Such a strange design, pipe going off horizontally, then just stopping for a small pipe down.
Last time I was heading towards a Pump Head to get unlimited food for the province of Moldenia I was in. This turns out to be quite simple, because all the guy in charge of it wants is food. Giving food to get unlimited food seems like cheating the system, even if it's only in this province. Every problem's going to have to repeat itself over time.
Next up, there's an administrative block here, which I need to blow up. Because of the way attacks work, I need to leave my previous vehicle, order up a bomber, blow it up, exit the bomber, then return to my previous vehicle. There's no special attack there, it's just point and shoot. Like a gun, not even a missile. I suppose not having to aim that much is good news.
Mezzanine floor feels like a bit too purple for this game.
I continue south, and find myself at Yevrograd, which has a refinery, which with an oil well I get unlimited fuel in this province. I haven't seen an oil well just yet, but that should mean I have no problems replacing vehicles. Should, being the operative word, since there might be a component beyond vehicle + fuel for airdropping them. I can't see one from where I'm at, so that'll have to wait.
No wonder we're trying to save this place if they've built habitable underwater cities!
But I do spot a town in the middle of the lake, which has several useful facilities and no enemies nearby. Which is fairly important considering that once I get near to the eye of evil, I'm going to be fighting wall-to-wall enemies. So I go south, and forget to consider that the game didn't just set the town in the middle of a lake, it's underwater. Damn it, Singleton, why did you add underwater towns to your realistic Yugoslavic conflict game? You were doing so well. This really is a reskinned Midwinter 2.
Down the coast is an Admin Block, and I still have a bomber, so that's a good choice. Just a nice, gentle, flight, identify the building, easy enough because the other options are a Loading Dock and a Mosque, blow up the block, and check the others for what they can offer. Loading Dock wants a barrel of wine for a ton of goods, Loading Dock gets a barrel of wine. Now what? Therein lies the trouble, because while I have an unlimited amount of air vehicles, I don't have unlimited air drops and there's no other way to get your unlimited vehicles. So I really need to find that oil well or I'm going to have to use the batteries I've picked up a supply of to get something to fight my way through the horde of enemies.
It's a bit odd seeing backgrounds which seemingly have no relation to what's going on around things.
I go north two towns, one only had a farmhouse, to Crokrara. Where there's a Well Head, which is the aforementioned oil well. Did I misread Well Head as oil well or did the game mess with me? I'll probably figure it out eventually. I of course, negotiate for it, simply because I also have to wait for the Captain of Works. I manage to negotiate myself both the Well Head and the Pump Head while waiting. Unfortunately, the Captain of Works wants a military team, and I'm out of those.
There's no fatigue, like Midwinter, so I can run across the entire country if I wanted. Like an European version of Africa Trail.
My next course of action is to head northwest, to Prernalsk, a town with a Depot. At this point, two bad things happen. Despite having unlimited fuel and aircraft, I can't have another airdrop, guess I need to track down another factory or something. The second is my bomber blows up. This may be related to how I don't seem to get what I needed in a moment. As I have to destroy the Depot, this presents a big problem. I can get there in a reasonable amount of time, but I can't do much other than just negotiate for places I've already won. There's no way to get more vehicles if I'm out of airdrops, short of running up to a tank and using a ECM battery, which when I have to run there, sounds unfun. I really hate to resort to this so soon, but I foresee if I try to restart the game this is just going to turn into a series of restarts until I get sick. In other words, time to cheat, this time, hex editing, since I can't negotiate airdrops any other way.
From top left, emergency medical treatment, firefighting teams, batteries, time before partisans attack, military teams, air drops.
Giving myself 255 airdrops is trivializing an important aspect of the gameplay...but if I lose this game I kind of want it to be because I did something wrong and not because I fumbled my resources without realizing this was a survival horror political sim. Actually, that might be on me. Now that I can actually move, I start taking out buildings I need to take out, dodging most of the enemy patrols on the north side of the circle, since most enemies can't hit planes, they just sort of follow me.
Despite being Eastern European, there sure are a lot of Italian, French and English names around here.
Heading north, towards where I started, I discover a couple of Well Heads, which I thankfully don't crash into this time. I basically just grab any Processing Plants or Pumping Stations I missed, and take out any Depots or Barracks I didn't before. After a while, the distance between towns starts becoming more and more pronounced as I start exploring the northwest side of the province. Enemies are there, but scarce enough and not in fighters or AA vehicles, so my bomber is safe enough. I meet an Ossian nurse, who gives me the needed votes to solve that side of the voting equation.
Come to think of it, there's probably more guys over there, but why tempt fate?
Deciding I need to better figure out this part of the area, I head to a radar station on the lake. That seems to reveal the rest of the towns and enough of the enemy forces that I don't need to worry about getting another. There's nothing I need on the western side anyway, and when I eventually move on, I'm headed south anyway. Some of the purple dots over water are enemies. Which means they're basically irrelevant to my objectives, underwater towns don't have build objectives and I don't need to kill them to advance. That means...it's time to go east. Well, first a bit of bombing, then the big fight.
Radar is actually the most important way of detecting enemies, light red are flying enemies, bright red are ground enemies.
