Project Firestart (1989)

Name:Project Firestart
Number:223
Year:1989
Publisher:Electronic Arts
Developer:Dynamix
Genre:Survival Horror
Difficulty:4/5
Time:3 hours 30 minutes
Won:Yes (94W/70L)

Here's a game I've been looking forward to for a long while, which to my mind is one of the most interesting Commodore 64 exclusives. What's odd about this particular aspect is that it's American, and entirely exclusive to a non-DOS PC. I'm showing my age, but I think around this time it's an oddity that something made by Americans would not be on any other computer. Considering that in 1989 Dynamix released mostly DOS games, with only one port to another computer released in America, it is odd. Especially since this isn't the B-team, this is Damon Slye and Jeff Tunnell themselves.

Before we even begin, I'm in trouble, because this is a pain for me to get started. Every rip I find for a while just won't go past the EA logo. In both emulators I have. This is not the kind of game I'm willing to just give up on, this is something I was looking forward to. It's really even an issue I can go and point, yep, that's the problem, because I eventually just got lucky with one rip.

Slowly, you see something approach, but it's just a shadow of the thing.

The story is, the research ship Prometheus has been performing genetic engineering to create dumb, durable laborers to assist in the mining of precious resources. The ship is no longer answering, and you've been assigned to clean it up. Unlike a lot of C64 games, this is actually important to know, because the story is important in how you play and how you win this game. In-game, this was really easy to accidentally skip, which is unfortunate since it's actually really nice. So, I watched it afterwards.

Our objectives are specifically, to find the logs from the science lab, then, because we can't risk contamination, set the bridge to self-destruct...but if you don't get off within two hours, they'll set it anyway. Um, why don't I just go in and out and then they set the self-destruct without me having to potentially put myself in a worse place? And contact them via radio if I need to. A map came with the game, I don't have a clean copy, so I know a few places contain death, but I'll just have to live with it.

The game begins with the player just standing in the dock between the player's ship, Exis (?) and the Prometheus. This whole intro sequence is kind of on-rails and kind of not. You get used to the controls in a controlled area, then go a few rooms until you reach the interior. Note the clock, we're looking at 15:07, not that you could ever reach that without specifically going for it.

Go up the elevator and uh-oh, there's a dead guy.

Whatever it is just ripped off part of his arm, oddly.

You even get a nifty close-up. This is certainly a weird setup here, something tore off his arm, but then just left him, giving him enough time to write danger. I'm not going to complain because the "N" trails off, he was probably just in a lot of pain then.

Left of this area is the rest of the base, while the right side leads to a security station. A monitoring room which doesn't really show anything and can't be interacted with, a prison cell, complete with laser beams, and an armory with more lasers. That last one is important.

The manual plays up checking every corpse no matter how damaged...but there's nothing here or on basically all damaged corpses.

What I'm supposed to do is head to the labs straight away, which basically means, left from the entrance, one door left, then up the elevator to the third floor. More corpses, which seem to be empty. A suspicious silence. Left from here, another empty corridor.

Every room here is filled with corpses. The observation room shows that the observation has clearly failed. There's a guy with a loaded laser rifle here, clearly it didn't save him, and the other guy has an ID card. Nothing else I can really do here. Which I have to say, is kind of a positive and kind of not, each room feels constructed even if there's no purpose to it. Which, oddly enough, is fairly consistent with survival horror games.

Okay, this damaged corpse has something, but he isn't that damaged compared to the others.

Left, we have an actual lab. There's another guy with an ID card, the game sure is generous with these. I can't help but be reminded of something Ahab of Data Driven Gamer said, in that a manual can function as copy protection without actually having copy protection by the game requiring knowledge from the manual. I wonder if that was intentional here. Because as I discovered later, you aren't getting anywhere without coming here.

I expected this guy to jump out at me, but he never did.

I can look up close at one of the monsters, or mutants as I've seen them called online. I imagine in 1989 what's about to happen would be shocking to many, but being probably the first real survival horror game does come with its drawbacks.

That was just the messages, the notes tell us that back in February they started. Their target is to create a creature that is strong, docile, capable of working in low oxygen, and survive in sub-zero temperatures. At least they were aiming for something that was unable to replicate itself...which I presume means breed. Anyway, what they did was take ox DNA and some asteroid fungi and mix the two together. More notes talk about the process of creating it, and the Latin name of the specis is A. Promiveriate, which I'm sure sounds ominous in Latin.

Earlier this month, the event that set the creatures off reveals itself. They began a stress test on their first specimen, nicknamed Fred, and he died at a higher temperature than they were hoping for. Their other specimens, unfortunately, turned out to not be as docile as they hoped. So they started sedating them. These things are apparently quite weak, because further tests resulted in one dying in a higher oxygen environment and slightly high radiation killed another. The log ends with the sedation gas proving ineffective, and the writing informing us that A. Promiveriate can replicate.

