Isle of the Dead: Cheating, and a Rough Map of the Game

Last time, I had explored the entire isle to the best of my ability. Problem is, with this game there's some very visually invisible doors. Normally, I wouldn't do this, but in the interest of actually finishing this thing, I have attempted to document the map of the game, and a big visual bonus. I modified some graphics.

In order to make the game look like this, you'll need to go to the cels3 folder of your game. You'll be picking RTREES1 & 2. Move these to a backup area, copy UNKNOWN (or something that won't visually clash) twice, rename those copies, and blam. One problem solved. You could also take the ones from the censored version. Viola, problem of the doors solved. That made this partially easier. I still needed a way to know where I was going. I was clear on the beach part of the game, but so was everyone. The interior of the game was a confusingly made mess that probably made sense to the developers at the time, but now no one knows. Its also worth pointing out that if you filled out the sheet on paper, you would end up with a mess, as the isle doesn't cleanly conform to an accurate rendering.

As can be understood, the game tries to fit everything into the actual space. Now, it isn't perfect, but can you imagine this game with an accurate beach? Yugh. Further, there are several walkable paths that can't be engaged with. These seem to be consistent across all versions, but you don't need them to complete the game. The one on the left side seems to lead to some unreachable place. There must be some unreachable map somewhere. The ones on the right link together via a map related to the endgame. You can't actually go into that area even if you're one second away from winning the game.
I didn't document it at the time, but the power supply box is in the little fenced off area in the south. SE portion of beach, southern exit, then left. The one that's a in-level yellow area. You'll need the rifle to destroy it, but don't think you're going to be clever by winning the game by skipping portions of it, you'll end up screwed if you do.
There's also the revelation that this is a really freaking small game. Without the constant stream of pointless fighting, you could beat this game in under 20 minutes. Not only are the enemies padding, they're the paddingest anyone has padded anything since the overstuffed chair.
I'd also like to add that I didn't fill in the cave system nor the fortress. The cave system you don't need to go more than one area deep. The fortress, well, once you get there, its smooth sailing. The smiley face cave because that thing is really easy to understand.

Isle of the Dead: Not-Alive, but Not-Dead

Ah, the safety of town. Reminds me of King's Quest 2. Which is about the only time this game is going to do that. Well, those zombies aren't going to resurrect themselves. To find the other chief.
One more thing of interest when fighting the not-alives, is that the child one can be shot a great distance away. This would be quality work if this also didn't apply to the other enemies at times. Mostly it only works against enemies that it should.

The second village is right in front of a horde of the undead. Right in front. Joy o' joy, oh happy day. Who designed this and thought, that's a good idea? Because that's the kind of guy who shouldn't be designing levels. The guards in the new village surprisingly seem to be different drawings than the ones in the first village.

How not to add hotspots, the game

Inside, we can continue our thieving rampage and...perv on some native woman in the shower. Now, normally, I'm not going to complain about T&A in a game, but come on. What is likely less than a minute ago, I shot a zombie with his guts hanging out, another using his severed head as a weapon, and a kid zombie. Yep, time to look at some titties! Get that motor running. VROOM! VROOM! Right, enough of that. There's a new track, which is some guy playing the bongos. It is incredibly annoying.

I was tired of being on barrel duty

I get another dialog with a chief. You know, talking to these characters is annoying, because each time I do so I have to use the translation book. Its not a puzzle, because its incredibly obvious. Its just busywork. Anyway, Mr. Gay Stereotype here complains about all the men disappearing, but he wants me to stop the music track. This is done by killing the bongo player, not turning the music off. Killing him literally turns off the music. Turning the music off does nothing.
Anyway, I must take the other chief's amulet to the oracle and maybe get a sacrifice. That's all I got in-between the devs making fun of themselves for drawing the same characters twice. At this point I mistakenly went back to the previous village and found out that wasn't what I was supposed to do. Upon reloading I come back to the village with a different song. One that sounds fun and like something from a platformer. Easter Egg? I'll see.

Smooth

So I leave the general area. Its hard to know exactly what I'm doing because these levels are terrible. First, I reach another area with a stone wall. I never noticed it before, but the stone walls are very badly made. Wow, I'm so shocked this game did poorly. Level transitions are difficult to figure out, it mostly involves hitting the wall with the machete and hoping you hit something, then standing there. If you have been standing there, you move automatically.
I also found out here that if you save while having the machete equipped, then reload that save, you have infinite reach with the machete. This is removed whenever you change rooms. Quality.