It's not quite like Midwinter 2. There's more consideration than just circling around pressing the fire button until everything near you is dead. You can crash into other vehicles, which renders this tactic dangerous. Aiming, on the other hand, is easier and enemy numbers are usually modest...which actually results in encounters being longer, since you have to gun them all down over a longer period.
You get two weapons, missiles and gun. Missiles are fire and forget if you've aimed them well enough. Enemy missiles hit them, but you are limited by firing rate, not number of projectiles on-screen. In a confrontation, you win...assuming you have superior ammo. Even knowing where they are ahead of time thanks to the radar, they'll still be a threat if you shoot just one missile, you need to drop a couple. The gun's surprisingly easy to aim, even against flying enemies. You just have to make sure you aren't in a circling pattern. Which despite the great speed at which you can go, is hard to avoid doing if you mess up the initial salvo.
Then there are friendly assault groups, which do take out some enemies, but you can't really rely on them, you have to be using them as a supplement. So you can't use them to take out ground units while you're in a fighter, you have to be taking out ground units with them. Considering that this game runs off of limited resources, they're not much good. Less cost effective than just burning through the ammo yourself, or heck, just taking a shot and having to spend a couple hours in the hospital.
The battle lasts for in-game days. I'm reluctant to switch to the map, so sometimes I get away from the enemy group I'm trying to take down. They never retreat until they're down to the last man. It's grueling, but by day 3, I decide I should clear out around a town. Seriously, you spend so much time chasing down enemies that you end up having to run back to the primary group and it's just a lot. It's not even grinding down the enemy numbers I need to pacify that much, when it starts really thinning out I still have work to do.
Still, I take a break to go to Stotroran, which has some mostly unnecessary buildings. At this point I view food and a barrel of wine as nothing worth holding back. Pretty sure I don't have unlimited wine, but it sure feels like it. The most important of what I grabbed is a Communications Centre, which allows me to see all the professionals in the area. Which I'll need to fill out the votes, nearly there, but I think I need it for the building programme. Seems like there aren't 9 forts around on the map. One of the guys I spotted was an Engineer Builder, so I go there.
And he doesn't have anything I want. There's a certain irony in him offering me the kind of building I do not need at all, since there are more than double the number of Control Towers I need. The votes are a little important, but for what else he's offering, I'm not buying it. The other guy...also offers a Control Tower. Is nobody going to offer to build a Fort? Well, at least the area is starting to be clear enough for me to fly around with a little freedom. There's still a big chunk under enemy patrol, but I'm cutting through.
Reagan was wrong, these are the nine most terrifying words in the English language.
I finally reach into one of the more central towns and meet this fine Doctor. The votes and the treatment don't matter. The only thing that matters is that this guy is the answer to everything I've been avoiding for the past two entries. The big battle. And it isn't even the answer, because I should have just run past the hordes and headed for a town. Because that way I wouldn't have to grind them all down. Equal parts genius and cruel. If I had just headed this way to begin with, so many problems that I had would have been solved. Not the lack of forts thing, that much I can't avoid, but this. I'm impressed.
Next time, I don't know if I'm going to restart or just keep on. In favor of restarting, I'm just now on day 10, and I'm not that close to solving the province. Most of the building programme is unfinished, but the other three need a little push to finish. As I said in the introduction, since I have a time limit of 150 days, that means that spending more than 10 days in a small province like this one is setting myself up for the doom spiral. If I do it again, I'll know where to go to deal with the big ticket things, but am I really going to be doing this for all 15 or so provinces I'll have to go through to win the game? It doesn't help that most of the places that have obvious designs are not that important. Churches and Mosques give you extra time before partisans attack, only one Well Head is needed for fuel, the rest are blocks of varying designs. I keep having to stop to check my targets, which means getting out of my plane, getting within entering range, then returning.
Bear in mind, restarting feels like the only thing I can do, since you only get one save slot short of copying the save elsewhere. I get the feeling this was either intended to force games to be played without restoring outside of extraordinary circumstances or for the player to go through long periods of the game without saving. Technically you can save scum, but some situations make it less useful than others. To have multiple saves, I need to physically copy the save folder to somewhere else.
This Session: 3 hours 00 minutes Total Time: 4 hours 20 minutes
Mark another one on the "I should really check games from prominent authors before dismissing them out of hand" board, because Mike Singleton is back with another early-FPS/strategy game. I hope it hasn't come off like I've been ragging on him too hard in the past, since outside of Midwinter 2 being a spy game where you gun down an entire army, he's been very interesting. Outside of the credit we give him for Lords of Midnight, he hasn't gotten enough.
I'll set out the long version of the story in the summary, because it's truly complex, but the short version is that you're the not UN, United Coalition forces commander of a vague nature, going into the recently destabilized Confederation of Syndicalist Republics, which is like if the Soviet Union had Yugoslavia's ethnic tensions. Your job is to stabilize the country before radical elements of the CSR's rapidly failing government decide to deploy nukes within their own borders. To do this, in each of the five republics, you need to perform four tasks, called Building, Demolition, Pacification and Ethnic Harmony. This is, I should point out, before things in Yugoslavia got truly dicey and the UN's peacekeeping attempts were seen as a joke. This game was released in either 1992 or 1993, so this was some timely game design.