I'm not really surprised it went south. Oxen are docile compared to most animals, which isn't saying much. There's a cherry-picked fact about cows that point out that more people die to cows than coyotes in the United States. Herbivores aren't the friendly little things you might think, since they have to scare off their predators somehow besides running away. Cows in particular tend to have a somewhat violent temper, since bulls are known to be violent. Bullfighting didn't start because the bulls were too friendly. I'm not sure if I'm just falling for a meme, but I think a capybara would have been a good point for docility. But I admit, this is sidestepping that the real problem is that Project Firestart didn't have a fire-based method of extermination. At the very least, you shouldn't have more of them than you can manage.

Shockingly, nothing happens here, I can just leave. There's another lab, but it's purpose is later. Keep walking to the right and...

...It's one of them. That sure doesn't look like a cow or fungi. It looks like a troll, like it was made from wood. Eh, guess that's a bit like a fungi. This is how you're supposed to meet the mutants/creatures/Promiveriate. This is a great time to bring up the controls.

While I've never really thought about it, this is exactly what you would expect hearing the phrase "C64 survival horror game" without any context. Maybe a different perspective. The game is controlled entirely through the joystick, one singular joystick. Were it not for the ability to move up and down, this would basically be a typical side-scroller from the era. The high-end graphics, meanwhile, divide it from the usual Speccy-style weird wireframe stuff you'd see in something like The Great Escape. The button is context sensitive, meaning it only activates something when it's in front of you, and that means looking over everything hoping for something. And also a lot of opening and closing doors.

A lot more of that C64 survival horror game observation comes into combat. You shoot whenever you aren't able to interact with something, and only left and right. There is one enemy type, the mutant/slime thing. Nobody gets any hit collision, no animations, no sound, just slowly draining health when you touch and their health drains when you shoot. You can even walk straight through them. It turns combat into a question of whether or not you really need to take the guy out right this moment. You can find additional lasers in various armories, and according to the manual you can carry up to two at a time.

It is disappointing, because I keep expecting one of these 2D games to have some clever gameplay mechanic that ties the survival horror aspect into it quite nicely. Now, I should point out that "disappointing" is not the same thing, necessarily, as "awful". In this case it's bland. It's mozzarella and turkey on white bread, not mustard, peanut butter and mint on brioche. It doesn't matter if the rest of the game is good. And this is very interesting. This is a fairly impressive bit of tension building if you do it the right way. Resident Evil had the better reveal, but by the time you've seen it, you've already seen a cutscene in which a member of your team dies horribly.

There's a special elevator from here to the bridge. That's too easy, so what's about to cause me trouble? More mutants than seem possible pop out of the bridge to this uh...whatever this room is. There's not even anything in here that I can interact with, must be where the staff goof off. Seriously, enemies sometimes just appear from somewhere there's no possible way they could appear from, they're not even bothering to show a vent system they can go through.

The bridge has some surprisingly unmutilated corpses. Nothing on them, but they're intact. More importantly, the radio is here, I'm told to continue my mission as stated. Then another mutant. Man, in some of these rooms it's a pain to set up a shot on them. I guess this is the only real way the game can hurt you, force you into combat in unfavorable conditions. Another message log, cryo room working as intended, the lead-glass thing again. This computer also functions as the self-destruct. Well, I see no reason not to activate it. I've got 25 minutes to return to my ship.

As I'm just about to return to my ship, the screen goes funny and mutants appear. I kill them, only, uh-oh, my ship has been destroyed. Fortunately, there's a shuttle on this ship, as I currently have no other way of escaping, this seems like the logical answer.

But then I get a meanwhile and it reveals someone waking up in what looks like a cryo tube. Survivors? That's marked on my map, so it seems wise of me to head there first. I got time. So, the Cryo area is on the first floor, directly left of the main elevators.

Now that I'm here I can see that the first person is probably dead, seeing as there's a mutant here and a ripped apart door. No corpse, which seems odd. Another one pops up behind me. After dealing with them, and taking a moment, I can wake up survivor number 2, lady with a noticeable figure. She's injured, so you know what that means, escort mission. Right, well, let's go right. "Jon, you're going the wrong way!" (This is the character's name, which has been so unimportant I forgot to mention it) Um, I'm the guy with a map of the station and it's simply easier to go this way...

...Damn, some people really can't stand someone going a different way they planned on. This actually breaks the game, since my guy now breaks into four pieces when standing around. As do the mutants. I'm okay when I'm walking though. This consistently happens, so I'm guessing that just none of these rips are in complete working order...or this was just something they didn't notice.

After retrieving another weapon, because I was nearly out, I head to the shuttle, which I probably should have done to begin with. There's a medikit outside and once I'm in the elevator...

I get attacked by some mutants while still in the elevator, and then I get a picture of an egg hatching. That really helped right now, can't see squat and the game is distracting me. I die, naturally. So much for any sense of mercy. Let's talk about a really big issue with this stuff, namely, that the way the game is set up makes this more difficult than it should be.

Each laser is a self-contained weapon, each pick-up is a new laser. You can only carry two and you drop empty ones automatically. You seem to be able to shoot about 2-3 mutants a laser. And you can't really run past enemies because you need that health for the final stretch. That means a bit of luck. You can run away, but nothing prevents the game from then deciding to have an enemy in the direction you're running into.

