Duke Nukem: Under Construction

Not with Duke's can-do attitude!

Right away, there's a slot for the Robohand and a green key door. The green door I can understand, but use of the Robohand seems relatively pointless since it isn't like you can get rid of it. There's a trick that I don't think the game actually says, where you can press up while hanging on something to climb up it. No going back down though. Once you get past that, it's simple, but annoying. Lots of platforms with hidden flame jets. This is Broussard's doing, I just know it. There's a roof you can hang from, and fun fact, if you get hit while hanging from something, you get knocked to the floor. Which is very high up if you're in this area. That's basically the level, outside of a fall where you get blown back and forth by fans. Naturally, there's a secret here. 

 The Bubble City of Dr. Proton. Which starts you off in a hole where when you climb up, enemies and hazards fall down. Despite knowing this, I got hit by them a lot, so either I suck at this game or this is really annoying. This makes itself clear that you will need a lot of keys early on, but said keys are not particularly forthcoming. I manage to find another computer card, guarded by flame jets, which doesn't help me yet. So, there's some trick I haven't noticed yet. And it turns out that the reason is that the computer card is used on a down arrow. That isn't annoying...

This level is big, so big there's just a massive amount you don't need to ever see. It's worth it just for the two health refills. What you actually have to go through is a sort of factory area, which isn't too tricky. What is tricky is a spot with two flame jets and a nuclear beam you have to take out. The only place you can shoot is right in front of the jets, and did you know that touching the beam is death? What was I expecting anyway? At this point the level is mostly typical, a few side areas, the usual go where indicated and gather up points.

Then Doctor Proton shows up, looking like Doctor Robotnik. He goes around in a U pattern, stand below it and jump up and shoot at him when he's waiting at the top, and he dies quickly enough.

What, nobody noticed Doctor Proton smoothing out the surface of the moon?

We get a weird little level outro, and then there's the usual speech. This won't stop him, I'll go after you. Also, moonbase, Duke really loves returning to moonbases. Onto Episode 2. The intro is the usual back and forth.

I see the north-eastern part of America and the British Isles have sunk into the sea.

To start with, this level is wide, expansive, fairly easy. Enemies approach in small numbers and traps are rare. Health items are so plentiful it's practically impossible to go anywhere without accidentally using one. I like it. There's a cleverly laid out secret near the start, if you notice that a hole near the start has a floor once you go past it, you can find an elevator which will allow you to reach some points and health.

The way this level is laid out does result in some slight issue. The top half is nice, lots of points items, tricky jumps and the one large group of enemies. Which makes it seem like the way out. The way out is, if you go there by slowly climbing down this area with a big pit, hidden. It's something that just looks like a hole to the bottom floor, which I already came up from without having noticed that there were more floors.

This level is weird, basically a series of Xs going on unto the top, sides and bottom. Carefully jump on individual blocks, with missing either resulting in a little progress lost or a lot of progress lost. It's an interesting concept, somewhat ruined by the keys basically just being at the bottom, then going through a series of doors on the sides. It's basically all but impossible to see the entire level because of this setup, but at least the way out is simple enough.

Find the Robohand says the level introduction text. Go up a giant elevator shaft, says the level. You better believe that the game is making the most of its verticality here. Only, it's a long ride up, then a long climb down. There are also certain points that funnel you back here, which isn't entirely annoying. There are two secrets attached to this shaft, one if you find your way back in from elsewhere, and another on the way up. One of the walls is destructible and has another blaster.

The actual level isn't much to talk about, just towers where you have to use elevators to climb up vaguely designed buildings. It's haphazard and annoying to go through, with the Robohand in some random room, and the eventual activation of it seeming just as random.

"You might find that the next level is too windy for you...!" What is that the three dots and then an exclaimation mark trying to convey? Waiting, then sudden surprise? Doesn't really work in a between level hint. There's no wind, just long jumps. So long they go off the screen, and then you go expecting another platform only to start free-falling. Outside of that big wide open area, there's another labyrinth. Interestingly, there's a section near the exit that technically requires a key to enter, but because the exit of this section is within normal jumping range, you can see the other side without having reached it first.

Another maze level. This one has the added bonus of having a conveyor belt full of mines. This is about all that's interesting about this level, it's another big maze, albeit one that's mostly straightforward once you know two tricks. The conveyor belt full of mines is optional, and you need to get the jump boots to win this one. After that, it's mostly going through the same passages hoping to eventually find the exit.

An ancient underground lunar city. Beware of the snake techbot. I don't know what it is, but I see another one of those segmented worm robots. Little late to warn me about that one, boys. Then again, I can't blame them, I don't have anything worth talking about in regards to this level.

The between level hint tells me to find the grappling hooks. This level is simple enough. It's set up like a construction site and makes decent use of the verticality of the game. Even if it is basically just up, down, up, down, up. If it weren't for the requirements of both the Robohand and the grappling hooks, this level would have been a lot better earlier, since outside of a part near the start where you can get blind-sided, it's a cakewalk. I don't know if I didn't notice this before, but the game has two backgrounds depending on where in the level you are. It's cool.

Mercury Mines, which is about the same as the last level. Dangerous start, then easy. In this case, you start at the bottom and your two choices of getting out involve going past a mine at the edge of a platform or past a moving flame on a small platform. That said, it has one element that's weird, the key is easy enough to find, but the door is quite tricky to reach.

Next level starts off with an elevator maze. Remember, elevators always return to the bottom the second you jump off, and it is somewhat slow going up them. Further, Duke starts going down the second he hits the ceiling. Unless it's a climbable one. But quickly it's out into a glorious open section. I stumble upon a door and start looking for a key. I find it, but not before Doctor Proton brags about how Duke will never escape his next maze. Great, I think...only that's the end of the level.