I only realized it now, but the female zombie looks wrong here

The next section I encountered was an area in front of a fence full of zombies. This is fine, since it seems to be the entrance to the final area of the game. There only seems to be the one entrance from the jungle though. I could be wrong. The PC is also bigger than one tile wide, as there was a corner piece I was unable to enter.

This occurs twice when it happens too

Wow, the first actual death cutscene I've seen. This is seemingly the censored version, that is, it doesn't play the zombie death scene. It seems to be missing the file, so either someone screwed up ripping this thing or there are three versions of the game. So graphic zombie dead is bad. Electrocution is fine though. Suicide is too, now that I remember it. Plane crashes...zombies...Anyway, a mad scientist appears each time you die. This doesn't make any sense until I actually get inside, I think. So, this is a bust. Good.

Another area full of stone, this time on top of a cave. The machete glitch seems random. Given how plentiful ammo is I suspect most of the dev team didn't use the knife enough to notice. There's not much to say about this one.

Underground reveals a new enemy, bats. Who look freaking massive yet are very much not. I find myself some rifle ammo down here. There are two exits in this cave, one to each side of a seemingly flipped stone area. I did not check the other seemingly flipped area extensively yet.

The area is a person's face. That's really fucking lazy.

I swear this happened, I just didn't get a good shot

To top this area off, I find this guy hiding in the walls. They're coming out of the walls indeed. This happened again later.

PROTIP: Zombies can't go over holes

There's a vine in the center of the cave that leads to a completely new area. Full of not-alives and a flower.

They actually breath when unalerted

At this point I lose interest in documenting this properly. I journey through an area or two of lifeless island terrain. If you ever want an answer as to how to do an island wrong...Anyway, I come across a vast cave system. This brings me to another new enemy, the wolves. They're wolves and they're about the size of a bear. These caves have a lot of rifle ammo.

Meanwhile, sometime later, back on the surface, there's nothing much going on beyond poor enemy placement. I think the tree may be dead enemies. I have not yet talked about the map system. The map shows the area you're currently in, with "X"s for marking dead enemies. No live enemies, no exits, no nothing. Now, I may be alone in this, but I never had any problems with figuring out where I was in the area I was in, just in relation to other areas. You know, because there's all these dead guys wandering around...

I can't get a picture of that, so here's this instead

In yet another area I find out that if you and a zombie occupy the same space at the same time, they can't attack you. Right, nothing more of value here...

Can you spot the problem?

To bring my session to a close, I find a bunker. This area is located directly on the beach, so if you decide to play this, that's where you should look. It appears to be a Japanese or maybe American installment. Don't question game logic, by now nothing really makes sense. Firstly, looking around, there's a corpse off to the side. A real old corpse. In one bit of actual cleverness, you can get or talk to the corpse. The game will call you sick. If you use the corpse the game will call you really sick. If you want to see this gag in a good game, play In the Dead of Night, which has multiple gags relating to doing object-related tasks on the human characters. In front, that's a rifle, I think it'll be useful. There's a crate of ammo that's really useful. There are a couple of tricks the developers pull with the rifle, but if you wish to not know how this goes down, you should skip now.

No

Firstly, if you don't notice the tripwire, you'll get vaporized. So you use wirecutters on them so you don't die. Then you get it out and you fire it and this happens...

That's the shotgun and neither have pistol grips

Just like a Japanese rifle* to do that. You need to use oil you find in the bunker on the gun in order for it to not kill you. Is it worth it? Its slower, but it does more damage. It would be worth it if there weren't a thousand shells lying around. To be honest, even if there weren't, it wouldn't matter, at that point Cheat Engine would be employed because that would be bull.

Where does this leave me? Well, I have a jewel I found in the cave of a man's face, a flower I found in the area of vines atop that. I am no closer to finding the oracle than I was when I started. I have most of the items, so I do believe I'm at least halfway through.

*I don't recall any issues with Japanese rifles, but a good chunk of WWII Japanese pistols are objectively bad. As in, if you fire it, you will possibly have it explode in your hands or it will shoot backward. Superior Nippon steel indeed.