I decide that even if I'm not going to get the best ending, I am going to get one in which I escape alive. As I have no stated reason to go after the cryo chamber outside of the game giving me a cutscene, so I ignore it. I head straight from the bridge to the shuttle, fighting my way through the mutants. I make it there...and I die in a shuttle slowly running out of oxygen. Okay, I should tell mission control beforehand.

Something like this will always impress me. Sure, you could have as much FMV in your game now as you can, but back in the day having an animated person feels like witchcraft, even looking at it now.

The mission control dude gives me a spiel about how they can't send a ship to dock with a ship that's about to self-destruct. And you know, informing me about the shuttle as if I didn't already know about it. I guess you could beat this without the manual, it would just take a lot longer. Fortunately, I do get what I actually wanted, which was for him to send a ship to the general area so that after I escape in the shuttle I can survive.

It's entirely possible for you to get here without knowing who this guy even is.

I make it, and the hairs on my back stand on end. It's the guy I thought died, Annar. Not that I have any way of knowing that or he of knowing my name in this playthrough. He's going to kill me because I have the lab notes and he can't let me take them. But before I do it, I get a brief chance to control myself again.

Beating him is as simple as just walking into him. When not faced with genetic freaks, my guy is quite skilled at hand-to-hand combat, and either knocks the dude out cold or kills him. Either way, he's not going to be a problem for now. And that's it, I've won.

The chief congratulates me, and I get a vacation. Considering mission control was on my case with my ship getting destroyed, this must have been a good job indeed. Now, let's see if we can't save the lady. Let's see how we can optimize this.

Remember all those cards I got at the start? Well, those are what you need in order to get into the cryo room. The front door is locked and while there is a backdoor, even if it isn't locked it's right next to an area full of constantly respawning mutants, so you aren't getting in. This is apparently where they made their nest, because opening one of the doors is instant death. So I need to find something I can use to solve some of my problems, and that means exploring.

Technically I already have some idea of where I need to go, since the map I was able to find was not fresh, but written on. There are three rooms of note on the 1st floor, a room with a medical kit to the right of the elevator. A locked room in the upper right, which I didn't have the key for, and a laser gun in the lower right, which is filled with so many mutants that it's a waste of time.

In engineering, which you enter by going to the third floor, then right, then down to the second floor again, there's the power room with the faulty shield, the power switch and a storage room with a plasma laser. The power switch is interesting, because it turns the game dark, which I suspect means I will need to turn it back on at some point in the game.

So, my plan forms, focused on minimizing the amount of movement and time I need to do. I suppose this is cheating you out of seeing some good stuff...but the amount of combat I might need to do over that is very unappealing to me. I've figured out what the tricks are and think I can work around that. That said, there is a certain order the game expects you to do things and you can't really work around it.

Now, I can't really do anything different until I call HQ telling them that my ship is destroyed, except I take a laser from the armory at first rather than picking up the one in the lab. So I'm not completely screwed if I get stuck up there with one laser. More importantly, I try not to engage in fights I don't need to, since everything is about time. Time spent in a room is time ticking down for an enemy to spawn. Which is unfortunate, because you need to wait for certain events to happen.

My attempt at optimization, unfortunately, doesn't really help me much, instead I'm stuck waiting around for the room to be unlocked. I charge in, shoot the enemies, then escort her to the waste disposal room. You shoot her into space rather than escort her to the shuttle. Hopefully that has enough oxygen for her. This also breaks the game's sprites.

This means a trip back to the lab to eject the waste pod, then going to the med lab since I've taken too much damage getting away from the monsters. Seriously, hiding in any room with an active enemy outside it will result in them camping outside the door. Change levels? You're safe, since I guess it only saves enemies in active memory whenever it's on the same level. You can only rarely exploit this though.

It's just over sixteen minutes left when I eject the waste pod and finish healing in the medlab, which should be plenty of time to win. I kept expecting time to either trigger an event or the game to just wait for me to try the shuttle before something happens...and nothing did. I actually waited in engineering for something to happen, since that's where the power switch was, but nothing happens.

The endgame proceeds as last time, I take out Annar, but this time I pick up the waste pod. The hero gets a kiss from the lady. Nothing else changes. Feeling somewhat disappointed, I look up a longplay. Turns out I just didn't wait enough for the event to happen. After a few more moments the pod the game cuts to will completely hatch, revealing a white version of A. Promiveriate, who is completely psychotic. As in, killing its fellows and chasing after you psychotic. It won't die to laser fire, instead you need to take it to a gimmick room to kill it. Basically, you need to be paying attention to those notes you find around the area.

But this happens just before the power actually goes out, which I didn't find despite hanging around for a good amount of time before just reloading and going for the shuttle anyway. Apparently you can't exit to the shuttle while it's off, but that just seems like a weird gimmick. Oh, and sound, which is off by default for some strange reason.

I could reload to try this, but Project Firestart is best when you're figuring things out, and not when you're waiting around for death. I got the best possible outcome without encountering these things, and I didn't know anything about this game before starting. I thought the monsters were some sort of Xenomorph knockoff as opposed to cow fungi. I didn't even optimize that much in the end, my first plan of action was the same as my last plan of action.

