Black Crypt (1992)

Name:Black Crypt
Number:258
Year:1992
Publisher:Electronic Arts
Developer:Raven Software
Genre:RPG
Difficulty:4/5
Time:9 hours 50 minutes
Won:No (115W/86L)

After finally getting around to Black Crypt after years of meaning to get around to it, I must admit, I have mixed feelings on it. Not just because the game crashed and I couldn't continue it, but because as a game this comes off as a bit of an oddball. There are a lot of things this game is trying to do, but some of these felt like they really counteracted one another.

This also applies to the game's development process itself, since given the 1992 release date, you'd expect that this for some reason just appealed to whoever was greenlighting games at EA back then. An Amiga dungeon crawler? In the US, that was on its way out then, even if the message wouldn't be fully received until this year. No, this was started in 1986 and the publishing deal was made sometime between the two points. This was just an unfortunate victim of bad timing and a strange unwillingness to not make a DOS port. Which made it the only game they made until X-Men: Legends to not be on DOS or Windows.

The premise is your usual Dungeon Master-clone idea. There's this evil bad guy, Estoroth Paingiver, who took four champions from the past to kill, and now he's about to take over the world again. You have four lousy amateurs, go survive in his dungeon where dozens have died in vain. Go through thirty levels of dungeon, while moving in a blob through a grid-based movement system. Go fight monsters in a circle, solve puzzles, eat meat that's been on the floor for god knows how long, and try not to get screwed over by spinning tiles. If you don't really know what that is, go play Dungeon Master, it's got a free port and everything.

Despite considerable room for improvement, this genre is ultimately just "is this still as fun as DM, despite being worse". The answer here is complicated, while that's true, whether this is playable really depends on your skill with Amiga emulation and having an idea of how to install a game to a hard drive rather than just using save states and hoping it doesn't kill itself. I didn't quit willingly, the game just stopped registering disk changes after the third area transition. If you can avoid that, it's worthwhile.

There's no control over party selection, you just choose the name and which portrait they get from a selection of people who look like they just got out of fantasyland jail. What matters is you get a fighter, a cleric, a "magic user"/magician and a druid, and attribute selection. This feels very Dungeons and Dragons derived at times, with classes which seem taken from the game, armor class and attributes mostly taken from the base six. Stats go up to twenty and you have no real knowledge of what they do beyond assumptions you get from previous games.

The fighter is more or less a straight copy of the class from DnD. At first the most useful character since he can actually fight, until your spellcasters can actually cast spells, at which point he acts as a meatshield while your druid brings down the forces of the four planes. (Ice, bees and chaos) He is useful when you need to fight in melee, of course, like when you've just cast fifteen attack spells at someone and they're still moving. Melee is just a lot less effective than the always hitting spells, since he'll be trailing far behind in damage and ability to hit.

The cleric is an oddity. In four character crawlers like this, it's tradition to have two melee fighters and two spell-casters in the back. The melee guys soak up the damage, the spell-casters do whatever, then use their bows. The cleric is also a straight copy of the DnD class, good defense, good variety of offensive and defensive spells, and a class aversion to hitting things with bladed weapons. Violence with a mace is okay though. For a while, this guy functions weirdly. He does less damage than the fighter, which should technically be augmented with spells, but outside of healing, he only has one effective attack spell for a while, which makes him the least useful character in the party until he gets his third spellbook.

The magic user, or wizard as I called them, is well...like a wizard in DnD. Not fully like, since the magic system here doesn't work like DnD and this has a strange selection of spells, but it's the same archetype. At first, somewhat useless. You can have him use throwing weapons or a bow, but ranged attacks from the people who will use a ranged attack are useless. He doesn't get an attack spell until the third level, and until then all he gets are a map spell and a defense spell. But when you get that second spellbook the wizard becomes the sort of universal problem solver, getting stat boosting abilities along with being able to remove glyphs and magic barriers.

The druid is the strangest class. It fits the usual druid DnD class, but the spells you would think to be lower level are sprinkled throughout later spellbooks, and what you get at the start are odd utility spells and the only starting attack spell. He also doesn't get another spellbook for a while, leaving him as the worst character you have, since it takes a while for that starting spell to get useful. It takes a while for him to get more attack spells, but boy howdy, does he start hitting hard when he does.

The magic system uses spellbooks and levels to indicate what spells you can use. Your wizard can cast Shield at the start of the game, but not Fireball despite both being in the starting magic spellbook. In contrast, by the time you get his final spellbook, Libram of Darkmagic, chances are both Deathstorm (9th level) and Detect Traps (2nd level) will be available to him. I have no technical issue with this, except that the progression is odd, in that a druid went a lot longer between spellbooks than a wizard or cleric. Otherwise it's simple memorization, click on a spell in the spellbook section, it pops up above, then you can cast it. Once memorized, you can memorize it again after a set period of time which is reduced if you cast said spell first. Meaning, you can have multiple casts of the same spell at once.

Control-wise, the game is more or less what you expect from a DM-clone. The arrows move, and you turn with delete and page down, which kind of works. Spells are in the upper right corner, each caster can have five at a time, including multiples of the same spell. Switch between them with the symbols. Left click on a character's portrait and he uses his primary function, usually sword against monster, right click activates a secondary function, which is a spell with some enchanted items. Never really used that in combat, just accidentally whenever I meant to open the inventory. The bars are health, the row of six dots are status effects and that gold dot is indicating who the leader is. This only effects things like what plaques you can read and if someone with magic sight can direct the party. If you have your druid lead, he isn't going to be in melee combat. If you click on the skull, a little menu will open up allowing you to save your game or sleep in-game.

Right click on the character name and you open the inventory screen. This is more complex than it really needs to be. There's the armor, weapons and spellbook, but the bottom part seems odd. These are your packs, bags which hold stuff in them. You can have up to five, though in practice I just kept two/three per character. The manual says encumbrance is a thing, but I've never found out. As the game goes on there are more of bags you have to put in these slots to search through. You can't attack on this screen, so do so safely.

The icon below the shield is the class icon, in case you forget. This is actually a clue for later, because you can pick up smaller icons and give them to any character and get a small stat boost. I didn't notice a difference, but I'm not complaining. The three bars on the right are health, sleep (because magic just happens) and food/drink. So many meters the game had to combine one. Clicking on that will give you the hard numbers of your stats along with any status effects you have.

