Obitus (1991)

Name:Obitus
Number:243
Year:1991
Publisher:Psygnosis
Developer:Scenario Developments/Tech Noir
Genre:Action
Difficulty:5/5
Time:1 hour 30 minutes
Won:No (107W/78L)

For the second time in a row, I've come across a game that really tries my general ethos that there's something of value to any game. That no matter how crappy it is, there's a lesson to be learned from it. Any such lessons that could be learned from Obitus are so obvious as to be a basic building block of the idea of making a game. It's that bad.

The story is, a long time ago, a king was unable to find a suitable bride in all the land. The search went on for long enough that a wizard, who hid himself from the world, heard of it. The wizard hated the king a great deal, and created a bride for him. Not a good bride, but one born with a spark of evil.

The king and the bride meet through convenient circumstances and they fall in love. Four sons are born, and when the king dies, they start to war among themselves. It goes on for a while, and the land becomes a hellhole. A strange device appears in a tower in the middle of the land, and each son takes a piece of it, which allows control over the populace. An uneasy, oppressive peace falls over the land.

In the present of the 1990s, a history teacher by the name of Wil Mason, driving his Volvo, crashes during a thunderstorm. He wanders until he find a glowing light which leads to a strange tower. With nowhere else to go, he sleeps, and finds himself teleported a thousand years in the past.

The first problem with this game is that most of this doesn't really matter as far as the game is concerned. There are supposedly four figures in four castles you need to kill, but this is about all it matters. Mason might as well be a baker for all he matters to the story, since as soon as the game begins he becomes a silent killing machine, capable of shooting a bow with unnerving accuracy.

I'm not arguing that this backstory is bad, it just doesn't matter. The game doesn't have an actual story as much as a series of cryptic statements from people you're probably about to kill. It'd be one thing if Mason being a history teacher was relevant or if the machine is relevant as anything other than a treasure hunt. They aren't, you could say any of a thousand different backstories and they'd be true.

I didn't realize that the game had VGA graphics at first, so I played a bit in EGA.

You start off in the tower with a key on the floor in front of you and four doors around you. Something a text crawl helpfully tells you. The way things work is not obvious. Oh, you get a GUI with information on it, but that information is not necessarily obvious to the player. There are nine actions which are mostly self-explanatory. Mostly.

Info is weird. The manual tells you nothing about it, but obviously you can use it on items to get information. This tells you the various stats of items, from the straight-forward and useful to the more vague. Weight and nutrition have direct effects, you have a weight limit and nutrition is how much an item heals you. Mystic and value don't seem to have much direct effect in gameplay.

For a long while, I didn't figure out that you can use info on characters in the game world. Here, you can trade with people. I want to repeat that the manual mentions nothing about any of this. This is where value sort of comes into effect, because presumably trades are based on the value of items. The theory then, is you trade the most expensive item you can find, then work your way down.

This makes Info the closest the game has to a look function. It's more illuminating than a regular look function in theory, telling you all you'd ever need to know about an item. In practice, a list of statistics with very little to go by beyond that is very unhelpful. Everything requires you to guess as to what it does and how you use it.

Which is a problem with puzzles, which all involve guessing what item you have to use on which hotspot. Hotspots are tricky to click on, which is odd because the mouse cursor doesn't seem like it should cause any issues with this. When you have many keys and don't know if you use them on the door or the lock and have no indication of which is which, you have a problem. When things start getting less blatant, it's very troublesome. There is no indication that you're doing something right or wrong until an action happens, be it a key in the right lock or you accidentally shooting an arrow at nothing.

This leads to a sort of new section, the maze sections. Technically the maze is the same as the section you just came from, except you can actually move forward and backward. Controls are customizable and imitate a single button joystick, but you still need to use the mouse to click on things. You can use an actual joystick to, which seems like it would be interesting for a few moments.

The big draw of the game is the shiny, first-person parallax graphics. It's very nice, some of the best first-person 2D work you could find. Except that it's also quite confusing. Turn and you track in one of eight directions. It's enough distance that you would turn in real life, except that when turning it doesn't feel like you're properly turning, just sort of side-stepping.

So you have to rely on the GUI to tell you where you're pointing. The most obvious problem is that looking at the GUI to figure out where you're at kind of ruins it, even if it has a compass. You're looking at a map, not the game, in a game where the graphics are the selling point. The less obvious is that the way thing on the compass is a man, so the two ends of it? Those are the sides. Took me a while to figure that out.

Moving is no less confusing. Unlike turning, there's no locking, you just keep moving until you hit a wall. To help, there's no turning unless you're on an octogon, to name a tile. If, say, there's a octogon you can turn around on in-between the octogon you started on and the octogon that's at the end of your walk, the only way you can find out is by looking at the GUI.

This gives the game a very empty feeling. Not as if they forgot to populate the game world, just that you're doing the bare minimum for it to be called a game. You walk around, click on things, pick up items, then use them when relevant. It's just a game, not anything you could actually do with that, nothing special.

In order to navigate around the game, you either need to make a map yourself or take a map someone else made. I'm thankful that maps already existed, because that's just not a rewarding process. To start with, you're mapping eight-sided tiles, which is something you're going to have to figure out how to do yourself rather than take advantage of anything preexisting. So you have to figure out how you're going to map it, then actually go through the large and confusing area of the game, in a game that has more trouble than the usual dungeon crawler in making areas feel distinct.

