Game 47: Freaks

Name:Freaks
Number:47
Year:1993
Publisher:Triptico
Developer:Triptico
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:4/5
Time: 8.5 Hours

Its hard to think that a game made with a worse engine than Hovertank 3D gives me a bigger smile than just about anything I've played in the past year. You turn in 90-degree angles, no sound, no use key, bulletsponge enemies, enemies are stupid sacks of crap, and the gun is the bare minimum of what a shooter needs. What could possibly be good?

One of the things that appeals to me a great deal are puzzles. Short games that have logical, easy to understand rules that have an understandable solution. I greatly enjoy games like The Fool's Errand, Crush the Castle and The Incredible Machine, even if these things aren't always the cleverest or the most fun. Usually whatever pain there is gets over quickly enough and I'm back to doing what I like best. Shooters that mimic this feel of short, interesting to solve puzzles just give me a warm feeling inside. That was this game. Short bite-sized levels combined with an autosave and it becomes Deadly Rooms of Death 3D. Except I don't think that was intentional. Which makes this all the more strange.

The story is, you're The Magician, a servant of Gaia, creating all manner of nasty creatures. You have an assistant, named The Learner*, who is obviously evil, yet you do nothing. Naturally, he betrays you, killing you, and Gaia recreates you. You get a shotgun with infinite ammo somehow, and begin your quest to regenerate your body and take out The Learner, who has caused all your creations to turn on you. Then the author mentions he likes Lovecraft, Giger and Dead Can Dance. I have to admit, considering how many games just stick a Xenomorph in their game, it was quite refreshing to see a game that said "I love Giger, but I'm not going to take the completely obvious route." At no point are these inspirations blatantly obvious, with exception to one of Dead Can Dance's album titles.

At this point, the game begins, and its fun. The game consists mostly of small levels, and it autosaves every time you enter a new level, so its never time-consuming to get back to where you were. This honestly cuts off most of the problems older shooters had. Its not a question of where or when to save, so you're not savescumming or saving too little. Which places you entirely on the focus of beating this level. What makes this all work is ironically enough the engine's 90-degree turn limitation, more like Dungeon Master than Wolfenstein.

Because you always shoot in a precise direction and enemies always head for you in the simplest way possible, accuracy or enemies firing back, were only problems in specific situations. Like whenever the enemies were blocking a door or on the edge of a corner; The game is a bit weird with where the gun hits, so you're hitting the air in some cases. Thus the game is entirely about strategy. That's not saying this strategy was always brilliant, no, sometimes the strategy was standing at the end of a long corridor while holding down the fire button. But the amount of levels that had me figuring things out was always high. The gun does a set amount of damage over a set amount of time while the enemies are similarly predictable. This provided the majority of gameplay.

It doesn't even change when the game throws out ranged enemies either. They're all hitscanners. The damage they deal to you is inconsequential to what damage they deal to you if you attack them, so these sections suddenly turn into a different kind of puzzle. Although because they didn't die, you could sometimes screw up and place them in front of a door you needed to go through. I never had this happen to me, but I was smart, you might not be so lucky.

Now, I say this could be accidental, because there are boss battles, and they are not fun. They're all damage sponges, and none of these battles, except the first, involve any kind of thought from the player. The first is only an exception because it introduces the ranged enemies. The only thoughts are when he realizes its shooting at him, and if he realizes its hurting him when he fires at it.

Like I said this game feels like a bit of a counter argument to several typical shooter problems. Don't know when to save? Only the game can save. Think backtracking sucks? Its usually obvious when you need to backtrack and it isn't ever obnoxious. Don't know which weapon is optimal against which enemy? Doesn't matter, everything's the same. Its the antithesis of every generic shooter complaint one could have against the early era...except, explain to anyone that the solution to their problems is this game. Doom is the suxxor, so go play this game that looks like the missing link between Wolfenstein and Dungeon Master.