It's also not that fun to actually play the game, rather than take it as a first time package. Discovering things, figuring out how best to do them, that's fun. Constant loading between rooms, switching disks between most floors, waiting for timed events to happen; these are not. Actually shooting the endlessly respawning enemies is incredibly boring too, you just shoot and hope they die before they reach you, or just run past them. There's no figuring out combat here, you just get lucky or you don't.

In the end, we still have a lot of questions as to what's going on. Did Annar sabotage the ship after the fact or did he sabotage the development of the creatures? Why does he not want us to have them? Is it because he's plotting on wiping humanity out or that he doesn't trust people to restart the experiment? If it's the latter, I can't blame him, because there's no sign of any containment measures beyond knocking them out and blowing the station up. One would hope that this would be a wakeup call, but you never know. That's even assuming the people being given the logs are trustworthy.

I was actually disappointed that the big gimmick was that they were creating a new stronger cow fungi rather than finding out that the cow fungi laid spores on you, and you need to stop them. But admittedly that would probably clash with the game's general feel as a small, well-crafted package if you needed to do something for another 5-10 minutes. And with that, let's see how it rates.

Weapons:
You have one, it's extremely boring. 1/10

Enemies:
Three, but one requires a bit of effort to reach, albeit effort is required to defeat it. Another is a puzzle. The last is quite generic. I want to be generous, but I know I would only do it out of pity. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
A lame escort mission doesn't get points. 0/10

Levels:
The ship generally succeeds at being both a real place and a fun place to explore, but does rely on backtracking to the same location a bit too many times. 7/10

Player Agency:
Unfortunately, janky. You need to hold down the keys just enough in order to perform an action, but if you want precision, you need to get good at doing it just right. It's better than most games, but it's the weakest link by far. 3/10

Interactivity:
I must admit to being impressed by the computer interface, just like what I use...just with a joystick, and the occasional depth of what you can do, but for the most part it's opening and closing doors so you don't get chased after. 3/10

Atmosphere:
The game does an excellent job of imitating a horror movie. Sometimes to its detriment. I especially thought the intro to the introduction of the monster was well-done. 8/10

Graphics:
Clearly pushes the graphical capabilities of the C64 to the limit in both static visuals and animation. That said, it so dearly needed more combat animation. 5/10

Story:
Basic but well-done science experimentation gone wrong. I do dislike how in the game you're not actually given a reason to go for the best ending. Since at most you hear the cryo room unlocked message. People also know each other's names despite nobody mentioning them in-game. (I had to look up that my guy was named Jon Hawkin) 4/10

Sound/Music:
Surprisingly little, it swells during creepy moments, but without enemies on-screen its silence. At least I got silence, sound effects were turned off and I just thought they weren't any. There are at least basic sound effects. 3/10

That's 35. No additions or subtractions, the special ones I'd do balance out. Pretty good. Obviously not perfect, they just needed to work a little more on making combat fun. I don't need to read the reviews, since they're all positive last I checked. I couldn't blame someone in 1989 for doing so, but looking back this has to be the effect swan song for the American C64 market. The last big and impressive game. Europeans lasted longer, as I have Newcomer in mind for that continent, but I admit I'm no C64 expert. (Check out that company name too, an amusing coincidence)

Despite Dynamix never following up at all on this game, someone made a remake of the game, just called Firestart. I'm sure it plays a lot better, but looking at the screenshots it looks considerably less polished. Without that polish, its just another horror game about exploring a space station.

And that's it for the special Halloween games this year. Next month will be more Rejection, the no doubt exciting sequel to Pharaoh's Tomb and some more Japanese PC games from 1984. It hasn't been that long since I made progress on the latter, but it sure as heck has felt like it. It's been a slow couple of months, mostly a consequence of real life issues forcing me to slowly make my way through a long Japanese RPG at a somewhat slow pace.

Rejection: In a Zombie Apocalypse, the Important Thing is Heart

Something odd happens this session when I reload my save. The girl we briefly met last time talks to K-Ko. She asks if she's going somewhere again. Mariko, as I don't think she was properly introduced, it just sort of happened. K-Ko explains our current goal again, we have to go to the nuclear power plant. Mariko is lonely, and K-Ko just tells her not to worry. I can then walk out to her in-game, but this causes the same text. Only this time, her name is girl.

I know people probably expect me to make fun of this, and I kind of already did with this entry's title, but goofy as it is, it kind of works. Sure, it's annoying that we're focusing on the struggles of one single girl, when camps full of people have been tortured or killed by soldiers, but this is a small, easy to deal with problem. Zombies and soldiers are for practical purposes, impossible to fully eliminate outside of a small area. Unless you're taking out a town of 1,000, that's a lot of work and I think I've barely reached that in-game. This is Tokyo, which does not contain 1,000 people. Speaking of which, I guess I better get on lowering that number.

Now, where do I go next? I ponder this for a moment, before I joking think, yeah, the keep out area, that sounds right. Nuclear power plants certainly are keep out areas. Then I realize that might not be a bad idea. Last time I was coasting a bit at the end because where I had to go was straightforward, so I need to reopen my map and calculate my route. West of the camp, then down.