Combat is dead simple. Have a weapon selected, and if you're in a first person section, click on what you want dead. Then keep clicking until it dies. Strategy consists of using a different weapon if it doesn't die and you have to reload. Side-scrolling sections add a little strategy, sometimes you can jump into an enemy to kill it.

But there is a curious aspect of this. Some enemies don't attack you. You can talk to them. They're obviously hostile, because this game doesn't do subtle. If this game had clever writing, you might think this was foreshadowing that the player isn't a good guy. Then the game makes you kill an obviously non-evil NPC to advance.

I'm not saying that a game can't allow you to kill innocent characters, but I expect it to be acknowledged. Tell me I'm evil for doing it. Acknowledge that it's not the act of a hero. I can believe that a British history professor, when push comes to shove, will kill someone trying to kill him. I do not believe that one is going to kill a defenseless old woman. Especially not when he could just walk around her!

Eventually, there's a path out of this area, leading to another new type of gameplay. A side-scroller section. It's dead simple, you go from left ro right until you reach a dead end or another area. Enemies occasionally pop up to stop you, but as far as I got, they weren't much trouble. Hell, you can just jump into them and they die.

Much later, there's yet another style of gameplay, sort of like the side-scroller, except designed like a game with more traditional screens. It's built off part of the last game from the lead developer, The Kristal, most visibly with being able to go into the background and the foreground to simulate depth. It's the part that most feels like a game, though this could be because this is a boss dungeon, at least in theory.

It's at this point that I gave up. Oddly, this is because the game finally throws something at me I feel like isn't just me randomly clicking and things happen, because there are traps. Traps that are very hard to avoid. Up until this point, the difference between getting hit and not getting hit felt very small. You have a lot of health and most enemies don't do that much damage. Traps are different, they take a big chunk of health and it seems almost impossible to dodge them.

Which means I've been playing it wrong and I need to do everything right in order to make it to the end. Since the difference between dodging and getting hit is barely noticeable, that's not very easy or fun. Healing is limited to items. Sleep is just busywork, a fatigue bar periodically fills and you need to rest lest you lose more health.

I did look up the ending afterwards. Wil just sort of ascends the opening tower, and then goes on further adventures in other worlds? I mean, that is a valid idea. A history teacher who is suddenly capable of fighting monsters and wizards like some sort of knight? Yeah, I'd want further adventures too. But considering everything else the game has, I'm just left wondering about it all. To the rating.

Weapons:
They differ in power, but otherwise they might as well be the same thing. 1/10

Enemies:
It's a bit odd that the only real difference between enemies is if they attack you when you get close to them or if they attack you after you attack them. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
The difference between and enemy who doesn't attack you and a NPC is usually how fast they die. 1/10

Levels:
Mazes intended to extend the length of an already questionably long game. 1/10

Player Agency:
Outside of hotspot issues, I had zero problems with the mouse and keyboard setup. It could have used some quick select keys for actions, but otherwise I can't see how this aspect could be improved. 7/10

Interactivity:
Only the most important actions do anything, otherwise you might as well be clicking into the void. 1/10

Atmosphere:
It's certainly an alien and mysterious fantasy world, but this quickly disappears when it becomes clear that they just didn't make much of anything. 3/10

Graphics:
The parallax is nice, but the spritework seems quite limited in many ways. Most characters just move to attack, so animation is extremely limited. It's also very samey within an area. 4/10

Story:
A barely important wall of text which could have added so much if the developers actually had some writing in-game. 1/10

Sound/Music:
Passable music and some forgettable sound effects. 3/10

That's 23, which is what the numbers add up to, yet it isn't anywhere near the passing grade that would describe. With a wave of the magic wand of boredom, I shall call it 13. Still feels like a higher number than it should get, but I guess between the graphics and the way I had no complaints with controls, it has something.

Obitus, as a game, is terrible in every regard. It does three genres, each so poorly that you have to wonder what the primary focus was. Having tech demo visuals is a selling point for a tech demo, a game needs something more. This is just nothing, a black stain on Psygnosis's library.

The only thing interesting about it is how some enemies only attack you if you attack first. If it was used by someone more clever, it could make for some interesting gameplay. A different take on getting around some enemies. Or perhaps make it so that attacking an enemy who isn't hostile has consequences.

And the reviews, back in the day, well, quite a few praise the game. I can only hope the check cleared. There are a few reviews that point out that the game is boring and pointless. The SNES version was actually named one of the ten worst games of 1994 by some magazine I've never heard of.

From a technical standpoint, the DOS version I've just played is the worst version. Other versions of the game include lighting mechanics, where you have to use torches and lanterns to see in the dark. Technically, it still exists here, but because the game is in 16 colors even in VGA mode, it never changes.

The SNES version is the best, since apparently resting actually heals you there, even if it comes at the cost of random battles and having to do mouse tasks with a gamepad. It's still not good, but at least you can win without feeling like you're torturing yourself.

Next time, we'll see Skyfox, one of the games I've been looking forward to in 1984.