Weapons:
I think I've gained an appreciation of one-weapon shooters now. The gun in this game has showed me that the weapon is only a tool, not necessarily something that needs to appeal on its own. Not that it changes the rating. 1/10

Enemies:
For the most part, the enemies really are interchangeable. You've got shooting enemies, and you've got melee enemies. You're not really supposed to kill the shooting ones because they hurt you whenever you attack. Bit backwards, but otherwise they're jokes if you don't get surrounded. However, I must admit they had an appeal beyond their varying health meters. It was neat seeing what weird new enemy would show up, and they all interesting in that regard. What was really different about this game was you needed to kill enemies in order to get health. I'm sure there are later games that focus solely on getting health via vampirism, I remember a Doom mod in particular, but this seems to be the first actual appearance of it. 3/10

Non-Enemies:
None, everything was an enemy. 0/10

Levels:
Freaks made use of some really inventive level design for the most part, and because of the way it was set up, most of the levels weren't obnoxious to get through. How do I get through this level with as much health as possible? Every game is like that, but here, because of each level's short length, it becomes that much more of an interesting thought. Now, the problem is that the 3rd episode felt more like a mediocre Wolfenstein-clone in a lot of places. But overall episode had more good levels than bad levels. 8/10

Player Agency:
I thought I was going to hate the way this has no smooth turning, just sharp turns. That was fine, no more troublesome than any other DOS-era shooter. What was troublesome was the weird issue where walls are technically larger than they appear. I have to assume this is some kind of coding issue rather than an intentional design choice, because its just so odd-looking. I could have used some rebinding of keys, since the Shift+Ctrl+Alt cluster are always tied into system functions. Also, the pause key crashed the game. 3/10

Interactivity:
There wasn't really any. 0/10

Atmosphere:
Freaks does what I think very few shooters or shooter mods have ever succeeded in doing, do an excellent Lovecraftian atmosphere. This just felt like a bizarre alien adventure, but every part of it was going to be good. 9/10

Graphics:
I liked all the graphics in of themselves, but they felt like they were made ugly because of the engine. I like the hand-drawn VGA pixel-look. The problem is that at long distances or from a side angle, like most of the game, they look off. 4/10

Story:
The player is effectively God killing the Devil, with a shotgun. I realize its still an excuse plot, but man, how many games do you know that have a story like that? 2/10

Sound/Music:
There were basically three tracks in the game, which considering the level design, made sense, don't want tracks getting cut off in weird ways. The first track was the best, and it played the longest, reappearing at the final boss. The second was okay, except for the ear-bleeding part of it. The third was just okay in general. No sound, unfortunately. 3/10

Because this game is good in a way I didn't exactly anticipate when making my score system, I'm going to give it 3 bonus points. That's 36 points. Putting it one point below Catacomb Armageddon and Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Am I wrong? Well, you'll never know that unless you play it yourself. Because there aren't any reviews beyond my own. Freaks is incredibly obscure, I've only seen it on a handful of sites, even including my otherwise large field of vision. This won't be the last game from Spanish developer Triptico AKA Lovecraft Dreams. Sometime in the future we'll take a look at Space Plumber, which is weird, and the remake of Freaks, which adds smooth turning. That might honestly ruin the game, since this feels like its only as good as it is through a combination of its out-of-date by 1993 tech choices. Making it a normal shooter would probably make it a mediocre Wolfenstein-clone, and I already know I'll have my fill of those by 2002.

The lead of Triptico, Angel Ortega, is kind of a renaissance man. He's done stories, he has his own one-man band, art beyond his video games, and basically had a hand in every bit of his video games. Its funny, looking at his blog, you don't see that going into any real popularity, the guy seems to have trouble getting his stories published, in addition to constant troubles with services that actually do publish his work. This guy's Spanish, so the audience is significantly less than in the English world. If this guy, who's pretty talented, in a smaller pond, can't get any kind of following, what hope does anyone else have? Food for thought for the artistically inclined among you.

*Which I suspect is a mistranslation of apprentice. The author is Spanish and that's what Learner translates into over there, with a few letters changed. As the years went on, it was probably kept because the author liked the sound of it more.

Freaks!: Does Hell Have a Frequent Flyer Program?

 Hmm, that joke is probably more appropriate to a Doom wad than this, oh well.

Automatic double-barreled shotgun? The dead swimming through a lake of blood? Music that doesn't feature the worst midi bank? You're back in my good graces, Freaks, try not to leave again. The opening section here is a surprise return to linearity, not that its bad for this. Gets pretty hairy in places. Especially when the mutants show up. Some very original level titles, like Towards the Within. I don't know what that's supposed to mean in-game.

Eventually, there's a fork in the path, and I enter a forest level. Its still a river of blood on the ground. The enemies here are all tentacles in the water. They're no pushover either. This comes off as cruel, but ultimately ends up being fair, as I win.

For a good while after that, its uninteresting to talk about. Perhaps as an attempt at difficulty, the developer threw out dozens of enemies rather than trying to come up with clever paths to get through a level. What's interesting...I guess...is that this episode's keys are...whatever these are. The manual tells me its going to make sense after I find them all. Okay, whatever.