Isle of the Dead: Should Have Taken a Boat

Exploitation films, these are low-budget films designed to cash in quickly on a trend, star or exploitive content. Chances are today, you probably know them from a mockbuster or the films of Quentin Tarantino. No group of people have ever gone out and said "This right here is an exploitation video game". While asset flips could be considered exploitation, it doesn't feel like quite that much the same. People don't just buy a bunch of stock footage and sell it as a movie, even Ed Wood. While the best ones are indeed worth the premium price that companies like Arrow and Shout! Factory put on them, some are crap made by crap filmmakers. Isle of the Dead falls into the latter. Because it is terrible.
Of course, its hard to call this exploitation when it clearly had more effort put into it than nearly every other Wolf-clone made this year. Its got features like adventure game elements, videos, a plot and comic-y graphics. While Isle of the Dead has the feel of pulp comics, it shares more with films like Dawn of the Dead than any comic released at this point in time*.
I had a demo of this on a shareware disc that I never played. I looked at the video files folder and then chickened out. That's right, one look at the video file names in the demo and I said no. One look at the video files in the full version here, and I can tell you I made the right choice. Of course, I already knew that, because I've played this in-between then and now.
The story, from our perspective, our plane is shot down over an isle, and we are the only survivor.

The title screen and intro music do a good job of giving that spooky low-budget feel. Like anything could happen. Like someone trying to copy John Carpenter's fondness of three note melodies and didn't understand why those were good. Or it could be I already know about the horrors within. So we're on the same page, I am picking the easiest difficulty, because I fear no evil except turning.

I start on a beach. Near a plane. I fumble around pointlessly trying to get the medikit you see in the screenshot for a minute. Oh, well, I better check out the burning plane here. Its on fire. A good sign. Not a sign you should flee or anything.

Note that the knife is just casually there, above my cursor

Isle of the Dead follows adventure game logic in that you should meticiously search the area for anything of value. In this plane you should find the following, a machete, a book, a flare gun, wirecutters, and a compass. The bloody remains of those who flew with you on this flight are a grim reminded that the squeamish should return this to the store they bought this from. You know, if this was 1993. Despite approaching its 30th anniversary I don't think this game is any less morbid.

Its also worth looking through items in your inventory. Sometimes its useful, such as searching through this jacket containing a package of copyright infringing cigarettes. Was it that hard to draw? Make sure to read the help section, its useful so you know which button to press for vital tasks such as getting items on the ground. The key for shooting is spacebar, and the key for side-stepping is Ctrl. Guys, I think you lost your attempt at not getting sued by iD by plastering the box with quotes relating to how much like Wolfenstein it is.

Is it night or day is the least of my questions

If I were smart, I'd wait to be rescued, because as anyone who's heard about downed planes knows, they search for those. Tell the coast guard about the undead, and then wait for the US government to send the Navy SEALs in or just napalm the place. I guess if the game was smart enough to know about that, it'd be smart enough to send the zombies to the beach. There should be a game about the former. That'd be awesome. Although it might just end up like this one...
Before I go jungle-hopping, I'm going to circle the beach. Why? Because we've only got a machete against a horde of undead. As anybody who's ever seen a zombie film knows, that is going to be as useful as trying to punch them. Along the way there's some useful coconuts and at the other end of the downed plane? A shotgun. This was apparently told in a comic that came with the game. That comic is now lost as is any trace of the story of this game.

I enter the jungle. You do this by cutting up an area that looks indistinguishable from the other walls. Yes, someone charged money for this, and chances are someone would do the same today. Inside I am greeted by the hordes of the undead. The badly, badly added undead. The undead that don't really make sense given the subject matter. You will see why soon enough. They aren't much of a problem on this screen, seeing as there's no way for them to sneak up on me, and soon enough they're all dead.

Let me talk about three issues at this point. One, the movement is really fast. Too fast. That's something I thought I'd never say, but its true. You walk faster than Doomguy runs and run like a supercar. Turning is either too slow or too fast, the options are pointless. Two, the soundtrack that was okay at the start, it is now annoying. There was an interm track on the beach, but in the jungle its the main theme. Now, I wouldn't mind this if it only played when enemies arrived, but trying to find out where three, the path through this game is, is very annoying. So I assume that this area has nothing for me as of yet, and I'll get past the fence later.

You can see over the walls, which is a flaw of this game's outdoor engine

Another area, this time full of even more undead. There's not much to say here, but jungle entrance of the eastern side of the east half of the crashed plane leads to the village. In such a way that you will surely get harmed on the way out. It hasn't cropped up yet, but enemies respawn. Every time you leave a screen the enemies you killed come back like you were never there. Items remain gone, so you can screw yourself if you aren't careful.

Shown here after having already convinced them I'm...okay?