Ray-Thunder (1991)

When you press start, the guy gives a thumbs up.

Name:Ray-Thunder
Number:236
Year:1991
Publisher:Nihon Bussan
Developer:Nihon Bussan
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:3/5
Time:1 hour
Won:No (104W/74L)

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.

Commander Keen 6 (1991)

Name:Commander Keen in Aliens Ate my Babysitter!
Number:235
Year:1991
Publisher:FormGen
Developer:Id Software
Genre:Side-Scroller
Difficulty:4/5
Time:3 hours 50 minutes
Won:Yes (104W/73L)

Hey, wait a minute, this wasn't released in December 1992, you might ask, having just come off Keen 5. It wasn't. It isn't even about Mortimer...it's about his sister, who babysits Keen. Isn't he a bit too old to be babysat? Naturally, Mortimer's sister had been kidnapped by aliens with a taste for the flesh of children. Ah, the things we accept in children's media without battling an eyelash even if it'd be grotesque anyway else. 

Keen decides to park before the river crossing.

This time around, Commander Genius has issues with playing the game, so instead I'll be playing it in regular DOS. The game is surprisingly spartan in its set-up, no F1 menu in the version I played, in stark contrast to previous entries. Just straight to the overworld then. Which has a lot of teleports, like the first trilogy. As this was intended to be the third part of the Goodbye Galaxy set, there are seemingly no real changes between the two control-wise. So I'll refrain from repeating them, and point out you can see what I've said of past Keen titles with the labels at the bottom. Though it did take a bit to refamiliarize myself with the game's controls. Apparently it was longer than I thought. The first level, despite being the typical opener, gave me some trouble.

One observation about enemies is that they seem to be alert to the player's presence a lot more than usual. Whether this is just me being more on point or if the game's AI is noticeably improved is the question. Regardless, we get these enemies:

Adorable little Blooglets.

• Blooglet, at this point, your typical "doesn't actually hurt Keen, but instead pushes him around" type of enemy. It's very fast and surprisingly hard to dodge, so taking them out is a better strategy than it would be in previous games. This is actually a very important strategy, because guess what? Sometimes they have keys.

Blooguard, trying to protect a Bloog from vicious galactic threat Keen.

• Bloog, the basic run around and kill Keen by touch enemy. Pretty big, pretty slow. Has a deceptively large hitbox, I suspect there may be some issues with that. As in, the hitbox is the whole sprite when there should be considerable transparency there.
• Blooguards, like the Bloogs, these guys kill Keen and are dumb and big. Unlike the regular kind, they take three shots to knock out and they have a club capable of stunning Keen for a moment, which they use randomly.

A Babobba, not pooping, but instead sleeping with his blankey.

• Babobba, small and lethal. Well, in theory. If you don't try to jump over it, it's easy to take out. They drop little...uh...radioactive turds which Keen shouldn't touch. Frequently, fall asleep, which makes it even easier to take them out.

A Gik, sinister or cute and cuddly? You decide!

• Gik, my first encounter with this resulted in my death. It's like those rock enemies from 4, except they chase after you and jump without delay. It's less of a jumping arc and more of a lunge, very little vertical air, more horizontal, turning into a slide.

Flect, just wandering around below me, smarter enemies do that.

• Flect, it has a mirror which reflects your shots back at you. They're unstunnable and push you, so this is the real trouble they provide.

Nospike, such a depressed looking creature...until it attacks you anyway.

• Nospike, it has a spike on its head and it charges after you. Takes a few shots, but not actually as deadly as it seems. Earlier Keen games had more deadly charging enemies.

Also visible here, this game's one-up, the Queen Vita.

• Ceilick, hides in the ceiling as a small tongue, shoots out when Keen gets within a certain distance, then pops out so you can shoot it. Not actually as tricky as it could be on their own, but with other hazards or enemies can frequently get you.

 

Very intimidating, unfortunately he can't touch me anymore than a random Bloog can.

• Fleex, very intimidating looking, but sadly not very difficult to fight. They're basically the Blooguards without the advantage of the stun attack. They even have a little move where they stop for a moment to look around.

 

Sometimes the most unassuming of foes are the most deadly.

• Orbatrix, very annoying little buggers. They're floating orbs, can't be killed, and turn into hypersonic balls if you get close. The only strategy seems to be to shoot and pray that it won't start bouncing around.

 

The Blorbs are even see-through!

• Blorb, your shots go through them and they kill Keen on touch. Not that bad, because they're slow and dumb, bouncing off walls in a consistent diagonal pattern. Less enemies and more a moving hazard.
• Bipship, little guys piloting flying saucers that shoot at you. They don't actually fly over things, they're more like your basic enemy that shoots at you. Which in Keen terms actually makes them quite mundane. They do explode spectacularly and drop little guys that you can cruelly stomp on. And here I thought Keen didn't like killing aliens...

There were also two more that the Keen wiki describes as monsters. A Grabbiter, which is actually what you need the later mentioned sandwich for to get past it on the overworld. Then Bobba, a bigger, immortal version of the Babobba. Which is only around on hard, I played medium.