There is a wealth of introductory materials. A manual which has over 140 pages, not sure the exact number since nobody actually digitalized the whole thing, a reference card for commands and a VHS tape serving as a tutorial. Like you'd get in games proper just a few years down the line. There's a lot to break down here, but to make the story short. You need to complete all the aforementioned tasks in a province to pacify a republic. The manual straight up says you have to complete all the tasks, no doing part of it. To pacify a republic, the capital and two other provinces need to be pacified. All five republics need to be pacified to win, within a time limit of 150 days. Because the CSR isn't above nuking itself and the nuclear tension rises every 50 days.
These are not entirely related to their name. Building could involve you having built some of the buildings you're supposed to build, or just capturing existing ones. Demolition, meanwhile, doesn't count as finished if you capture the building. Even though there is no reason for you to destroy a building you control. Pacification is just ground combat, force enemy military units to surrender by shooting them. Ethnic Harmony is all about collecting votes, which is done by convincing professionals, wandering NPCs, to join with you by giving them stuff. Professionals are doctors, generals, engineers and administrators. They can also be used to make up the special teams. As these seem to be a highly limited commodity and most professionals provide incredibly useful things, like votes and destroying buildings, this is kind of hard to work for.
Then there are commodities, which you can use to trade with people for their services. Gold, diamonds, food, wine, goods, tools, medication and clothing. Along with vehicles, because you don't get unlimited anything unless you find it in a province. Everything is airdropped to you, but you can't do this if you don't have fuel. There's also papers, movement, which means enemies won't shoot you if you don't shoot them, interdiction papers, which allow you to enter enemy controlled buildings. There's also fire fighting teams, who fight fires saboteurs set, emergency medical treatment, which saves you time, and power cells, a ground attack which allows you to capture enemy vehicles.
The game is very dense when you start it up. You get a long, text introduction about the events that have resulted in you being called in. It repeatedly makes a point about these events not being very good. They're all incredibly grim, real-world things that games today try not to touch. The Adlib music, honestly, feels incredibly...off to such dark things. The game automatically loads your last save or starts up a new game.
This looks more like the bit of Russia that borders the Baltics, specifically Estonia.
The proper in-game stuff is more fitting. More frantic. It works when you first start it up, but it plays throughout the game. There are a few other tracks, but I hope you can get used to aggressive Adlib music. As you can read, I need to pick out a border providence to start my operation in. I choose Moldenia, because it looks small enough to start with.
This game could do with a bit of "We do not reward failure", right about now.
The situation is grim. Very grim. I'm really not sure how much time 11 days is. It seems like a low amount of time to stop a famine, but at least I know how to stop it, supplies. I need to build certain amount of buildings, of which I am not yet clear on what I need to do that, but I see I have to destroy certain buildings and destroy certain people. That much I can do. I'm sure that convincing people to vote for...me (?) will follow once I make the trains run on time or whatever it is we're doing.
"You may have saved us from dying...but that's really only worth 20 bars of gold."
And here's what I get if I can save the province. Seeing as I have a rough time limit in each republic of 30 days, currently 21 to pacify the republic, that's not that helpful. Gold and diamonds are goofy to see, though one must admit, having money to pay people is oh, so, important.
Soon to be filled.
So the map, this screen is incredibly obtuse. You automatically start here and have to go get other information through the function keys, I got the situation that way. There's seemingly nothing you can actually do here, just find out what your surroundings are. Right now I'm just focusing on the reference card and none of the buttons are for doing anything on this screen. Clicking somewhere gets options of viewing this screen differently. Which is...not helpful. There's an auto-move I have yet to figure out, but doesn't really seem like I need it just yet.
Into the golden void...
Most of the game is played via the main screen. And memories of Midwinter come flooding back. Memories of flying around in chaos and not hitting things. Because the aiming sensitivity is way too high. This time I solve that by just lowering my system's mouse sensitivity. Now it's just a question of flying and hoping you reach someplace. Because all you get to find something is the map unless something is really close, and it's slow switching back and forth. Later, I did discover you can open an expanded version of the radar map, which usually makes things easier.
Not pictured, civilian vehicles in the distance.
Eventually I find a town and some vehicles. Blue vehicles are friendly, dark red dots are buildings. So I approach the town, slowly set myself down, get out and enter the radar station.
"I'm not going to help you if you don't give me stuff, but I am going to help you anyway."
Much like Midwinter 2, people want favors in exchange for doing stuff for you. The game advertises 665 professionals who move from town to town, but the true number is much higher. Domenico here is a regular civilian who is just working the town radar station. I just need to get him to join the side that isn't about to start the events of Midwinter, and to do so I need to give him a barrel of wine. Which I have and can easily give him. This is done with the barter icon, simple enough. Or you can try to persuade them using the icons below.
"We grant you the title of doctor, but you can't introduce yourself as Doctor Marceline."
Using the lion-shaped door knocker, I can switch over to the other building, a hospital. Marceline, meanwhile, is a bit greedier. (well, a hospital needs that stuff more than a radar operator needs wine, but this is quibbling) I see no reason not to give it to her, and then have to ponder if I should wait for the surgeons or try to track them down. I mean...It already took me 2 hours to reach this place, by the time I figure these places out they're likely going to be back here again.
Quality aside, Midwinter 2's faces were better, simply because they didn't look goofy and move around like crazy. That's a caricature, not a face that belongs in a serious war game.