But there's one thing you can't pick up from context, it's that you have multiple sets of clothing. Yes, rather than doing so in an elegant system where everything is on-screen at once, you instead get a confusing inventory system where it takes in-game hours before you realize you can equip belts and rings! And also shirts. Which implies that if you take them off, that you could fight demons and goblins dressed up like the Celtic warriors of legend. (And probably die too.)

I clown on it, but it isn't that bad. Just click on the torso icon in the upper right. It's what seems the logical course of action the second you pick up something. It's just unnecessarily large and complicated, but it isn't that complicated. I get the feeling it's there to account for the whole bow and arrow/dagger ranged attacks, you put those in a quiver or bag and they automatically pop out. It's just less elegant than it could be. I really only dislike the combination food/drink meter, because that one just feels needlessly obtuse. People know if they're thirsty or hungry. These aren't really that tricky to fill, since usually every section has a water fountain early on and you get enough food that by the time you get a food summoning spell you won't end up in trouble.

Combat is very typical of the sub-genre. Click on a spell to cast it, click on whatever items you have equipped to use them, and sooner or later someone will be dead. Trade blows or engage in the usual combat waltz. Where it differs, I feel is that spells reign supreme while physical attacks feel weak. As I've mentioned, spells always hit and most spells scale with levels, while physical attack damage is more esoteric. Throwing weapons might as well not exist since they never seem to actually hit.

While I did have fun with it, the added depth of having multiple attack spells at the ready trivialized most of the combat I got through. The problem is that the game really encourages this route, because in the second section you fight against enemies which steal the items out of your hands. Right next to enemies which can poison you, when you have a limited supply of cure poison items. There is no way to deal enough damage to one of the item thieves without spamming a few spells. After this, you get enough spellbooks that you'll never run out of attack spells.

The most definitive characteristic of the game in my mind is that sometimes scrolls will tell you information that is outright false. For instance, in the opening section, you have to fight a giant, two-headed ogre to go further down. One scroll tells you that to beat it, you need to get the Ogreblade. Another tells you that said sword drains the lifeforce of the holder. The game includes the option to figure out if a scroll is real or fake with a spell, but I felt it added so much to the game I never used it.

It's a very clever idea that makes the dungeon not just a series of stuff that makes everything better and tells you the truth. Too many games will just constantly tell the truth to the player about whatever it is they're about that adding in something that lies to you is a breath of fresh air. I wish the game did more with this. Have some of the plaques tell you lies, have items be traps of some sort. Why is a random piece of meat I found next to a corpse still edible? Why are all these potions of cure disease what they say instead of something like bestow diarrhea? This is a dungeon, act like it instead of making the whole thing one endless prize parade.

Now, I'm not saying this is something universally good, but outside of a few cases like this it doesn't come up. To the point that, in an odd way, a game that does this has it worse than a game that did in back in the day. If a game doesn't actively draw attention to the fact that it lied, then it's far more reasonable to assume that something wrong is happening on the game's end. Rather than necessarily saying we're all dumb sheep who trust what games tell us too much, game developers are just too stupid to pull it off. Which in turn, makes players look like dumb sheep for trusting what the game is telling them. It's a no-win situation.

Black Crypt is very mixed on difficulty. At first we get a situation where the game is building up to an encounter with a deadly monster who can only be killed with a certain weapon...which may kill you as well. Then a section where the only reasonable recourse was to spam spells at a monster so it wouldn't poison you or steal a weapon. Then for the rest of my experience it was more or less a smooth experience.

There's not really a lot this has over Dungeon Master. Most of the puzzles are odd. I liked having to consult the manual to find out what the answer to a question was, but the rest were not that memorable. The worst was one had seemingly no logical answer beyond brute force, and was designed in such a way that you couldn't quite figure it out through that either. Even map design wasn't much of a challenge, the game gives you a map spell which means you don't need to make one, you instead get one as you go along. Since by the time the usage runs out, you can cast another, there's no reason not to use it.

It's a shame because the game has a very nice mood to it starting out. Raven had a really good run in these early days making these dark, dying worlds and then just...not doing much of anything with them. All the mood disappears for what is basically Dungeon Master with nicer-looking graphics and a different spell system. Right down to the only ambient sounds being the footsteps of your enemies. This isn't necessarily bad, but knowing future games, it does paint Raven Software as only being capable of making nice, simpler imitations of other games. There are of course, gaps in my knowledge of their games, some of those non-FPS titles from the '90s, for instance, but it does feel like Raven is always following, never leading, in what they do.

Weapons:
A selection of weapons you can only figure out the damage of by trial and error, ranged weapons which never hit, attack spells which function more or less function the same except for damage, and various magical items which feel to valuable to ever use. 3

Enemies:
An interesting selection, where puzzle enemies still require standard combat, and a ton of enemies have one annoying thing about them which makes fighting them feel incredibly risky. 4

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
For what I got through, I always felt like I was going for some goal or another in the short-term in addition to my long-term goal. Most moment to moment stuff was just fluff, but in a fun way. 5

Player Agency:
No complaints for the most part, it's a Dungeon Master-clone and doesn't screw it up. The scroll system is mildly annoying, because it's difficult to use in combat, but that's also true of the inventory screen in general. That's why you don't do that stuff in combat. 6

Interactivity:
Nothing special, puzzles, the usual buttons and switches. 3

Atmosphere:
Starts off dark and moody, especially with the constant darkness, but soon enough just starts feeling more or less like your typical fantasy RPG. 5

Graphics:
Very nice-looking, even if it's once again the same wall texture for...thirty hours. At least this game shifts it up occasionally by...turning the walls blue or red. Enemies look properly sinister, but there isn't that much animation. 5

Story:
The backstory is referenced all the time during the game, but we're not getting much more depth that using various bits of it for puzzles. 1

Sound/Music:
There's one really nice intro tune which sets the mood, then just combat and ambient monster sound effects. They're nice, but since there's no sound when you've killed all the monsters, it can get quite silent for long stretches at a time. 3

That's 35, about what I expected. Good but below Dungeon Master.