Wait a minute, these aren't zombies! Well, I need the XP anyway and...wait, this guy dropped a Beretta 93R. This is basically the burst fire version of the 92F, I think. A lot of games ignore this and make it autofire. The game stops while I try to ponder what I should replace this with. Ah, screw it, the Colt's not very useful at this point and I have the rocket launcher for special occasions. Let's test it out.

I made the right choice. It shoots short bursts, and it has no recoil. It has the usual range problem, of course. More interesting, I now have a rangefinder. I'm not quite sure what it exactly means since both numbers seem to jump around without necessarily corresponding to damage. Defense and offensive strength, maybe? Since I seem to do better damage against guys with lower first numbers. I realize it later, my rough damage and how much health is left.

If you look closely, the foregrip is up, which is incredibly rare in a video game.

In the next area the game stops again. Because one of these guys dropped a Steyr AUG. The question with this is what I'm going to give up for it. If you've seen Die Hard, you've seen this one, it was the gun the guy who was trying to avenge his brother was using. Generally speaking, despite getting close to being able to collect a pension, it's a futuristic-looking weapon, at least here in America, though that might not be as true as I think anymore. (Let me know if you want me to link information about real weapons whenever they come up) Let's hope there's not another new weapon, I think this is like the 5th new gun in two hours. Give me a chance to enjoy something.

I drop the Skorpion for it, let me tell you, it was a wise choice. The AUG here has no recoil and only uses six bullets per salvo. This is going to be great. Even if I do get hit more than I'd like against the mutants I find in the next area. They're still alive, apparently.

Now, the Keep Off Area, this is fairly straight forward, you start north and then continually go south with the occasional side tunnel, with nothing of value. A lot of enemies, who seem to mostly be at a fair pace with what I'm at now. A lot of cybernetic guys. So I keep going deeper without yet starting a map. This is unwise for reasons which will become clear. Nothing really threatens me, but I'm very aware that I need ammo now and can't just knife my way back. Everyone has a ranged attack now if they didn't before.

Somehow, I make it to the area I need to. It's just saying this is the nuclear power plant in a tone that says she's impressed. Or he. It doesn't sound like K-Ko. There's a voice so low under the music that I wonder why they even bothered. This is a weird area.

So, it's not a nuclear power plant apparently...it's a submarine nuclear power plant. I wonder if this is a misunderstanding that there's a difference between submarine and substation...but that would be confusing too. There are also these things that don't actually go after me, but are blocking me a bit. They're hard to hit too, but if you do hit them, you've just caused them all to get angry with you, so don't do that.

More enemies, I guess K-Ko really isn't that unique if everyone is running around with power armor. I don't notice anything special about them. The 93R doesn't really hurt them and the AUG doesn't work much better. The M60 all the way; Until...

I find a minigun. Actually, THE Minigun. The General Electric Minigun, the one they put on tanks and helicopters. 3000 ammo, but it seems to be a burst fire at about 24 with some being more. I definitely burned through a lot more than that rate would dictate. I'm not actually sure it's an upgrade over the M60, because quickly I find myself up against...

A tank. This tank is, unfortunately realistic. The guns I have are useless, I need to use the rocket launchers. Oh, and the LAW doesn't kill it. So I wander around the previous area, it's set up quite simply, I don't need a map for it since it's straightforward, four side rooms in a square hallway with one hallway seperating the halves. I then find a grenade launcher. It's basically a weaker rocket launcher with multiple shots. Still functions on launcher rules, run out of ammo and K-Ko tosses it, even though you can actually get more ammo for it. Weird.

The tank is just a mini-boss, because there's an elevator up and an ammo box. (And a levelup) There are more floors to this place. Which is unfortunate. These Coatwall guys, they don't take damage from a lot of guns, including the Minigun I just picked up. The M60 was damaging them, so that means that the Minigun isn't actually that good, but for now it also means the only gun I can use to take them out is the grenade launcher...because I gave up the AUG for that. Trust me, I'm reloading after some of these decisions.

On the second floor, I find this guy, and he has a lot to say. This is Lieutenant Colonel Misaki and he knows K-Ko's father, Colonel Kihara. He knows that she's been fighting a war since the meteor hit. A group of officers are dissatisfied with the current government's state of affairs, he's one of those officers. Originally, the plan was to not entangle ordinary people, but they should have known about the others intent; To blow up the nuclear reactor and probably use the nuclear arms on the submarine.

K-Ko is shocked at the nuclear arms bit and wonders their aim. (Do we really need to wonder about this when we thought they were blowing up a power plant?) He sort of ignores this to say that their opposition was put in confinement. K-Ko explains that she just came here after that. One of the things she overheard was that they were leaving after the explosion. He says he can't tell her the code, it's engraved in an artificial tooth. It'll have to be cut out. She says that's not necessary, she can destroy the handcuffs and they can go to the control room together. He says he can't, because they infected him with Kusomoanfitamin, and in a moment he'll change. He might be too powerful since he's an officer, so this is is last chance. K-Ko says she can't bear to do that, and he keeps insisting that she kill him.