And here are the notable to me levels:

• Guard Post One, the first level you can reach after the opener. If you go up, there's a Bloog and two Blooguards, and I don't have the ammo for them. Down is a large maze. It's a stark reminder of just how tricky these guys can be to avoid. Oddly, in comparison to the Goodbye Galaxy games, it's not the environment that's being trick, it's the enemies. The Babobbas are basically just there, but the combo of Blooglets and Bloogs is tripping me up. I'm burning through more shots than I normally would, but I'm still coming out ahead.

The walls have eyes.

• Second Dome of Darkness, where I get killed right away by a Gik, and I see no way to avoid it by going through the door. Much like a level of SWAT, just going through the front door will get me killed, so I just climb upwards. All the way to the top is a Bloog I have no way of shooting, but there's a passage above another...which leads down to a spike pit. Ouch, guess I have to get past the Gik. They're not that tricky to get past. Once inside, it's quite the maze of dodging Bloogs. It's actually a bit inspired beyond that.
• First Dome of Darkness, these can be tackled in any other. The real challenge here is going through a massive treasure room full of so many lovely traps. The real goal is to get to the top, where a grappling hook is, allowing you to go back and take a path you couldn't previously go through.

Welcome to the Machine, Keen.

• Bloogfoods Inc, you know, I don't think I've covered a commercial title with a food factory before, despite how seemingly common it is. (Obviously there was Keen Meets the Meats, but not commercial) It's a maze of industry traps and manages some cleverness in the layout I haven't seen before. Unfortunately, the music track really reminds me of Isle of the Dead. But this level has a lot of key hunting, and sometimes the keys are not behind places I enjoy having to get them from. Like a series of these flame jets which requires close to pixel perfect timing. The path to the final key is full of situations you just have no chance of avoiding and have to get lucky on to win. This still leaves a big room with a good half dozen switches you have no idea what they do until you need them flipped. All for a giant sandwich.
• Bloogdome, which the game implies is a bad idea to enter. There's even a giant stop sign there. Outside of the first appearance of the Nospike, there's nothing too concerning going on here. It's a lot less difficult to pass and more just, aha, you had no idea going this way would result in your death or loss of progress. It's not actually that tricky beside that, it's all in optional areas.

Sometimes it seems like Romero's rules only came about because he realized how bad it could be when he broke them.

• Bloogton Manufacturing, oh, nice, Blooguard right away. It's one of those levels. I can't help but feel like ID is running out of ideas. "Okay, have them go under the Ceilick, over the floating mines and the acid puddle to get the key." This isn't actually what you have to do, instead, you have to get another key, slowly go up the whole level, using that key to unlock a door, then pulling a whole bunch of switches, finding out that the key you ignored is the key you need, and then eventually discover that a switch activates a floating platform. All the way up, all the way down, then up again. There is at least, a one up for your trouble, if you're willing to risk death again.

 

It's a long way to the top and not that far down.

• Bloogton Tower, what is with these enemies at the start? This one starts off with two keys to the left of the start, the trick is that Keen can't reach one of them just yet. On this level, I discover that the Blooglets can have keys. It's not a very good level besides, since the first half consists of a lot of going back and forth on elevators. And we can't forget the second half, which is going back down to get the keys you missed, assuming you didn't miss any switches up above.
• Bloogville, hey this one looks deceptively easy, just some nice shiny side points. There are a lot of Celicks and Giks on this level. This isn't like other levels where you can just dodge the suckers, no, you have to proactively deal with a lot of them. Despite this, there is some cleverness in it all. I found the using a switch to get to a ledge a neat trick, feels like something that would be in a mod rather than a mainline game.

Keen, experiencing true terror.

• Bloog Aeronautics and Space Administration, well, that's amusing. The level itself feels like a pun on this, because the Giks are constantly getting in your way. Less annoying than Bloogville, but still a constant presence. What was more annoying is that to win, you need to go through a massive tunnel on a floating platform, going straight through it just leads to Keen's death. This isn't even halfway. What I'd describe as pure cruelty is that the game expects you to shoot a Fleex in a space it barely has enough room to not kill you straight off.

If you squint, maybe you can see Marvin the Martian.

• Bloogbase Management District, very Looney Tunes space feel to this one. I dig it. The music also has shades of Doom, probably unintentionally. This level has a lot of wall turrets. Energy dart guns? Despite some oddities, it's not too special, because at this point shooting the regular Bloogs is very old hat.
• Blooglab Space Station, the secret level, reached by going behind the Bloog Control Center. It feels like the fun kind of secret level, though this is slightly ruined by how the level puts Flects in places that are strategically designed to trip you up. It's mostly about dodging Blorbs, who sometimes slow up the game and sometimes not.
• Bloogbae Recreational District, ah, how an unfortunate typo can make things sound weirder in retrospect. (Not that anyone seems to use bae anymore, but this would have been hilarious a few years ago) Very good level, Bipships appear a lot here. They're a very fun enemy to fight and the level gets a lot of use out of them here. I also like the idea the last part has of pulling switches near dangerous enemies to slowly raise bridges to get higher. Feel very second-to-last level.

Just an ordinary day climbing over eyeballs.