Then, there's this level. Praying mantises are the primary enemy, but the important bit is that there are crucified corpses on the walls. Er...souls. Also, there's a mantis is a side-room for no apparent reason.

The lull in difficulty changes almost instantly after that. A level full of more mantises. The problem? There are too many to just shoot down at once, so the level has a bunch of little rooms. Thus the level's name, The Crypt. Its mostly just moving back and forth between two of the doors, most of the doors lack a good shot at any of the enemies.

Curiously, there are quite a few level titles relating to the dead. At first I assumed there was going to be some undead again, but I only encountered the mantises and recolored imps. A few tricky levels here, nothing interesting to talk about. Then I find The Old Cemetery. A bunch of graves, and I eventually come across a cross. Its an item, so I take it. At this point I go to write some of this, but because of the weird button combinations, DOSBox is on a different plane of computing than the text box, causing DOSbox to disappear and vice versa.

When I returned, this was going on. I guess there are undead. Forgot about that gimmick. This was actually pretty cool, although the problem I now had was that it seemed like I was stuck here, because there was a horde of these guys. This whole level exceeded at being creepy, because to begin with all the tombstones were moving.

It feels like this episode's big gimmick is enemy control via these doors. It was interesting at first, but every time it pops up again its just running around two doors because all the others are pointless to try. This comes to my great annoyance in The Dead Town, in which enemies are tucked away in the interior. I wait by the side, they just scatter all around, or I'm not fast enough to reach them. I wait by a door, well, doesn't take a genius to figure out that's not going to work. I eventually figured it out.

The cathedral section is okay. Lots of gnome ghost-like enemies. Reminds me of the levels in Deadly Rooms of Death where you'd have to trickle enemies in around a curve. I realize what the keys are forming, at least, I think I do. A funeral urn. I actually find the episode exit before I find all the items.

Somewhere in the cathedral are The Dungeons, which felt weird, but whatever. By this time, I have all but 1 items, and there's a door that's locked. Okay...weird...whatever. The final item is here, which spawns more enemies...and the locked door is a boss...I think? I feel like I've seen this in something related to Junji Ito, but I haven't seen anything. On to the episode exit...feels like I've missed something. Nope.

This episode's ending text is rather short, fitting considering the final episode is supposed to just be a boss battle.

The boss battle is...uh...not terribly impressive. The music's the same as the first episode; I don't even die once; And The Learner is some alien-looking dude. He's tough, but bullet sponge, all that.

C'mon, you give me all this awesome backstory, and you don't even give me some ending text? Man...Well, I guess I gotta decide how I feel about that.

Final Time: 8.5 hours

Freaks!: Fantasy Kitchen Sink

So far this game has been a real hidden gem. Excellent, clever level design, original atmosphere, and a plot, that while an excuse, is delightful. Its also the most epic in scope of any shooter...scratch that almost any game made. Starting in a creation myth setting and now, the far future. But...can it keep that quality up? The first episode made it by on a combination of tiny puzzlesque levels and dumb melee enemies. The closest thing the level had to a final boss was broken, although he did little damage to the player by himself. Can the commercial episodes continue to succeed where the shareware episode shined?

A new song starts up, I have a new gun...and oh...no...the new song uses the harmonic guitar soundbank as part of its melody. If you don't know, midis have these various soundbanks that are intended to imitate a certain sound. There are two acoustic guitars, three "clean" electric guitars, and three "distorted" electric guitars. I believe the Doom soundtrack made extensive use of two of the distorted ones, and you can probably recognize one a mile off. The third one, is a harmonic guitar. I don't think I've heard anything close to it in a real song, probably because its a harsh, sharp sound.

You can hear it used well here, in fact, this is the only good that's ever come of it. Its the short high pitched notes. Although now that I think of it, it could just be a really high piano note. I can't tell...its not helping the soundtrack here.

Oh, crap, the problem is continuing here. As you might recall from last time, the enemy near enough to be called the boss of the shareware episode was glitched, at least I think that was the case. Whenever I hit him, I actually did damage to myself. This continues here, but they have less health than the boss. I still lose nearly half my health. I get an item, but that's not really helpful if I die quickly. I must be doing something wrong. Nothing in the manual, but it does say to be careful and leave. Interesting

Then I find a little side level a few levels down. Its completely black. Even the enemies are black. Spinal Tap's favorite video game level. Curiously, all the previous enemies didn't show up on the radar, but these ones I can't see do. Figuring I'm treating this wrong, I restart. Okay, that does work...so the game has changed from being a FPS to a quasi-stealth game. Its not the kind of stealth game I suck at, so that's a plus.