Then he is killed, I presume by K-Ko and I get his Deringer, those old west self-defense guns which could have up to four barrels. This reminds me of the Resident Evil remake, except in this case you don't kill the guy, he kills himself and the gun doesn't suck there. Here it shoots two bullets at a time, and you only get six bullets. It doesn't really shoot that well either.

His desk has a memo. I don't know what it reads, but it's apparently from a researcher. Seriously, it's one massive string of nothing but Kanji at one point. Which gives me that feeling that I'm not missing anything by not reading it...except that it also says that it can be used to mind control people.

Moving onto the third floor, I don't find much until I meet this blue guy. I'd call him a blue oni, but once I start shooting him, he's a loser. That's his name, really. Might as well call him Blue Loser. He's a soldier, which is how he knows that K-Ko is wearing power armor. He's curious about how she got it, since it belongs to his organization. He also threatens to use the virus to bring her back to life. Naturally, K-Ko has an issue with that and it's boss time. I didn't catch it at the time, only later, but he mentions something odd, "You've come from Ichigatani", a name. Either hers or someone else's.

It's at this point that I've put myself in an unwinnable situation. I can hurt him with bullets, but by now I don't have enough ammo for him, and knifing is too weak. I'm not really sure how I can get past him because I need too many weapons and to hold onto too much ammo. Unless...I drop the Beretta for the grenade launcher, and pick up the Minigun after the tank.

So I reload a save back at the camp and decide to find an alternate route into the nuclear section. Because I don't want to get into a gun battle, which doesn't work out like I had hoped. Instead, I get a Calico M.100, which I didn't recognize at first since the only Calico I recognize is the pistol variant. In real life they're basically novelty items, because its cylindrical magazine is quite annoying to reload and has the rear sight. Which if you don't understand, means that every time you changed the magazine you didn't actually know where you were going to be shooting. Here, it's about the same as every SMG at this point, reliable, short bursts and low recoil. Not actually worth the change.

My only other real aspect to this plan is to get another level, possibly pointless, but every little bit helps. At least that's what I think until I fight the tank again at a higher level than before and barely get hurt. Still costs the rocket launcher and most grenades. It then occurs to me, well, the Deringer isn't going to help me...why don't I go back to where the soldiers are dropping free guns and pick up another AUG? Because K-Ko won't let me go out. I don't need to translate it to know why.

Finally I return to the Blue Loser, with full ammo. He takes the entire Minigun, all six Deringer shots, and most of my M60 ammo. Some weird messages popped up and he seemed to last a lot longer than he should have. What I think happened is that I missed something about the Deringer bullets being some sort of super anti-zombie weapon I should have finished this guy off with, but I managed to do it with the knife. Guess that level up really helped.

Now I can use the codes to deactivate the reactor or whatever. Which is what happens. I get another ID card, guess that leaves the third exit I saw back near the camp or maybe that room in the war college. Which means a trip back to the camp against ranged enemies while I have limited supplies. Also to see Mariko I guess. Goodie.

Only, on my trip back I can just use my knife, because the enemies here are only rarely hurting me. Consequently, my XP gain has fallen dramatically. Which I suspect is intended as an indicator that you shouldn't be wasting your time here anymore, much like with the sewers way back when. Instead it's the enemies in Shinjuku that cause me trouble. Weird.

The camp leader has more dialog. K-Ko tells him that she stopped the explosion. He congratulates her, but K-Ko can tell something is off with him. The army is starting to track down the camp. That means they can't gather supplies anymore, but they're okay on bullets. K-Ko decides that she should attack their base. K-Ko asks about this Ichigatani fellow. He was someone with the first army group sent in. There's not any more dialog with Mariko, oddly.

I'm not really sure how much longer this game is going to be, but logically we should be near the end. Mind you, my normal logic is a bit wonky here. We're getting endgame stage weapons, I'm about 5 levels away from level 20, a common endgame level, and it doesn't make much sense to have another hub at this point, and I only have two places left to go. Dunno which one leads to the army base I presumably need to take out, but just following the usual logic of going past the areas with things I can now successfully kill should work.

This Session: 3 hours 30 minutes

Total Time: 19 hours 00 minutes

Rejection: Parody of Man

Strap yourself in for this one, because if you thought this game was crazy before, it's gotten crazier.

There are two ways into the "zoo" of Shinjyuku, south, which is where I entered before, and north, which I haven't. Here is quite the array of enemies, two stomach bigfoots, one regular bigfoot and an elephant. Curiously, my knife does a remarkable job of taking care of them all, dealing very good damage. And that "shocked" thing that pops up sometimes? It's me stunning the enemy. It's a good thing, because I need to hurt the elephants a lot to kill them. Although, since elephants sometimes ignore typical enemy behavior and instead stand there, I could be stunlocking enemies. Which begs the question, why not with the guns?

For a little while, it just seems like dead ends and plenty of XP, until I spot a door leading to somewhere that clearly isn't Shinjuku. Keep off area. Sounds friendly. I take a quick jaunt in. We got this cyborg thing called a Ramseed. If I can hit him first I can survive, but 80 damage a hit is way too risky to deal with right now. I also suspect this area is going to be important later, so I'm holding off for now anyway. Let's just say I think that K-Ko isn't going to be happy about where this is going.