The final level of this episode. It's a conveyor belt maze. This is quite possibly the most tedious concept for a maze possible. Do one thing wrong and it's entirely possible you'll get sent back to the start. Take the wrong path, and you might end up wasting time only for points items. I don't even need useful items at this point, I have everything. But that's just the first part. The second part is more reasonable, just climb over the usual single block things in the sky. The trickiest part is a blind jump, you really just drop down, but you can't know that without failing first.

Doctor Proton is the exact same boss fight, only...actually the last one was over spikes. You're on a single block in the air, maybe? Whatever, I just kept blasting him and he died quicker than last time. No joke, the second I get on his level and start firing, he doesn't even get a real chance to defend himself. That's worse than the mechs throughout the regular level.

Doctor Proton is remarkably calm talking to someone who looks and sounds like he's going to slowly torture him to death.

There's another ending sequence where he goes from the moon back to Earth, where he shall go into the future to build up his robot army more. Because he had a time machine randomly placed, which I assumed was a joke, in a level in episode 1. Next time, Duke kicks Proton's ass for the third time. Will we see new enemies? Will Proton find a new way of attacking Duke? Will I learn to stop asking questions I already know the answer will be no?

This Session: 3 hours 00 minutes

Total Time: 5 hours 25 minutes

Duke Nukem: Introduction

I've never quite gotten Duke. Of all the side-scrolling characters to turn into a tough as nails FPS protagonist, Duke seemed like he was just sort of there. Outside of a kickass intro in his second game, and even that was just the novelty of animation, there wasn't anything that put him above Johnny Dash or Snake Logan. I'm pretty sure I only beat the shareware episode of Duke 2 simply because that's just what I had at the time. Because I remember despite some good stuff, my overall impression was that I played it because it passed the time. This is also the last Apogee game I haven't played until 1995. (well, outside of Wacky Wheels, but from Crystal Caves until Rise of the Triad, I've played everything for at least a little while)

That said, this is an important game because it's the first to have all the important Apogee guys together. That is, Allen H. Blum, George Broussard, Scott Miller, and Todd Replogle. John Carmack helped with the coding, which probably means that this is going to play a lot better than previous titles that were effectively in-house. This is still EGA, and there's only PC Speaker sound, compared to previous titles which were either CGA and PC Speaker or EGA with Adlib/Soundblaster options.

Before I go in, the only thing I've really heard about this one is the plagarism allegations. There was going to be a paragraph mentioning that this wasn't something to brag about. Duke isn't that good looking of a game, since it's EGA. But once I actually found the stuff it was pretty conclusively some of the only actually good-looking stuff in this...and some stuff from Mega Man's DOS spin-off. Those barrels are making me ask the question, is it possible to draw something so poorly that you can't copyright it?

Now, this is coming from a guy whose art is considered objectively awful, but it isn't that hard to draw a crate if you have any drawing ability whatsoever. Stealing stuff from Turrican I can understand, if you're stealing, you steal from the best. Not the dinky Mega Man game nobody likes. Straight-up ripping other game's artwork and then taking one from a crappy-looking game is like becoming a criminal mastermind to steal from a 7-11. It is a complete and utter waste of time. Enough distractions, let's get to the game.

As per usual for a shareware the story is in the instructions menu. The year is 1997, a man called Doctor Proton and his army of techbots have taken over Earth's largest city. Tokyo? No, Los Angeles. I'm assuming they mean largest in size rather than population, but even then Tokyo wins out. Even in the US, Houston is bigger. Unless there's some weird trick or the authors just did not care. I'm making fun of a game for calling LA the largest when the developers assumed that someone could field a robot army in 1997. Naturally, Proton's robots have easily overcome our planet's military, until...

"Self-proclaimed hero, Duke Nukum" is hired by the CIA to stop Proton. "Armed with his [prototype nuclear] pistol and his can-do attitude". Is this Duke Nukem or Lester the Unlikely? This feels less like the badass hero that he was in Duke Nukem 3D and more like the overconfident guy who gets killed in the opening scene before the real hero pops up. Considering how they know where Proton's lab is, since they're setting Duke on top of it, that might not be an unfair assessment. The controls are typical, left and right move, ctrl jumps and alt shoots. Up interacts with things and of course, esc is the menu.

Before the game starts, you get a little cutscene where Dr. Proton mocks Duke. Proton reminds me of the villain of Power Rangers: Time Force, but I guess wearing a metal plate on your face and having armor tends to look alike.

Duke looks like the antagonist's right-hand man, not a hero.

This is the second lamest insult I've heard recently, but I'll give Replogle and Co. credit and say that they intended this to be lame.

Starting off, Duke does feel considerably different to the character of previous Apogee games. Unlike past games, you drop down from a height to an area with both directions open to you. No going in one direction at the start like in Dark Ages. Although this uses a weird save system, only save in a hallway between levels. Unlimited lives, at least. Duke's "pistol" sticks out of the middle of his torso, meaning that it shoots slightly lower than him. Assuming that he's two tiles high, it seems as though we won't be overshooting anybody. Technically, it's at his top tile, but it hits anything that's shootable on his bottom tile too. That is, it ignores solid tiles, but not crates or destructible walls. Jumping is smooth, but has the issue of no real control over height. There are also elevators, which you can raise by pressing up. As soon as you jump off, they retract into the ground.

Duke makes itself quite different from other games by virtue of having a lot of weird power-ups. Firstly, you get on-shot onscreen, find more guns and you get more. There's a jumping power-up which increases jumping power. Then there are health items, chicken, soda, which you can shoot, and an atom. Duke loves his atomic references. Most health items are in crates, which come in three flavors, oddly, the gray variety is the most dangerous. That has dynamite in it, which explodes after a moment and hurts you. There are also letters which if collected in the order N U K E M (or possibly D U K E) gives you extra points. I wonder if that's the first case of that? Mind you, most games I can think of that did that were by Apogee or Epic.