It turns out, the only thing I was doing wrong was shooting the enemies. Is this intentional or accidental? There are four patches and a remake, I'd think the guy would notice if this was a glitch, but it just feels weird. Anyway, the air duct is something I'm supposed to be able to see, its just a very dark grey against black. My monitor shows that as complete black with my default brightness settings, and because I'm using Ubuntu I have to fiddle around in a terminal to see. The monsters are fortunately not hitscanners, good for me, and not very interesting here.

This leads me to another level, with the next key. A few more ranged enemies, and I'm back at the start, but that's okay, I know which way is out. It deposits me in what I hope is the center of the rest of the episode, if not...well that's going to suck for me. There are three doors, excluding the one I came out of, and two of them are locked.

I didn't really understand what this section was going for at first with its weird design. I walk in a door, but walking back in and its locked. But walking into a different door and it returns me to the previous level. Oh, its an elevator. I end up getting stuck quite a bit on the third floor.

So, I go as low as the game will let me...to the cellar...on a space station. Two things of interest, when the elevator is really at the end of the line, it just doesn't do anything, so I can go further up, and this is the first time I've seen a recolored enemy. Which is interesting, in a certain sense, because this is just a robot.

The way out of the basement is strange. Its just an ordinary lift out, but it seems to be in a different direction than the rest of the lifts. Takes me to a different room and everything. Confused the hell out of me. I'm not really fond of that here, because from experience, its just a short trip from confusing to going around in circles.

Despite having a lot of ranged enemies, the puzzle-like gameplay that I enjoyed hasn't changed. However, because I have to dodge enemies, rather than fight them, and the AI is still...uh...stupid, this leads to the game getting on my nerves. This is all for nought. The door past this particular room is locked at the moment. This leaves the other two doors back at the hub.

Malloks, these just look like a generic platformer enemy. They're melee and this section feels like a shallow attempt at returning to the gameplay of the first episode...at first. The second and third levels are more interesting than that. The second involves a circle with 8 hallways leading out, each one containing the Mallok. It also has an incomprehensible name. The third is The Vortex, which centers around doors, with the usual door teleporting puzzle. These give me access to the reactor that was locked earlier and then I can go to the other door at the hub.

This section starts unassumingly enough. Its got a few clever tricks up its sleeve though. The first, an empty room containing a keycard. If this were Doom, it would obviously be a trap, but this game isn't that clever...except it is a trap. The other is a level containing nearly dead ranged enemies. They don't shoot damage back at you, so its easy to take out. The rest of this section ends with the last key card and what I assume was a maze. Its a very easy maze, which I'm grateful for. Its a bit of an anti-climax though. Whatever, onward to the boss.

The "Biocomputer" is such an anti-climax. Its just dodging the same enemies I've been dodging enemies for the past 2 hours. I literally just walk into the "Core" of it like any other door. The end text crawl tells me that the next episode is technically going to be where I began? Hmm, interesting.

This Session: 1.5 hours

Total Time: 6.5 hours

Freaks!: Them Bones

Games like Freaks are a mixed blessing to someone playing them for a blog. A really good game that you want to play more of, which is exactly what the point is, but you have other games to talk about and its boring to constantly gush over one. It doesn't help that its opposite the basically a RPG, Sundog: Frozen Legacy. Oh, as an aside, I've discovered that there's a run function. Right shift and only right shift. What it lacks in easily understood controls, it makes up for in gameplay. This adds a bit of depth to the combat, before I could only retreat after turning, now I can do so sideways.

This doesn't help me with in the snake temple I left off in last time, and the door forward is locked. I haven't seen anything close to a key yet, so I'm wondering how these will be handled eventually. Returning to the area I originally got stuck at, I discover with my newfound ability at the game that I can handle it just fine, even this horde of knife ghouls. Unfortunately, there's a dinosaur guarding my foot, and I can't reach him yet. There's no in-level way to him.

One of the ways out leads me to a sea level. Its exactly the same as the other levels, but its  blue. Sharks are my enemies, they're not really unique, around the ghouls strength, but there are a lot of them. This leads me to the dinosaur, and a tricky combat situation.

In order to get past this area, you don't just sit at the door, no, you wait for him to get out of your path, then rush the bodypart. That gives you enough space to kill the dinosaur.

After a few long hallways and some forks in the road, I enter Kingdom of Dholes, which are not Asian dogs, they're dinosaurs. Presumably, there's some Spanish joke I'm missing. I'm less enamored of this area, its mostly just gunning down enemies with little strategy. I'm building my health back up though, which is going to be good for that part I left behind.