• Bloog Control Center, black background, yep, this is a proper last level. There's a switch next to you, with mines below. A platform approaches...and it's time for Let's Make a Deal, pick a door, Commander! After you realize that the Blooglet above you has a key and travel over the acid puddles to reach him. Oh, and there's an identical room with a yellow Blooglet and key. Oh, and the blue key is below the door to this set of doors. The red key, thankfully, is just in a Blooglet on your way to the end of the level. Otherwise, it's fairly straightforward with only one last annoying bit to go. And there's Molly, behind four doors.

I have some questions about Mortimer's home life...

Molly, then tells Keen that it was her brother, Mortimer, who sold her off to the Bloogs and then told them where to find the Sandwich I gave the Grabbiter. Apparently, he plans on blowing up the universe, which is of no consequence to her, because she's more concerned that Keen gets back before his folks get home. Next time, Keen and Mortimer battle for the universe!

Weapons:
The same as last time. 1/10

Enemies:
There's some good ideas here, like the Blorb, but a lot of it just feels like shoot the big guy, or thing you can't deal with, run away. The usage makes up for a slightly samey enemy selection though. 6/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
I have mixed feelings here, some were very good, but others felt like they had a lot of padding added. Which is a valid concern in a commercial product and in a game that even with them, felt like I just sped past it. But checking that isn't that unusual, but still the feeling remains. 7/10

Player Agency:
Same as the last time, except now he doesn't seem to surf on moving platforms. Oh, well. 7/10

Interactivity:
A few bits and bobs here and there. 1/10

Atmosphere:
We've gone from reaching out to an unknown world in the first trilogy, to the mysticism of Keen 4, the machine of 5, to an entirely alien planet here. It's nice, but I feel it's lacking in truly establishing itself as an alien world. 6/10

Graphics:
Still very much in the category of I can't believe it's not VGA. Environments are still stunning, but enemy design seems...slightly missing in some respects. Like they weren't quite fleshed out in time. 7/10

Story:
Mortimer is proving more resilient than Wolverine. 1/10

Sound/Music:
Sound is still solid, but there's still only 6 minutes of music. It's fine, it's varied, but it's 6 minutes of music. A few tracks are very nice, but some are just sort of there. 3/10

That's 39, one below Keen 5 and the same as Keen 4. That feels fitting, much like Keen 4 a few things kept nagging at me. In either event, neither score is too shabby.

This is, for most people, the end of the Keen series. However, while the conclusion never happened officially, there are two attempts at having the conclusive battle between Keen and Mortimer. The lesser known Game Boy Color game and the unofficial The Universe is Toast trilogy, which attempt to finish what the boys at ID never got to do. While neither is going to do what ID likely would have done, since they were moving into VGA at the time, I'm sure there'll be a pretty good attempt at making it work.

Next up from ID, of course, is Wolfenstein 3D, which I'll go through again despite not entirely wanting to. Much like more Keen, that's in the future. For now, expect another forgotten FPS, this time from the handheld king of FPS titles, the Game Boy, or more ZZT.

Crystal Caves (1991)

Name:Crystal Caves
Number:231
Year:1991
Publisher:Apogee
Developer:Apogee
Genre:Side-Scroller
Difficulty:4/5
Time:6 hours 50 minutes
Won:Yes (101W/72L)

My experience with Crystal Caves is a bit of an odd one, I never played it back in the day, instead, I ended up playing it years later when I felt like going through more of Apogee's catalog. I don't know why I went on this one, since I thought before that it wasn't actually a shooter of any sort, just a side-scroller where you collect things. So I was surprised to find out that it was using the same design as Secret Agent from the following year.

The story is, Mylo Steamwitz is a low-life space trader interested in making a quick coin and not much else. Something which isn't working out in his favor, because he's currently being pursued by creditors. He's also somewhat dim, since he tried to sell blood stones to vampires. His current scheme is to head to the Altairian star system in order to mine their crystals to get enough cash for a Twibble farm. Which seems odd, considering that this is his objective, yet he objects to working on his uncle's farm. Apparently they are the rage right now, but chances are by the time he finishes mining there will be little point. I get the feeling that Mylo is the epitome of the expression "How do you make a small fortune? You start with a large fortune."

The hub level of Episode 1.

Your objective, thus, is to collect all the crystals in each level in the game. There are the usual controls, arrows to move, ctrl shoots, alt jumps and oddly enough, interacts with objects. That won't be annoying. Some enemies die in one shot, others multiple and a few require a limited time item to kill. The gun is weird, one shot on-screen only and it accelerates as it stays on-screen, starting slow and quickly shooting across the screen. There are colored doors, which instead of a key, you just flip a switch. The game refers to Mylo's health as lives, but it's clear that it's hits. You may restart a level an infinite amount of times.

Crystal Caves works differently than most Apogee games we've seen so far. There's a hub level and then you pretty much have free access to all the levels from this one. Also, sometimes fruit appears here, which you can get for score/money. Apparently a strawberry costs $5000 in whatever year this is. Inflation's pretty bad in the future. It takes about 100 crystals to equal a strawberry, so maybe this wasn't Mylo's best idea.

To the left, a wall gun, with the switch that turns it off also visible. There are hidden spikes at the bottom. The glass blocks are shootable, while those 8-pointed stars are just background scenery.