An oddity of this area and Shinjuku is that there's an isolated section of the latter only accessible by going through Shinjyuku. Inside, I find some stuff again. Firstly, a Cz 75. Looking it up, I didn't realize it was somewhat famous, since to me it always seemed like one of those handguns that you put in to pump up gun type numbers. I better check it out even if I'm not going to use it. How does it handle? It kicks a little and does slightly less damage than the Mauser, so basically a slight upgrade over both of those, but not really valuable. Then the area actually connects up with an area just outside the camp that I didn't think was possible to enter. Whoops. Still, once I'm level 7 I go back to that door that needs the ID card.

Looking back, I suspect I just wasn't noticing how much damage I was taking.

Even inside this locked door. Nagano is suspiciously quiet. There are some interior rooms, which contain soldiers. All right, I understand how this is going to work, there are just more soldiers I have to kill until I reach a room which gives a cutscene. They even drop ampules. Then in the second room I reach I see a new type of soldier, I kill off his compatriots so I can get close and get a nice screenshot...and I get one-shotted. I quit at this point, deciding I've had enough for the day, which turns into six days. Whether this is because I got my ass kicked or because real life stuff and Aliens interfered with playing this shall be left as an observation to the reader.

Coming back, I immediately go after that guy again, and oh, look, one of his Mustache compatriots dropped a M72. As I'm trying to obtain powers of deduction like Sherlock Holmes does, I immediately determine this means there's a boss soon. So I should toss the M-16, because the M-11 is too powerful. And then I kill the guy without getting close to him. Now I need to track down another one, but apparently he's Rocky too. What's with the name reuse?

The next room over is a Bird, and some soldiers. Wait, the army is working with the Birds? And by extension the Rockys? What?

Getting back to the game not caring about its enemy factions, this area is laid out surprisingly simply, and with a suprisingly lack of enemies. North of the first west-east hallway there's just nothing but empty space, then the third hallway has enemies but also the exits. I backtrack to the rest of the first hallway. More enemies, more ampules, then a Skorpion Vz 68. You know it as that one Eastern European SMG from the '60s. Technically, I would expect it after a M-11. It's a hard decision to decide what to replace, but I can always reload if it proves borked. It seems to be about the same as the M-11, which tracks, but I replaced the Minimi with it.

These guys have an excuse in that they're pretty clearly the same thing, except these guys have a gun and a rocket launcher.

Oh, hey, it's the Rocky guy, finally. Yeah, he is different from the Rockys from the last area. I wonder if someone was accidentally duplicating some names. Right, well...he dropped a rocket launcher, a M47 Dragon. An anti-tank one, which I'm unfamiliar with. I don't really need multiple rocket launchers, unless I can get spare rockets for this one. Well, so much for the magnum.

Finally, before entrances to other areas, I find a M60 off another Rocky. Now this one is an improvement. It's slow to turn, but it hits hard enough that if a burst catches two enemies at a short enough distance, they'll both die. Technically the Minimi did this before, but less noticeably. The M47, meanwhile, is also one-shot, and thus is indistinguishable from the LAW until suddenly the LAW doesn't kill something, not worth it to keep both at the same time.

My final strategy here is to just grab a rocket launcher, then go for the dangerous-looking areas, grabbing the other rocket launcher if needed, then replacing the empty Minimi with the SAW, and if I run out of launchers the Skorpion.

I wonder what happened to these creatures after this?

At this point, I have three exits from here, one locked, one I pass up and one I go through. It's a lab. There are a bunch of zombified girls inside. Quickly, we hear a researcher. They're testing the zombie virus, Kusomoanfitamin. I think this unlocks some of K-Ko's repressed memories, because we then get a wall of text. (This is eavesdropping, not a flashback despite the weird way it appears)

A military task force is using the virus to create mutants. They're looking to put human genes into animals and vice versa with the virus. Both rejected the change. But the task force kept trying various things. K-Ko is the success of that project. K-Ko is naturally shocked and says she needs to think about this. The cutscene then ends awkwardly.

Now it's time to clear out the massive amount of military guys here. This big fight is somewhat underwhelming. I wonder if it was intended to be, since after all I've killed dozens of them to get to here and I have much better equipment now than I did when I first fought them. Maybe it's the ampules I have now too, the game is far too generous with them. I'm basically only ever in trouble when I try to be too stingy with stuff. Once the military is gone, I get a level up, now I'm level 8. I can look around, there's a computer I can't do anything with and a door with a bad odor behind it.

It's a prison cell, full of dead and presumably experimented upon bodies. Yeah, that smells. The text is basically saying that these are the failed experiments with the virus. After that I'm put inside the room. For no reason, because in-game there's nothing here. Maybe that locked door is unlocked now?

And they're still experimenting on people. There's dialog, but it's unsubtitled and impossible for me to make out over the music. Lame. I guess these guys explain why I'm encountering elephants in a place that shouldn't have them. The bears made sense since, you know, there are bears in Japan. The names on the lower left are professional wrestlers, though the two Japanese ones are translations of usually untranslated parts of the name.

