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.

Galactic Dan: The Last Seven Sectors

Operation Strawberry, Sector 18. Another tough one, dark side of Lygon. The night I made it through the last sector I started this one, to prepare myself for the terror. It's a nice big arena, with the enemies and hostages spaced out, plenty of space to run past enemies. This is a lot less the nightmare this game was and a lot more normal difficult, that is, I'm just fighting the aiming as I try to shoot hordes of enemies before they can hurt me or kill the hostages. I do die a few times, but it's basically just a sampler of past levels.

Operation Willow, 42 hostages in 20 minutes. The catch? It's a big slum. Like the cityscape levels in Doom. Long, annoying, and attempting to replicate reality far too much for a game of this era. And they're behind doors you need the Plasma Disruptors for, and guess how much of a limited resource they are? It all depends on where you go first. Maybe you get 5, maybe you get 2, but there are more than enough of them to destroy all the doors. You just have to get lucky to find them. Don't forget the enemy department, you need to spam the toughest weapon in order to kill even previously normal enemies.

New enemies include a crystal which acts like the other floating enemies, and flying coconuts. These are annoying because they're fast, shoot a ton of shots, so you can't really hit them. But because they go so fast, they're not that big a threat. They also go through walls, which is sometimes bad and sometimes not, depending on whether or not I'm about to get killed by them.

Operation Teacup, 4 hostages, 5 total, in 10 minutes. What's the catch? It's a house, you know, the kind of thing people made in 3D because it was impressive when things were first starting out. It's nice, even if you have to fight the coconuts again. What drags this level down is how if you reload a save here, this level turns into an absolute nightmare of a platformer. You have to jump from a chair, to a table in another room, onto a couch, then onto a TV in order to win the level. You also get zero hostage leeway in being able to win, but that's nothing after a few tries.

Operation Lovesteal, 12 hostages in 1 minute. I'm told no enemies. There are no enemies. Instead, it's a race against the clock. This would be fine if they were stationary, but some run away from you. You also have to jump over some hurdles to win, because track and field racing hasn't been implemented in a FPS yet.

Operation Triple Nine, no warning about anything, 24 hostages in 10 minutes. This is a weird level. On the ground it looks like some sort of Alice in Wonderland teaparty, but those are buildings, it's a tower climb. It's also incredibly merciful for a level in this game. I messed up quite a bit and I still won. The time limit feels like an acknowledgement that jumping in this game is crappy, but, if you know that, why did you leave it in?

Operation Camus, 40 hostages in 25 minutes. Fudge tells me that the planet will be nuked when I finish the next one. "Doesn't sound so noble." Yeah, but I'll enjoy it after all I've been through. Especially this level. I'm not sure how you're supposed to beat this one legitimately. Everyone on the ground is shooting hard, there are flyers spamming shots who can't be shot back, and moving around it all is quite tricky. I keep losing because my computer gets knocked out, even with infinite health that can happen. Even if you get it afterwards, that's it you don't get any sounds or messages from pick-ups.

There are two phases to this level, the first is the ground exploration, after you get the computer shield from the maze section. The second is when you find the platforms up. This is true terror. To win, you need to get those 40 hostages, and to do so, you need to jump all across the level. You can actually shoot those flyers now. I don't know how the developer beat this, because doing just the bare minimum to survive feels like I'm risking precious seconds. I feel like I can jump a lot better now, which is a shame because the game is about to end.

To escape, you need to activate two ball switches. One is in the corner of a multi-story building with a hostage on top. You can hit this one from a distance, but you have to jump a little. The second is on top of a green building near where you jump up. The first opens the door out, the second lowers an elevator so you can reach it. But to reach that, you actually need to jump all the way around the area. Somehow...I made it.

Operation Cleanup, Cadillac breaks back into the briefing, bragging about the might of the Vorian hordes and the sound of their tramping Doc Martens. Cool, cool. 22 hostages in 25 minutes. This is easier in overall terms than previous sectors, but still pretty hard. Enemies take a lot of shots, shoot rapidly, and run around like they're on crack. I swear the intended playing style is to run around not shooting enemies all that much.

Still, the inescapable annoyance is not the Vorians, but the platforming. Now the game expects you to do it precisely, in a small room. The tricky part is that it's incredibly easy to just slide off. This makes the level very tricky, you can actually just go to the exit right away, but you can't escape without the hostages required unless you're me and cheat. But I do give a chance at reaching the final group of hostages.

I end up finding another set of platforms up, behind a door locked by a random enemy. This is actually worse than the other one. I just can't jump up there. I don't mean, oh it's very difficult. I mean, it's physically impossible for me to move my mouse in such a way that allows me to climb up more than one. There is no perfect jump I can do to not just slide off at the end. I have no idea if this is a problem with my mouse or if it's a problem with the game having little testing beyond the author.

And with that, I "win", in as much as anyone is able to win without sinking hundreds of hours in. The ending crawl says some stuff I don't feel like summarizing. But, I will point out, based on this ending crawl, the opening crawl and most of the death quotes you get, that the author seems to be enamored with the idea of making a cinematic game. Not, it seems, in actually making a cinematic game, just with the idea of it. It doesn't have anything to do with the issues I have with the game, just an observation.

This Session: 3 hours 15 minutes

Final Time: 9 hours 15 minutes