First level I play starts the player off under fire. Nice. Still this is as good an introduction as any. The game is not afraid to force you to jump to pull a switch, which I'm sure will be made tricky later. You get your usual traps, guns on the side, hidden spikes, hidden things in the walls, and falling spikes. The usual shootable block walls. Enemies are more interesting. There's a spider that goes up and down which shoots webs at you. Some sort of flying worm which goes in a random direction when it hits a wall. So in order to kill that, you have to be in such a place that you can shoot it without it dodging. There's also a minecart, stays in one place, then drives to the other side of the platform it's on. Can't kill it without the special gun pill.

The robots are about to get Mylo, he simply hasn't any hope of escape.

Another one where the player is under threat and a lot more interesting objects. To start with, there are chests which you need to find a key to open. Just one key and they will all pop open. You can also jump up, but not down these platforms. You better believe the level works around that. Then we have more enemies. Robots, which have very odd behavior, they can't be shot if they can attack you, but they'll turn around if you shoot them sometimes. I don't understand quite how it works. Some sort of invincible monster that looks like it came out of a Keen game. A T.Rex lookalike which chases after you if you shoot it. Then some thing walking around quite randomly which can be shot.

This doesn't look very much like a cave...maybe a hill in front of a castle.

This level has snakes, which are annoying because their corpses can hurt you. It's a low gravity level, that means shooting pushes you back. To top it off, there are green mushrooms on this level which kill you instantly. So most of this level is just waiting past the snakes, no point in shooting something that'll hurt you anyway. Like Duke Nukem before it, there's signs that this game is trying to push the limits of your jumping distance but because of the way the engine works, it isn't that annoying. Yet.

I know it's game logic, but I'd prefer that the magic gun pill just gave you a limited number of magic shots rather than be on a timer.

Lemmings pillars? Four new enemies here, a thing under a rock you have to use the pill to kill; A triceratops which shoots fireballs; A rolling ball which is immune unless it's sleeping and also shoots fireballs; And a pair of eyes that just floats around. All of them are set up so that they're easy to avoid. The pill is near both rocks. The ball is at the bottom of a pit you can easily get out of. The triceratops isn't even somewhere you need to be. That oddly, was the only one that killed me...because I shot the oxygen machine behind it. I forgot doing that killed you.

Are there bats here? You'll never know until it's too late.

This one has a few mean tricks up its sleeve, like black bats against a black background and having to go a long way if you fall down. I did learn that you can actually kill those eye monsters. You have to shoot the eyes while they're open, then you can take out the central body.

In particular, this bird is of no trouble lest you unwisely rush in.

Two new enemies on this level. There's a bird which lays eggs which spawns more of itself. Obviously owing to how that works, usually the ones they spawn aren't in too good a shape. Then there are centipede enemies. You know the kind, shoot the head, the next piece becomes the head and so forth until it dies. Otherwise, there's a gravity pill which reverses gravity. It's mostly typical, albeit the optimal path requires some back and forth.

The purple mushrooms are just scenery, as well as those purple rope things.

I like this mushroom forest level. Note the green grass and note that the spikes are green. In general, I notice I've been getting hit the most by spikes I keep missing. This level takes it to an artform. Even better, there are other nasty little things hiding from you, like flame shooting out of a pipe or spiders in tight corners. It also feels cruel because there are some mundane rocks (which look like the enemies) and spikes which don't fall. By actually not being cruel it seems just as cruel. If this were Arctic Adventure, I would hate this, but between the better movement and having hit points, it's a lot easier to both survive and dodge such situations.

The oil drums are things you can walk on, not something dangerous.

Ah, something annoying, gun above, tied to the switch on the right, and pipe dropping the usual liquid that hurts you. Now's a good time to mention that Mylo is well-animated. He's got a nice little charm to him despite being presumably as dumb as a sack of rocks. That animation also applies to his death sequences. They're nice, not adventure game nice, but still nice. Unfortunately, they're unskippable and kind of long.

Something could be out to kill Mylo right now and I could never see it!

Then there's a level, where after getting unpinned by a T.Rex, you have to make your way through a shootable block maze. It's actually quite annoying. Because it's quite possible to screw yourself in such a way that you won't realize it for a while. The way bats pop up here makes it difficult to get out unscathed. Those black enemies on a black background are tripping me up.

This level is clearly a crystal lab, not a cave.

This level looks simple, but on the lower right, you have a robot that it is quite tricky to get safe shots at. If you go to those crystals the direct way, you will get hit. Finally, the danger sign will fall down if you're under it, and the blue door requires a lever found elsewhere. Once you get past that, it's one act of dodging water drips after another.

Reverse gravity levels feels like a cheap way to use assets in different ways without an easier way to place them all the opposite side of the block.

Levels with reverse gravity for the entire time are a bit tricky, but not for the reason you might think. Because the hidden spikes are all on the top side of the block, where you walk with normal gravity. Walking on the ceiling can blind you to this. And there's the usual collect letters to get a bonus thing, which I didn't notice until now because I didn't realize they were inside the eggs. I assumed they were random collectibles, like the pickaxe.

"My flashlight does nothing!"