Getting to this opening level, I completely understand how this game was so popular at the time. Between how smooth Duke is and how easy it is to move around this place, this game is showing a great start. Boiled down, it's three floors, plus a secret nearly as big as the level below. You get there by just jumping on a suspicious floor. The only thing truly dangerous is in the secret, which is counteracted by having a lot of health items. There's this mech I didn't get a good shot of, which takes a few blasts to kill and shoots back, compared to everything else here being dumb walk back and forth types. Sometimes on the floor, sometimes on the wall. There are also bouncing spiked metal mines which are invulnerable. They only disappear if they explode, which happens if you touch them. They have a short bounce range, but I didn't notice much trouble getting past them.

The way out is in the middle floor, find a key, open the door, then shoot a nuclear reactor. Or a glowing pillar of light representing a nuclear reactor. I'm sure if Duke was actually shooting the radioactive materials, the nuke part of his name would no longer be metaphorical. Ending the level leads to a corridor, which is the only place you can save. You also find out the various bonuses you got on that level.

Next level introduces some more mundane ranged enemies, and the mechs in regular areas. And boy howdy, does this shift up the difficulty. It's less the enemies and more the hazards. The non-mech is just a slow and dumb floating thing. There's also a walker with spinning flamethrowers you need to wait until the flame stops. It's less impressive than it sounds. The hazards are just dozens of spikes and ball mines, with the odd flame jet. It's not a big increase, but you could sleepwalk through the first level whereas you can realistically die on this level. So many spike balls and spikes in the ground. They try to hide the latter, but they're very easy to spot. It's very simple otherwise. two floors with an optional third floor leading to more points. Most of the level is, since the key is to Duke's left and the door out in down and to the left.

While levels are distinct, they aren't that important, as the game doesn't tell you how many there are or which one you're on. Level 3 starts with a helicopter attacking Duke. I must have killed it too quickly, or they just ram Duke. Which means it's just an oversized bird, really. Interestingly, it's another straight shot to the key out, just don't fall and go right. This also leads to a teleporter. Well, despite how easy it seems, I'll go explore the level. There are some fans around, which blow Duke away if he's within a certain distance, but if you shoot them, they stop.

What I sort of glossed over when reading the level introduction, there's one in the hallway between each level, is that I needed a computer card, which looks like a computer board. Oh, and four keys. This level is very non-linear, you can go in many ways to many different platforms. In this particular case, it's getting on my nerves. Perhaps 2D when the two dimensions are ZY instead of XY my brain can't navigate. I do know that I got lucky. After the fact, I discover that there's a secret level here. Sorry.

This next level is weird. Starting off there's a spinning fire thing and only one path, which eventually leads across a lightning barrier, you can see on the right. This game is actually throwing out a lot of jumps Duke can just barely make, but because of the engine they're all easily managable. I'm going to miss that about this game. Secondly, there's this flying centipede creature. Centipede in the sense that it has multiple segments. It's just an oddity, it makes a terrible racket but just goes in a fixed pattern.

I ended up skipping a big chunk of this by complete accident. Well, possibly a big chunk. There's a destructible floor which has two crates land on it, and one crate has dynamite and I jumped and made a big mistake. This nearly results in my death, because there's a mech on the ground below, but somehow I manage. There's no way back up, but the level does imply such a path with a series of blocks that you can now reach with some boots which increase your jumping power...sadly it's only a secret. There are also Energizer Bunny parodies roaming around. There are a lot of little jokes like that, despite how much more serious it appears to be, it's still spun from the same cloth as DN3D.

The boots and extra laser I picked up last level carry over, which is nice. This level's quite mundane at first, a fairly simple level which just has the illusion of non-linearity via tons of little side places. It does bring me into one of the game's few problems, no looking up or down. Every single jump down a pit is blind, which trips me up quite a few times. I found out those spiky balls are actually mines.

Back to this level, there's a moving car enemy, it doesn't seem to shoot at you, it's only faster than other enemies. The real enemy here is how freaking big and mazey this level has become. There is just so much of this level that's just wandering around trying to find a key. Looking at a map after the fact and it's just so big with little reason to it otherwise. It's just a maze, even in-universe Dr. Proton is trying to break Duke with it.

It's probably not that visible just standing here, but this is very annoying to see in motion. Gray against a gray background. Probably not helped my a headache I have as I write this. (Unrelated reasons) It does look nice, but Keen or Dangerous Dave this is not. This continues to be more about navigating around hazards than fighting, well, much of anything. This level is not quite as ponderous as the last one, instead centering around a tall elevator shaft.

And these stylish rockets you can shoot to spawn a blue crate.

There are two new elements, introduced soon after one another. The Robohand, which is basically another type of key. The difference is it seems to be used for non-door objects, and if you use the slot without having the Robohand, you get hurt. That little trick nearly cost me a restart. Conveyor belts, which function exactly as you'd think they would.

Is that water? A reflection? Or is that a glitch? Could go either way, since it's flickery as hell in gameplay, but there are a lot of them. This is another mazey level, but in comparison to the one a few levels ago, this is much better done, more straightforward, and you only need two things. The key out and a grappling hook that seems to be claw hands. On certain ceilings, Duke can navigate across them. How bizarre. There's not really much else about this level, it tries to do a trick where you have to go back to the start if you fall down to the bottom level, which is really easy to avoid.

Here, you start off next to some walking enemies. Not sure how I feel about this one. Sure, you have to be quick, but you also start in the hallway beforehand. It's a sign of how this level rolls, it tries to make enemies the real threat...by spamming a lot of them. It kind of worked, but that was just because they were in-between crates which often contained dynamite. I'm starting to loathe those gray containers. At least the level is nicely designed.

Another addition, moving fires. Duke can't shoot them. After all, he is shooting an atomic weapon, and aren't fires just mini suns? (Considering this game's fascination with the atom, that may not be untrue) This had a weird effect on my handling of the level, I could try to go past the sections with them, but I already have the key and found the exit. That's not really something that speaks favorably towards how I'm thinking of these levels. They're good, but in the short and sweet way. I think outside of the first level I wouldn't consider any of these classics, and that's more because I think the first deals with the assumption a lot would have in these days that you go from left to right mindlessly. Like Metroid's first section.

