Category: Reviews

Niche Game: Deus Ex

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing mecause they’re something different, something special.

Deus Ex is one of my favorite single-player games of all time. Many others have promised to provide the same things this game provides, but every time the others fall short. It is really that good. The game was released back in 2000 by Eidos for Windows computers, and has been released for Macintosh and Playstation 2 in the meantime (under the name Deus Ex: The Conspiracy).

The year is 2050. The world is in a state of chaos. The Gray Death plague runs rampant, ripping through the populace. There is a vaccine, but it is in very short supply and is primarily used for the rich and famous. Riots occur everywhere, and anti-government groups are becoming more and more prominent. To combat this, the United Nations has formed a worldwide police force called UNATCO, the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition.

You take on the role of JC Denton, a rookie agent for UNATCO (United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition). You’re one of the prototypes of a new kind of enhanced agent. Instead of bulky and dehumanizing mechanical body parts, like your fellow agent Gunther Hermann, you are nanotechnologically enhanced. The title is a short version of “Deus Ex Machina”, which means “God from a machine”. This is a plot concept introduced in plays many centuries ago, where an apparently unsolvable situation is suddenly and miraculously solved by the unexpected intervention of a deity. The god was introduced to the stage at the time by lowering the actor mechanically from above the stage, thus coining the name. The title “Deus Ex” is particularly apt. The nanobots give you super-human abilities, which is one aspect, and also your character is the deus ex machina introduced to solve the world’s problems.

The game starts with your very first mission, which has been assigned to you as a test. UNATCO headquarters is on Liberty Island, the location of the statue of liberty. Terrorists occupy the statue with soldiers patrolling all over the grounds except the small portion of the island occupied by UNATCO. Sure, the UNATCO troops could mop these guys up with no problem, but they’d rather see what you can do.

The most unique aspect of this game is the way the missions are set up to allow multiple approaches to every scenario. These choices affect what you’ll want to carry in your inventory, how you want to interact with people, what skills you want to develop. This makes for enhanced replayability, because you can play it again with different tactics and have a very different gameplay experience. For instance, you can charge in the front door with guns blazing in classic FPS style. Or you can use lockpicks to sneak in a side door, only confronting enemy units when absolutely necessary. Or you can rely on your hacking skills, turn enemy turrets against their owners, unlock all the doors and just walk in.

Another thing that made this game great is the interweaving of dozens of conspiracy theories into one cohesive plot. The Illuminati, the Knights Templar, Men in Black, Area 51 and many others are all tied into the plot.

As you go through the game, there are so many incentives to explore. By picking a lock into a hotel room, you might find a note with an ATM code on it, a stash of money. You might find information. You might find a man with a gun ready to shoot intruders. Or you might find nothing of interest. You never know until you try. Not every area is hostile territory, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t break into shops, find contacts to buy black market goods behind hotels. You visit major world cities along the way, such as New York City and Hong Kong.

There are numerous ways to customize your game, which can make it different every time. First, you have upgradeable skills. At the beginning of the game, you’re given a set amount of skill points which you can allocate across a wide variety of skills. Many of these are weaponry skills: enhanced skill with pistol weapons, rifles, explosives, etc… Others are more general use, such as swimming skill that will help you hold your breath for longer underwater. But, to me, one skill trumps them all: hacking. Hacking is so versatile it’s useful for any situation and the more you upgrade the skill the more versatile it is. Every skill has four levels, each ascending level costing an increasing number of skill points to upgrade. At the lowest level, you are unable to hack. As you increase the skill level you’re able to affect more things when you hack, as well as have more time to do so. You can break into people’s personal computers and read their emails. You can hack into ATMs and withdraw money from other people’s accounts–although the ATMs do tend to malfunction after a single hack, never working afterward. Occasionally you come across ATM codes in emails and memos, so use the legitimate codes before hacking to maximize your cash intake. Most importantly, you can hack into automated security systems. From within the security system you can open security doors, disable laser triggers, and sometimes even turn automated machine gun turrets against their owners. You gain skill points by doing various things, such as completing primary or secondary objectives, and you also get them for unlisted objectives, such as exploring new areas to get “exploration points”

One of the things that makes this game the most unique is the upgradeable nano-augmentations. At the beginning of the game your augs are pretty basic. You have an infolink that gives you a popup comm window on your screen at anytime. Your targeting system can tell you if a person is a friend or a foe by color-coding the cross-hairs. And you have a light that you can use to see in the dark. But it uses up your battery systems, and enemies can see the light.

When you find your first nano-augmentation canister, that’s when things really start to get interesting. Each augmentation upgrades a specific aspect of your body, and can provide one of two enhancements, but once you choose one of the two, the change is permanent, and you can never go try the other one. One of the canisters, for instance, upgrades your eyes. You can choose “vision enhancement”: night vision at level one, infrared vision at level 2, short-range sonar at level 3 (see through walls), long-range sonar at level 4. Or you can choose targeting, which increases your accuracy and weapon damage as well as giving you info about your target, the higher the level the more accurate and the more info. Other upgrades throughout the game include the ability to heal damage, to walk more quietly, and invisibility. Choose wisely! There are two kinds of canisters, the augmentations which you have to choose between the two types, and upgrade canisters. The upgrades can be applied to any of your augs, but remember that these things aren’t just lying around everywhere–you’ve got to choose which augmentations are most valuable to upgrade.

Another way you make the game your own: inventory choices. You have a limited (though large) amount of carrying space. You can’t carry everything you come across, nor even every type of weapon. Myself, I like a wide an array of weapons to use in different situations. Others might like to tote around bulky heavy weaponry. Whatever you do, keep in mind that you might want to hold onto each weapon as long as you can, because of weapon upgrades. Each weapon can take numerous upgrades that can affect magazine size, reload rate, and the like, so once you’ve upgraded a weapon you may want to keep it around. Some items are must-haves: med kits, LAMs (like grenades), energy canisters, to name a few, luckily these things take up only one space in the inventory and are stackable (more than one of the same type fits in the same square). Lockpicks are a worthwhile tool as they are often an investment more than a cost, and you can use less of them if you upgrade your lockpick skill.

