be no way to avoid this. It's at this point that ideas seem to be pulled from places that have no place belonging in the story as previously established. Every planet seems to have a random person on it who seemingly could not have gotten there and there are frequently no signs of anyone else. It's not surreal, it's ill-fitting.

Eldorado is weird this time around. In combat, he's very obviously mortal, but the existence of his powers implies something a lot more is going on. Most of the game is dedicated to laying down his powers to destroy a great asteroid threatening the Earth, but not that it's going to crash into the planet. At other times, he seems subservient to people he shouldn't be subservient to, like his wife or someone who is effectively a random guy on the council he set up.

WHAT!?

To top it all off, we don't even get a resolution to the game, at the end it turns out that a here-to-unmentioned god (Unless you count the European title) got awakened, presumably by Eldorado, and then does some stuff. It's not even a sudden downer, he just comes back and shoves off. Nor is it a Cthulhu Ex Machina. What was the point of anything then!?

Getting to the gameplay, we now just have space shooting sections and adventure sections, no more ground combat. I can't help but feel that this change is for the worse, it's not that they were good in of themselves, but they made adventure sections you moved around in; Here every adventure section is very self-contained. Maybe this would be better if they were better, but I just feel limited in what I can do in every place.

Most of all, this feels like an interactive movie, better than that implies from the time, but worse than that should be. It's feels like you're just acting out your part in a script you haven't read, and everyone else just awkwardly stands there waiting for you to do your part. Things that would make sense for a character in a movie to do fill the game. The game frequently does these in a way that only works because you have such limited options that you would naturally do these things just by clicking around.

Look ma, a 3D cutscene!

Don't get me wrong, there are actual aspects of this that are an interactive movie, like little cutscenes that play to show some action has taken place or the overwhelming importance of the story. Which is odd because it doesn't feel like the story should be the primary part. It's just that usually when a game is like an interactive movie, it's either a crappy game full of FMV, or a game with a nice story that puts you in control of the nice action scenes. I'm guessing this is just a failed attempt at the later, but my last guess was very wrong.

Such lovely art, wasted here.

The adventure game sections are pointless, they're just there for pretty backgrounds. But the space sections, well, they're just there because the last game had them. I could go into detail, but you basically move with the mouse and you have an infinite laser weapon, along with specialized missiles for special targets. I want to point out that I was playing along with the TAG review, and Ilmari, who lost every space battle last time, won the final space battle. If someone who admits they aren't good at the genre won, do I need to go into detail? Though I must admit, I'm not sure there's much detail to go into.

It's not technically just moving the face up and down, but it sure looks like it in motion.

Visually, it's very nice, the 3D is of the period to a certain extent, but the 2D art is very nice. Two complaints I have are that some of the 3D animations loop far too obviously, and the real actors are animated by moving parts of their face down. That's very awkward, and I can't help but feel like it was intended as a counter to Lost in Time's lack of showing the mouth. Like these guys felt that no mouth was a lame move. I think it's the opposite, no mouth gave a mysteriousness to that game, whereas this felt cheaply animated.

If anything, the game looks too good for what it is. It's like a book where the cover is really cool, but the actual writer is boring at best. Often, a really beautiful screen will flash by for a single moment, never seen before or after. A graphic artist's hours are not the same as a programmer's hours, but still, they were used for something that wasn't that important.

The CD version I played added in some stuff which honestly made the experience worse. There's a maze and then a final puzzle which add absolutely nothing to the game, much like the rest of the endgame. Then we have the voice acting. Everyone is terrible. Sometimes this works in the game's favor, like Atahualpa sounding like a whiny teen or the Han Solo knock-off sounding like he's collecting a paycheck. Other times it doesn't, like Eldorado being wooden in a way that never works. When Eldorado's son dies, his cry of "no" doesn't sound like he's dead, just that he ordered an expensive souffle for dessert and he wants to see a football game at home.

To close this off, I just thing that in most little ways this game was worse. Like I said, Inca was an experience, this was not. There are no little touches that make the game come off as Incan-themed, even the music is just sort of there. It's not really Incan themed, it's just sort of there, filling the void. I recognize it listening to it after the fact, but it just isn't interesting or memorable.

Weapons:
A laser weapon with a weird firing arc, and basically weapons that take out one kind of target. There's no crosshair, and there's no way to figure out where you're actually shooting. 1/10

Enemies:
The game talks up a lot about enemy ships, how many varieties there are, how they're all piloted by different kinds of pilots. The difference is that some don't move, some do, and sometimes there are way too many. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
Despite a great deal of implication, there are no in-game friendlies. 0/10

Levels:
Something I never thought I'd say, but the game flows too well. It ensures that the game doesn't get stale, but at the same time it plays out like a series of events with no buffer between them. 3/10

Player Agency:
You control 99% of the game with the mouse, shoot, turn, all the adventure stuff. Other actions require the keyboard. Plus and minus control speed, although it's sometimes automatic. The function keys select your weapons. Some other keys, along with spacebar, control your targeting. You can tell it's a European game of this era when the developers don't understand how a keyboard is supposed to be used. 5/10

Interactivity:
Click on things and things happen, sometimes the puzzle makes sense, often it doesn't even if it should. 2/10

Atmosphere:
In theory, a wide variety of differing places and moods should work for a space opera game...but that is done far better in other works. 3/10

Graphics:
For the most part, beautiful and well-animated. 8/10

Story:
I don't understand any of this, at all. 1/10

Sound/Music:
It's fine, everything works, nothing feels out of place, but nothing is memorable. 7/10

That's 32, but I feel it's inappropriate for it to be higher than Inca given what I've said, so let's subtract 3 more for 29.

Is this one of the worst games of all time? Personally, I'm going to say no, but I can see where someone could argue for it. Would I say it's one of the worst adventure and/or space simulation games ever? Adventure, no, any game that I can finish within 6 hours is not near that list. Space simulation, maybe. I haven't played enough yet to know if something like this would qualify. The thing is, to be one of the worst games you really have to have hated it.

I don't hate Inca II, I am confused by it. It doesn't know if it wants to be as crazy as the original or just a space opera game with an Incan theme, starting off somewhat mundanely before going into utter insanity. The space combat sucks, but somehow two people who sucked at it managed to bumble their way into winning it. Even the more chaotic battles. The adventure game sections, even when they come off as reasonable, manage to make themselves seem convoluted.

It's not something I'll ever have a bugbear about, but it just leaves me scratching my head. Why did they do this, and why did they do this that way? A lot of good time was spent on this game, and nothing ever really tied it together. More than any other Coktel Vision game, I want to know what was going on behind the scenes. I understand where other games are starting and going, at least vaguely, this feels like three different plots tied together. Why the ending? Why the ending?

The next, and final Coktel Vision space game is 1995's The Last Dynasty, which by my current reckoning, will be played along whenever TAG covers it in 1995, assuming it's another adventure/action hybrid like the past four. Other Coktel Vision games will probably be played when I get to the years they're released in and whether or not they're actually worth playing here, I think only a couple are fully within my interest. For now though, it's time to return to Rejection, and not a moment too soon.