You can sum this one up with one sentence. Do you know how to install Amiga games and like Dungeon Master? Though I feel like if you said yes, you've probably already played this one.

Most of the reviews are overwhelmingly positive, doing nothing but praising the game. So, I looked at whatever was actually critical. There was one, which...said mostly the same things I did before calling it incredibly difficult. Eh, I kind of get where they're coming from, since in one section you basically have no recourse but to savescum or be quick on the spell draw, but once you get past that it's quite smooth sailing.

The next Raven Software title will either be CyClones or Heretic, since I think both are '94. There's not going to be any particular order or anything. Just the whims I get whenever I finally reach that year.

Next week, I've unfortunately got a bit of stuff to do in the real world this week, restricting the time I have on this. Chances are I'll be doing a 1984 or 85 game which won't take too much of my time to cover.

Skyfox (1984)

Name:Skyfox
Number:244
Year:1984
Publisher:Electronic Arts
Developer:Raymond E. Toby
Genre:FPS/Flight Simulation
Difficulty:5/5
Time:50 minutes
Won:No (107W/79L)

We've seen quite a few alien invasion games so far. It's a simple enough plot to come up with and provides easy conflict. At first glance, Skyfox does nothing to change up the formula. Oh, sure, it's a first-person flight sim rather than the hordes of side-scrollers and top-down games, and within atmosphere rather than space, but that's not too different from the template.

Skyfox was released on most platforms of the day, from Apple II, C64 and ZX Spectrum, to later Atari ST and Amiga ports. I chose the Amiga port, based on the logic that since it was released later, it probably smooths over the worst parts.

Starting the game up, you get a difficulty selector and a mission selector. The latter can be divided into two categories. Training and the real deal. Training pits you against a limited selection of enemies and you have to take them out. The real deal pits you against an entire invasion, complete with a mothership you have to take out. For future reference, I took the easy way out as far as difficulty is concerned and stayed on Cadet.

At the start of every game, you get a map of the area you're in. In training missions, this just shows where you're going. In an actual battle, this just shows the tanks that have freshly spawned off the ship. Fortunately, you can bring this map up, complete with up to date tactical info, with C. There's a whole bunch of other stuff you can do, but it doesn't matter. At first, all you really do is just click until it brings up a launch mode, select high or low launch, which almost always seems to switch to high, then launch.

When I first managed to flew around, what was brought to mind wasn't a flight sim. This is not even an arcade simulation, it's more like a FPS where you're flying. You move at a constant speed, determined by what number you hit, and up and down causes you to turn up and down. You rise and fall based on that. Hitting the ground doesn't hurt you, you basically just float across it. Moving in any direction doesn't cause constant turning, it moves you a bit then you right yourself automatically.

This actually makes it really annoying to do much of anything. Since you're constantly fighting against your plane going back into the same, standard position, you can't really move around quickly. It's also hard to aim, because you never seem to stop on an enemy. At first I even thought each time you turned, you turned 45 degrees, but no, it's just freeform for that to not be true. It's slightly better with a keyboard joystick over a mouse. The mouse aiming here isn't like regular mouse aiming, it's holding it down, which any joystick does better.

Training is more or less what you expect it to be. Here you are in this situation against these enemies, now take them out. The rub lies in these being training missions. Technically, you are in an actual live fire action, but regular enemies like tanks and planes aren't that difficult to deal with.

But the weird thing is, you never seem to fight the two at the same time, instead, you alternate between the areas they're in. Press U to jump up into the clouds, press D to go back down to ground level. There's a long shift as you automatically move, then a time you wait for the disk to load.

To fight back against enemies, you have three attacks. Your typical gun, in this case an automatic laser. This works well enough, but you can only hit enemies with it when you turn, not when you're just gliding along. Then you get two missiles, a guided missile and a heat-seeking missile. The guided missile seems to have a higher chance of not hitting its target, but otherwise the function of the two are the same.

Once you master training, it's time to deal with an invasion. This removes all enemies from the board at the start, placing you against a giant, floating city which constantly spawns planes and tanks. These go after friendly installations which you can recharge your ship's fuel and heal damage. You're going to need to do that, because unlike in training, those are important concerns. You get three spare fighters, and depending on how things go, you'll need them.

Motherships are far more difficult to kill than anything else. It's not necessarily that they're tougher or more difficult to hit, just that they fire a lot at you. I'm not sure how getting hit works, it seems to just happen based on if there are enemies around, but if you're near a mothership, you're getting shot.

Unfortunately for the mothership, it isn't any stronger against missiles than anything else. So get a lucky missile hit against it and poof. This makes the strategy fairly easy to understand. Rush to the mothership, then hit it with a missile. No more enemies spawn, and you can take out the rest before they clear you out.

This is of course, the small invasion on the easiest setting. A proper invasion consists of multiple motherships. I beat one of them, dubbed Halo. Here, there are five motherships, one in the center, four two tiles away from home base. This is the easiest of the proper scenarios, simply because the motherships don't drop tanks. With less firepower, it's easier to take out a mothership and then you can clear out the planes that launched much quicker.

There are more variations, some based on unorthodox gimmicks, others based on throwing as much as they can at the player. Even on the minimum difficulty, they're throwing groups of five tanks at you, which is very difficult to counter. Higher difficulties don't seem to increase this speed, it just turns them into more dangerous enemies. They actually chase after you a lot more rather than the more casual stroll the lower difficulties have.

Getting away from the big problems of the game, there's a lot of little problems. The game slows down when there are a lot of enemies nearby. Tanks stare at the player with an almost unreal look. It's odd seeing a half a dozen tanks turn in perfect harmony. You basically just speed from place to place and hope your fuel doesn't run out at the worst possible time.

Weapons:
A simple blaster and some missiles. 2/10

Enemies:
Tanks, planes and a boss which seems invulnerable. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
Don't let this place get hit. 0/10

Levels:
The game tries to have variety in the number of scenarios it has, but there a few obvious variations. The grouping around a single base and the "chess" motif, in which there are bases on one side and motherships on the other. In 1984, I might have even considered working through them. 2/10

Player Agency:
It's sort of what you expect, but works in enough odd ways that it feels more off than if it was outright unusual. 5/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
Very meh. 1/10

Graphics:
Colorful but not too garish and a decent number of variations, but the ground is one solid color. 3/10

Story:
So little they don't even pretend there's one in the manual. 0/10

Sound/Music:
There's a jaunty intro tune and some soft sound effects. 2/10

That's 17.