The difficulty of the game all depends on your decisions. I’ve heard it’s possible to complete the game without killing a single human being. That would be very difficult. There are several non-lethal weapons such as the tranq. crossbow and the stun prod, but tranqs are so slow-acting that the enemy often gets to an alarm button, and the stun prod requires a direct melee attack. And what augmentations and skills you choose to upgrade all affect your available strategies and the difficulty thereof. If I wanted to make the game harder, I could skip the hacking skill entirely, but for me that would make the game much less fun, because there’s nothing quite like the rush of turning an enemy’s trusted security system against them.

Also, you can save anywhere anytime, so if you constraint yourself in this ability, the difficulty will be raised. Otherwise you could pick every lock and just re-load an old game just before the pick if you don’t like what you find. While there’s nothing in the game to prohibit this, it does take much of the challenge out if you take this strategy.

There are multiple endings to the game, though luckily the objectives for each of them are given to you. You just need to choose which ones to complete. You’re not locked into any of the endings until you perform the final task for them, so if you keep some strategically saved games you can see all three endings without having to replay the whole game.

The graphics in the game are quite good, nice textures. My only complaint is that the faces, particularly the mouths, look blocky as people speak. The music is great, and the voice acting is superb. Some have complained that JC’s voice is too deadpan, but I think it’s appropriate given his character.

Hungry for more? There is a sequel, Deus Ex 2: Invisible War, but don’t expect much from it. It has some interesting ideas, but the core principles that made the first one great are dummied down to appeal to a wider audience. In addition, the graphics engine is needlessly vamped up. I ran it on a computer above the minimum specs and it would frequently stall as it tried to handle the rag-doll bodies and dynamic shadows. Those were fun effects, but reliance on pretty graphics is merely settling when looking at a Deus Ex game. Supposedly a Deus Ex 3 is in the works, but I don’t have high hopes for it. Warren Specter, the man that is given much of the credit for the first game, is not involved in this one, and that always makes me think it’s going to subpar, and usually I’m right. I hope I’m wrong. I really do. Hopefully I will be able to write up a separate Niche Games article later about how great it is. But I wouldn’t hold your breath. There have also been talks about movie rights, but again, I don’t have high hopes for anything worthwhile to come out of that.

If you want to find this game, it shouldn’t be too hard. A quick eBay search finds copies under 20 bucks, well worth the price of this one. Deus Ex has something for everyone. You will not regret it. Go buy it now, and enjoy!

Game Review: Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time

RatchetWritten by Melissa Shaw
Reprint from Fantasy Magazine

The new “Ratchet and Clank” game, “Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time (CIT)” for the Sony PS3, has a lot to live up to. The series is renowned for its quirky humor, vast array of gadgets and weapons, gorgeous visuals, and fast-paced, gleefully destructive action.

This installment picks up where the last left off: our favorite Lombax, Ratchet, is searching for his little robot pal, Clank, who vanished just after they won the big boss fight in “Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction (TOD).” (“Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty,” a short game that was released between TOD and CIT, was a Ratchet-only digression that, while it had a few entertaining moments, added nothing to the ongoing storyline.) Clank himself ends up becoming a caretaker of the Great Clock, a device that sits exactly in the center of the universe (give or take 50 feet) that maintains and repairs the stability of time. The main villain of the story, Dr. Nefarious (familiar to fans of earlier R&C games), is scheming to gain control over the Great Clock and thus time itself, so he can change history, wrong past rights, and rule the universe.

Like previous installments, CIT delivers lots of weapons (though the Quickselect menu is no longer customizable), enemies, worlds, spectacular visuals, and gadgets. The series’ humor is still firmly in place. Particular favorites include Mr. Zurkon, a homicidal “synthenoid” robot who loves to taunt your enemies (and sometimes your friends), and the battery bots, who complain bitterly every time their brief rebellions against being used as power sources are thwarted. The game also introduces mini-worlds with mini-games that feature various prizes, including treasure items and weapons mods. Clank’s role and abilities are expanded dramatically, particularly with an interesting self-cloning and time-manipulation gameplay mechanic that lends itself to some challenging puzzles. Story-wise, you finally learn more about Ratchet’s mysterious Lombax heritage (turns out he’s not the only one left).

The game is not without its flaws, however. You spend most of the game playing Ratchet and Clank separately, precluding opportunities for the character interactions that make up so much of the series’ charm. Also, the game is slow to get going. It opens with more than six minutes of cut-scenes, interrupted only by one brief training sequence in which you play Clank, not Ratchet. While the cut-scenes are entertaining and slick, they get between the player and the action, and the first four minutes can’t be skipped. The first third of the game feels a bit dumbed-down and slow compared to previous versions, more oriented toward the 8-to-10-year-old set than the older demographic it’s ostensibly intended for. (Minor spoiler alert ahead!) And while it’s likely supposed to be a pleasant surprise, discovering that not one but both of our titular heroes are essentially princes feels heavy-handed and too coincidental.

But the game steadily picks up steam as you progress, and by the second half, it’s worthy of its place in the R&C universe. The game gives you not one, not two, but three big boss fights at the end (although one is dependent on finding all of one particular treasure item, a time-consuming venture), and all are challenging and exhilarating.

The soundtrack is a mixed bag: sometimes orchestral and seamless, sometimes a jarring, retro 80s rock. Standout voiceover performances include Armin Shimerman’s as Dr. Nefarious, and Jim Ward’s as Captain Qwark.

Overall, while “Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time” gets off to a slow start, it ultimately delivers the humor, spectacular visuals, variety of weapons and gadgets, and lively action that fans of this series have come to expect.

10527_1187758026540_1606014926_30480607_3193812_nMelissa Shaw’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, Analog, and several anthologies. Melissa is a Clarion West graduate and a “Writers of the Future” contest winner. She is currently writing for an as-yet-unreleased video game.

Niche Game: Blast Corps

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing because they’re something different, something special.

Blast Corps, released in 1997 for Nintendo 64, is based entirely around blowing stuff up. But it’s different from all those other blowing-stuff-up games, because you’re not destroying to kill, you’re destroying to save humanity. Two defective nuclear missiles are being transported cross country to a controlled demolition site. In transit, they start leaking, and the autopilot of the carrier kicks in, sending it on a direct path to the destination at a steady speed to the demolition site. A DIRECT path, completely disregarding any buildings or any other obstacles If it hits any bump, no matter how small, it will detonate. So the demolition squad called Blast Corps is hired to tear down everything in the carrier’s way.

