Game 44: SunDog: Frozen Legacy

 

Name:SunDog: Frozen Legacy
Number:44
Year:1984
Publisher:Accolade
Developer:FTL Games
Genre:Space Simulation
Difficulty:5/5
Time: 4.5 hours

If I were to sum up this game in one sentence, I would take a quote from Ayreon - The Human Equation's last song. "Nothing much has changed since you were gone." From 1984 to 2020, next to nothing in the space trading simulation genre has changed. Which I suppose grossly oversimplifies all that has changed...the only difference between this and something released in 2004 is a better simulation of space. It all just feels...shallow. Everything just feels shallow. Thinking back to something else involving ships, Sid Meier's Pirates!, and I'm left wondering how Pirates! is just so much better. They shouldn't produce such radically different changes in my personal enjoyment. You basically do the same things in each, trade goods, shoot hostile ships...but Pirates has always been compelling, whereas your average space sim has not.

The game starts with the player having to find a hidden colony, founded by a space cult. When you find it, you have to get all the items the space cult needs to get a full-fledged city. Naturally, the player hasn't been given anywhere close to enough resources to do this, so the player needs to do the usual thing one does in games where they can buy goods, buy low and sell high.

This is where SunDog turns bad, HARD. You do the usual space trading sim thing, leave a planet with enough trade goods, whereupon you promptly get murdered by space pirates. Well, promptly isn't the ideal choice of words, more like slowly. See, the game doesn't seem to apply any logic to these space pirates, so if you have valuable trade goods in your hold, they attack, you don't, you're free to go. You can fight them, but the second I defeated one, barely escaping with my life, another one attacked me. This isn't confusion on my part, this is actually what happened. You can get a cloak, which I'm pretty sure is 100% necessary to complete the game, but the process of using it is really janky.

Fortunately, you can trade goods between cities...but at that point, I started to question what I was doing and why I was doing it. Barely making more than you put in is usually how that feels. You do this by driving your "pod" (which also serves as the in-ship cargo area) around the planet. There are quite a few city designs, and I'm sure I didn't see them all. The only problem is, they're not that interesting to look at and all they do is create confusion as to which place you get food and drink from...which is a concern, because you have a sleep and hunger meter. At least the banks and trade depots all look the same.

Sometimes you have to walk around on foot to get inside a building. This can result in meeting random people. Usually these are gangs of muggers, who I either told I had no money or got killed by. Sometimes I met people selling stuff, but I didn't find it useful.
There was also character creation at the start, basic stuff, point system, choose your name. Couldn't really tell you how much they affected the game, but I definitely wasn't going to start over and find out.

Of interest are some realistic mechanics. If you sleep outside a select few areas, you lose all the items and money on your person. If you leave your pod outside of a parking space, it gets locked off by the local police. Public transportation systems that teleport you to different cities and places inside the city. There are also a lot of little touches intended to make the game feel more real...but they ultimately felt hallow. It was cool to see them the first time...then it gradually got boring. The shoper keepers don't immediately attend to your needs, which in a video game isn't very fun.

Weapons:
Everything was a generic kind of weapon expected for a ship/person. 1/10

Enemies:
Everyone was just sort of there to screw me over. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
I guess because of the game's nature there are considerable friendly NPCs, but they're mostly just merchants. 2/10

Levels:
The towns all feel like they have no thought put into them, each new location is an exercise in finding the few places you need to go to just so you don't die of hunger. The planets are nice, until you realize you have to navigate through them. Its not a very positive experience. 2/10

Player Agency:
I despise the game's overuse of the mouse. Left click activates things, moves the player and items; Right click cancels or opens a menu. It works...but c'mon. You activate rooms by leaving your guy on top of it. 3/10

Interactivity:
Uh...I guess the inventory, the trading and the system consoles count...? I'm not sure what to put here. 1/10

Atmosphere:
There's something a bit surreal about seeing bizarre, alien worlds while you're basically an obese space trucker who eats burgers and drinks beer constantly. You're doing what amounts to an incredibly mundane job but with SPACE written in big bold letters. I wonder if regular trucking will have the same appeal if we ever leave this rock. 2/10

Graphics:
These are very nice for 1984. Everything looks like it should...however, if you focus on things for a second, they fall apart. The buildings are varied and sometimes very out there, but they aren't appealing to look at. Nothing is. Everything hurts my eyes. The ship is cool, but its very simplistic to look at. 2/10