While it didn't have much to capture my attention, and I didn't have much fun with it, I see several good points about it. We've got the basic template of any later action game with small-scale, randomized missions, just with a spawn rate that's way too large. Seriously, five tanks at a time?

Tobey had an unusual career afterwards. He had a hand in three other games, Budokan - The Martial Spirit, one of the more notable early fighting games, a chess game and a Sega Saturn adventure game. The later two he does not list on his personal site, instead focusing on graphics programs he worked on. Considering the number of people who seemed to have used them, I can see why.

Next time, in order to get out of this feeling that I've been spinning my wheels here, I've decided to go very out of chronology and play Streets of SimCity, one of Maxis's weirder titles.

Project Firestart (1989)

Name:Project Firestart
Number:223
Year:1989
Publisher:Electronic Arts
Developer:Dynamix
Genre:Survival Horror
Difficulty:4/5
Time:3 hours 30 minutes
Won:Yes (94W/70L)

Here's a game I've been looking forward to for a long while, which to my mind is one of the most interesting Commodore 64 exclusives. What's odd about this particular aspect is that it's American, and entirely exclusive to a non-DOS PC. I'm showing my age, but I think around this time it's an oddity that something made by Americans would not be on any other computer. Considering that in 1989 Dynamix released mostly DOS games, with only one port to another computer released in America, it is odd. Especially since this isn't the B-team, this is Damon Slye and Jeff Tunnell themselves.

Before we even begin, I'm in trouble, because this is a pain for me to get started. Every rip I find for a while just won't go past the EA logo. In both emulators I have. This is not the kind of game I'm willing to just give up on, this is something I was looking forward to. It's really even an issue I can go and point, yep, that's the problem, because I eventually just got lucky with one rip.

Slowly, you see something approach, but it's just a shadow of the thing.

The story is, the research ship Prometheus has been performing genetic engineering to create dumb, durable laborers to assist in the mining of precious resources. The ship is no longer answering, and you've been assigned to clean it up. Unlike a lot of C64 games, this is actually important to know, because the story is important in how you play and how you win this game. In-game, this was really easy to accidentally skip, which is unfortunate since it's actually really nice. So, I watched it afterwards.

Our objectives are specifically, to find the logs from the science lab, then, because we can't risk contamination, set the bridge to self-destruct...but if you don't get off within two hours, they'll set it anyway. Um, why don't I just go in and out and then they set the self-destruct without me having to potentially put myself in a worse place? And contact them via radio if I need to. A map came with the game, I don't have a clean copy, so I know a few places contain death, but I'll just have to live with it.

The game begins with the player just standing in the dock between the player's ship, Exis (?) and the Prometheus. This whole intro sequence is kind of on-rails and kind of not. You get used to the controls in a controlled area, then go a few rooms until you reach the interior. Note the clock, we're looking at 15:07, not that you could ever reach that without specifically going for it.

Go up the elevator and uh-oh, there's a dead guy.

Whatever it is just ripped off part of his arm, oddly.

You even get a nifty close-up. This is certainly a weird setup here, something tore off his arm, but then just left him, giving him enough time to write danger. I'm not going to complain because the "N" trails off, he was probably just in a lot of pain then.

Left of this area is the rest of the base, while the right side leads to a security station. A monitoring room which doesn't really show anything and can't be interacted with, a prison cell, complete with laser beams, and an armory with more lasers. That last one is important.

The manual plays up checking every corpse no matter how damaged...but there's nothing here or on basically all damaged corpses.

What I'm supposed to do is head to the labs straight away, which basically means, left from the entrance, one door left, then up the elevator to the third floor. More corpses, which seem to be empty. A suspicious silence. Left from here, another empty corridor.

Every room here is filled with corpses. The observation room shows that the observation has clearly failed. There's a guy with a loaded laser rifle here, clearly it didn't save him, and the other guy has an ID card. Nothing else I can really do here. Which I have to say, is kind of a positive and kind of not, each room feels constructed even if there's no purpose to it. Which, oddly enough, is fairly consistent with survival horror games.

Okay, this damaged corpse has something, but he isn't that damaged compared to the others.

Left, we have an actual lab. There's another guy with an ID card, the game sure is generous with these. I can't help but be reminded of something Ahab of Data Driven Gamer said, in that a manual can function as copy protection without actually having copy protection by the game requiring knowledge from the manual. I wonder if that was intentional here. Because as I discovered later, you aren't getting anywhere without coming here.

I expected this guy to jump out at me, but he never did.

I can look up close at one of the monsters, or mutants as I've seen them called online. I imagine in 1989 what's about to happen would be shocking to many, but being probably the first real survival horror game does come with its drawbacks.

That was just the messages, the notes tell us that back in February they started. Their target is to create a creature that is strong, docile, capable of working in low oxygen, and survive in sub-zero temperatures. At least they were aiming for something that was unable to replicate itself...which I presume means breed. Anyway, what they did was take ox DNA and some asteroid fungi and mix the two together. More notes talk about the process of creating it, and the Latin name of the specis is A. Promiveriate, which I'm sure sounds ominous in Latin.

Earlier this month, the event that set the creatures off reveals itself. They began a stress test on their first specimen, nicknamed Fred, and he died at a higher temperature than they were hoping for. Their other specimens, unfortunately, turned out to not be as docile as they hoped. So they started sedating them. These things are apparently quite weak, because further tests resulted in one dying in a higher oxygen environment and slightly high radiation killed another. The log ends with the sedation gas proving ineffective, and the writing informing us that A. Promiveriate can replicate.

I'm not really surprised it went south. Oxen are docile compared to most animals, which isn't saying much. There's a cherry-picked fact about cows that point out that more people die to cows than coyotes in the United States. Herbivores aren't the friendly little things you might think, since they have to scare off their predators somehow besides running away. Cows in particular tend to have a somewhat violent temper, since bulls are known to be violent. Bullfighting didn't start because the bulls were too friendly. I'm not sure if I'm just falling for a meme, but I think a capybara would have been a good point for docility. But I admit, this is sidestepping that the real problem is that Project Firestart didn't have a fire-based method of extermination. At the very least, you shouldn't have more of them than you can manage.