Who designed this equipment? An autopilot system on a carrier hauling nuclear weapons? And nobody considered adding in the small detail in the autopilot of being able to steer around giant obstacles. Also, if nuclear weapons detonated from the smallest bump there’s no way they would ever have been deployed. And, hmmm, the guy who decided to cut corners on the budget by skipping the shock absorbers? That guy is SO going to get fired.

Yeah. The “plot” leaves something to be desired, but if you’re willing to set that aside, the game is original and fun. As the game progresses, you drive a bunch of different vehicles, each with their own demolition capabilities, and you have to clear the tiniest of obstacles out of the way.

The first vehicle you get is the bulldozer. It’s the easiest vehicle to use: all you have to do is drive it straight into obstacles. But it’s not very powerful, because it doesn’t have a lot of momentum behind it. It works pretty well for one-story buildings and small obstacles. When the bulldozer’s a bit out of its league it can push convenient crates of dynamite into buildings to pack extra punch. Who leaves crates of dynamite sitting around by civilian buildings? Why can’t more than one person be at a site demolishing? You’re asking questions again. Stop it!

My favorite vehicle is the Backlash, dump truck. It’s fairly slow, and can do a bit of damage by ramming head on, but it’s real power is the heavily-armored back end of the vehicle. By turning and jamming on the emergency break, or by hopping it over a bump, you can send the Backlash into a destructive controlled slide.

Some of the vehicles are just downright silly, though they’re still fun to use anyway. Such as the Sideswipe, whose destructive power uses its limited fuel to extending bashing panels out to either side. Its a terrible design for a demolition vehicle, but the fuel budgeting makes the gameplay interesting anyway. And the J-Bomb, which uses a jet pack to rise up in the air and then smashes down on buildings.

After you clear the path for the carrier in each level, you can come back for some playability appeal to knock down every remaining structure, activating beacons throughout the level, and rescuing survivors. Besides the main carrier levels, there are also bonus levels which don’t involve the carrier, but still involve blowing stuff up.

And, that’s about all there is to say about the game. If you think mass demolition with strict time limits sounds like fun, try this game out. If you don’t, then you should skip it. It’s as simple as that. Finding a copy of Blast Corps shouldn’t be a problem. I found multiple copies on eBay for less than 5 bucks a piece. Otherwise, you can probably find a ROM for it to play on your computer, though I haven’t dabbled in N64 ROMs. It’s worth a play through, especially if it only costs you a few bucks. Enjoy!

Niche Game: Space Station Silicon Valley

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing because they’re something different, something special.

If you look at a list of my favorite games, they tend to be the ones where gameplay is ever-changing, where you either have multiple characters with different abilities, or you can newly acquire vehicles throughout the plot. Space Station Silicon Valley is a prime example, as you spent the game constantly hopping from host to host, each with its own unique abilities. DMA Design (which later became Rockstar North) created this game back in 1998–they seem to have a particular talent for making games with a variety of gameplay, which may be one of the reasons they’ve been so successful. I honestly can’t believe this game has received so little attention, it is simply great but I’ve met very few people who know about it at all.

In the plot of the game, a space station was put into orbit around earth filled with animals. It was intended to be a high-tech amusement park. But the station disappeared shortly thereafter. Everyone thought it had disappeared forever but in the year 3000 it reappears on a collision course for Earth. “Heroes for hire” Danger Dan and his robot partner Evo are sent to investigate and to prevent the collision.

As they’re flying their ship to the station, they’re arguing over the choice of radio station and they manage to crash into the station as a result. Evo is shattered into many pieces, scattered into various areas of the station, and the game starts as you take control of the only remaining functioning piece, his CPU chip. The control chip itself crawls around like an insect, using its pins for legs, and it takes damage quickly with nothing to protect it from environmental factors.

Before the ship crashes, we see a scene showing Flossy the sheep and Roger their dog finally admitting their love for each. The spaceship lands and kills the dog instantly. This is typical of the fun and weird sense of humor this game has. It’s also convenient, because the Evo chip has a convenient host in the dead (dormant) dog-bot.

Strange things have been happening on the ship over the course of a millenium. The animals have evolved and merged with mechanical components on the ship, creating a diverse array of robo-animals. Some of them look like real animals, others are obvious hybrids, such as a polar bear with tank treads instead of legs, or a camel with a turret cannon in place of his hump. Each and every one of them can be taken over and controlled, but there’s a catch. Evo can only take over a host that is already dormant, which means that he has to defeat the animal first.

Each type of animal has its own set of abilities which must be used to solve environmental puzzles in the game. The sheep is one of the first animals you encounter. It has no attack, but it can glide slowly down, floating like the little puffy cloud that it resembles, which lets it cross long gaps easily. Also in the early stages you can become a dog which can jump and bite. Hyenas have contagious laughter which causes area-of-effect damaging hysteria. Pigeons can grip dormant robots and carry them from place to place. You get the point.

The space station is split into four environments, a European zone (foxes, dogs, sheep, and the like), an ice zone (polar bears, penguins, and others), jungle zone (hyenas, lions,…), and the desert zone (vultures, camels,…). As you progress through the game you are always coming across new animals that you must take over and use each animal’s abilities to progress through the game.

Danger Dan does not play an active role in the game, as the crash has trapped him inside the ship, but he is the one that hands down missions to Evo. Before the exit teleporter will activate, you have to complete your objectives, which are different for every stage. A few examples of missions. Some of the missions make sense, such as opening a security door into the next area, and some of them don’t. For instance, some of them say things like “Bring me something fluffy”. But Dan’s the boss-man, so you’ve gotta do what he says. In addition to the main objectives, you can also find souvenirs in some levels, gold objects that commemorate your time there. They help add some replay value if you want to go back and collect them.

The humor of the game is great. The interaction between Danger Dan and Evo in particular. Some of the animals just look and act really funny. The sheep in particular has the most stupid look on its face it just makes me laugh, and Dan’s mission objectives, though sometimes random and nonsensical, add some variety to a mission-based game.

The graphics aren’t spectacular by today’s standards (duh), and many of the animals are blocky. But that’s okay, they’re robots, so maybe the robots really are blocky.