The last two levels I reached each had a new gimmick. One was just in the dark until you found the light switch. Though it did have other ways of screwing you over, like a section where if you don't find a switch to the moving platforms or the doors first, you end up trapped. The other had constantly falling rocks. It wasn't that annoying, but I would say that I probably got lucky there.

Mylo really just goes everywhere wearing a mining helmet, huh?

The episode ends with Mylo getting exactly what he wanted, the Twibble farm. Of course, they're explosive breeders and the fad is dead. So now he has a planet full of the things, which of course, is dying thanks to Mylo's lack of foresight. So he decides to leave the planet he has completely ruined and get some more crystals. Episode 2 starts with him selling his Twibble farm and deciding that he should buy himself an Organian Slug farm because they're needed for medicinal purposes thanks to a war. Can Mylo destroy two planets?

The gems change appearance between episodes, which I guess is neat.

The first level I play in this episode turns out to be quite tricky. Starting off in darkness and in a situation where you're about to get attacked by the birds. This is especially tricky owing to this being the start, and the ammo factor of Mylo's gun, which will probably never come up again after this, actually matters. This doesn't really improve as you go through the level, since you constantly have to go up so the birds don't have free reign over you. And of course, in order to do so, you have to make a lot of long jumps, onto moving platforms which you often have to jump on and off so you aren't knocked off by some standing block.

I wonder if the design of the crushers is a joke or a miscommunication?

And the second continues my troubles. To start with, you have to jump over poisonous mushrooms, bit trickier than just one, to grab a stop sign at the right moment so you don't get killed by that hammer. And then there's a group of shootable blocks you have to climb up. I see we're getting some of Broussard's evil nature back.

Welcome to crystal...construction zone.

Acid pits, lovely. A pattern emerges regarding level design, throw the player over some dangerous location and put in a ton of blocks you can get caught on. There's still that pesky block-based collision detection going on, at least in some places. Still, it's a lot less difficult and a lot more time-consuming, which is a positive for the worst part of Apogee's level design.

I was so concerned about this level I didn't even take a proper screenshot!

This one is hard to explain, the real threat here is nothing you would expect. Oh, sure, there are the surprisingly difficult birds and bats, but the real threat are those green things and the snakes. Remember, those create corpses when they die that still hurt you. They also take multiple shots and stop sometimes for no reason. There are multiple sections here where you have to get past two in tight quarters.

Yes, the spider blends against the cave wall, but that's not noticeable in motion.

A gun on you at the start, falling rocks and the only way out is by bumping into some invisible blocks. This isn't difficult per say, just tedious, because you have to slowly go up, step on a moving platform over an acid pit, go down a long jump, then open a door and activate another moving platform, wait for it to come down, then repeat with two more doors and then you can go out. On the bright side, the game won't drop a stone on you if you're near the top of the screen.

I don't know if this is the right screenshot, but look, Keen's helmet!

Oh, wow, it's another one of those long and tedious levels. I'm starting to regret mocking previous games for not being consistent with their difficulty, because this is getting on my nerves. You basically get no shots out of this level, there are a bunch of enemies you need to kill in the right way or else on the way back...through the entire level, you will deal with them twice. Oh, and to top it all off, the beginning/end is a moving platform ride over an acid pit, and you need to jump on top of non-moving platforms in order to not die...without any leeway whatsoever.

Oh, wow, it's another one of those long and tedious levels. I'm starting to regret mocking previous games for not being consistent with their difficulty, because this is getting on my nerves. You basically get no shots out of this level, there are a bunch of enemies you need to kill in the right way or else on the way back...through the entire level, you will deal with them twice. Oh, and to top it all off, the beginning/end is a moving platform ride over an acid pit, and you need to jump on top of non-moving platforms in order to not die...without any leeway whatsoever.

The crystal above Mylo right now might genuinely be the hardest one to get, I'm not joking.

This one is annoying, but not too difficult. You have to avoid a ton of enemies that you either can't kill or leave deadly corpses behind. Either way, you can't win. To add insult to injury, there's a pistol pill at the top, where it does the least amount of good, the unkillable enemies are all towards the bottom. And it doesn't help that so many crystals are placed in such a way that reaching them is very tricky. One particular one was so tricky I wasn't sure it was possible to take.

I'm impressed someone managed to put so much "it is what it is" into one EGA image.

After finishing Episode 2, Mylo's scheme actually works out...until the slugs bury themselves underground and hit a salt deposit, resulting in all their deaths. I'm not surprised. I'm really not. Episode 3 starts with Mylo now resolved to get into...real estate. What could possibly go wrong?

The hint is that the items are on top of invisible blocks.

Have you ever wanted to go through a level consisting almost entirely of invisible blocks you need to bump into to be able to walk on? Good news. Unfortunately for me, I didn't. I actually had to come back to this level, because shockingly, I needed more ammo for this one than I had by this point. Though frankly even with the starting number of five shots it was kind of tricky. Though by now I'm going for the egg bonuses simply because I don't want Mylo to completely suffer.

You can go right where the rock monster is, or you can go for the gravity pill. That's it.

Speaking of tedium, there's a level that proves the game was avoiding making the player jump at the very limit of their ability, because this one requires it. The annoying bit is that despite Mylo not being that fast, it seems like it's a bit trickier than most games to successfully pull off. So much so that I restarted the level because I didn't realize I could do that and thought I did something wrong with the first gravity pill you get. This is a jump to get the second, there's no other way to win this level.