Story:
Your thought lost uncle died in an "accident", and you inherited his ship and his obligations. His obligations being to build a colony for a group of space cultists. Aliens hate humans, humans hate aliens, and a bunch of stuff that doesn't matter if you don't read the manual. A point for the thought. 1/10

Sound/Music:
The version I played did not have any sound. Given a choice between no sound and no game, the choice was obvious. 0/10

That is 15, not bad for a game I hated. Same point total as Space Station Oblivion. I don't really feel like going through reviews for this, because I know they're nearly all positive, and because I just stopped caring. It might not be a bad game, but I feel that way.

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

SunDog: 44 Hours

Last time I wrote about Sundog, I was trapped because of multiple problems:

• I had very little money.
• My ship was in need of repairs.
• I had to find a colony of cultists.
• If I left the planet I was on, with a ship full of trade goods, I was going to get attacked by a neverending swarm of pirates.
• If I somehow managed to deal with that or ignore it, I would be a smoldering wreck.

Somehow, this wasn't the worst time I've ever had in a sci-fi trading sim. I had a boring, but obvious solution to solving my problem. Trading between cities. I needed enough money for a full cargo of decent trade goods and a fully functional ship. Eh, just the former.

The colony

While wandering around the planet, it occurred to me that this game is close to twenty years ahead of its time. This massive open galaxy with every attempt to make it lifelike. People wandering in and out of a bar. Sure, its very artifcial open world, effectively a series of static vignettes that don't affect each other, but its 1984 or something. I didn't feel like I was in a living world in Starflight, I feel that here. I also feel like I'm playing that one Morrowind creepypasta where you can only quicksave and quickload. Most old games I don't play on the edge like that.

Also while wandering around, I find the colony. In order to win, assuming there's a real win state, I need to find all the trade goods the colony wants. I don't pay any attention to that at the moment, because I'm going to explore the galaxy a bit first. However, I do know from my exploration of the planet, that I'm going to need to find wherever the other cyrogenics are, there's only one in a warehouse on Jondd, the planet I'm currently on.

After a few trips around the planet, I'm satisfied with how much money I have, and set a trip for the nearest system, Lafser. This is incredibly slow. So slow. While checking my ship, because this is slow, I examine my engines, which are at half strength. Figuring this is the problem, I reload and fix them, only to discover that's exactly how its supposed to be. I hope that resurrection project under the NDA is going to fix this crap, because if it isn't that's a joke. This game is living on borrowed time, because I haven't played Iron Seed to completion, and that's infinitely better than this.

It turns out the problem is the game isn't advancing towards a warp point. I don't know if that's an issue with this remake or the original, but I no longer care to make the distinction. The author may consider that a lucky turn of events. Once I figure that bit out, it just takes me to Tcana. It was the system I wanted to go to, but this is worrying me a tiny, tiny bit.

Tcana or Lafser, I dunno, this game is confusing as to where I am, but it is the place I wanted to be, so I'm not about to whine; Is a fine place, only, I fail to see the point in coming here. I can do low-level trades on Jondd, and no real new items are here. I could even transfer a screenshot from a different city and you'd never notice the difference. I do encounter a map who sells me stuff, a Dexbooster, its temporary though. I decide to leave the city, for the other city on this planet.

SURPRISE! ITS YELLOW HELL! YOUR EYES BURN AND YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE TO GO! GAME DESIGN! On a serious note, this is possibly one of the worst and yet most alien planets I've ever seen. Yellow is hardly a typical theme amongst us Earthlings for alien planets. Yellow and brown, interesting in theory. In practice, this is ugly. I don't know where I'm going, sometimes its logical, sometimes its not. There's another city here, get this, [i]perfectly[/i] situated on the practically exact opposite position of the planet. I burned through all my food trying to reach there, twice. If I find out I actually have to go there at some point, I am quitting this game in disgust.

So I reload, and blast off from the Hell I'm currently on. I set off for another system. This also has only one planet. "W'orrad". I can't help but feel like these names have no real thought put into them. The starport town is Sheshco, which is better...I guess. The good news is that this planet has a set of cryogens. Uh...right...now what? I guess I go back to the cultist colony with the cryogenics here and the cryogenics there.