The village is full of what appear to be Maori tribesmen. In order to get into the village you need the translation book, upon which a "clever" dialog will happen one line at a time. I'd like to take this time to mock the arms of the guy on the right. Heroic build, not strange proportions like the guy on the left. A lot of the anatomy here seems suspect, but competent enough that you might not notice it.
You are free to rob them blind, spy on a man taking a crap, and then talking to the tribe chief. Oh, and the dialog is voiced. I hear a lot of clicking and the sound of breath against the mic. I'm going to blame the developers. Because I can. The voice acting is bland.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

The chief tells us that a strange white man came to the island many moons ago, built a fortress, and then the island was plagued by "not-alives". He further goes on to tell us that the not-alives took everything from the village. That solves the problem of how they didn't get attacked, but also keeps the question of how they're still alive. Daughter taken, find brother, and BEWARE OF NIGHT DEMONS. We can't take his pliers though, because that would be stealing.
Which brings me to my final point for this section. Most of the undead clearly aren't the natives to this island, because they're vaguely some lost Maori tribe. Did someone just not notice some guy stealing a crapton of corpses? Including the corpses of children?

Well, I think that's enough IotD for one day, better quit and play some Master of Orion, and-

Imagine seeing this twenty times over the course of completing the game

That's right folks, if you quit this game normally, as opposed to quitting out of DOSBox like I imagine most people do, you will get a video of the PC killing himself. I'm sure you're thinking that's pretty low class. You'd be right. While I think there are situations where the developer can mock the player and even be right for it, I feel like there has to be an issue the player sucks at rather than the developers being incompetent. This is not the player being an idiot, refusing to read the manual and dying. Nor is it the player being so horribly incompetent they shouldn't even be playing this game to begin with. This is the developer sucking, mocking someone who may even like the game. I guess it is fair that it exists given the game's exploitative nature, but that doesn't mean its good.

Next time, my understanding of the game falls flat and then absolute chaos will befall me as I flail around trying to beat this thing

*Okay, that's not completely true, there's the obscure series Deadworld, and the Italian comic Dylan Dog but I doubt that the developers read either of these.

Mod 3: The Stranger

Name:The Stranger
Number:3
Year:2006
Mod for:Doom
Modder:WildWeasel
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:4/5
Time:6 hours

As an aside, instead of the base levels, I used OBLIGE to make a custom set of levels for this review. If you don't know, its a computer map generator. While it is very obviously limiting, and very clearly bad, if you need a custom levelset for say, the DoomRL mod or that Call of Duty one, then its fine. Key word, custom, not quick.

Ah, anime, that great Japanese succubus that eats the souls of men. (and some women) The Stranger is not the first game to merge shooters and anime together, by my definition there are at least three Japanese titles and one western. Although at this point I cannot remember if that some are ports. It is the first one I played, however, and feels like a more realistic starting point. Its not the first mod to do that, although it might be the first Doom mod. I'm not going to talk about THAT Wolfenstein mod yet, because I don't hate myself enough at the moment to do that. I'm not sure its even possible for me to hate myself enough to want to do that.

The stated primary influences are Trigun, Hellsing and Ghost in the Shell. Hellsing has no weapons related to it. Given how the mod is balanced this is probably because they'd be too powerful. Ghost in the Shell has one, the auto-pistol, and outside of the crossbow everything that has an actual influence is taken from Trigun. Weapons are taken from surprisingly specific episodes. Which effectively makes this Trigun: Doom Edition. All you need now is to slap on some map pack set in a desert.

I will be talking about the weapons roughly in order.

In slot 1, you have Martial Arts, a fist replacement. For the primary, its has a three-hit combo that's useful if you're desperate. For the secondary, a shockwave attack that hurts you. If that's an attempt at balancing, its a bad one, since you are going to only use it if you lack any ammo for the real weapons. For the chainsaw, there are throwing knives, which can be picked up after being thrown. They also have the secondary attack of just cutting someone. Given the anime theme, I'm surprised they aren't called Kunai or something. One big problem is that they seem to be the highest priority weapon, meaning if I run out I switch to this automatically, instead of something useful when I'm already about to die.

Possibly the ugliest Luger I've ever seen

You might not be able to tell, but the pistol seems to be a mod of the Duke one.

In slot 2, you have a Luger pistol. Stated influence is that WW had the files for this on his computer, but Lupin III exists so who cares? It doesn't have a lot of accuracy or bullets so its usefulness is until you get...The Auto-Pistol. It has no accuracy but carries 30 bullets and pumps them out at a steady pace. One problem is that it jams, constantly, a feature I question the balancing of. The auto pistol already hits like ass, why would it need to be weaker?

In slot 3, a revolver, seemingly based on the Mateba Autorevolver, a gun that fires considerably faster than this game's imitation of it. Hits like a truck against most enemies, so its all good. This is your shotgun replacement, effectively. Eventually, you get two, solving firing speed as an issue. The only problem now is how to feed it.