Getting your hands on this game shouldn’t be a problem. A quick eBay search turns up 11 entries, with Buy It Now prices as low as $15 (for a “very good” condition cartridge with no manual) to $70 (factory sealed). In addition, it’s very possible you could find a ROM for this on the net, though I can’t vouch for that–I’ve never dabbled in N64 ROMs.

If you like gameplay with variety, you can’t go wrong with this game and it’s menagerie of mechanical critters. Enjoy!

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

PerdidoCoverVERDICT:Â Recommend, try to read at least 50 pages to get through the slow beginning.

Perdido Street Section is a great book, well worth the read. This is the first story I’ve read by China Mieville, but I will now be on the lookout for more from this author. It doesn’t take long to recognize China Mieville’s obvious skill at worldbuilding. The city of New Crobuzon is multi-faceted and schizophrenic, populated by humans and a multitude of semi-human races. But it does have its flaws. The good parts were great enough that I am still happy to recommend it.

It seemed to me that perhaps Mr. Mieville has been told too many times how great he is at world-building. He depends on it too much. The best stories are a balancing act between many different aspects: setting, character, plot. If the aspects are unbalanced, the result can be boring, confusing, or just plain annoying. In the case of Perdido Street Station, the unbalanced emphasis on setting made many sections tend toward boring. Unfortunately, the first part of the book fell under this category. The first thirty or forty pages go by without a whiff of conflict. The main characters are introduced and different areas of the city are explored, but there’s no reason why I should care. If I had picked it up for a test read at a Barnes & Noble, I would have given up and found a different book. Luckily, I’d come across the book via a friend’s strong recommendation. He has not steered me wrong before, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and kept reading, and I am very glad that I did. I highly recommend the book as well, but you need to stick with it for a while. Don’t worry, it gets better!

Isaac Dan Grimnebulin is the lead character, a freelance scientist and researcher, is approached by Yagharek, a garuda. The garuda are a desert-dwelling species shaped like men with wings and a beak. Yagharek, though, has no wings. They have been removed as punishment for a crime he has committed, and he asks for Isaac’s health in regaining flight.

Lin, Isaac’s significant other, is a khepri. Khepri are one of the many races in New Crobuzon, and are sort of like a mix between a beetle and a human. From the neck down, she is indistinguishable from a human, but in place of her head is a large beetle, with 6 legs, useless wings, and fully functioning head and rear parts. The khepri are particularly interesting, because the males are so different from the females. The males have no human parts, they are just the head-sized beetles, and they are not sentient.

Anyway, as I was saying, Lin is a khepri artist. She can make sculptures out of “khepri-spit”, which isn’t really spit at all. She eats colorberries and the beetle body processes them and spits out colored mush from its hind end that can formed into sculptures. As the book begins, she is recruited to create a sculpture of Motley, one of the kingpins of crime in the city.

They all live in the city of New Crobuzon, a world that’s very different from ours. The world is full of non-human creatures, steampunk-style machines, magic. The city is depicted in loving detail (sometimes too much detail), giving the nitty gritty details about many different districts from the rich neighborhoods to the poor. Some of my favorite sections followed the administration of the city, giving us a view into the government that keeps this whole place running.

The most interesting subgroup in New Crobuzon are the Remade. “Remade” is a very broad term which just means that the person has been altered in some fundamental way by a bio-thaumaturge. Most Remade have been given twisted forms as punishment for crimes, turning their heads backwards, replacing their legs with a metal tripod, any number of bizarre things. Besides punishment, Remaking can also be used to enhance soldier’s abilities and other advantages of body alterations.

Besides the slow beginning, there are also slow and pointless sections scattered throughout the story. Most of them are just expositionary lumps to show off Mieville’s worldbuilding. The world they reveal is complex and interesting, but to explain them at the cost of the momentum of the story is a mistake. Near the end of the story, there is a long segment when the main characters are all working together on a plan, and the book goes through the steps in painstaking detail, without explaining what the plan is! With everything else going on in my life, I tend to read only for a short period of time every day. At the slow rate I read it took me more than a week to get through this plotless unexplained section.

The climax of the book is exciting and satisfying, but after that the book just kind of keeps on going like a guest who doesn’t know when he’s overstayed his welcome. It spends a long time solving a “mystery” that none of the characters had shown any interest in before. If he wanted to end the book that way, I wish he would’ve made more effort to make its importance clear throughout the story.

There were quite a few loose ends that were never tied up, many hints that seemed to be designed to get you thinking about the significance of certain people or places, and then they were never mentioned again. Perhaps there will be more stories set in New Crobuzon and this is just a stub to leave some things open to tie up in the next one. If there are, I would definitely read them, but if not, I’d really like to know how some of those plotlines tie off.

It’s hard to say much more without major spoiler warnings, so this is the end of the spoiler-free section. And I do mean spoilers, I’ll be telling a lot of important details, including details about the ending. Read the book!

SPOILER WARNING!!

The major focus of the plot shifts as the book goes on. As part of his investigation, Isaac arranges the procurement of a variety of winged creatures, and those who will metamorphise into winged creatures. One of these is a vibrantly colored caterpillar. For weeks it won’t eat anything he feeds to it, until he happens across dreamshit, a hallucionogenic drug new to the market. The caterpillar eats that stuff up, grows like crazy, and builds a cocoon. What breaks out of the cocoon ends up being the main focus of the rest of the story.

Near the end of the book, the survival of the characters ends up being determined by a Deus Ex Machina character who has only been mentioned in passing beforehand. Not only that, he has no apparent reason to be interested in the protagonists, certainly not at the risk of his own life. Maybe he’s really that selfless, but he’s so undeveloped, only appearing for that one scene, that I will never know.

And in the end, Lin’s character ends up serving no purpose to the story. The first few scenes show their Isaac and Lin’s relationship together, so it seems like that will be vital. Then they get so involved with their own projects they barely see each other for the next few hundred pages. Then Lin is kidnapped by Motley the crime lord, and Isaac is convinced that Motley will kill her. He is very broken up about it, true, but it changes none of his actions. She shows up again at the very, very end, and he saves her life, but she ends up with half her mind wiped away so she is little more than a child. None of her actions really affected the plot, and her presence or absence would not have changed a single event in the story. So why was she there?