This Session: 2 hours

Total Time: 4 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

Game 48: Defender

Name:Defender
Number:48
Year:1981
Publisher:Williams
Developer:Williams
Genre:Side-Scroller
Difficulty:4/5
Time:1 hour

Defender is one of those games you might have played a clone of without realizing it. The player is the last human space ship, defending what remains of the human race, a bunch of idiots walking around while aliens try to kidnap them. You shoot them down and grab the humans before they fall. The player can only shoot left and right, but he has complete movement. The ship has inertia, so keep that in mind when just flying around. Further, the player gets a bomb, which destroys all enemies on-screen, and a teleport function, which teleports. Simple to learn, difficult to master, the motto of arcade games that don't cheat you out of money.

I'm playing the Intellivision version, because that's the console I grew up with and I don't understand MAME. I don't know how smart of a choice this is on my part, because the demo's player AI looks completely incompetent. And with arcade games there's always flaws in porting them to home entertainment systems. This is one of those eras where that choice isn't deliberate. Ironically this version was made by Atari for some reason.

There's not much I haven't already said. If you suck at it, the first level's okay, then the second gets really hard. Arcade machine, remember? At that point I just get absolutely slaughtered. The game might as well be called, Morpheus Loses at that point. Its incredible, everything I try to do in-game I fail. Seeing as its another unwinnable arcade game it seemed prudent on my part to give up.

As to the score, I'm giving it 1 in enemies, non-enemies, player agency, graphics and sound. That's 5. I'm just not the kind of person who enjoys these kinds of games, and I'm not really the kind of person to give a good write-up on such an important game. I'd suggest if you do want something like that, to go here.

Freaks!: 90-degree Turns

As difficult as it might be to believe, I've already gone through most of the FPS games from 1993 that I know of that I considered good. 5 out of 7, while the whole year sits at a staggering 15 PC FPS, 8 of which I've beaten. I've adjusted the list so the other two I remember liking are at the end of the year's games, so from here until Ken's Labyrinth, its all crap. I'm not joking that much. Today's entry is Freaks, a game I remember briefly playing, not liking, and then giving up on. This is related to the game's weird Dungeon Master-ish movement system. That's the only thing I noticed.

Kickass music starts, there's this Lovecraft quote...Lovecraft Dreams presents...and then the title. Is this actually good? Its got a cool intro. Slow text based stuff. Apparently the player is some kind of creator wizard, but "The Learner" betrayed us. I am without body, without mind. I have to make The Learner pay. So...basically...I'm God and all my creations have betrayed me. Holy crap, this is actually starting off pretty good. It was even beta-tested! Maybe I just gave it a bad shake. They're inspired by all the cool horror stuff, Lovecraft, Giger, Dead Can Dance.
 

The menu's a little weird, like a quasi-Windows thing, no keyboard usage, despite the game lacking any mouse controls. Four episodes, standard shareware stuff. Its freeware now, including a remake I'll get to in 2001 or whenever it was released. I've noticed that sometimes the intro doesn't start the game, which might have something to do with my original distaste for the game. Sometimes this menu is a bit glitchy, but restarting the game always works.

The music track starts again as the game starts. There better not be one track, because one music track and no sound means nothing good. If I took a screenshot, you should see the effect that happens when you turn. Its honestly not as distracting as having 90-degree turns is in general, which limits the player's fighting ability. You can sidestep, but its slow and personally hinders my ability to shoot. I'd appreciate being able to rebind keys. I mean I could do that in DOSbox, but I'd forgot I changed that for other games and screw myself over.

This game feels a lot more hardcore than most shooters so far. It was the wild west of video game violence. In many ways, it feels nastier than more realistic depictions of violence, anything can happen. The doors are opened by walking into them.

Speaking of hardcore, floating heads. I think the title Freaks! doesn't accurately convey this crap. They just walk straight in front of you, no strategy involved. The player wields what seems to be a rapid-fire shotgun with infinite ammo. I can't fault that, I'd make myself that too if I were God. I do however, sense this could get ugly with bosses.

Devils, ghouls with swords. If nothing else, I love the enemies in this game. Much like In Extremis, they only have forward walking frames, but they're nice to look at, at least so far. I actually really like the whole thing. Amateur-ish, but it feels very well done. The level design's been generic, but each level is like 25x25 or something similarly smallish.