I probably should be more annoyed by the constant breaking of that "can't get killed by an enemy at the start" rule I have.

This. Freaking. Level. To start with, you are right next to a spike and one of the rock monsters. You have a few seconds to jump away. Your safe platform isn't safe, it has a snake on it. The left path is to a spike...and another rock monster anyway. To the right is the safest. This is the beginning of this level's annoyance, because there are a significant number of platforms you have no way of getting past without a power pill. Which is far away. I didn't mention it, but the pills are on timers. The power pill has one for 15 seconds. This is the first time it's been such a big problem. Even with it, it's still impossible to beat this level without getting hit at least once. Getting it right was tense because I did not want to have to do things so precisely again.

You can't jump up from here, instead you have to jump to that block in the middle, then left, and of course, right again. While dodging water drops.

The funny thing is that right after this I played the easiest level in this episode. The jump in the screenshot is the only difficult thing here. Otherwise it's just some nice, pleasant smooth sailing, including a section where you can either shoot or jump over a dinosaur at your leisure. Apogee's gotten good enough at balancing where these levels end up that I suspect this is an intentional choice.

I'm screwed in this screenshot, I have no way out of this area, the platform isn't moving.

This one has an egregious way of forcing the player to do things in a certain way. To start with, you're on a ledge with a snake, and below you is one of those ball enemies. Good thing you can't start this level first. Then you have the level divided into two halves, a top and bottom half, in which you can only get to the top via a gravity pill. Even at the top there are two areas where if you don't do things right, you're stuck in that area.

Skipping over another one like that, we get a reverse gravity level...also like that. This one feels clever because you're doing things in a different way than usual, like using a gravity pill so you don't have to jump over falling spikes or walk above one of those crushers. It's weird how a simple trick like that can improve what would otherwise be an annoying level.

In the upper left corner of the main level, there's a section that you can't get out of. Oddly, these are some of the easier levels in this episode. This is fixed in the HD remake, but that's not the one I own. So instead, they're the ones you'll end the episode on here. Easing one out, which seems to be a theme with Apogee titles so far.

I guess the green planet wasn't a gas giant...

The episode ends with Mylo flying back to the trading post so he can buy himself a solar system. The man Mylo is buying it off of is suspiciously eager to sell it to Mylo, and forces him through the signing of the contract. After he goes off, the star explodes into a nebula. Mylo is ruined...or is he? The text cuts to a few months later where Mylo has built a burger joint. Where two burgers, two fires and two malts costs $60, which isn't too bad considering current inflation. And so, Mylo ends the game in pretty good shape.

Despite some issues, Crystal Caves is a pretty solid game. As the levels go on, there's a real problem where there's a single solution to the level and doing anything else results in death or an unwinnable situation. Some of the ones I didn't mention just fall into this pattern, while others are solid but unremarkable. Bad sticks in your memory more. Most levels are short enough that you can easily just pick up and play a few if you need to pass the time.

As such it falls into that category of game where if you want something meaty, you aren't going to find it here. But in it's goal of being a simple little platformer, it doesn't leave a lot to be desired. With that, let's get to the rating.

Weapons:
I like how the projectile speeds up as it goes on-screen, but ammo feels like busywork and the low-gravity levels are more annoying than a clever trick. 1/10

Enemies:
Could have used more as the game goes on, rather than putting them all in the shareware episode, but there's a nice variety. 5/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Even in the worst case, a level isn't going to take you more than half a hour. Most levels are fun and quick to beat, so the good outweighs the bad. 5/10

Player Agency:
As I said the shoot button, the button to activate switches/levers being the same button is annoying, but it turned out to be because the game exploits that bit to place enemies in places where you can't shoot them because of a lever. Otherwise I only wish you had control over the height of the jump. 6/10

Interactivity:
Not as interesting as Duke, but we still have some minor item messing about compared to your usual game. Not sure I could the oxygen machine you can shoot and kill yourself with as a positive either. 2/10

Atmosphere:
Solid as a sci-fi spoof and as a platformer, but doesn't really stick out in either regard. 4/10

Graphics:
Simple but effective. Most importantly, I can see whoever's doing the animation has improved, Mylo has a lot of neat animations. My least favorite part is actually the big graphics, Mylo always looks weird as opposed to the Duke-esque hero he is in-game. 4/10

Story:
As weird as it is to say, I liked it even if it was basic. I know Mylo's victory is going to be short-lived, but it was nice to see him win if for a moment. 2/10

Sound/Music:
Basic but inoffensive PC Speaker sound effect. 2/10

That's 31, Apogee's best in-house effort yet.

Nothing else, really, to say about this one. As I mentioned, there was a remake a few years back, which also adds in another episode. I imagine what I said about this game will also be true about that one, albeit with nicer graphics.

Apogee would try this style of game one more time with Secret Agent, before going entirely with big levels and usually a Keen-style of graphics. Based on what I've gleamed online, people liked this one, but didn't care for Secret Agent, no doubt an influence in the choice. As to what I'll be covering next, I think I'll take a detour from the finish line of 1992 and play another Tomb Raider mod.