At some point, I encounter another level full of enemies, no strategy, but there's a two-headed dinosaur inside a room here. The door forward is locked, and there's nothing inside. Hmm, is this how I'm supposed to unlock doors? So far the only options are killing enemies and getting body parts. This is actually very clever. You can exploit the way the room is set up to go in, shoot him, then jump out when he's close, and wait until he's walked away. This solves nothing for me.

Going back a bit, I find another body part in a rather unassuming room. Weird, but whatever. A bunch of little doors here that I'm not exploring yet, some locked.

So on a different path, I end up screwing myself over. This is probably why games with one slot autosaves were not the standard. In a level full of dinosaurs, the idea would have been to hide out in a long tunnel, then shoot them as they approach. Only too many came out of their room, and I, in a panic, rush out the door. Thankfully, that door didn't lead to more enemies or was tricky, but still, if I don't figure out how to handle things properly, I'm screwed.

Fortunately, as I enter the Bestiario, I discover something in my favor. As I get more body parts, my attack gets stronger. I just need to find another item. For all the open-endedness, the game isn't linking back on itself.

The Bestiario is a tough room, but I'm rewarded with another piece. And what makes this great, is the room right after this brings me back to the Dholes entrance. My problems are all solved. Only not because a dino is squatting at one exit and when I enter via the other, the dinos are rapidly advancing, but not the squatter. That's not as bad as it could be.

One level near this is an interesting one from a design choice. Half-water. Sure, its sewers, but its weird. This leads to a true underwater level, which has another body part. Another interesting level soon after, The Tower, but I didn't know why at first. Door behind you, door to the side, and two in front of you. Presumably, the two in front lead to a tower. Wrong, that's a room you can use to dodge enemies. I didn't realize that until it was too late.

Empty rooms in games like this make me nervous. Especially when they contain graphics I haven't seen before. What's going on?

Surprise, its just a stable...full of dinosaurs. Tricky, but I got a heart out of it. I'm only missing three, and one of those is on the other path near the start.

Oh, gees, that's a lot of snakes. The trick to this room are the clocks. Enemies block other enemies, or at least these things do, allowing me to carefully funnel them into the pattern I want. I don't know if I'm supposed to be this way yet, but the level is clever if you've already killed that one snake earlier.

Imps, man, these guys are ugly. And there are so many in this room I swore they were respawning. No, there are just a lot of them.

The next room goes from 10 to 1000. Hundreds of alien fetuses, and a freaking hitscanner. This level is actually a very dirty trick. I hope its a dirty trick and not a programming oversight. Whether or not you attack the enemy or not is irrelevant, he's going to die either way. When you hit him, your health goes down. When your health is nearly gone, he dies. This happens whether or not you're shooting at him or not. I was dumbly quitting and reloading hoping to find a strategy. I'm going to return here in a moment, as there are three items, one here, one somewhere, and one back in the temple.
The way to get the one back in the temple is surprisingly easy, I'm surprised I didn't manage to do it the first time...well, without health you need to be perfect. Just rush through the first room, then  There's nothing else here except a single locked door. Going back to the lab slowly, I take the opportunity to also take out that one group of dinosaurs...I actually manage to do it.

While exploring the Kingdom of Dholes one last time, I remember the door that was locked and try it. Ohohohohoh. The World of Ants. And they're on the ceiling in addition to the group. 10/10 enemy design right here. I'm not even joking.

I find the final body part, in a cave full of ants. This is tricky to get through, since they gang up rather quickly. I spot a problem here with the autosave system, namely, if you're in a rush, like fighting against a cave full of ants, you sometimes press the wrong button and go in the wrong direction. This doesn't make things too difficult, but it was a near thing.

So I return to the fetus room...and I was wrong, it was just a glitch, the darn thing kills me in any confrontation. Fortunately, without me returning fire, it doesn't do a lot of damage. With my body complete, I enter the final room.

A time machine, the text crawl explaining what has happened. Interesting choice, but okay. I also took a look at some of the readme files that came with the came, not all of them are in English. They're mostly patches, but there are two of interest, the tricks file, which explains what's going to happen in the remaining three levels, and the regular readme, which explains the backstory. The player is The Magician, who is the favorite son of Mother Earth. The Learner was supposed to be an assistant, but he's evil, very obviously so. He killed the Magician, and the game starts after Mother Earth recreates The Magician. Also, the Magician was responsible for creating most of the horrible things in the game, but The Learner twisted everything.

This Session: 2.5 hours

Total Time: 4 hours