I have two doors forward...does that mean this is open-ended to a certain sense. I find a set of bones, to regenerate my body to kill that nasty Learner. Although that's only indicated as another item on the player's HUD. That's apparently something like "The Apprentice" in Spanish, which it actually should be. Either way that's a very lame name for your antagonist, but whatever, I'm liking it so far, no need to get down.

I pick a path with a bunch of chains, destructible objects. I don't know if they hurt you...yet.

The next room is just pure chaos, the enemies nearly get me. The problem is there are no sounds, so if they're attacking you, there's no warning. You usually aren't paying attention to the health bar, on the side. In order to restore health, I just need to kill a lot of enemies. A lot of enemies. I'm good, but I'm usually not that good. I also take this opportunity to see how I save...its just an autosave each time I enter a room. Cool, cool.

I acidentally screw myself in the room after that. There's three or so robed dudes in front of me. I'm full of it when I say there's no strategy. There is strategy, but its probably simpler than I give it credit. However, running in and out of a room is not that strategy, which gives me nearly 0% health. Which screws me anyway, because the dude is always right outside.

I restart and pick a different route. Its open-ended in the sense I can explore the world as I see fit, everything is saved. Here, I see stuff like cages, unsure if I can enter it. I also see one of the enemies retreat, I don't know if its something glitchy in the pathfinding or if they're actually running, but that's actually cool.

Then there's this freaking thing. This thing is tough to kill, in an area surrounded with objects that appear on my radar, and takes me out in 4 swings, when everyone else is a bit more polite about violence. After eventually taking them out I discover something annoying, taking out inanimate objects increases one's health incredibly slowly.

Why did the dinosaurs die out? Because God killed them with an automatic shotgun.

Here I find the first locked doors, I should probably have checked that other door more thoroughly. Even one that doesn't look locked at all. Because its just a ladder and a hole. They should've thought that bit out, but whatever.

One of the other doors leads to a tough room, Garden of Delights. Which is Eden I think. Purgatory was somewhere else. Just a short walk away. This is legitimately tough, the plants, while tough to kill, give only a little health, its the four-armed T-rexes, which are easy to kill, but give just as much, which I appreciate as enemies more. Its actually nerve-wracking, because I have to start this section over if I fail.

After a few more outdoor sections, I come across Temple by the Sea. Here is just a bunch of heads, but its set up in a really hard to defeat way. They're flanking you, pretty much straight off, and no matter what it seems I do, there's one in a corner that hits me. I barely make it out on my success.

This eventually leads to the other side of Purgatory, which was the gate I missed earlier. Here's The Beach. Yeah, the beach all right. Two ogres, flanking me. I forgot to mention it, but you can push enemies, at least most enemies, and the trees are no exception. So I'm running away from ogres, pushing around trees. For my trouble, another body part.

Finally, the temple area has a snaking corridor. You know the kind, zig-zagging turns. Its here I meet the first enemy I can call a boss. He certainly eats up damage like a boss. With how long the level is, I don't seem to have enough space to escape the guy. I eventually do manage to kill the guy, just barely. If I didn't have a bit of health I'd be a goner, which worries me. This leads me to another ladder. Its not locked, luckily for me.

New enemies, snakemen and medusas. I can't show you a proper shot of the medusas, because bras haven't been haven't been invented yet. There are also medusa eggs around here, which are almost ready to hatch. They're all about average to kill. There's another purple monster thing and some statues in the walls. The latter make me nervous. Also, a swastika-shaped room. Bold choice in a non-nazi related video game.

Next is another tough room, 6 6 6, which is a series of three sixes. Its the same basic idea as each other level. You've got to carefully set up the enemies in a way so you can hit them without them hitting you. This is a lot tougher than it sounds, because they're each in different rooms. The second room I deal with by getting them stacked in a corner, but the third requires a bit of experimentation on my part.

I leave the game off at another interesting situation. This starts off like a typical level, shoot some dudes, continue afterward. There's a way out, but there's also two rooms with some monsters. The way its set up is tricky, and this is completely necessary, because what appears to be a body part is inside. I'm going to leave that for next time.
So far this game is really appealing to me, an awesome excuse story, appealing graphics, and it plays like a FPS Deadly Rooms of Death. I just love it.

This Session: 1.5 hours