Shockingly, nothing happens here, I can just leave. There's another lab, but it's purpose is later. Keep walking to the right and...

...It's one of them. That sure doesn't look like a cow or fungi. It looks like a troll, like it was made from wood. Eh, guess that's a bit like a fungi. This is how you're supposed to meet the mutants/creatures/Promiveriate. This is a great time to bring up the controls.

While I've never really thought about it, this is exactly what you would expect hearing the phrase "C64 survival horror game" without any context. Maybe a different perspective. The game is controlled entirely through the joystick, one singular joystick. Were it not for the ability to move up and down, this would basically be a typical side-scroller from the era. The high-end graphics, meanwhile, divide it from the usual Speccy-style weird wireframe stuff you'd see in something like The Great Escape. The button is context sensitive, meaning it only activates something when it's in front of you, and that means looking over everything hoping for something. And also a lot of opening and closing doors.

A lot more of that C64 survival horror game observation comes into combat. You shoot whenever you aren't able to interact with something, and only left and right. There is one enemy type, the mutant/slime thing. Nobody gets any hit collision, no animations, no sound, just slowly draining health when you touch and their health drains when you shoot. You can even walk straight through them. It turns combat into a question of whether or not you really need to take the guy out right this moment. You can find additional lasers in various armories, and according to the manual you can carry up to two at a time.

It is disappointing, because I keep expecting one of these 2D games to have some clever gameplay mechanic that ties the survival horror aspect into it quite nicely. Now, I should point out that "disappointing" is not the same thing, necessarily, as "awful". In this case it's bland. It's mozzarella and turkey on white bread, not mustard, peanut butter and mint on brioche. It doesn't matter if the rest of the game is good. And this is very interesting. This is a fairly impressive bit of tension building if you do it the right way. Resident Evil had the better reveal, but by the time you've seen it, you've already seen a cutscene in which a member of your team dies horribly.

There's a special elevator from here to the bridge. That's too easy, so what's about to cause me trouble? More mutants than seem possible pop out of the bridge to this uh...whatever this room is. There's not even anything in here that I can interact with, must be where the staff goof off. Seriously, enemies sometimes just appear from somewhere there's no possible way they could appear from, they're not even bothering to show a vent system they can go through.

The bridge has some surprisingly unmutilated corpses. Nothing on them, but they're intact. More importantly, the radio is here, I'm told to continue my mission as stated. Then another mutant. Man, in some of these rooms it's a pain to set up a shot on them. I guess this is the only real way the game can hurt you, force you into combat in unfavorable conditions. Another message log, cryo room working as intended, the lead-glass thing again. This computer also functions as the self-destruct. Well, I see no reason not to activate it. I've got 25 minutes to return to my ship.

As I'm just about to return to my ship, the screen goes funny and mutants appear. I kill them, only, uh-oh, my ship has been destroyed. Fortunately, there's a shuttle on this ship, as I currently have no other way of escaping, this seems like the logical answer.

But then I get a meanwhile and it reveals someone waking up in what looks like a cryo tube. Survivors? That's marked on my map, so it seems wise of me to head there first. I got time. So, the Cryo area is on the first floor, directly left of the main elevators.

Now that I'm here I can see that the first person is probably dead, seeing as there's a mutant here and a ripped apart door. No corpse, which seems odd. Another one pops up behind me. After dealing with them, and taking a moment, I can wake up survivor number 2, lady with a noticeable figure. She's injured, so you know what that means, escort mission. Right, well, let's go right. "Jon, you're going the wrong way!" (This is the character's name, which has been so unimportant I forgot to mention it) Um, I'm the guy with a map of the station and it's simply easier to go this way...

...Damn, some people really can't stand someone going a different way they planned on. This actually breaks the game, since my guy now breaks into four pieces when standing around. As do the mutants. I'm okay when I'm walking though. This consistently happens, so I'm guessing that just none of these rips are in complete working order...or this was just something they didn't notice.

After retrieving another weapon, because I was nearly out, I head to the shuttle, which I probably should have done to begin with. There's a medikit outside and once I'm in the elevator...

I get attacked by some mutants while still in the elevator, and then I get a picture of an egg hatching. That really helped right now, can't see squat and the game is distracting me. I die, naturally. So much for any sense of mercy. Let's talk about a really big issue with this stuff, namely, that the way the game is set up makes this more difficult than it should be.

Each laser is a self-contained weapon, each pick-up is a new laser. You can only carry two and you drop empty ones automatically. You seem to be able to shoot about 2-3 mutants a laser. And you can't really run past enemies because you need that health for the final stretch. That means a bit of luck. You can run away, but nothing prevents the game from then deciding to have an enemy in the direction you're running into.

I decide that even if I'm not going to get the best ending, I am going to get one in which I escape alive. As I have no stated reason to go after the cryo chamber outside of the game giving me a cutscene, so I ignore it. I head straight from the bridge to the shuttle, fighting my way through the mutants. I make it there...and I die in a shuttle slowly running out of oxygen. Okay, I should tell mission control beforehand.

Something like this will always impress me. Sure, you could have as much FMV in your game now as you can, but back in the day having an animated person feels like witchcraft, even looking at it now.

The mission control dude gives me a spiel about how they can't send a ship to dock with a ship that's about to self-destruct. And you know, informing me about the shuttle as if I didn't already know about it. I guess you could beat this without the manual, it would just take a lot longer. Fortunately, I do get what I actually wanted, which was for him to send a ship to the general area so that after I escape in the shuttle I can survive.

It's entirely possible for you to get here without knowing who this guy even is.

I make it, and the hairs on my back stand on end. It's the guy I thought died, Annar. Not that I have any way of knowing that or he of knowing my name in this playthrough. He's going to kill me because I have the lab notes and he can't let me take them. But before I do it, I get a brief chance to control myself again.

Beating him is as simple as just walking into him. When not faced with genetic freaks, my guy is quite skilled at hand-to-hand combat, and either knocks the dude out cold or kills him. Either way, he's not going to be a problem for now. And that's it, I've won.