I would have preferred to have dealt with this on an episodic basis, but time got away from me this week. I'll try to cover til the end of episode 2 next week.

This Session: 2 hours 25 minutes

Mazer II - The Ghost of Mordaine (1992)

The subtitle is only in some places, perhaps because you don't know who Mordaine is until you've won.

Name:Mazer II - The Ghost of Mordaine
Number:226
Year:1992
Publisher:Big Red Computer Club
Developer:Farfetch Software
Genre:FPS/Adventure
Difficulty:5/5
Time:15 hours 10 minutes
Won:Yes (98W/73L)

Mazer II is business as usual when it comes to these early days of FPS. It's odd, but not really that unusual to its contemporaries. It's an exclusive to one system, in this case the Apple IIGS, (basically a color Macintosh before they were called that) unique control scheme, an elaborate story that seems unfitting for this era, and pieces of absolute frustration.

The first bit of important information is the title. No, you did not miss my coverage of the first game. I don't know what the first game is. Maybe there isn't one. But the experience is not ruined by the lack of the first game, it's ruined by other things. In fact, I daresay missing the opening of the game may have made the experience better. Mystery is key to a good story, and this game serves mystery up.

One of the curious Mazeworlders, telling me what his problem is.

The story is, you, presumably the player himself, has arrived in Mazeworld, which is a world made of mazes. Mazeworld is in pretty bad shape right now, beings from the Dark Realm are invading, slowly draining the life of the place. These creatures breached in part, thanks to a being called The Adversary, who brought in the Dark Worlders in order to enact some mysterious plan himself. Now you have to stop these people while figuring out what happened to the creators of Mazeworld and a past adversial figure called Mordaine.

It's a basic story, but told in an interesting way. It isn't obvious what the plot development is going to be until you see it, which is important, though I think if you stick to a thought you have when you get most of it, you have a 50/50 shot of getting it right. Being dripfed the story through encounters with people desperate for you to help them or villains about to order your death does wonders. But I think I liked it most of all because, despite being a sequel, feels quite like a story about a children's fantasy world being invaded by some evil. You truly are the only hope.

The game is controlled almost exclusively by the mouse, with the exception of the escape key for the menu. Only, it's a Macintosh mouse, basically. So you get one button doing too many things and then movement which you hope won't go out of the emulator's window because there is no true fullscreen command and even the mouselock function doesn't lock it in the window all the time.

Affirmative energy floating in the game world.

You get four weapons, as such. Only one is truly a weapon, destructive. The other three are for interactions with stuff. Creative, which could be thought of as a use key, except from a distance. Affirmative and negative, which are a yes and no answer to questions. You change, not via any reasonable method, but by holding the mouse button down and dragging it into a certain direction. There's technically a fifth, which is nothing, used for advancing dialog.

Every weapon drains energy, and you of course have health on the left. It regenerates, there are no pickups. Ammo also regenerates. Unfortunately, it regenerates slowly, and enemies are far stronger than you are in numbers, but usually not in actual strength. Combat is weird, because of the controls it was never going to be great, but the game kind of tries. To start with, direct confrontation is suicide. Enemies are better at shooting than you are...not because they actually aim any better, but because they don't have to worry about accidentally shooting creative energy. They actually have the same handicaps you do, in addition to dying in one hit.

Combat with some of the creatures on one floor, this is as close as it gets to a normal FPS.

Enemies respawn, at set points after their death. In theory, you should be able to survive better than your enemies, but in practice, as with Doom's Nightmare! difficulty, this isn't happening. This is basically just a repeat of Galactic Dan, all the good strategies I've picked up over the years don't work when my control scheme is a mouse alone. At least I don't have to jump with the mouse and moving is...normal for a mouse. I get the feeling that the author was really into this whole virtual world thing and using as limited a control scheme as he could manage to get that across. Nice idea, terrible execution.

These guys are blocking a portal, and if I get close they kill me, which would be 100% in place at your usual adventure game.

This ties into what I feel is the real meat of the game, the puzzles. This feels adventure-esque for the simple reason that the actual gameplay is just a disguise for navigating between puzzles. Fighting enemies is incidental. They either respawn infinitely or are invulernable. Not exactly a point in favor of combat. It's very odd, because if it were a few years later, one might say that the choice of an adventure disguising itself as something else was an attempt to make itself more palatable, but in 1992, when FPS wasn't a genre yet? I don't understand it.

The puzzles were pretty good when they were centered around using the four energies cleverly. Paying attention to the world and how someone else is interacting with it. There was one puzzle I couldn't find my way around without cheating, but I can be pretty certain it isn't just a clever application of some energy, since I tried a lot of things and never found a real answer to it. The puzzle after it is also kind of crap, both as a puzzle and what sense it makes with its solution in-universe. Every other puzzle is fittingly logical.

I like this game far better in theory than in practice. It's the world of a children's story if the villain won, where you slowly try to make things right. Dodging enemies stronger and tougher than you as you try to get help from the few remaining helpful entities. This is what it is in my head. In practice, there are two separate genres here, one of which has much more focus on it, while the other is stapled on awkwardly. Which seems to be a common problem with adventure/FPS hybrids, this, Galactic Empire, Inca and Isle of the Dead, to just list the ones I've already covered. I know in all those cases, the developers would have been better off trying to make the adventure half of the equation the whole game. With that, let's get to the rating.