Those shells look about the size of an anime eye, which puts the caliber of it to "do not get hit by it".

This monster, to quote the exact name, though in-game he's Plant, is very talkative and polite in his speech. He's glad K-Ko came here, while she wonders what kind of monster he is. He's not a monster, he's the head scientist. (But as some say, the monster isn't Frankenstein, but Frankenstein is the monster) This shocks K-Ko. He talks about using his biology knowledge to make himself evolve. (I don't think evolution has much to do with the grenade launcher on his left arm) "I am beyond human!" K-Ko calls him a mad scientist and says she'll smash him. I appreciate K-Ko having such a straightforward character. He then says he'll end her and complete his work in the lab...then he'll blow up the nuclear power plant. Then the secret of Kosumoanfitamin will be known. A little more back and forth.

He walks away in the cutscene and then faded clones of him appear. More text, which I don't understand, but it's something about how his bodily fluids contain plants. I actually spot him quickly, so I switch to the rocket launcher, but you have to aim pretty well to hit him, hit the clones and nothing happens. Guess I'm using the rocket launcher another day. And unfortunately, I can't really hurt the clones enough to kill them and trying to get a shot in at the monster himself is tricky. Not sure if I'm getting anywhere hurting the clones or if they can hurt me. I'm not getting hit like multiple guys with massive guns are hitting me, not even one technically.

A few more attempts clears it all up. Each time you hit the right Plant, he changes places with one of his clones. His clones do nothing except block you, and any time I thought I was damaging them, I was really shooting through them. The strategy, therefore, is to get him close to you, then hit him with the rocket launcher. Anything else will burn through way too many ampules and you just can't keep up with him with the automatic weapons...until I realize that multiple Plants are sometimes solid at the same time. I don't know if that's a glitch or intentional, but it doesn't change my plan. What does is I figure I need another level up.

So I optimize my weaponry here. The M60, of course. For some reason the guy who drops it continually drops it even after you get it, which means free ammo without having to go to base. But I decide to change the M-11 for the Skorpion, the former kicks too much and it's damage drops off so steeply I have to be one tile away for it to work.

I also take a quick jaunt back, I really don't need to since I'm getting plenty of ampules and infinite M60 ammo, but just to top off everything. This triggers a new dialog with the camp leader. K-Ko tells him about what just happened, which was at the National War College. (A fictious place apparently, might as well be a zoo in Shinjuku anyway) He's as shocked as she is that they're experimenting with the virus. It's horrible that humans are capable of things like that, she won't stand for it. He says something about not knowing about a politician inside the military and about how a coup is being planned. I remember someone mentioning a coup before, does that mean that the military is acting against the interests of the government? Seems slightly odd as a plot development, at least not without the military becoming a bunch of thugs rather than mad scientists. (As I got this bit confused with later developments, this may just be an error on my part)

Back against the head researcher Plant, I finally get him dead center with my LAW. Nothing. Crap. Worse still, my levelup has done nothing as far as increasing the amount of shots he needs to kill me. Well...maybe a little. There's nothing I can really do outside of just pumping him full of lead and hoping for the best, and this time I do it.

The text says he's down. She needs to reach the nuclear power plant, because when the time comes they're still going to blow it up. Guess his plan is still in motion. She's got to stop it. On his corpse she finds an ID card and more ampules. I think 5, I had 72, used 8, ended with 69. Finally, I get another level up, to level 10. And now I can explore this room. There's another desk. It says something about parts for K-Ko's suit, but I don't get an upgrade, must be an invisible item like the cards I have. There's another door, it's locked. I see another one. Wait, inner chamber?

Speaking of how weird they look, why keycards on their chest?

Oh, it's more unsubtitled dialog under music. I hear an isolated everybody is here, so I'm assuming K-Ko is glad to see these people. I think they might be the refugees. Who look like they're victims of experiments themselves. Just the eyes, how they seem to be short, and not in a natural way. Seriously, they look like human Furbys or something.

K-Ko now talks to a random girl, asking if she's okay. The girl isn't, because her older sister has gone somewhere and her father has become a demon. I think he killed someone. K-Ko tells her not to worry, he's probably still alive and thinking and to be strong.

They return to the camp, where K-Ko talks to the camp leader again. Just in-game. He asks about the people she brought, she tells him that they were captured at the National War College, could they please let them stay? He says it's all right, he's obligated. Then the conversation ends.

This is a pretty good place to stop for now. I have three new objectives, stop the nuclear power plant from exploding, which is probably related to the new ID card I have, and a person to find. I may have to kill him, but that's okay, if I can't shoot him, I can hit him with a rocket launcher. I do have to wonder how much longer the game is going to last though. We're not really fighting zombies anymore, and there's nowhere you can reasonably go after stopping a nuclear explosion and determining if you can cure the zombie virus. I guess the real answer is that we need to find K-Ko's father, or "father", I guess.

This Session: 2 hours 50 minutes

Total Time: 15 hours 30 minutes