The chief congratulates me, and I get a vacation. Considering mission control was on my case with my ship getting destroyed, this must have been a good job indeed. Now, let's see if we can't save the lady. Let's see how we can optimize this.

Remember all those cards I got at the start? Well, those are what you need in order to get into the cryo room. The front door is locked and while there is a backdoor, even if it isn't locked it's right next to an area full of constantly respawning mutants, so you aren't getting in. This is apparently where they made their nest, because opening one of the doors is instant death. So I need to find something I can use to solve some of my problems, and that means exploring.

Technically I already have some idea of where I need to go, since the map I was able to find was not fresh, but written on. There are three rooms of note on the 1st floor, a room with a medical kit to the right of the elevator. A locked room in the upper right, which I didn't have the key for, and a laser gun in the lower right, which is filled with so many mutants that it's a waste of time.

In engineering, which you enter by going to the third floor, then right, then down to the second floor again, there's the power room with the faulty shield, the power switch and a storage room with a plasma laser. The power switch is interesting, because it turns the game dark, which I suspect means I will need to turn it back on at some point in the game.

So, my plan forms, focused on minimizing the amount of movement and time I need to do. I suppose this is cheating you out of seeing some good stuff...but the amount of combat I might need to do over that is very unappealing to me. I've figured out what the tricks are and think I can work around that. That said, there is a certain order the game expects you to do things and you can't really work around it.

Now, I can't really do anything different until I call HQ telling them that my ship is destroyed, except I take a laser from the armory at first rather than picking up the one in the lab. So I'm not completely screwed if I get stuck up there with one laser. More importantly, I try not to engage in fights I don't need to, since everything is about time. Time spent in a room is time ticking down for an enemy to spawn. Which is unfortunate, because you need to wait for certain events to happen.

My attempt at optimization, unfortunately, doesn't really help me much, instead I'm stuck waiting around for the room to be unlocked. I charge in, shoot the enemies, then escort her to the waste disposal room. You shoot her into space rather than escort her to the shuttle. Hopefully that has enough oxygen for her. This also breaks the game's sprites.

This means a trip back to the lab to eject the waste pod, then going to the med lab since I've taken too much damage getting away from the monsters. Seriously, hiding in any room with an active enemy outside it will result in them camping outside the door. Change levels? You're safe, since I guess it only saves enemies in active memory whenever it's on the same level. You can only rarely exploit this though.

It's just over sixteen minutes left when I eject the waste pod and finish healing in the medlab, which should be plenty of time to win. I kept expecting time to either trigger an event or the game to just wait for me to try the shuttle before something happens...and nothing did. I actually waited in engineering for something to happen, since that's where the power switch was, but nothing happens.

The endgame proceeds as last time, I take out Annar, but this time I pick up the waste pod. The hero gets a kiss from the lady. Nothing else changes. Feeling somewhat disappointed, I look up a longplay. Turns out I just didn't wait enough for the event to happen. After a few more moments the pod the game cuts to will completely hatch, revealing a white version of A. Promiveriate, who is completely psychotic. As in, killing its fellows and chasing after you psychotic. It won't die to laser fire, instead you need to take it to a gimmick room to kill it. Basically, you need to be paying attention to those notes you find around the area.

But this happens just before the power actually goes out, which I didn't find despite hanging around for a good amount of time before just reloading and going for the shuttle anyway. Apparently you can't exit to the shuttle while it's off, but that just seems like a weird gimmick. Oh, and sound, which is off by default for some strange reason.

I could reload to try this, but Project Firestart is best when you're figuring things out, and not when you're waiting around for death. I got the best possible outcome without encountering these things, and I didn't know anything about this game before starting. I thought the monsters were some sort of Xenomorph knockoff as opposed to cow fungi. I didn't even optimize that much in the end, my first plan of action was the same as my last plan of action.

It's also not that fun to actually play the game, rather than take it as a first time package. Discovering things, figuring out how best to do them, that's fun. Constant loading between rooms, switching disks between most floors, waiting for timed events to happen; these are not. Actually shooting the endlessly respawning enemies is incredibly boring too, you just shoot and hope they die before they reach you, or just run past them. There's no figuring out combat here, you just get lucky or you don't.

In the end, we still have a lot of questions as to what's going on. Did Annar sabotage the ship after the fact or did he sabotage the development of the creatures? Why does he not want us to have them? Is it because he's plotting on wiping humanity out or that he doesn't trust people to restart the experiment? If it's the latter, I can't blame him, because there's no sign of any containment measures beyond knocking them out and blowing the station up. One would hope that this would be a wakeup call, but you never know. That's even assuming the people being given the logs are trustworthy.

I was actually disappointed that the big gimmick was that they were creating a new stronger cow fungi rather than finding out that the cow fungi laid spores on you, and you need to stop them. But admittedly that would probably clash with the game's general feel as a small, well-crafted package if you needed to do something for another 5-10 minutes. And with that, let's see how it rates.

Weapons:
You have one, it's extremely boring. 1/10

Enemies:
Three, but one requires a bit of effort to reach, albeit effort is required to defeat it. Another is a puzzle. The last is quite generic. I want to be generous, but I know I would only do it out of pity. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
A lame escort mission doesn't get points. 0/10

Levels:
The ship generally succeeds at being both a real place and a fun place to explore, but does rely on backtracking to the same location a bit too many times. 7/10

Player Agency:
Unfortunately, janky. You need to hold down the keys just enough in order to perform an action, but if you want precision, you need to get good at doing it just right. It's better than most games, but it's the weakest link by far. 3/10

Interactivity:
I must admit to being impressed by the computer interface, just like what I use...just with a joystick, and the occasional depth of what you can do, but for the most part it's opening and closing doors so you don't get chased after. 3/10

Atmosphere:
The game does an excellent job of imitating a horror movie. Sometimes to its detriment. I especially thought the intro to the introduction of the monster was well-done. 8/10

Graphics:
Clearly pushes the graphical capabilities of the C64 to the limit in both static visuals and animation. That said, it so dearly needed more combat animation. 5/10

Story:
Basic but well-done science experimentation gone wrong. I do dislike how in the game you're not actually given a reason to go for the best ending. Since at most you hear the cryo room unlocked message. People also know each other's names despite nobody mentioning them in-game. (I had to look up that my guy was named Jon Hawkin) 4/10