I’ve pretty much decided to retcon out the last section of the book after the major conflict is resolved, because if I acknowledge its existence, then Isaac becomes a major scumbag in my view. At the beginning of the book, when Yagharek approaches Isaac, Isaac does ask what Yagharek’s crime was that caused the removal of the wings. Yagharek told him it was “choice -theft in the second degree with utter disrespect”, which is a cultural thing of the garuda. Isaac thinks about asking what that is, but ends up kind of shrugging it off for 90% of the rest of the book. To me, his lack of interest during this period of time signals his acceptance of whatever crime has occurred. If he would refuse Yagharek for his crime, it should be now at the very beginning. But he doesn’t. He decides it’s none of his business, and puts his mind fully into the research. By the end of the book Isaac does create a means to fly, which is a huge groundbreaking discovery that will most likely be Isaac’s greatest scientific achievement. Without Yagharek, he would never have pursued the line of research that caused the breakthrough. Besides that, Yagharek pours significant amounts of his own money into Isaac’s pocketbooks. When the main conflict of the book goes into full swing, Isaac depends on Yagharek’s unique skills as a hunter to help resolve it and in the very end, Yagharek saves Lin’s life. Yagharek has done a LOT for Isaac. These actions were not selfless; he is desperate to fly again and he will do anything to help Isaac do it. And, on top of all that, Yagharek never lied to Isaac about his crime. He told him exactly what he did, though Isaac didn’t understand the meaning. If Isaac had asked, Yagharek would have told him.

Then, at the very end of the book, Isaac is finally on the verge of creating a flying device. But before he can give it to Yagharek, a delegation of garuda arrives to ask him not to do it. As if this is supposed to be the driving conflict of the story, instead of having been completely unmentioned for over 500 pages. She explains that what Yagharek did would be called rape by New Crobuzon culture. But then goes on to explain that “rape” does not describe it. In her own words “I was not violated or ravaged, Grimneb’lin. I am not abused or defiled… or ravished or spoiled[…]He stole my choice, and that is why he was… judged.” Throwing someone’s lunch in the trash would be pretty much labeled as the same crime. Isaac is horrified despite his earlier disinterest. In the end, Isaac decides not to give the flying device to Yagharek. Even worse, Isaac just ducks and runs while Yagharek is out of the house. He’s not only willing to take extreme advantage of Yag, he doesn’t even have the guts to tell him in person.

But despite these parts that I really disliked, the world and the main conflict are interesting and unique enough that I recommend this book without any hesitation. Give it a chance!

Niche Game: Laura Bow 2: The Dagger of Amon-Ra

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing because they’re something different, something special.

The era of text-based adventures ended and was replaced by graphical adventures, and of those games, Sierra is king. They are the ones who created the King’s Quest series, the Space Quest series, Leisure Suit Larry, and the topic of today’s article: Laura Bow 2.

The first Laura Bow game was titled The Colonel’s Bequest(1989), which is set in the 1920s and revolves around college student Laura Bow, who wants to be a journalist. She accompanies a friend to attend the reading of the will of her friend’s reclusive relative Colonel Dijon. A murder occurs, and Laura is left to figure who did it.

Laura Bow II(1992) takes place several years later after Laura has graduated from college. She moves to New York City where she lands a job at a major newspaper. This being the male-dominated 1920s era, no one takes her very seriously, and there’s not even a ladies restroom in the office. She’s given a fluff assignment to cover the opening of a new Egyptian exhibit at a local museum. The assignment turns serious when a murder occurs, and everyone is locked inside pending investigation. Other guests begin dying one after another, and it’s up to Laura to once again figure out who did it.

There are plenty of other point and click adventures from this era that are truly excellent. Again, most of them are created by Sierra, so if you ever get the chance to check them out it’s well worth the time. The major feature that sets this one apart is Laura’s notebook. Each time she hears about a new person, place, thing, or idea, she automatically writes it in her notebook. From that point on, you can ask anyone you talk to about that entry. Of course, many people don’t have anything interesting to say. If you ask the drycleaner about the museum curator, he’s probably not going to be able to enlighten you. I thought this was a great way to add a little more variety to game conversations. In most of this sort of game, at every point in a conversation you only have 2 or 3 things you can say. But the addition of the notebook lets you bring up a much wider range of topics that made the conversations feel more varied.

The interface of this game is simple enough, all point and click. Each time you right-click, the cursor changes to a different kind of action, from an eyeball for “look”, a pedestrian for “walk”, a hand for “take/manipulate”, etc… Each time you left-click on an area, that action takes effect at that location (or tries to).

Besides the cool notebook idea, I really loved the sense of humor instilled in the game from the very beginning, in particular the manner of obtaining a press pass near the beginning is very funny (I won’t tell you the details to spoil the fun of figuring it out yourself). Also, the murders in a museum setting are always fun. Lots of cool artifacts from various eras surround and can be murder weapons, and I had fun just wandering from room to room and examining all the different items.

Unfortunately, I never completed this game. At the museum party, you must eavesdrop on other people in the crowd, but I just never managed to do that. I looked up hints online and did my best to do exactly what they said, to no avail, so I’m left standing around a dull party without much happening. I tried long and hard to defeat that and never succeeded. I would say it’s a glitch in the game but I never found anything online to suggest that other people had trouble, so it must just have been me.


You can die in the game, but it can’t happy in many places. As with many mystery games, most of the risk is late in the game when you’re on the verge of uncovering the killer’s identity. It never hurts to “save early save often” here but it’s probably not strictly necessary in most cases either.

I originally played this game as part of another collection of games released by Sierra. I don’t remember if it was the Space Quest collection or the King’s Quest collection. Either way, my frustration with the party scene was partially offset by the fact that in this particular edition you could skip ahead to the next act. This was good for me, so I could really explore the museum’s interior and get to the good stuff. Alas, since my game experience was disjointed already, I never really had the motivation to figure out the rest, but I did poke around and have some fun with it. Also, when skipping ahead, those saved games never had as complete a notebook as I did, so I missed the ability to ask about some of the things I had learned that game assumed I wouldn’t have.Getting your hands on this game isn’t too difficult. It’s old enough to be available on Abandonware sites, such as Abandonia. You should be able to run the game from there. Otherwise a quick eBay search brings up a copy of the game for a Buy It Now price of about $22, not bad. Otherwise, I think I originally played this game as part of a King’s Quest game collection (or was it Space Quest game collection), so if you can track that down it will be modified for modern operating systems already. I hope you have a chance to try this out, and maybe you’ll have better luck with eavesdropping than I did. Enjoy!