So I wait for Fokine, a name which makes me glad I'm not a video reviewer. Fokine offers a significant amount of stuff in exchange for bringing him 20 cases of medication, 20 sets of interdiction papers and 20 sets of movement papers. I apparently don't have this, which isn't surprising since that's a lot of stuff. On the other hand, he is willing to give me so much in exchange. I then wait for Nahhas, who is known to be a Ruzakh. He asks for something I can easily give, a military team and some of what I need for Fakine. The manual says something about either getting resources or getting their services as a professional. Not sure how that's going to work out, but whatever. I decide that I'll do it, I still have one, having 2 of each type of team I can have and I can check out how effective they are as allies when I actually see some combat. Since they cost resources to use I can't afford to use them willy nilly.
I guess it's a caliber issue, but it feels just so abstracted away in a strange way.
With the radar station obtained, the map shows a lot more stuff, including a town with some nearby soldiers southwest of my location. I go there, occasionally checking my map, and find the two offending vehicles. I start attacking them, with bullets and bombs. They don't attack back. I burn through my entire supply of bullets and most of my missiles and nothing happens. I quit in disgust at this and check the manual. No, those were hostile vehicles and yes I'm supposed to shoot at them. Copy protection poorly removed? Or is this going to be one of those annoying games where you can only shoot something when you have the proper style of vehicle? I'm in a VTOL/plane and they're in armored cars, so that could be it. Combat is given lip service in the manual. Hey, you wrote a manual that's over 140 pages, do you think we could find out how to shoot something as opposed to how soon the people will be dying of hunger in the streets? I like story more than the next guy, but you need at least playable gameplay to go along with it!
Time to fight fire with fire!
So, I check the instructional VHS tape, and I'm really not sure what I'm missing here. The tutorial just has it as point and shooting, but noticeably, he never shoots a ground vehicle despite being in a plane. Curious. The next day I start up the game again, losing some progress, but technically making it up by just rushing to the town. This time I get to the Ruzakh before he leaves and secure his services. I also discover that your vehicle disappears if you enter a building with it, but you can also airlift a vehicle to you. Basically any vehicle. And it turns out that it's probably just mismatched attack types. VTOLs can't shoot armored cars, but armored cars can shoot armored cars just fine. In my case, I eliminate the armored cars with a few shots. Heck, yeah!
Every town looks like this, the difference is in the icons down below, a Professional is in the middle building.
First order of business, meet with random house owner in Frelgorsk. He wants quite a bit for a few extra days and some wine, if I wanted I could negotiate with him, but more impportantly, there's a nurse here. In exchange for 5 sets of interdiction and movement papers, along with 5 cases of medication, he'll give me 5 courses emergency medical treatment and 4500 Ossian votes. Emergency medical treatment being a way of recovering from injury faster. You can't truly die unless you run out of time. I unfortunately, don't have the resources right now. Fortunately, I can perform parlor tricks to convince the housekeeper to join me, anyway. Since you can only save by pressing F9 and reload by F10, one could engage in a bit of savescumming. It's the only chance you'll get since there's only one save. I'm not desperate enough yet.
The rest of the town has a fort and a depot, which I believe are vital to my war efforts. The fort comes with unlimited amount of ammo, assuming I can find a mine. The depot meanwhile, adds vehicles to my overall pool. I use resources for the former, food and wine is an easy way to a man's heart, but try the persuasion system on the later. It's intentionally Russian Roulette with 8 chambers. Get the right option and you win; Get the wrong option and you lose time. The Fort is something I'm supposed to capture, yet the depot I'm supposed to destroy. Not much point in destroying something I own, but the objective isn't to capture them. Hopefully I don't need to completely solve the objectives before winning, because I would be oh, so, annoyed at having to do that.
I wonder how you discover towns without radar?
With that done, I decide to go southeast, to Spitchagan, which has some Professionals, but more importantly, a mine, which I think will prove quite useful. Driving around in an armored car is quite bouncy. You get every single bump and crease as you drive along, which is a lot, so high speed travel is quite...disorienting, not just to the player but to the actual direction you're going in. There's also a radar station, some resources and a little negotiating later and I have unlimited ammo, but not unlimited fuel and air vehicles. Anyway, let's see what I can now see...
Judging by the rate at which enemy vehicles seem to drain the Pacification Programme, I'd have long accomplished my goal by the time I finish with that area.
Yikes, that's a lot of guys. Almost all ground vehicles, guarding effectively a hospital. I decide that it's best to go north first, since there's a control tower there, a vital building to take, and more importantly, not thousands of vehicles. Though I must admit, that the game is willing to go this hard this early on is a sign that this is going to be very difficult. I'll also start exploring around the place.
My guy must be really ugly if she isn't looking at me. Then again, I'm not looking at her, either?
Celestine doesn't want much for her services, but now I'm suddenly not concerned about her. Rather, I'm more interested in this Medical Coordinator. There's a system in this game where if you recruit someone's superior all his subordinates join up. I don't know if it's conditional, or if it automatically happens, but either way I think I need this guy. Possibly gal. Either way, I give resources to the kind air traffic controller and then look around at the rest of the town. There's a bombproof factory here, which gives unlimited aircraft in this province. Well worth what the director is asking for, one article of basically everything I can give. Muahahaha! Now, to the place he is said to be.