Sound/Music:
Surprisingly little, it swells during creepy moments, but without enemies on-screen its silence. At least I got silence, sound effects were turned off and I just thought they weren't any. There are at least basic sound effects. 3/10

That's 35. No additions or subtractions, the special ones I'd do balance out. Pretty good. Obviously not perfect, they just needed to work a little more on making combat fun. I don't need to read the reviews, since they're all positive last I checked. I couldn't blame someone in 1989 for doing so, but looking back this has to be the effect swan song for the American C64 market. The last big and impressive game. Europeans lasted longer, as I have Newcomer in mind for that continent, but I admit I'm no C64 expert. (Check out that company name too, an amusing coincidence)

Despite Dynamix never following up at all on this game, someone made a remake of the game, just called Firestart. I'm sure it plays a lot better, but looking at the screenshots it looks considerably less polished. Without that polish, its just another horror game about exploring a space station.

And that's it for the special Halloween games this year. Next month will be more Rejection, the no doubt exciting sequel to Pharaoh's Tomb and some more Japanese PC games from 1984. It hasn't been that long since I made progress on the latter, but it sure as heck has felt like it. It's been a slow couple of months, mostly a consequence of real life issues forcing me to slowly make my way through a long Japanese RPG at a somewhat slow pace.

Shadowcaster (PC-98,1994)

Name:Shadowcaster
Number:165
Year:1994
Publisher:Electronic Arts Victor
Developer:Raven Software
Genre:FPS/RPG
Difficulty:3/5
Time:7 hours 40 minutes
Won:Yes (63W/58L)

I said the last time that I played Shadowcaster that it would be the last time, unless I played the PC-98 version. Guess this really is the last time I play this game. I can't say I regret that. It's a good game, it just has some issues. Yeah, I played the game for under 8 hours, but counting time I just had the game running in the background, you could double that.

The game unceremoniously tosses you into combat, a bit of a theme.

If you're unfamiliar with the game, you can think of it as Ultima Underworld by way of the Wolfenstein 3D engine. You have a fancy save system like UUW, a map system that puts most used in Wolf source ports to shame, and a fancy control scheme. I don't really have anything bad to say about any of them. The controls are the kind of game where turning and moving is ideally done without the mouse, as that functions independently of the gameworld. Like UUW, its better than it sounds. I do note that when I played the CD version, that had a glitch with the save system that this didn't have. Bug added by the CD version, or bug fixed by the PC-98 version? Considering that the infamous glitch from UUW was only fixed in the CD version, not the various ports, I think the former.

The third and last time I used this guy.

The central concept of Shadowcaster, playing as one of the last members of a shapeshifting race, is interesting. Running around being able to change into different forms for different situations is interesting, its just that this combined with the RPG aspect of it is kind of awkward. Each form has its own experience and is implied to be its own character independent of the human one. The player has three metrics which are improved by increasing score/XP. Mana/power in the base, human form, health in all forms, and in one, the amount of time some relatively unimportant spells last.

This incentivizes you to use the human form as much as possible, to ensure you have the highest possible mana. While XP gotten in non-human forms transfers over a little to the human form, you don't get much out of it for most forms. Let's take the first form, the Maorin, a cat warrior. There is only one place you really get something out of him, and even that you can sort of just rush through. While he does do more damage, there's not really any reason to use him over the human form. Sure, its harder now, but later you'll really appreciate it when you have a ton of mana.

Meanwhile we have the Caun, an old-school elf or brownie-type. It is actual suicide to use this guy in melee, he's a pure special purpose form. Except most of his spells are useless. Hiding from enemies is pointless, stunning enemies is pointless, and reaching in the distance nearly so. You do not get anything from avoiding enemies. Instead the creature's only purpose is to cast healing and light spells, and jump over a few obstacles. This is also the only creature to actually get non-health advantage from XP, the strength of some spells increase as it levels up. You'd have to be dedicated to give it more than a few. You don't really get anything out of this, short of an increased length for its light spell.

Enemies can get stuck like this, and it absolutely is intentional.

Then the forms become useless or of limited utility as you get later forms. The Opsis is good for a little while, as it can fly and cast fireballs, iceballs and some other things you don't really need, its useless once you get the much faster Ssair, which only has a fireballs attack but can actually survive in melee. Nothing you'll fight at that point won't fall to one of its two attacks. The resistance each enemy has to various kinds of attacks does vary, but it doesn't come up much. Very few creatures have a high resistance to a combination of physical and whatever magical attacks you're likely to use. I had an issue last time trying to drive up as much XP to the base form as possible, which can only use physical attacks without items.

These red cloaked fellows absorb your health, making them one of the most dangerous enemies in the game.

Now, that said, combat isn't necessarily as straight-forward as I describe. Certainly, despite some forms having multiple physical attacks, you're going to focus on certain ones, at least before you get a sword, but I did find myself in some interesting fights. While you can blindly melee fight a good chunk of the fights, I found that some of the few sections that worked a fun reprieve from the more troublesome sections. I've been dividing things by physical and everything else, because that's more or less how it functions. Physical attacks don't cost any power, and even the physical ranged weapon, a shuriken, is infinite. Magical attacks either cost mana, on top of the usual maintenance cost for being in a different form, or are from items with a limited number of charges.

With the enemies you can't brute-force, you have an interesting variety of attacks. Obvious attacks usually come in the form of a special item you just got, like a silver sword against a werewolf, or the form you just got having special attacks that work against this section's enemies. If an enemy isn't swift enough, you can pelt them with the shuriken and avoid their attacks. Still, it feels somewhat underutilized. You don't really need to shift between a lot of forms if the terrain doesn't force you to.

Fighting a flying enemy with the shuriken, something I'm forced to do as I don't have a form with a ranged attack yet.

Moving back to not being able to brute-force, should you not have the option of a special attack or worse yet, run out of mana, you can run away. Its part and parcel of playing the game, unfortunately. Like most RPGs, you can heal when you're away from combat. As this is built on the Wolfenstein 3D engine, this works in strange ways. You just sit there and wait. No, no rest button. Yes, I do think the game should have had a rest button. Unless you're building a game around a lack of resting ability you should have one. You just wait some fifteen or so minutes every time you need to heal. I'd even be okay with it having an ungodly high amount chance of enemies spawning.