Weapons:
It's hard to describe what you're given as a weapon, more like a single gun with four different ammo types, all infinite. 1/10

Enemies:
Sort of tied into interactivity intimately. Every enemy is tied into a puzzle on the level they're on. While you can delay them all, you can't stop them without solving that puzzle. Some are easier than others to delay though. 3/10

Non-Enemies:
Every time a character acts as a friendly it's basically just a scripted sequence, but it does feel more interesting than most FPS by this point. They're actually helping me for once! 1/10

Levels:
Fairly simple for the most part. As could be expected, a few levels are mazes. The first I didn't find too annoying, you can easily do the wallhugging trick to get where you need to go. (Well, in theory, that was where the puzzle I couldn't solve was) The second, meanwhile, does not allow this trick. It also has hordes of enemies who can easily kill you. The rest are all simple enough to figure out and center around the puzzle more. 3/10

Player Agency:
Annoying, tedious, and I'm tired of this sort of thing. The issues here are half what the game is doing, all mouse, and half what the emulator is doing, you can't really capture the mouse in KEGS. You're also slow and can't sidestep. It takes a moment to shift energies, unless you get unlucky in combat and accidentally switch from destructive to negative energy, which isn't the same thing. It's also annoying to have the use key tied to ammo. 1/10

Interactivity:
For such a limited amount of actions, the game gets some decent mileage out of them. 4/10

Atmosphere:
Mazer really sells itself on the once bright world enshrouded in darkness, with each corner hiding something unpleasant, often for ill. 4/10

Graphics:
Amateurish, but charming and effective. Very little animation though. 3/10

Story:
Were it not for the story, I don't think I would have powered through this one. It's not mind-blowing, but it was enjoyable enough that I felt the effort was worth it. 4/10

Sound/Music:
None.

That's 24. Which is a bit generous for another game with a repulsive control scheme, but does reflect that I found it enjoyable despite its handicaps.

With that, 1992 should be mostly smooth sailing. I have an arcade game and an Archimedes game left, but both of those should be simple enough to cover. There are going to be some replays, of course, but those should be simple. Outside of a Mike Singleton game called Ashes of Empire, everything in the near future looks to be simple enough. Which probably means some of it isn't, but enough of it is that I'm not too worried.

Mazer II: Won

When we last left off I was stuck trying to get past some starfish which I just can't figure out. I've been thinking about how I can solve it a lot more than actually trying to solve it. The problem is that this really isn't the kind of game where that strategy is rewarded. To go off somewhere and think on the matter incidentally and then return generally works if you've been presented with all the possible actions you can take. Yet a game that doesn't do this still has things I can do. Actions which, even if I don't understand how they could work, could work. There are no actions I haven't taken but could, at least not the kind that are so bordering on desperation that they're practically insane.

For instance, I could start shooting random walls with random kinds of energy. I have no reason this could work. There's nothing visible for me to shoot. Except...hang on, maybe the bars block my shot and I need to try spraying and praying past the starfishs? Maybe I didn't try that already? The bars don't block my shots, so that isn't it. Spraying and praying won't work, if I can reach something on the other side, surely I'm not just supposed to just shoot it in effective darkness? So I go around, again. I didn't check the walls, but then, I assumed I could spot any signs there was something unusual there. There isn't. So, I cheat. By just moving myself across the room. It takes a few tries to a safe location, and I really only got it by doing it from the side with the blue guy.

I'm really not sure how you get past this legitimately, but the other side has a set of bars. The only thing I can think of that I haven't tried is to get the two starfishs to fight, but I spent years on Galactic Empire with a similar problem and I don't feel that generous anymore. The doorway past here is already open, so I could have missed something in the north section. The orb. How do I deal with this? I don't know, I can't move it, and if I use any energy other than affirmative or creative, a creature pops out and kills me without any resistance. Affirmative just changes what creature kills me. Creative does nothing no matter what.

I go past it to the teleport. These things are around, acting as the limbs of some unseen enemy. Really creepy, also really easy to accidentally teleport back a level. If I stick around, white jellyfish crawl across the ceiling and then...

It's really not that terrifying in picture form.

...kill me. That's out. Talking is out. So I try bruteforcing it, and find a teleport. The next floor is exactly the same as this floor. In the sense that there are more of these things around. So I cheat...prematurely, it turns out, because you can just shoot these things. The eyes, not the jellyfish, they might be invulnerable. Well, this is a per session thing, so I'm not turning it off.

I go through a few floors of teleports, and I end up here. I get lost, but then I wonder if this is what the map was for. After all, it isn't like it was for anything last time. And it is, I eventually find my way. Time to go to this brain thing. This outta help me somehow. I'm glad I decided to cheat, because this is turning into too much for my ammo to normally keep up with, just waves upon waves of enemies. I must have accidentally skipped a massive chunk of stuff.

This leads to the brain, which is this thing. He gives a speech about energy, which basically just leads into him spawning too many enemies for anyone to fight. I really hope I accidentally skipped something important. I shoot him, and the things until he dies. I try talking to one of his...uh...followers afterwards, but it doesn't speak. I walk back through the maze and discover that nothing much has changed. I check the floppy image for unencrypted text, and discover that the brain should have said something to me before I killed it. I think I should have tried to kill it by cutting off its eyes first, but I didn't think of that in combat.

The enemy AI in this is very cruel. It's not unmanageable, but the eyes drift towards portals, which, you know, you need to go through, so you're basically running ahead of these guys in order to survive. Based on events that are about to happen, I guess that at some point you get a health/ammo upgrade that I just couldn't figure my way around. Because I know someone got past this section because there's a map for it, meaning he didn't get ground to a pulp. So, at this point I'm going to err on the safe side and try to cheat every time.

Not killing the brain seems to be tricky, I guess you just shoot him once before he finishes talking, since during the fight you will probably die based on the unearthly amount of spammed enemies the game throws at you. He tells me that to obtain total power, I need to become a being of entropy, joining with the fara eferon, the illusory world of appearances. He then sends me to a new room. I hope that I didn't need to destroy that orb. This also adds a question as to what would happen if I didn't deal with the portal to the Dark World down below.

Okay, a mirror and four pedestals. (I didn't take a picture, but there's a video later) The brain said something about creative energy, so I shoot the pedestals with creative energy. Nothing happens and I wonder if I did something wrong.

Until this guy pops out of the wall. He flashes through colors. I get the feeling he's probably not on my side. I think he's the Adversary, but I can't be certain, he might be Mordaine. He doesn't introduce himself, just informs me that he was cast out by Memory Store, and is now going to take over Mazeworld. I'm then marched into the mirror and die. There's no avoiding this, I've put myself into an unwinnable situation. The question is, where?