In slot 4, a double-barrel personal shotgun. Like a really tiny one. You fire it twice, not both barrels at the same time. Its not bad, it isn't even useless when we get...Power Shotgun, which holds eight shells and fires them off two at a time. It hits hard, but it feels slow. The combination of the low-wait time between shots and the reload time makes it a gun you won't use as often as you should.

In slot 5, you have an assault rifle and a heavy machine gun. The former, faster, clip-based, more accurate. The later slower, no clip, less accurate. I found in practice there was little need for two different weapons and mostly used the heavy machine gun. Neither of them were terribly powerful.

In slot 6, there are hand grenades, which okay. I didn't find a lot of them, but when I did they didn't do much good. They felt too floaty. There are also satchel charges, which instead don't feel powerful enough.

In slot 7, a crossbow, which is silent. Useful if you want to be silent, hey, it happens. Weak otherwise. There's also a sniper rifle, instead of sniping, it penetrates multiple characters. I found that to be a bit difficult to utilize effectively.

In slot 8, an explosive cannon. It felt really underpowered, which is a problem when the weapons here already felt underpowered. I swear I saw a zombieman tank a shot. A lance cannon, which is effectively a high damaging semi-auto weapon. This one was really effective for what it was.

In slot 9, an anti-tank rifle, which is really an inaccurate rocket launcher. Felt a bit underpowered and the inaccuracy didn't help things, but overall this was a pretty good rocket launcher replacement. There's also a demon arm, it uses your health as ammunition and seems to cut through most enemies like butter. Very nice, doesn't help the overall problem the weaponset has though.

If you cheat, there's two weapons in slot 0. These were axed by WW but kept in...for fun, I guess. A Glock...just a Glock. I can see why it was left out. What appears to be a modified version of the shotgun from Duke Nukem 3D. Its semi-automatic and reloads quickly. Suffice to say, I can see why it was left out since it actually works as a shotgun.

This weaponset works well in some respects. If you want to kind of sneak through the level, you have some throwing knives and all your problems will be solved. I mean, until there's something that you can't sneak up on or the target is more than a few feet away. I'm assuming you'll be changing if a crapton of enemies pop up anyway. Its also good for multiple weak enemies and a handful of strong ones. The rapid fire weapons are good at this, and most single fire ones have a habit of gibbing enemies. However, this is not very good when the enemy count gets higher, which it does. You have no way of effectively dealing with them. No BFG-like weapon. The demon arm and sniper go through enemies, but that's not very helpful when you've got a lot to deal with that aren't in a straight line.
One thing that isn't something you really think of, but there's a lot of neat effects going on. Smoke and shell casings are the most noticeable.

What about enemies? There's a good chunk unmodified from the base game. Changed monsters seem limited to spectre, lost soul, pain elemental and archvile. Although there are minor changes to the shotgunner, mostly to bring it in line with how the shotguns work in this game. The former two are changed to make them more explosive, the lost soul in particular now being a drone that explodes upon death. Making it a mobile explosive. The latter two are changed so they don't resurrection/spawn enemies, the archvile is now that mech from Strife.

A minor issue is that the invulnerability powerup completely turned the screen blue. Which would be a problem if you use this on a normal mapset.

Weapons:
Interesting weapons, but without a real horde option, not good for most levelsets. 5/10

Enemies:
Outside of the mech from Strife, I've got no complaints. 7/10

Graphics:
There's a new palette which makes things interesting, which is a plus. On the other hand, the weapon sprites don't really feel all that cohesive. 4/10

Sound:
Most sounds are taken from other shooters, but only the new death sounds are obvious about it. 3/5

That's 19 out of 35. As a replacement, its only good for low enemy wads. There are very few of those, giving this a limited usefulness.

Mod 2: Wolfenstein: The Original Missions

Name:Wolfenstein: The Original Missions
Number:2
Year:1997?
Mod for:Doom
Modder:Las Rojas
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:3/5
Time:1 hour and 30 minutes (unfinished)

I don't know what I can lay the blame on here. Myself? Eh. I guess. This ended up being a mission in torture. At the end of my Wolfenstein 3D review, I am hopeful. Meanwhile, here at just the fourth Wolfenstein related game, I'm exhausted. What good have I missed? I've got nothing much to say about it. Its Wolfenstein, with Doom game logic. That works in places and others...not so much.

Weapons:
The same as Wolfenstein. 2/10

Enemies:
The same as Wolfenstein. 4/10.