Niche Game: Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing because they’re something different, something special.

Star Control IIThe original Star Control was developed by Toys for Bob and released on computer platforms as well as the Sega Genesis in 1990, and is a great space combat games, pitting a diverse array of ships against each other one on one. This was followed in 1992 by Star Control II, a vast expansion on the original game, providing many more alien races, each with their own unique ship. On top of this is the very best part, the space exploration aspect, which I’ll go into more later on. Star Control 3 was developed by Legend entertainment, which was hired by Accolade to create a sequel when Toys for Bob refused to create a sequel for the same amount of money they produced Star Control II for (Toys for Bob had to work for no money for several months for that game already). It’s obvious that the original creators had nothing to do with this one. Despite its 3-D rendering of the ships, and the addition of new races with their new ships, new regions to explore, and claymation of the alien species, this game was vastly inferior to its predecessor. If you want to try the series out at its very pinnacle, try out Star Control II. Star Control 3 is okay, and may be interesting if you loved Star Control II as much as I do just as a means of holding off the impending cravings for more content. Star Control 4 was scrapped during the development stages.

In 2006, Alex Ness, producer of Toys for Bob, wrote an article on his site stating that Toys for Bob has been working on a new title for the previous year scheduled to come out in early November of that year. He hinted that if he got enough fan support, they could work up a legitimate sequel to Star Control II and bring it to Activision along with a loaded handgun, then they could finally be convinced to take a gamble on the thing. I, for one, hope they do.

SC2Base

Star Control II begins with you piloting a ship back to Earth from a distant exploratory mission to see the outcome of the war between the Alliance of Free Stars and the Hierarchy of Battle Thralls (the subject of the first game). You return home to find Earth covered in an impenetrable red shield. You learn from the men in an orbital station that the Ur-Quan won the war and now all Earthlings, and many of other races, have been eradicated, put under a slave sheield, or are working as battle thralls for the domineering Ur-Quan.

Your goal is to build up enough power to confront the Ur-Quan. To do this, you have to collect resources. Each planet you visit has resources scattered around the surface, which can vary from valuable radioactive materials to common metals. The materials can be converted into money which can be used to buy fuel, to purchase upgrades for your ship, and to add more ships to your fleet. As you explore you’ll enter the sphere of influence of other alien races, who may be friendly or hostile. Some will join your cause immediately. Others will take persuading, either through force, bribery, or other means. Others will simply not join you. That’s what makes this game great, this discovery of new species. As you explore, you should listen carefully for rumors about interesting things to visit, as that will narrow down the amount of star systems you have to visit to a great degree.

Ur-Quan_Race

Interacting with the alien races is a blast. Each has their own quirks which are closely matched to the ships they pilot. The domineering Ur-Quan pilot ships that can easily power a headstrong opponent, requiring careful strategy to overcome, while the Spathi, always preferring retreat, rely heavily on the BUTT missile. That stands for Backwards Utilizing Tracking Torpedo. It fires out of the back end of the Spathi ship and homes in the on the enemy, so it’s perfect to use against a pursuing foe. The Pkunk, the spiritualists of the group, sometimes reincarnate after a battle, even multiple times, making them a real pest.

The best part of the original game, also done well in Star Control II, is the combat. Each round of fighting pits 2 ships against each other in a battle to the death. Each alien race has their own ship design, each varying wildly from the others. As you play, you see an image of that alien race manipulating its controls as you press each button, which I always found amusing. Each ship has two resources they must draw on: crew, and energy. Crew is the number of crew members left on board. These are basically used as hit points for the ship. The energy is what is drawn on for most of the weapons systems (with a few exceptions). Except for one or two exceptions, crew do not regenerate, so once you lose a crew member you can never regain that. Energy is depleted by a specified amount each time a weapon is fired. Different weapons require different amounts of energy, and each ship type regenerates energy at a different rate. In addition, each ship has a different mass, acceleration, and top speed (though that speed can be exceeded by using gravity slings, more on that later).

The controls are simple. The left and right arrows rotate the ship. The up arrow fires thrusters. Because the fights occur in space, once you get going in one direction you keep going in that direction at that speed until something else affects your speed, like your thrusters, enemy fire, or the gravity of a planet. Each ship has a primary fire and a secondary fire, the effect of which varies depending on the ship. In most stages there is a small planet whose gravity can be used to accelerate your ship (try not to hit the planet, it hurts a lot). Asteroids fly at random trajectories and can be used to block enemy fire. Opposite sides of the playscreen link to each other, so the battlefield is not infinite size.

dreadnought

For example, one of the most powerful brute force ships in the game is the Ur-Quan Dreadnought. The Ur-Quan are a spider-like race who dominate other species by brute force, and this tactic is evident in their ship design. The primary weapon is the fusion cannon, which can kill 6 crew in one shot. The blast fires in a straight line at a relatively fast speed. Most anything foolish enough to wander close to a Dreadnought dies. The secondary weapon are a pair of fighter pilots. At the cost of some energy, 2 of the crew can be loaded into fighter pilots and loaded into individual fighters to chase after the enemy. The fighters will then hover around the enemy craft constantly shooting their puny weapons into the alien hull and trying to stay behind the enemy. They return to the Dreadnought when they run out of fuel. In Star Control 1 these fighters had a major flaw in that they were too stupid to avoid planets. So an intelligent enemy fighter just had to wait behind a planet while the Dreadnought’s crew members committed suicide. This was resolved before Star Control 2.

arilou

At the other end of the spectrum is the Ariloulaleelay Skiff. They are known as the Arilou for short and are the stereotypical green-skinned bublous headed aliens with big eyes of UFO sightings. They also fly the standard flying saucer, pretty much the smallest ship in the game. The Skiff has very little in the way of crew, so must rely on hit and run tactics. The primary fire is an auto-aiming short range laser. It’s one of the weakest weapons in the game but has the advantage of auto-aiming so you just have to get within range. The secondary fire is a hyperspace jump that takes you to another random place in the battle area. This can be good or bad depending where you end up. A quirk of the ship is that it is unaffected by gravity, so one tactic is to hang around in the gravity well of a planet and wait for opponents to come attack to bash themselves to death against the planet.