"I, an important member of the community, am going to travel all the way to the very important random farm in the middle of nowhere."
He's gone a significant distance over many towns. That's quite the trip, not sure how he's doing it in under 6 hours, but that's game logic for you. So I head there, making sure to stop on every town along the way that I can. First stop, Vidalsk, complete with another control tower and...a Commandant regularly walks around here. So I try to charm this person, eventually succeeding, and walk over to the barracks, another target I have to take out, where the Commandant is.
In retrospect, I'm not quite sure if I'd do this, since that is a steep price.
That's a pretty high price, since I haven't gotten anything to replenish them, but I can't deny that these services are of vital importance. More assault forces means friendlies for my eventual assault south, and that's one set of buildings I just don't have to worry about. Not quite, but I'm not sure how to destroy them just yet. The administrator is in the opposite direction entirely, back west, the opposite of where I'm headed at the moment. So more east.
My next destination is Krenomsk, which has a vault. With gold. I really don't think I need the gold. I would just pass over this place, but he mentions an Administrative Coordinator, so I should stick around. So I look around the rest of the place, there's a windmill, which has a power cell but is otherwise unimportant, a mosque, nothing special, and the final control tower I need to have one third of the construction requirements met. The Administrator proves useful, because he offers plenty of Moldene votes, and more importantly, where to find an engineering coordinator. He just wants diamonds, gold and wine. Nothing too valuable.
I end up in combat with another group of enemies a bit further east. I find out some interesting things now that I'm on the ground. Firstly, enemies are not obstructed by your limitations. Planes can shoot ground vehicles just fine and ground vehicles can usually shoot planes just fine. Seems like there are limitations to what vehicles can do buried in the manual, and I just overlooked it since, hey, it's Midwinter set in the Soviet Union, why do I need to know that? I reload and instead come here in a tank. It seems like the better option even if practically everything in this game is torn apart like tissue paper. This seems to give me a little more protection, though it's mostly just using missile to take out enemies before they're within range.
Bagrolsk, one of the last places before I reach the place I want to be, has a power station, which is completely irrelevant outside of giving me power. I don't actually know if I need power yet. I'm sure I'll find out when it's needed most. In the meantime combat is proving interesting, fights aren't luck, but it feels like you have no proper way of countering everything, you will always be under threat from some enemy force. The only real anti-plane vehicle is the fighter, but that leaves you vulnerable to ground fire. It's an intentionally screwy game of rock-paper-scissors, with the consequences being two hours of your time.
Finally, I make it to Dokenko, where the Medical Coordinator isn't actually at. Well, better make the most of this. There's nothing of value here, except a cache of building materials, of which I need someone special to make use of. I just have to wait for the guy. He knows where a surgeon is, gives more medical treatment and some Moldene votes, but the real prize is that he'll win over all CSR troops with 50 kilometers. As an American, I am legally obligated to not know what those are, but I'm pretty sure that's a suspiciously high number. That seems like more than the entire distance I've gone. The speed and distance I've gone is clearly not that amount.
Looking back through my screenshots, I'm not even sure that missing dot west is one that got removed by it, I just took them out.
Lo and behold, the game is not quite to scale. 50 kilometers is akin to at most, 15 seconds of flying at top speed. Which in reality is quite impressive for how fast I'm going, but in the game world means I've been cheated. At least I get a few groups in case I need support. Military teams and in-combat teams are two different things. My next plane, get some of these more important people around. Two of the more important guys are in Smetajan, right in the center of those remaining teams.
Like an eagle in the sky.
The only group I end up encountering are groundhawks, which are planes, which I didn't quite get until I spotted one. I went there with a bomber, so I wasn't able to take them out...and also somehow crashed it. Which is quite impressive. Unfortunately, I crashed it, seemingly into air. Guess I hit the hitbox of an object which isn't boxy shaped. The town has some interesting stuff. A processing plant, which, when I get a pump head, will give me unlimited fuel. The manager wants some stuff, but since I have some time before the two big boys come back, I just haggle with her. Eventually while trying to negotiate for a fuel dump, more fuel, the engineering coordinator will tell me where to find a constructor general, and some goods and tools, all for 10 diamonds and gold. Sweet deal. Unfortunately, when I eventually meet with the surgeon, he wants a ton of stuff, which would be a stiff sell if I had 50 interdiction and movement papers, but I don't. Also, Surgeons are titles, but sometimes generic civilians are also surgeons.
Either way, I look around, and spot a Pump Head south, located away from anything I know to be important. I end up stopping at that town west, which has some vehicles guarding it, natch. And lucky me, I find out that the Captain of Works hangs out around here sometimes. And the factory here will give me unlimited underwater craft. I don't see much water here, but it couldn't hurt me. When I eventually meet with the Captain of Works, whose name is Giulio Agricola, which sounds suspiciously Italian to me, he offers me a lot, all for a military team. The important thing is that he gives four processing plants, one of the buildings I have to build.