Levels:
I realize there were only minor changes, but some of the changes are not good changes. I should not have to deal with elevators in a game that doesn't deal with them. While LZWolf is putting in-level elevator support, its the quick kind. Also, those secret levels. 2/10

Atmosphere:
There's kind of a charming atmosphere to this despite the quality issues. Which I guess is code for it's better than the sum of its parts. Something made me want to complete the entire game, again, for the fourth time. There's something charming about a colorful game about killing nazis. 0/10

Graphics:
With Doom's lighting engine the game feels wrong. Unnecessary. Plus the odd graphical improvements from the original artwork looks weird. 4/10

Sound/Music:
A mismatch of sounds that were taken from random other games, but I'm sure in actuality were taken from Wolfenstein Mac. Music is going to be bad depending on your soundfont. 3/10

A 15 out of 60. I think I'll fudge the math on that to a 14. That makes it the best mod so far. Which isn't shocking because the other competition is Barneystein.

What's this? Nocturnal Missions is next on my mod list? Eh....I guess I should see the secret...no, that's how...ah. Who knows what's next. Besides not Wolfenstein. Maybe...maybe something anime-related.

WolfenDoom: The Original Missions: Off the Rails

Now, we move onto the second episode. The one where things go south. I guess I enjoy the first episode, but that's just because I keep coming back to it. I think I've played this episode like 2, 3 times. I think that was more because I could, not really because I wanted to.

E2M1:
Hmm, I remember this one. The one with a big gap of nothing at the start before the big reveal of mutants. Or undead as I call them, because there's nothing really mutanty about Frankenstein's monster. I wander through the level vainly trying to find the one meant to sneak up on me, before stumbling into the level exit. Upon which, I provide a noble effort, but ultimately get killed. At first glance, the undead still seem a credible threat. They still suffer from not being as quick on the draw, but they'll kill you if you don't stop them quickly.
Despite finding all the rooms and secrets, I left three enemies alive...somehow.

E2M10:
At first I thought this was the Pac-Man level, but no, that's Episode 4, I think. This is just a blue maze. The music track's nice in my soundfont for once. That's good. Sounds like it was in some other Apogee game though.
The level exit's close to the start, because most of the level is behind secret doors.

E2M2:
Ah, the clever ambush level. Starts off with a couple of guys behind you, but not immediately behind you. Nothing much of interest beyond a window outdoors that shows that I am indeed getting higher. Oh, and can't forget the broken promise about secrets.
At this point, despite playing around 15 minutes, felt the urge to do LITERALLY anything else. I'd scrap this completely and just switch to a total overview, but there are some new levels in this. Let's see about them.

Map 32:
Why 32 instead of 31? They apparently link back and forth so which one you pick is arbitary, except this is the easier of the two. It appears to be a take on Dead Simple from Doom 2. Except its all Trans Grossman. Except due to a weird quirk they don't seem to be able to shoot. So you can just knife them. Try that anywhere else and you'll be dead.
Then you get to the outside ring and get slaughtered. There are four bosses in corridors that open when switches are pressed, and four bosses in corner pillars outside. I'm sure there's some way to beat this legit, but as my patience was already gone, I just cheated my way through. There's four switches on the boss pillars, and one opens the level exit.

Map 31:
There is no way to get to either of these maps as far as I can tell. Which is good, because they're bad. This one is some weird swamp cavern full of the undead. There are some rooms on the side full of more mutants. Oh, man, this is bad.

I guess I'll talk about my overall opinion next time.

Game 22: The Terminator

Name:The Terminator
Number:22
Year:1991
Publisher:Bethesda Softworks
Developer:Bethesda Softworks
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:???
Time:12 hours

Though today, Bethesda is known for being basically the only major RPG developer around, back in the day they were just another shovelware dev. Sports games, Home Alone, Where's Waldo on the NES...Which features music from the man who would be the primary programmer for this thing and would go on to coding the first two The Elder Scrolls games. So, we have James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger to thank for one of the biggest RPG franchises around today. Because I don't think Arena would be in the place it is today if it weren't for this game. You might think that isn't true, but being able to futz around with 3D with low expectations provided necessary experience to make Arena a smooth-ish game. Or they could have just bought the Wolfenstein engine like Raven did.

GETTING IT TO RUN:
As long as your copy is fine it should work fine, but do remember to type Adlib or Sblaster after Term, or you'll be bereft of sound. Of course, this is from a certain point of view, as you'll soon see. You should also make sure you have a manual, because you're going to have a bad time if you don't.