I'm torn as to whether or not this was a conscious design choice or one forced on them. There's a strict number of enemies throughout the game, for instance the base form can only just reach level 8, at least I think, I got to level 7 here, and the XP required increases quite a lot. Because there are no or very limited respawning enemies, you have to track all their positions as you sleep, in the Wolfenstein engine. Even just the alert ones would be annoying. I can see the design choice being that they thought was a cool idea, "you're always in danger", they think. Good luck, I'm hiding behind 7 doors.

Two of the items I have here could be ignored without any penalty whatsoever

And that leads into the game's items. I don't really think there's a good sense of how they should be paced out. I ended the game, me, an expert in the game supposedly, with quite a few more items than I needed. Health and mana items are a hard thing to get a sense of, because you can get to be very good at running away in this game. The only time they're truly needed is at the end of the game. Damage items aren't much better, because the enemies you want to use them against are bosses, who are introduced with little fanfare. Sometimes they even just look like every other enemy. And of course, using them too freely puts you in a bad place against the final boss.

This all gives the impression I don't like the game. I do, but it feels unfinished in the sense it feels like its missing something. Its not like a lot of games where it feels like they gave up near the end, rather, they managed it so it feels like some of the middle sections are lacking. The game basically has twice the running time it should have thanks to that regeneration system. Is that why it was added? It just feels like there could be more, more levels, more ways to take advantage of each characters forms. With games like Dungeon Master, Ultima Underworld and Pathways into Darkness, I know what it could be.

Fighting a lava monster as a dragon over lava, what could be easier?

This is in part because the game does some things very well. It didn't occur to me until this particular playthrough that Shadowcaster does something very rare for a first-person game of this era and technological limitations. Every section is unique. Not something you see in every dungeon crawler or FPS from the time. Quite the opposite. Even games that succeed at making levels interesting tend to look very samey. And to this day games can struggle with succeeding at this, both professional and indie titles.

A lot of the game feels just right, and its not necessarily an opinion I just got either, when I think back to my memories of my first proper playthrough, in many ways it felt well-balanced. Perhaps on the easy side in that you should be able to figure it out the first time you play through the game. I made fun of some of them, like a puzzle that consisted of a rope along with putting boulders on pressure plates, but it is hardly enough to put a damper on the experience.

An aspect of the game that works out surprisingly well is the game's visuals, specifically the fog. People tend to dislike anything that reduces visibility because we shouldn't have anything. Once again, I think this is an intentional choice, and it works. The thing about fog from a player perspective is that it only matters if it impacts you in a negative way. Like you can't shoot someone or you get shot at. Because Shadowcaster is primarily a melee game, that's not an issue. It does a lot for the game, causing some encounters to sneak up on you and improving the mood of the game.

This game does more than you would think at first glance. Its by no means a must-play, but I think the game does enough interesting things to make up for its short-comings. Others will probably be put off by the long resting times. It always comes back to that. Some things are good, some things are pretty good, but none of it ever truly makes up for that stupid little design choice.

Weapons:
Melee is satisfying, but its rules are unclear. Ranged combat is very interesting, as I mentioned the item issue. Using them has a sense of liberation about it. When you can finally attack enemies from a distance is a satisfying as other games ultimate weapons. 3/10

Enemies:
The AI is subtly clever. Its hard to see. Enemies run away if they're damaged enough, but continue attacking if cornered. If they chase after the player and lose sight of them, they actually chase after where they last saw them. Not that you'd ever see that most of the time. Otherwise there's some surprising variety here. Even though you can broadly categorize enemies into ranged and melee enemies, they feel different from each other. A werewolf fights differently than a skeleton or a wereboar. 5/10

Non-Enemies:
Some simple non-hostiles in one of the stages. 0/10

Levels:
Each section feels unique, but not always good. The castle section, despite having a very mazey part of it, did a good job in creating unique situations and encounters that this wasn't a problem. There's also the factor that some of the less good sections might be suffering only due to poor choice of the player's form. 7/10

Player Agency:
I've never found the right words to describe the Ultima Underworld style of controls, where you use the mouse as a sort of menu in addition to having normal-ish FPS controls. It works, but kind of strangely. You basically need three hands, one on the numpad, on resting in the middle, and one on the mouse. I like how the inventory itself works, especially right click to rapidly change items, but not how I might have to change between 3 forms to give an item to a form that needs it. Or how dropping items and picking them up in some forms is more annoying than doing this. Otherwise its fine, no real complaints about fighting or moving. 6/10

Interactivity:
Interactions are mostly limited to using a few scenery objects along with the odd destroyable wall. 2/10

Atmosphere:
There's a very good sense of travelling through the disused ruins of a once great civilization. From the overgrown gardens to lonely, abandoned areas, the game keeps a nice, dark mood. 7/10

Graphics:
Everything looks nice; wall graphics, even the more generic designs, feel like they belong together. Enemy sprites, while limited, are well-drawn. 7/10

Story:
A simple story, told primarily through two cutscenes at the beginning and end. The CD version was better with multiple cutscenes, even if those didn't age well. 2/10

Sound/Music:
The sound effects are nice and punchy, though I wish enemies made alert noises. Musically, it sounds nice, but its not anything special. 5/10

That's 44. Up 2 points from the last time I played. The difference, surprisingly, isn't just that I gave the sound category more, most things have jumped around. No pity point for non-enemies, atmosphere and story were a bit over rated, and weapons, enemies and levels were a bit under rated. Were it not for the increase in sound I actually would have rated the game one point less.

I still recommend this, but I have to admit, this doesn't really appeal to anyone. RPG fans, even those hungering for an old-school dungeon crawler, won't like how it has a smattering of RPG elements. FPS fans aren't going to like it because its very unusual. Even if this game uses the same mechanics as PS2 era action-adventure games, I doubt fans of that era would care. Those interested in augmenting their Japanese learning with video games are not going to care for a western game they could already play, when Ultima Underworld is right there. But yeah, for the two people out there for whom this sounds interesting and don't mind dealing with the awkward healing, its worth it. But perhaps I'll be proven wrong whenever the CRPG Addict ever gets to this.