There are three options for this. Firstly, Mordaine's ghost was mentioned by the sphere after taking out the Dark King. The problem is, I can't see any place where this ghost wouldn't have already been discovered if I could. Secondly, I should have taken out the sphere that the blue guy wanted me to take out. This is the most obvious yet most perplexing case. Thirdly, there's another option I figured out by reading the ending text ahead of time. I'll explain it at the end. Because at this point, I don't know if I'm going to win or lose, but I am going to finish this.

My first plan is an odd one. Remember how I could switch being going to the maze section with the blue guy and the area where I have to avoid the dark ones? I found the maze later, so maybe the amoebas on the opening level are tied into the starfish in the maze. It's a nice idea, but it isn't right. They're not spawned by anything, they're always there. So, to get to the sphere, I need to find the ghost. I need to find something, anything.

So I explore the opening level again. The theory being that maybe the ghost appears after you are told about it. Because I already checked the maze for ghosts, albeit indirectly. There's nothing here, and double checking the maze again, there's nothing there either. That's unfortunate, because I suspect the condition for the starfish is the same as in other places, there's something there I need to find. No, it isn't in the area where the hooded figures were either. Went all the way down, nothing. I got one last idea, and this is either going to work or I'm out of luck.

Don't do anything with the Dark World, just go to the brain first. I actually get distracted on this by reader LanHawk, who was telling me about something connected to Valhalla, but then got unluckily roped into helping me with this game a bit. Alas, I think in retrospect all I did was waste his afternoon, but this distraction might have just helped me figure out another piece of the puzzle. After finally being able to move my character through walls again, I end up figuring out the trick to destroying the orb. Spam affirmative energy until the blue guy pops up.

He destroys the orb, then tells me about how things came to be this way here. The denizens of this level were tasked with turning away those who came in unknowing of the peril that lay below. Mordaine, believing himself to be capable of remaking the world as it was before. There was a great knowledge, from the Mazelords, which apparently was what undid Mordaine. With that, the two missing pieces are how to defeat the starfish and if Mordaine's ghost is around. Arguably, the two key points that have been holding me back from doing this legitimately. And after going through the maze again, no change. It looks like this might genuinely be the point preventing me from winning, which suggests that the two aren't linked like I think. Since I figured this out, maybe it works if I take out the Dark Lord?

Answer, I win. Another text pops up and I get the Dark Lord and the ghost of...Mordaine stare at each other. I can go into the ghost and then kill the Dark Lord. If I don't, we both die. George thanks me for my help and then the mirror turns into a normal portal. The game ends. With that, I am likely one of the few people to win Mazer II, even if it is a hollow victory. I will likely never know how to get past those starfish legitimately, nor am I ever likely to.

Finishing this, I'm still not entirely sure I understand the events as they happened. The glowing guy was Mordaine, as mentioned by the Dark Lord, and George called him the Adversary. Since it's also implied that he was stuck down in the area I was sent to, who helped the Dark Lord then? It just seems odd that Mordaine can affect the world so as a ghost trapped in a small part of the world. I know this isn't true, but when I realized I could walk into Mordaine, I thought that maybe that meant I was Mordaine all along, and this was the Adversary. It's in my head, possibly like most of this game's virtues, but it would have been an interesting twist.

This Session: 8 hours 30 minutes

Final Time: 15 hours 10 minutes

Galactic Dan (1992)

Name:Galactic Dan
Number:227
Year:1992
Publisher:The Fourth Dimension
Developer:Ian Holmes
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:5/5
Time:9 hours 15 minutes
Won:Yes (97W/71L)

This is my third game in the Acorn 32-bit machine range, the others being Apocalypse and Starfighter 3000. (The latter I haven't covered because I unwisely wanted it in a single entry) Both were fantastically advanced, and incredibly unique. Quality between the two was wild, so Galactic Dan had me intrigued. Would it be a frantic unplayable mess like Apocalypse or would it be an epic romp far more entertaining than it has a right to be in Starfighter 3000?

An early scene, note that I already got all the hostages I need, so this guy can live or die and I have no concerns about it.

Kind of the first? What I wasn't expecting out of this game was for it to be the missing link between Hovertank 3D and Doom. I know the absurdity of that statement, because iD did games between those of course, but this is just odd. It feels like something that should contribute to the development of Doom, but it also seems impossible given the platform and the vast geographic and platform difference between the two games.

One of the more informative briefings, telling me everything I need to know about this very dangerous location.

The story is you are special agent Dan Quicksmart, sent to free the people of the moon Lygon from the evil Vorians. Because they invaded...and also because they're going to nuke the place once you're done. (The Hovertank comparisons continue) Each mission gets introduced by one of two commanding officers who rattle off a vague hint or inane gibbering depending on the developer's mercy that day. Then you get the time and number of hostages you have to get. Bigger numbers are bad, but smaller numbers are usually worse.

The actual genius of the game doesn't appear right away, instead, you get something that doesn't look too different from what we've already seen. The world is true 3D and everything else is 2D, usually a 2D rendering of a 3D model, but we don't see that straight off. So you're left to navigate basically another Hovertank 3D level but with mouse-only controls. It isn't too bad straight off. Right click moves, left click shoots, middle button jumps. Moving the mouse up and down basically controls your speed, or goes in reverse if you can. It's not going to be too bad, right?

That blue shape above the ground is a hostage, the spiky ball is an enemy, no doubt it shot me after taking this screenshot.

The real suck factor comes in when you realize that the game genuinely expects something more than I suspect most hardened platformer players would be capable of. A lot of the time, it was a gamble as to whether or not I was going to make a jump rather than land it. This might be because my middle mouse button is in my mouse wheel, but there is no rebinding anything. Sometimes it just didn't work, and that was knowing there's a delay between pressing it and jumping. Assuming that there is something wrong with my mouse, we're still left with the idea of moving with one mouse button and jumping with another. People generally don't intentionally press multiple mouse buttons at the same time.