There are more than a dozen other ships, more than I want to take the space for here.

syreen

Among them are the Syreen Penetrator, which can send out a siren call to lure enemy crew off their ship where the Syreen can pick them up, a very useful skill indeed.

druuge

Another interesting ship is the Druuge Mauler, which is basically a giant cannon with a cockpit attached. The Mauler’s primary manner of drive is firing the cannon, and to offset its low energy regeneration rate, crew members can be thrown into the furnace for additional energy.

Another cause of my undying love for this game is the effective use of PC speakers. This is the ONLY game I’ve ever played which makes music with the PC speaker that I have ever enjoyed. For those who don’t remember PC speaker music, it is sound made directly in the CPU of the computer, it vibrates at a certain frequency and generally makes a really annoying beep. Almost no modern software makes use of it, except sometimes to signal an error, such as the computer being non-responsive to keyboard presses. Back in the day, games used this speaker for music, and it sounded terrible, lots of annoying toned beeps. Star Control II’s music is both subtle, moody, and often sounds very nice. I don’t know why they were the only ones to figure out how to use the PC speaker properly, but they did an amazing job with it.

Ur_quan_masters_title

If you want to play this extraordinary game, you’re in luck! Toys for Bob has a great relationship with their fanatic fan-base, and has released the source code of the 3DO version of this game onto the internet. Because of this, there is a free version of the game which runs on pretty much any modern operating system, available for FREE to download here at SourceForge. Because Atari owns the name “Star Control”, this version is renamed “The Ur-Quan Masters”, but otherwise it is the same game I knew and loved. You owe it to yourself to give it a try. This version even included voice acting, unlike the one I had played. Allt he original music is there, although it’s produced through the regular sound system instead of the PC speakers. My one complaint is that a couple important pieces of information were not present in this version of the game. Specifically having to do with the timeframe the game takes place in. There is a finite ending to the game, though the exact ending date can be shifted by certain events. The version I’d originally played had this time limit told to you pretty early in the game, and this was important to know, because you don’t have time to explore every solar system in the galaxy in that time limit.

For those who have played all the Star Control goodness available and still want more, there is hope.
1. Although Star Control 4 (retitled StarCon) was never released to the public, rumor has it that it has leaked out onto the internet. I haven’t tracked down a copy of this game, but I drool simply at the thought of it.
2. Toys for Bob, the ones who made this great game, still exist and are still designing games. They’ve maintained the stance that they would love to make another Star Control game, an “official” sequel to Star Control II, but that Interplay games, their parent company, isn’t interested in it. If you’d like to see more, you can do your part by signing the petition to show your interest in another game. Also, if you submit a picture here of you playing SCII or with SCII items, then they will paste it onto a map by your actual location so that the Interplay staff who come to visit can’t help but see it. If Interplay sees how big of a cult fan-base this game has, I hope they’ll open their eyes and commission another.

Just to warn you, Star Control 2 is a time sink! To complete my research for this article I downloaded The Ur-Quan Masters and played it, and I could NOT stop. If you can’t afford a drain on your time right now, maybe you should wait til later to download this. Try the game for free, become a fan forever. Enjoy!

Niche Game: The Lost Treasures of Infocom

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing because they’re something different, something special.

LostTreasuresYou are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.If that sounds familiar, then you probably already know about the games in this article. For those of you who don’t know, that first paragraph was the opening to Zork, a text-based adventure game released in 1980. After this opening line you are given a prompt to choose what to do next. You type each command on the prompt and then the description of what happens is shown on the screen. After this opening line you could type “open mailbox”, at which point you will see there is a leaflet inside the mailbox. Or you could say “look at mailbox”, “look at house”, or “go west”. And so on.I remember my brother playing Zork in our basement back when I was in grade school. That was before I had access to too many games, and I remember one time he asked me for ideas as we were walking along the sidewalk in front of the townhouse we lived in. I told him everything idea I could think of. I don’t think any of them worked, but I still thought it was really cool he asked.

I came across this package by accident. My aunt and uncle, who lived near my home at the time were given a computer with the game and they passed the game on to me. I played the games for many long hours, but I’m sorry to say I didn’t complete a single one of them. Games in those days were HARD! And unforgiving. If you miss one detail, then you can’t finish the game, as simple as that. But if you have the patience and the determination it’s well worth it.

The Lost Treasures of Infocom is a package of 20 Infocom games that was released in 1991. The collection was released by Activision, who had closed Infocom, then their child company, back in 1989. The games included are Zork 1, Zork 2, Zork 3, Beyond Zork, Zork Zero, Enchanter, Sorcerer, Spellbreaker, Deadline, The Witness, Suspect, The Lurking Horror, Ballyhoo, Infidel, Moonmist, Starcross, Suspended, Planetfall, Stationfall, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Now, these games are challenging like nothing today. Many gamers who grew up on 3-D games will scoff at this idea, but you have no idea. Games now are quite forgiving. If you’re alive at some point in the game, then you certainly can defeat the rest of the game, given enough skill. This is not always the case with these older games. If you didn’t pick up the screwdriver under the couch in the lounge in the opening room of the game, you may not be able to complete it, and by the time you need to use it you can’t go back to the couch room, that sort of thing. Also, some of these puzzles are HARD, unbelievably hard. Most modern games I can complete given a solid block of time to crank away at them, but these ones are so hard I never finished any of them all the way through, though I did make it a little ways. Do not expect to pick them up and beat them right away just because they’re old.

Zork is light on story, but is fun anyway. You’re a treasure hunter, who ventures into the ruins of the underground kingdom of Zork. You collect treasures and put them in the trophy case back in the house. There’s no explanation to who you are or where you came from, whose house that is, or really anything else. But as long as you’re okay with that, you can enjoy the treasure hunt. Remember to always keep a light source, or you’ll be eaten by a grue–game over!

The other Zork games continue in the same treasure hunting line with new settings. Zork Zero is a new tack because it takes place while the underground kingdom of Zork is still thriving. It’s my favorite among the ones in this package because you finally get to see what the place looked like when it was still occupied.