I'll leave things here, as I'm starting to get something of a beachhead. The basic gist seems to be, it's one of those games where you have to spot your enemies on the radar first, shoot first and ask questions later. Everything comes down to time. Your vehicles can be airdropped in, but you have a usually limited number, and airdrops cost fuel. Everything can be gotten by either wasting time negotiating or giving other resources. The latter will eventually run dry if the player doesn't negotiate. I'm not sure that I'm doing too well, but I'm not yet sure what I could be doing better. This Session: 1 hour 20 minutes
Name:Strontium Dog - The Killing Number:237 Year:1984 Publisher:Quicksilva Developer:Channel 8 Software Genre:Top-down Shooter Difficulty:5/5 Time:1 hour Won:No (104W/75L)
Put another point for the '80s being the era of weird licensed titles. Strontium Dog is a series by the creators of Judge Dredd about a mutant named Johnny Alpha, who is a bounty hunter with the ability to see through objects and read brainwaves/telepathy. It's not weird that this is adapted, since frankly guy with gun who commits violence is the perfect form of media to adapt, rather that it seems to me to be a blip on the radar in terms of popularity.
The Killing is one of two Strontium Dog licensed games that Quicksilva made in 1984, and was released only on the ZX Spectrum. The game has a bit of story, which is just that Johnny has made it to some contest where the galaxy's most vicious murderers are in a contest to the death. Kill people, get money. Surprisingly, there's quite the epic introduction. Let me show you what I mean.
With the man on the slab, it looks less like an organized competition and more like a cult.
This is animated, and shows three figures crossing before the king here states that the killing has begun. Now, this would just be a cool, short little screen before the game proper were it not for one thing, this is an awful lot like the opening screen of Zelda II. It's amazing what coincidences you find sometimes.
Controls are the usual Spectrum nonsense. QA go up and down, OP move left and right. M shoots, one bullet on-screen. I must be getting used to the crap factor here, because it seems better than usual. You stop on a dime and move quickly, and shooting is fast. So much that it took me a while to notice it was one on-screen at a time. Johnny dies in one hit and has no real sign that he has any abilities beyond good with gun. I imagine if I read the story beforehand I would be ticked off. It's always disappointing whenever you play a game based off some superhuman comic character and you might as well be playing as a random guy.
Note the multi-colored electrical field, it shifts quite rapidly.
The oddity of the game continues when you reach your first opponents. You've got to kill 93 murderers, and it's not just simple slaughter. It's puzzley slaughter! I'm not saying I dislike the idea, but I'm pretty sure these guys were going for Robotron 2084 and were severely hamstrung by the ZX Spectrum not being built for that. On this first screen, which becomes a reoccurring room design, there are two guys who pass by behind the electrical fields. They shoot shots which go diagonally, bounce off walls and just sort of hang around in an ever tightening circle. So you can't just camp out hoping to hit one.
Nothing says the future like a short Elvis impersonator.
The other common type of enemy room is a series of doors. Like ye olde light gun games from around this time, but in a way that I don't think anyone really finds fun. Enemies pop out, sometimes they shoot down, sometimes diagonally and you just have to get lucky. This, along with just moving through a series of corridors, seems to consists of 90% of the gameplay.
Now of course, these corridors aren't always free of trouble. Often the walls kill you on touch, but just the glowing ones. Then there's this rainbow barrier. It's just sort of there, it's not tricky to avoid. As I've said, I haven't read the comics, but I know that British comics tended to have gritty, black and white illustrations. This feels like the exact opposite of it. Really, this is one of the reasons why games tended to suffer until the Amiga/VGA-era. Because if you're limited in the colors you can use, but not to the degree that it's pure black and white, you tend to overcompensate rather than just drawing better.
He certainly looks like he needs medical attention.
The big thing breaking up this are the Medi-Centres. Here, you throw a flare in with X, lest you get shot and die. Throwing a flare in causes a bunch of shots to ring out inside, and then a two-headed creature pops up and just shoots in a triangle pattern. Constantly. Your bullets don't take out other bullets, so you just have to get lucky. Did I mention you only have three lives and no saving and loading? I really can't imagine getting too far in this without save states.
That is likely where most, if not all players gave up. The Medi-Centres are chokepoints in progressing through the game, and you aren't getting much higher than 10 kills if you don't go through there. But afterwards, it's more of the same. Kind of. At first there's a sign that it's getting more difficult, more enemies, but then it just sort of eases up. Enemies shoot slower, and more and more rooms are just empty. I think, because enemy appearances are random, sometimes quickly popping up, sometimes taking forever to appear.
The second Medi-Centre is no different to the first. It's appearance does not mark anything positive. I know the number of kills I must make and the number of Medi-Centres I must go through, three, yet the two don't seem anywhere close to what they should be. Is the game just really backended? Or is it just really slow on some screens?
This is actually quite the annoying screen, when it has enemies on it.
Eventually I find some new stuff. There's another door shootout area, this time the doors are not flat but sort of criss-crossing. The first two don't have enemies to engage with, but I might have killed one the second it appeared because my kill count went up on one of these screens. Although later I discover another phantom increase, so maybe someone else is killing others?
I didn't know Strontium Dog had a tarot motif!
Then there's the hanged man. At first, you might think, oh, forboding, and mindlessly walk across it. Yep, it's another trap. He's hung himself or something. Just get lucky when you shoot him. The manual actually mentions him, just saying you need to shoot him. Which, to be fair, if it didn't say so, I would have genuinely assumed it was impossible. Now, you might think this is some sort of thing blocking off further progress. Yes and no, since there's a Medi-Centre not long after this. And the area opens up after this. Which considering the maze structure of the game isn't nice.