We start off with a copyright-safe rendition of The Terminator theme* and an equally strange retelling of the story of the film. Which is that John Connor is the leader of a resistance against an AI that deserves the name, Skynet. Connor has led the resistence to victory, so in desperation, Skynet sends back a T-800, The Terminator of the title and of Arnold's body, to kill John's mother, Sarah Connor. Connor, already knowing this, sends back Kyle Reese to defend her. If you need more of an explanation, watch the movie, it isn't really that complex.

We can play as either Kyle Reese or the T-800, with the obvious objective.
Before you enter the game, you have the option of playing as the T-800 or Kyle Reese. There are several more options that aren't obvious at first. Long and Short Game, change whether or not you start with some items. This is of somewhat questionable utility, as they're random and you're going to need more than you start with to kill the other guy. Easy, Medium and Hard just change the strength of the enemies that spawn whenever you steal enough, rob a bank, or just walk around with an M-16 out. Practice just turns this into a sandbox, taking out the other character.

Before we get to anything specific, I'm going to break down most of the individual elements that are not unique.

You'd think they could pick better colors for Bank and Vehicle, but I guess they couldn't use red

The Terminator is an open-world game. You have a good chunk of Los Angeles to explore. This isn't as uninteresting as most early 3D games either, while it is a bit generic, there's actual geography here. You can roughly tell where you've been. There are even a few distinct landmarks. Even if you can't, there's an easy to understand map system. If you're on foot, you can even fast travel to locations within a certain distance. You even get a phonebook for nearby stores.

Every picture of driving looks the same, so here's a picture of static

Walking is okay. You go slow, but that's to be expected. I'm sure its faster than it is in real life. You've got a lot of options that are frankly, useless. You can select your walking speed, which you'll only need if you slow down for whatever reason. Then there's driving. The game tries to be realistic and include both automatic and manual transmissions. Automatic's are easy to drive and what I used for almost the entire time. Manual's are terrible, you have to put the thing in gear, increase speed, then take your finger off the gear button. I genuinely thought they were broken at first. Cars have a top speed of about 60, slow down slowly, and corner badly. Very badly. The first doesn't matter, because you'll never want to go 60 and you get used to the latter.

There are some other problems, namely, speed. While driving, the slow down button was slow to start working but hard to stop. There's also a brake button that's also slow. Turning seems to decrease speed sometimes, seemingly at random. While walking speed was bad as can be expected, but functions semi-realistically. You pick up to much or get exhausted and you get slower. That doesn't get into injuries proper. As the T-800, I had a particularly nasty one where my vision went to static. Not for a little while, just went to static. FUN.

Not pictured, the explosive weapons or the shotgun

There are 8 weapons, of which I found 7 of. These can be divided into four types, semi-auto, auto, missile and grenade. Semi-auto is terrible because every enemy strafes everywhere and you can rarely hit things. Auto is okay, sometimes you can hit things. The missile launcher, as far as I could tell, only hit vehicles, which is terrible because I thought I was the only one who drives them, which tells you how effective they'll be. I didn't use the grenade, but I got the feeling from the manual that it was for the best. I suppose it might have actually won the game for me.

There is a persisent heartbeat sound throughout the game. If you play as the T-800. Yet, when you walk into a hospital, you have no heartbeat. Which makes the doctor call the cops on you. Quality. Outside of some gunshots, the screams of pedestrians as you run them over, there's nothing else in the sound department.

Look, its really hard to take good screenshots of this game

The regular enemies...are pointless. They take potshots at you, dealing a little damage, you run away. The army sometimes shows up, they aren't much better. There also appears to be police cars, but those are not fit to call enemies. You can literally drive through them.

You can't kill anything without a weapon though. In order to get a weapon you can either steal it or buy it. You don't start off with any money, so you need to rob a bank, or take out a loan, if you're Reese. How you manage to rob a bank without weapons is best left to the imagination. There are also sports stores and drug/hardware stores. Those are only useful for one-off raids rather than repeated business. And there's the army depots, which are hidden, except the manual tells you and you'd never figure it out otherwise. Finally, there are shooting ranges. These are pointless.
Although, as I later found out, you can get some cash by stealing from the register.

Playing as Reese just adds two things that I could tell. 1) You get Sarah Connor. Sarah is always with you, except if you tell her to run away. I didn't extensively check out her functions, but the manual makes a terrible joke about taking her booty. 2) The T-800 sometimes pops up with something about no pity. If you're in a vehicle, this doesn't matter. You can stop right there and look around and there's NOTHING.
However, it is worth pointing out that when giving and taking items from her, she's the one giving and taking. So if you want to give something to her, you have to have her take something.

