Number:5
Year:1993
Levelset for:Spear of Destiny
Publisher:Formgen
Developer:Formgen
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:5/5
Time:6 hours
Welcome to the first expansion pack to Spear of Destiny, Return to Danger. Forgive me if I don't go much into this beyond, "and clear out twenty more floors to get the Spear of Destiny", because the title screen isn't trying. It's the exact same title screen as the original. Could be because I copy/pasted the files over the original Spear's files in ECWolf, but I doubt it. You know the drill, Formgen smells money, decides to sell expansions to the game they have the rights to, ID doesn't care anymore because they're working on Doom. Same settings as last time, ECWolf, Bring 'em On.
To start off, I'm flashbanged by the graphics. I'm not sure what it is that's making it feel so weird. I've seen scanned pictures from this era, and none of them cause quite the same level of "what am I looking at" as these. Too bright? They did some weird effect? Too zoomed in? Too zoomed out? Perhaps just the strange feeling that the game tried to make updated textures for everything but they don't quite work? I don't know, but what I do know is that the developers violated the level design rule where enemies can't attack you at the very start. They are the dogs, but still. It's more troublesome that you don't have any ammo for a while.
For a moment, I had some hopes that this was going to be an easy level, since there are quite a few empty rooms. These are lies intended to lull you into a sense of tranquility. Once again, we're fighting against endless hordes. It's pretty clear that the developers of this one know what they're doing and some of the flaws of the original game. Hence the bizarre secret giveaways. Yet, I'm still banging my head against the wall fruitlessly, hoping that sooner or later I'll actually make it through.
Remember way back in the first game's secret levels? One of the secrets was in a desert rock-styled diamond room where you had to go the right way to avoid battling something like 44 Officers. This level is based around a similar principle, only instead of Officers, it's just endless Guards with a few SS thrown in. This only has 66 enemies spread across a wide area, but this opening section, which is really just nine blocks leading to the rest of the level, is by far the most tedious.
This level also reveals a particularly nasty bit of information, both that some secrets won't take advantage of the rat trick and that they may sometimes be vital ones. The key to the floor exit is behind one such secret, and you can bet that this is going to come up again later. I wonder what awful thing is going to happen next? Not even tempting fate at this point, that's just how this game is rolling.
Just because you involve something doesn't mean it wasn't going to happen anyway, I'm just surprised at how much worse it gets. At first this starts up like a normal level. A few guards, an obvious secret which leads to a room with...doors that open to verboten warnings. Well, I did miss a door back in the non-secret area...which leads to more doors with those warnings. You ain't getting anywhere without hunting for secrets. Good. Just what I needed.
I'm just impressed that they managed to make my opinion of them 180. I thought they understood some of the flaws of the past levels. No, they viewed those as strengths, and decided to double down. Because I can't figure out why else you'd place a door that leads to nowhere at the end of a long, winding hallway full of enemies.
This is where the first secret level can be entered, and it's actually kind of strange. See, there are two keys in the level and two exits, but the secret exit is actually easier to find. Since, you know, you have to find secrets to get through the level. I don't understand what the developers were thinking during this process.
The first boss floor. What terrible things will happen this time? Outside of the now expected difficulty, this is just a regular level with a boss appended at the end. Like how Spear was going, and we've picked up where Spear left off. Well, Spear left off just before we got to have to deal with a maze before getting to the boss. There are also 18 secrets, which are just so excessive. Especially since they aren't optional. One is even a way you can screw yourself, which is just the cherry at the top of this game.
Basically, this entire level is me going through a slog of a level before I get to fight the boss. A reskin of the submarine guy from last time. He's...actually, he might just be even easier than previous bosses. That or it could be the easy cover setup. In my serious attempt at the boss, I didn't even need to run away for health or ammo to get him.
Something occurred to me while playing this level, the art direction might actually be better. Yeah, it's garish, but so was the base game, and a lot more places in this game feel like actual places as opposed to the endless prisons and stone structures the original had. There's a secret lab here, and a lot of the map is dedicated to a food room. Nothing really special here otherwise.
In the absolute final statement on swastika-styled floors, the entire level is one giant swastika. The way this level is done overall is somewhat lazy. Instead of having four different sections, there are two sets of room which are more or less copy/pastes of each other. Also, the exit is basically right at the level start, if you know which hallway to go down. You could do it without ever engaging in anything at all on this level.