At around this point I just lose interest in going any further. It's no longer a case of just going to the side roads then returning to the main path, no, it crosses off in a large way, two massive areas past a crossroads. Then enemy groups start getting massive. Like 5 at a time. I applaud the game for having that many on-screen in a Spectrum game, but it's just another stark reminder that this game has limited lives, you have no way of getting any more, and you had to complete the whole thing in one sitting.
Weapons: Basic blaster, one shot on-screen. 1/10
Enemies: There seems to be a dozen different types of enemies but I can't tell if there's much difference. 2/10 Non-Enemies: None.
Levels: Make a map of a seemingly endless number of the same room which display no regard for geography or logic. The more puzzle-inspired levels that the manual implied are a blip in comparison to just dodging enemy shots. 1/10
Player Agency: It's solid. You need a light touch to move small distances, which you kind of don't need but is somewhat annoying when you do. But, this at least comes with the boon that it's very smooth to play. 5/10
Interactivity: None.
Atmosphere: The game certainly makes an entrance, but quickly loses it thanks to constant padding. 1/10 Graphics: On one hand, I can tell they tried. On the other, they ended up with a very garish looking game. Animation is surprisingly nice though, which is something that's struck me as beyond the capability of the machine. 3/10
Story: I don't think "kill everyone" can be said to be a story. 0/10
Sound/Music: Typical blips and bloops. 1/10
That's 14, seemingly quite in the middle for the year.
This is an odd game. It's not good, but it shows that it had potential as an idea. I would not be adverse to this if the game was just not as strict as it was. It shows that the Spectrum can be made workable as far as action games go and isn't just the cheap computer that barely functions. It isn't the game that shows that it will work, but it shows that it's possible. And that, despite a quite lackluster design and performance, is what strikes me as interesting about it. There just needed to be someone with a better idea of how it should be balanced rather than just throwing more crap at the player.
I know I said I was going to do The Dam Busters, a WWII flight sim but I could not figure out how the game operated even with a manual. I mean, I could go around, shooting stuff, but in a game where you have to drop a bomb on a dam in a specific way, not knowing how to drop it is a pretty big problem. Which, if you haven't seen the movie, involves lowering the plane to a certain height. In the movie, one person looks down while the pilot lowers the height. This is a game that you take all the roles at once, which presents a problem.
Next time, I think it's time I finally bite the bullet and get on with Ashes of Empire.
Said by some to be a FPS, I must admit I felt unconvinced going in, but felt like I could use something a little bit simpler to ease myself into the nightmare that is undoubtedly going to be Ashes of Empire. A Japanese FPS on the Game Boy is a combination that makes me think this will be quite easy to tackle.
The reason why I was unconvinced is pretty obvious, the game constantly shoves planes in your face. I know that technically there's nothing saying that a flight combat sim isn't a FPS, but it feels wrong to me. In a FPS, you can occasionally be in a plane, but mostly, you're on the ground shooting other people. How can a game where you chose one of three planes, and are in that plane all the time be a FPS? Because you never go off the ground.
Nothing gets me more excited for a FPS than picking out a plane.
This is such a weird game on the face of it. You're in a plane, just driving along shooting things. Underground. It's such a counter intuitive set of ideas that I feel like I'm not actually grasping it. It's an action that happens not because you're in an incredible situation in a game that has both planes and ground combat, not a game where you're always in a plane. Shouldn't they just be tanks?
You're given a choice of three planes, with varying power and speed. One with more power than speed, one with balanced stats and one with more speed than power. I went with the balanced one after trying out the more powerful one and the faster one. Oddly, the more powerful one feels more crippling to use, but perhaps this is just my usual abilities shining through. I think these are supposed to be power and special, since later on you get special attacks, but then that doesn't explain why the more powerful one moves slower.
An enemy in the distance, looking like it's a comic book character teleporting in.
Gameplay is your typical Dungeon Master-style FPS, except the developers felt like they needed to make it more fancy. So instead of turning around instantly or swiftly enough, you slowly watch your view rotate as you are helpless to defend yourself. It's a nice effect, but I would prefer just turning. I don't understand first-person Game Boy games feeling the need to overcomplicate your ability to view the game. It gets worse because pressing down does nothing but cause your view to mysteriously bob down and up. This is bad, but at least I'm doing this on a keyboard, the Game Boy had a D-pad which was easy to accidentally press two directions at once, so this would be unplayable there. I suspect this may be related to how I have to constantly fight with the game to get actions to work sometimes.
A shoots, you get unlimited ammo as far as I can tell. You only get one shot on-screen, but it's a short enough distance that it doesn't matter. B shoots your special attack, which presumably does more damage. There are multiple special attacks, I'm not sure there's a difference. Start might pause, because I remember it working, once. Select opens a map. The game isn't paused when the map is open, because that would be easy. This game does not want to give you any advantages whatsoever. Select closes it, whenever it feels like it should be closed. Speaking of which, the game has a soft time limit, moving uses fuel. There are pick-ups, in addition to repair items, which restore it. Being a bit conscious of it, I never ran out.