It sure removes dramatic tension when all you have to do is get on a boat

The game is won by killing the other character. If you're the T-800, you accomplish this by buying a compass, which shows the direction you're going in. I think it was supposed to show which direction Reese and Sarah Connor are in, but we'll get there in a minute. If you're Reese, just wait, he'll show up. That applies to both, when I think about it. The character I had the most experience with, T-800, had a terrible time of trying to kill Kyle Reese. The manual states some hub-hub, about Reese being a combat veteran, but Sarah Connor also ate bullets like candy. Which actually brings me to a bigger point.

I don't know if this is the T-800 or the game

Let's talk about the big issue with this game. Its broken. In the course of however long I spent, I never won. Its not for a lack of trying either. The game has a nasty habit of just crashing on you. Take a bullet, back to start menu, crash. Shoot a bullet, same thing. Reach the edge of the map, crash. Start a car, and so on. I'd be surprised if it wasn't possible to crash while drowning. It usually crashes by going back to the title screen and just locking up, but a few times I got a strange green screen or a flashy screen. The only time I actually died was while drowning. Yes, the T-800 died by drowning.

You try aiming with a keyboard cursor

I don't know the source of the game's broken nature. I have tried to play this quite a few times over the years and most of the time it wouldn't even start up. It's got copy protection, it seems to be cracked. Cracking the game could have broken it, intentionally or unintentionally. It could not be cracked and this is the end result. It could just be the game, too.

The game, if it was done properly, would have been a great movie adaption. It distills the movie down perfectly. Playing as either Kyle or the T-800 and just tracking down the other character. Imagine this done without horrible glitching or even in the GTA 3 engine.

Mr. No Pity in action, note the lack of shooting

What I do know is that I've spent too much time on this game, and this is the end result. I've at least had the advantage of seeing the end screens. By dying. Not by getting shot at, but by drowning, as previously mentioned. The only time I met the T-800 as Reese he just didn't shoot me. I couldn't shoot him either. I am not kidding you.

Weapons:
There was really only one or two effective options for me, without getting to an army depot, and not as much improvement after. They were not good options either. 1/10

Enemies:
You know, I try to avoid giving something a 0 if they have that something. Its basically a token effort point. Despite being the central conflict to the game there's not much to them. They basically do the only option given to them without being complete idiots, strafing. They don't do much and it feels like they soak up bullets like a sponge. Shooting people is not really fun in this game, and that's not getting into the whole "crashing when you shoot" thing that happened too much to me. 0/10

Non-Enemies:
The first appearance of hapless civilians. The first true non-enemies, as opposed to merely allies. A good step, if a small one. 1/10

Levels:
The game is just a 1991 3D recreation of LA. Now I know what you're thinking, that sounds lame. Well, today it is, but even as late at '96, '97 I'd say this was about the best virtual recreation of a city anywhere. There was a lot of effort put into it, and it shows. 5/10

Player Agency:
On one hand, a lot of good ideas here, on the other, a lot of unnecessary buttons that I never really needed. 3/10

Interactivity:
You just sort of go into stores and then go out. 1/10

Atmosphere:
Despite being arguably the least playable shooter I've played so far, there was something charming about the game. 4/10

All Skynet's problems could have been solved by this

Graphics:
This, oddly enough, was the only part of the game that didn't break at any point. Sure, its ugly, and not even good for 1991, but whenever you take moving objects out of the picture it looks like fine cheap 3D. Not high quality even back then, but it had to go on consumer computers, not animated in a lab or whatever. They even tried to animate people. That animation is as cheap as possible, but at least they tried. 3/10

Story:
Its the Terminator as told by someone who doesn't really care about telling you. Its not that good of a story** and somehow the story has become less-so in this telling. 1/10 for existing.

Sound/Music:
I guess the gun sound effects are okay, but everything else is mostly useless. There's a thumping sound I thought was to indicate how close my target was, but it was just the T-800's heart. No music, excluding the little ditty that imitates the Terminator theme. 2/10

According to my math, that's 21. Taking 5 off for the amount of glitches, its 16. The massive amount of glitches unrelated to the elements above are definitely deserving of a penalty.

As for other reviews, they're a mixed bag, ranging from 40% to 80%. They all more or less share my feelings on the subject.

*Its not really The Terminator theme, it just sounds like it.
**The movie is good for many things, but outside of one thing that hasn't yet forced its way into culture osmosis, it doesn't have anymore than a simple story.