Floor 8:
Oh, look, a level-sized maze. My favorite. My absolute favorite. Oddly enough there are more...normal sections, but they're in the middle of a big maze. Which has not only secrets which allow you to cut across wide amounts of it, but the level exit. Without anything to stop you from just taking it short of your own luck in finding it. This expansion, man, this expansion.
Floor 9:
It's another maze leading to big rooms with stuff and enemies in them. Sure, it's simpler than the last one, but it still follows most of the same tropes as the last level. These guys were really struggling to fill out 21 levels, weren't they?
Boss number two. This one starts off intriguing, there's this massive wraparound hallway with no enemies, but plenty of doors and one of the keys. One of the areas won't open with the new key, but one does, and it leads to a particularly annoying maze. The kind where you have to move around static objects while figuring out who's shooting at you. There's also a key in there you can't reach, but this is one of those levels where a boss drops a key, so that isn't important. Instead, I start clearing the rooms on the north side, big mistake, because these really just contain enemies. No real treasure, ammo or health. Just a drain on resources.
What maniac is designing this crap? Two paths out of the starting area, one leads to an AK and a key, the other leads to the rest of the level. Including, once again, the level exit with barely anything stopping you from just gunning it. At least this time there are some enemies there. Also, all the doors out of this area are locked, the first key opens a room inside this area which has the second key. Look, I get making some stuff optional, but at this point a significant chunk of the game is turning out to be ENTIRELY optional. Even modern day open-world games with optional content aren't making you avoid the main chunk of the game!
Twenty-five secrets and the exit to the second secret level. I'll say one thing at least, the actual exit out is obvious, especially since there's only two pseudo-secrets between the start and the exit. Most of those secrets are just pushwalls in a long corridor which by technical definition is a pushwall maze.
The actual meat of the level are four rooms, three of which are corner rooms with a small amount of enemies and the fourth is a central room with a significant chunk. That fourth room has so many enemies that you realistically can't get through it with anything less than full ammo. Naturally, this is where the secret exit is. Good thing you can funnel them through a small corridor. That and the ability for some guards to become awake but not all of them saved my bacon for the last charge.
Floor 20:
This level is more or less a straight shot from the level start to the level exit, save for the two keys. Not in the sense it has been, but there's only ever one path forward, past the hordes of Nazis you have to kill. Not really much to talk about, but the second key is in an annoying secret, non-obvious and near the middle of the level.
Floor 14:
Every level at this point is starting to become the same. Floor 13 and Floor 14 are basically the same, except this one has two mazes in it. Open door in corridor to room full of 10-20 enemies, funnel them through corridor, repeat until you fall asleep. Oh, but this level has something even better, this time, you have a fifty percent chance of finding the level exit before the rest of the level. Why do this every level?
The last floor was just a completed game of tic-tac-toe with a few side rooms, which was about as interesting as it sounds. This one, instead, is another floor with a bunch of rooms where a bunch of enemies stand at the door waiting for you. To be fair it's not all like that, but this game is getting tiresome in how much it repeats itself. This one's a giant swastika, but at least it's sort of clever in how each room is laid out...most of the time.
The boss is actually kind of clever in its location. There's plenty of ammo and health next to him, but positioning is actually tricky. Unlike other levels, there's just a whole bunch of stuff in the way of you and him, and while you get plenty of cover, one lucky burst could end you. Which gets us back into the real deadly foe of these boss floors, the rest of the level.
The real nastiest enemies around are the mutant replacements, the bats with machineguns. I don't know if they're at all changed from the regular mutants, but they feel faster. Every time I fight one, it's only luck that results in me not losing health. Screw the rest of the secret projects they've been working on in this game, deploy a battalion of these guys in London and the tide of the war will change over night.
For the most part, this follows the usual boss floor stuff, save for the health and ammo merely being in side rooms. Go out one door at the start, and you're face to face with the boss, go out another and you can slowly pick off the rest of the guards before taking him on. The layout of the room is a bit janky, he can get caught in a big niche and fighting back can be tricky. After this the final level is more or less the same as the last one, just with a bit more trouble finding the boss.
I've going to give this a 2 and not explain it any further. I'll save that for the second expansion, of which I am definitely looking forward to. For the time being, I'm going to head for an entirely different game. For some reason, I picked out a game at random and ended up with Legend of the Hero Tonma, a Turbografx/PC Engine game from 1989. Gotta say, played a bit and discovered that it was certainly a game. So, none of that, we'll just be seeing the next game I was going to play anyways, Overkill, a shmup from Epic MegaGames.