The map screen, showing everything important about a given level.
Your objective on each level is to kill all enemies and gather all parts. Dunno why we need the latter, but I'm sure it's very important to the backstory. It does something for the gameplay. I'm not sure if it's good that this isn't just mindless shooting. There are also various wall opening and teleport objects, which are seem to be invisible on the map, but you have a fairly decent amount of visibility, 3 tiles. Nothing really holds over between levels, it's all passwords, so it's not like you need to hold off on advancing levels to recharge.
A mine enemy, which you have to kill if you want to win.
The strategy boils down to, am I facing an enemy? If I am not, he hurts me. If I am, there is nothing he can do but run. Shots can be shot, and you have a faster firing rate than the AI, so enemies quickly fall down. It's just a matter of positioning yourself so that enemies can't sneak up behind you, which is entirely what level design is about. Enemies have some distinct behaviors, but it all falls down to simply putting yourself in a situation where you won't get snuck up on. Don't run into them either, because that hurts you quite a bit. You can use that as a strategy, but it's not reliable.
This guy is more intelligent than some of the other enemies, but in this situation there's little he can do to harm me.
On stage 4, I figure out how the levels themselves are designed. They're randomly generated, probably based off a few templates. I don't ever see a level that's impossible to win, but I can't be sure I didn't just have good luck. Power-ups are certainly randomized, but level design is too, because this level is primarily based around just going down a series of cross hallways shooting enemies as they pop up. This, oddly, seems to break the shooting mechanics, as I can't consistently get off shots.
Parts, needed on most levels they appear.
The game is trying to do dungeon crawler design, but does so in a bizarre way. There are traps, which are manageable, but then most of the things that would be objects or reusable are powerups. Things like walls opening or teleports are one-use. Level design means that these are often one-way to areas which contain parts and enemies. It seems like sometimes teleports are one use, sometimes not, just one of those things that comes off as odd about the game. I guess it isn't too bad in theory owing to the shortness of the game and easily starting over, but man, way to hit on every single possible bad design choice you could.
To nail home this point, there's a set of levels (Stage 6/7 if memory serves) that I found used these mechanics in ways that would be ridiculous to play in any other game. First, a level full of mines you have to navigate around, featuring the usual enemies you can't see. You can shoot them beyond visible distance too, but good luck hitting them. Then, a level using teleportation, not one-time use, to prevent you from going down a hallway. So the objective is to find the one gap in these teleporters so you can reach the other side.
Shooting something or another.
I skipped ahead to the end, Stage 21, to see if there was anything new or special there. Well, to start with, you get a series of blocked off blocks which gradually open up thanks to various wall openers. I like it, it's mostly just hampered by the game itself. Then it opens up to these enemies which look like corrupted sprites. Not sure if that's intentional or not. They're tough, and actually move around somewhat intelligently, but assuming you know what you're doing, they're easy enough to take out. It's a longer level, but feels good, not like memorable, just the kind of filler level I don't mind in other games. Here, it seems like the highlight.
It's a flying tank, I guess.
And that's the game. There are the credits, odd considering they were before the title and you see your ship flying over a city, which I presume I was defending, but will never really know. In the end, you're usually defending some city or another, even if the game never says it.
To not completely crap on the game, while I think the game is trying too much to polish a turd, I think it's easy to fall in the trap of throwing good development time after bad, especially when it's your meal ticket and it probably came off as incredible just for the sheer novelty factor at the time. This would have been the only game of it's kind during development, so why does it matter if one of the levels is some annoying minefield?
Weapons: It's weird being in a first-person game with shot limitations, and the special weapons feel like they're just there to take out tougher enemies quicker. 1/10 Enemies: There's a surprising variety, some more intelligent and some simpler. But because you're often shooting at the limit of your weapon range, which is longer than your sight range, you can frequently end up not having an idea about what it is you're shooting until it's dead. 3/10 Non-Enemies: None.
Levels: On one hand, they really tried. On the other, this was so unbelievably boring I couldn't bother to finish most of them despite how easy they were. Still, those randomized elements got on my nerves and the game doesn't really have anything to make up for it. 1/10
Player Agency: I never thought that an emulated game would remind me of how frustrating it can be to use an actual Game Boy, which is an accomplishment. That said, it was usable enough that I had no trouble going through the levels I did, and likely would have no trouble through the rest. 3/10
Interactivity: None.
Atmosphere: Clashing design choices and a lack of interesting...well, much of anything. 1/10
Graphics: The developers could clearly draw a nice, shiny big screen picture, because the enemy sprites look nice. It's just that you see the title screen, your fancy ship, and then maybe a full enemy sprite once every few minutes. The rest is bland walls and objects chosen because the artist could draw them. 2/10
Story: None.
Sound/Music: In addition to the usual bloops and blips, there's this odd ambient walking sound going on. It's not distracting, but it does feel a bit odd. 2/10
That's 13. Feels fitting. It's bad, but not offensively so. A big factor in this, is that while it is bad, it's never a struggle to play. Even when I was fighting against the controls I was generally winning. It's just a novelty that's been surpassed by other games on the system. Of course, today, considering you can play the biggest games of today on your phone, the novelty is considerably...less.
Next time, we see a psuedo-adaptation of the film The Dam Busters.