Walls this close together would not be risky in most games, but an ill-timed move to either direction could result in unnecessary delays.

Fix this and you still have genuine problems. Hostages are difficult to grab sometimes, yet often I found myself stuck on walls. That's freedom for enemies to blast away at you while you try to figure out what angle you can take to get unstuck. I never tried to break the game, it just happened. Situations that in basically any other game I've played would be simple to get out of turn into a source of frustration here. It's worse when you have to factor in the 3D element, often to a target you can barely see. Hope you're real good at visualizing 3D spaces.

A level consisting entirely of just jumping across platforms. In theory, simple, in practice, annoying.

The biggest problem is that the game requires a level of precision that I didn't find possible, if it ever was. Some jumps require you to jump while moving forward slower than the default speed you get by pressing move. What I guess is supposed to happen is that you pull the mouse back, press move, then jump, all in quick succession, but if that's possible, I can't do it. The game just expects you to do miracles with its controls. There's also falling damage (and running too fast into a wall damage) but that's just a minor problem compared to everything else.

I can see some people finding Wolfenstein 3D very unimpressive after this.

Now...the thing is, while this is bad in execution, I don't think the concepts in a lot of these levels are bad. If I were playing Doom (with jumping enabled) I could probably hit a lot of these and it'd be fun. It's a combination of these factors and combat, which I'll get into, making the whole package just incredibly frustrating. If you fix one aspect of these then the whole package becomes a lot more tolerable. The game's aspects just don't work together. Each aspect of the game works against the other aspects of the game to render it all completely moot.

It's hard to get the franticness of combat in one screenshot.

This gets us to the other big part of the game, combat. To start with, there are three weapons, a regular blaster, a higher damage attack, and a third which kills most things in one hit and most important, goes through the air fast. Everything in the game depends on two factors, how fast your shots reach an enemy and that shots destroy other shots. As every weapon is only as fast as you can click, this means you have to either spam more bullets than the other guy, or try to get an angle where he isn't shooting at you. I didn't find a good strategy in the end.

While there are distinct types of enemies, they broadly fall into two categories, stationary and mobile. The stationary ones you can plan around, the mobile ones are trouble. Mobile ones generally move around quite quickly, but it isn't that difficult...at first. Enemies get stronger with every level, until towards the end you start fighting guys who seem to take dozens of regular blaster shots. Towards the end, enemies were basically rolling around spamming shots at me while I either spammed back or just ran away. You can't actually fight them toe-to-toe, because you can't sidestep.

I question how well the developer tested this, even in a, "well I can beat it" method. I'm not really sure if there's a way you can do combat well. At the end most enemies took a lot of shots to kill and that strikes me as at the most generous, intentionally unfightable category of enemy. But it's just questionable enough for me to be wondering about it. Where I can attribute laziness there could be something there. After all, on the levels with harder platforming, there is a more generous time limit to match. And there could be tricks I couldn't just figure out.

The biggest challenges to this generosity are the hostages and the more precise jumping sequences. I didn't mention it, but hostages have multiple behaviors, but standing still, to coming after you to running away. Running away is often incredibly annoying and often drags out an already annoying level into something dreadful. The precision is an interesting question. Assuming I accept the possibility that there's something that my mouse can't do compared to original hardware, that's still riding the edge of this stuff. You're asking a lot in a short space of time. If I can't do it, that's not a lot of people who can.

In the audio-visual department, there's that amateurish sense of exploiting a cool toy as much as they can. Not like someone aiming for a specific thing, but someone with more time and money than sense trying to make something cool. Since, you know, stuff like this is something everyone can do now, there's not much cool factor left. When the technical accomplishments are no longer impressive, one is left with what it actually looks like...which is more than some contemporaries, but severely lacking in other departments. To the rating.

Weapons:
Three weapons, one basic and one is basically a door key. It's too rare to use otherwise. 2/10

Enemies:
A decent variety of enemies with wildly differing behaviors which don't matter because most of those behaviors can kill the player in 5 minutes if he isn't lucky. 3/10

Non-Enemies:
The hostages in this game should get negative points for that little running away trick. 0/10

Levels:
Despite the frustration involved, I though that there was a lot of good ideas in this game, ones that perhaps a better game could make actually enjoyable. 4/10

Player Agency:
Incredibly frustrating and simple. Thank god today we know not to bind jump and move to the mouse at the same time. 1/10

Interactivity:
Not much, just some stuff you shoot. 1/10

Atmosphere:
I certainly felt like I was on an alien world. Perhaps in a sense, the now awkward 3D works in its favor. 2/10

Graphics:
Ugly, unpleasant to look at, all those things. That said, I will note that despite itself, I never felt confused by the level design, no idea if that's the weird color grading or good level design. 1/10

Story:
Aliens from somewhere you don't know are invading somewhere you also don't know, vague briefings to follow. 1/10

Sound/Music:
Non-offensive, but unmemorable and not distinguished. 2/10

That's 17.

All right, that is a low score, but I do feel like this represents what we'll see over the coming years pretty well, better than a lot of games we've seen so far. It did a lot of things so right that I feel disappointed that it did some of the most important ones wrong. All arguably without even being connected to anything at all in the genre.

This motivated me to check some Acorn Archimedes games lists to make sure I didn't miss anything on the platform. It's not very well documented...and it turns out there's another FPS from 1992. Look forward to that. Next up I'll try to continue in Mazer II and probably fail.

I also took some time to clean up some 1984 games that either don't fit my requirements or aren't really worth talking about:

• Mazinger Z (PC-88), not a shooter at all, apparently I added this not knowing what it actually was. It's some kind of top-down thing which seems to be more along a RPG than a shooter.
• The Sentinel (C64), sequel to Dimension X, plays like Star Trek but as a first person action game. Kind of annoying to play.
• Wing Commander (C64), no not a fan port of the game you're thinking of. This is a weird game where you fly across an island stopping enemy bombers from destroying various targets. Unnecessarily complex controls and incredibly boring gameplay.

Knightmare! (1984)

Name:Knightmare
Number:228
Year:1984
Publisher:Romik Software
Developer:David Jones
Genre:Top-Down Shooter
Difficulty:5/5
Time:1 hour
Won:No (97W/72L)

Here's a small little oddball. No, this isn't the Knightmare you're thinking about. It's one based off the show, or the Amiga one, the Commodore 64 one that you probably don't know about. As the nicely animated title screen goes up and down, we get a jaunty tune that I recognize but can't name. Wait, Activision 1987? Isn't that the other Knightmare? This is a pirate release, so maybe they changed it? Hmm.

I'm the grey figure on the left.

This is another top-down, every room is special kind of action game we've seen pop up around this time. Kind of like Anticipital, except not as insane. This is good in some ways, I feel like I have a shot at winning. This is bad in some ways, I have less reason to actually advance. Our objective seems to be to gather seven treasures and to open many doors, but online descriptions imply I'm supposed to be rescuing fellow knights and the king.

Continuing the trend of games which force the player to use peripherals, this uses the joystick for everything. It's clever, but unnecessary. Movement is as you expect, but shooting is down by holding down the joystick button and pressing a direction. This does work against the game in awkward ways, as you can't stop moving once you start, walking into a wall hurts you. There are items on the ground you pick up by walking into them, and drop on crosshaired areas by pressing the joystick button. Saying all these factors are annoying is an understatement, it's a struggle to play this one. Even when I know what I'm doing, it's a struggle.

There's also a mechanic at the start where you pay parts of your lifeforce, because you don't die in one hit thankfully, to get a better crossbow and armor. I'm not sure about the specifics of the crossbow, but better armor/shield comes with subtle advantages and disadvantages. Your speed changes depending on the state of your armor, spend more, you move slower. This is not necessarily against you, as the unarmored state is way too fast to safely control.

Each screen has its own selection of respawning enemies which range from the usual fantasy to the title screen coming to life to attack you. Enemies will stop respawning if you kill enough of them in a certain room, at least for a time. Enemies that don't die in one hit require you to find a special weapon or to use some sort of item to defeat. Perhaps some aren't even killable at all, and you just have to avoid them. Rounding out the threats are the doorways between rooms, as walking into them triggers the wall damage sequence and you have to walk in that direction again to escape the room. It's always a great sign when things required to win the game are troublesome to do.

The game also really homes in on that puzzle aspect, but because of the aforementioned issues, this is not fun. The easiest to figure out is a puzzle where you rearrange numbers into a numpad. Well, possibly, because in practice it was a pain to do even with enemies gone. You automatically pick up to 4 items and then drop them whenever you hold down the fire button. It's so difficult I just couldn't solve it, so that's fun. It was pretty much a guarantee I wasn't beating this one.

The only actual puzzle I seem to be able to solve is one in which you get an item that turns your attacks into mostly harmless fluffy balls. These kill some unusual enemies floating over a key in one room. But the area this opens up is just more of the safe. Cool, more rooms with doors I can't open and another puzzle with an enemy floating over a key. Pills don't work, it's a vampire, who knows what does since I'm basically shooting stakes all the time anyway. There's oil in the room, what that does is a mystery to me, because it's a pickup like the health pickups, meaning you can't drop it.

There's one more item I can try, a yellow diamond. But there are no doors it can open, at least not by color. There's a treasure room, but it has seven slots and it seems doubtful that putting one treasure down will change anything. That basically leaves two options to me, both busywork. See if you can't get something by killing infinitely respawning enemies in each room or try the diamond in every slot there is. I'd try it if there were a trainer for the game, because this game seems to pride itself on jerking the player around. But there isn't, and it feels like too much work to try to use Game Conqueror, so it's off for my highly unsatisfactory rating.

Weapons:
I'm not actually sure what the difference is between a rating 1 crossbow and a rating 4 crossbow. 1/10

Enemies:
There are a number of unique enemies each with their own unique behaviors, none of which matters because you're getting ground down by a swarm of practically infinitely respawning enemies. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
There are two possibilities regarding this game. One, it's a secret work of misunderstood genius and I've just crapped on a modern day Moby Dick. That I didn't put in enough time to understand how the game set itself up. Two, it's a bunch of rooms and items put together in a haphazard manner and sold to children expecting something that isn't a piece of crap. I will let others decide if it is the former. 2/10

Player Agency:
However, I will say that if future generations condemn me for not getting the genius of this game, I hope they will understand why I say that this is the worst use of wall damage ever. It's either a trick to avoid or something that penalizes the player for not paying attention. Not a toll. The things you pay for and how they interact with how you go about the game world are also just too confusing to properly figure out without a copy of the manual. 1/10

Interactivity:
Stop trying to do a million things with a single joystick. It doesn't work! 1/10

Atmosphere:
I'm really not sure what this is trying to be so it mostly just annoyed me. 0/10

Graphics:
I did not find it very appealing. 1/10

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
There's a jaunty music tune, and some sound effects. What you expect, nothing impressive. 1/10

That's 9. Man. I'm really getting some dismal games lately.

The only place this is really talked about is Lemon64, who say it's crap. A review linked from there is basically an ad for the game, though curiously it mentions that the instructions are a 95%, the same score they game "value for money". Which makes me wonder what's in the manual. Is it informative? Because a high score for money value is fair, if you place it as how long you could play it if you could stomach it. Which is a very long time, I reckon, since there are no saves.

Anyway, things will be slow around here for a little while. I've been managing my time poorly lately and I have a lot of stuff to do and not enough time to work on everything as much as I'd like. This is not a hiatus announcement. Next week I'm going to wrap up Galactic Dan, then the week after that probably wrap up Mazer II. Just going to be slowly wrapping up what I have before starting up anything new. Going to cut it down to one game at a time, even if that can be boring.