Enchanter, Sorcerer, and Spellbreaker are 3 games in a series. Enchanter was the first game written by Infocom after the Zork trilogy. Krill, a powerful warlock, is spreading wreaking havoc on the world. The Circle of Enchanters is afraid to defy him, but they send a novice Enchanter with only a few spells to confront him, hoping that Krill will ignore such an obvious weakling long enough. It’s a fun challenge. You can learn new spells on the way, and even the ones you know aren’t always at your disposal. You must “memorize” each spell before you can use it again, and when you cast it the memory scrambles in your brain. It’s a good way to impose a “cost” to the spellcasting so it’s not just a magic bullet.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is based on the Douglas Adams book of the same name. It starts in the same place, with Arthur waking up in his house which is scheduled to be demolished in mere minutes. From there to his escape with Ford Prefect and onto the Heart of Gold ship. Readers of the books will appreciate the humor and the situations, but the puzzles are the game’s alone. Having read the book will not give you the solution to many of the puzzles. For instance, in the book, Ford Prefect sticks a Babelfish in Arthur’s ear to translate for him. In the game, getting the Babelfish is a long and multistep and very non-intuitive process which could easily discourage a player who wasn’t very determined from playing the rest of the game. You can keep going in the game without it, but you’ll have no chance of completing the game if you can’t understand alien speech.

Deadline, The Witness, and Suspect are detective games. In deadline you’re a detective investigating the supposed suicide of a wealthy industrialist. You have 12 hours to find evidence of foul play and make an arrest. The suspects are wandering around the estate, the widow, the son, the gardener, eand others, all following their own agendas. On top of the usual text adventure commands, there are detective specific commands like “accuse” and “arrest” and “fingerprint.” The Witness and Suspect have similar setups with a possible crime to be investigated, a list of suspects, and the opportunity to search and question.

Deadline was also the first game to include “feelies.” When making the game, the 80k limit was just too small to include all the material they wanted to include. So they included extra physical documents, official memos, lab reports, and more with the game’s packaging. They were a huge hit with fans, making the game feel more real. In addition they acted as a form of copy protection because they contained important information and were harder to copy than mere computer files. Many subsequent games include “feelies”.

Ballyhoo and Moonmist are also detective games. Ballyhoo revolves around a kidnapping investigation at a circus, and Moonmist is based on investigating mysteries at an English castle.

This collection contains a game which has one of the most unique game premises I’ve ever seen, one that could never translate well into a visual format. It’s called Suspended. The player character has been wired into the mainframe of a facility that controls public systems such as transportation and weather control for an Earth-settled planet. Normally the player would be kept in cryo-stasis for their entire stay. As the game opens, hoewever, he is awakened by error messages. An earthquake has damaged systems, and parts of the system are shutting down. For the duration of the game your physical body never leaves its stasis pod, and your only interaction with the outside world is with a handful of robot avatars. You can switch to each one on will and each has its own specialty. Iris is the only one who can see, but has suffered a burnt out chip and can’t see at the beginning of the game. Whiz interfaces the central library. Waldo perceives the world with sonar and is the most adept at manipulating objects. Auda senses sounds and vibrations. Poet can sense the flow of electricity and is very difficult to understand because of his cryptic manner of speaking. Sensa is specialized for the detection of magnetic and photon emissions. In addition to this disjointed sensory system that is geographically separated, there is a very harsh time limit. I didn’t get very far in this game, because every time I’d really gotten to the point of exploring, these strange men would storm into the control center, disconnect me from the system and replacing me with a clone at which point that is a game over. It’s been a long time since I gave this one a try. I’m curious to see if I could make it further now. I’m guessing to complete this one you will have to do many many saves and restores. It might be aggravating, but the satisfaction for completing this one will be very high, and the unique premise is just such a cool idea I can’t recommend it highly enough just to try the weird gameplay experience.

The Lurking Horror is a Lovecraftian horror story, Infocom’s only horror game. The point of view character is a student trying to finish a term paper, who has gone back to campus despite a blizzard to work on the report in the computer lab. But to his dismay he finds his file is overwritten by a hacker. He has to make his way around the snowbound campus to try to recover the paper, and finds out that something much more sinister is going on.

Infidel begins as an archaeologist searching for Egyptian treasure is drugged by the men he brought with him, who have stolen most of his equipment, taken the food and water, and left him to di. He has no idea how to find his way back to civilzation. Soon the navigation box arrives that he has been awaiting, sort of like a primitive GPS, and perhaps he can at least find his way to the treasurer.

Starcross involves the exploration of an empty spacecraft of unknown origin and composition, always a good premise. Planetfall is another space exploration game: the character escapes an explosion in an escape pod and crash lands on a planet which he then explores.
If you want to find this whole package, boxed up and everything, it will be a challenge. It came out back in 1991. My guess is that most people who have them now are lovers of text games and would be loathe to give them up. A quick search on eBay comes up with only one hit, $128 “Buy It Now” price, and that one’s for Mac. However, if you want to play these games, you can find them for free download with a quick Google search. I found a few of them on Abandonia.com, my favorite site for abandonware computer games. I’ve had good luck with them. Keep the source in mind, of course, and give it a quick virus scan.

While searching for more information about this games, I came across The Lost Treasures of Infocom II, released a year after this one. I haven’t played it, but I’m confident that it’s full of text-based gaming goodness just like this one is. Either way, if you’re up for a challenge, and don’t mind lack of graphics if the game is good enough to justify it, you should track down some of these Infocom games. Enjoy!

Niche Game: The Lost Vikings 1 & 2

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing because they’re something different, something special.

The Lost Vikings

In the mood for a puzzle game? Give The Lost Vikings and/or The Lost Vikings 2 a try. I originally played both on the SNES, but they’ve been on several other platforms, including PC, Playstation, Sega Genesis, and Nintendo DS. It a 2-D platform-based puzzle game based around time-traveling Vikings.

The Lost Vikings was developed by Silicon & Synapse, which has since been renamed to the well-reknowned Blizzard, and was distributed by Interplay.

In the intro sequence, the three Vikings are abducted from their homes by the evil alien overlord Tomator. They manage to escape through a time portal which takes them to to Prehistoric times. You control each of the Vikings, one at a time, and you must work your way to the exit. All three have to be at the exit or you can’t move on. Each Viking has his own unique abilities, and you’ll have to use each of them to fullest advantage to make it through the levels.


Baleog the Fierce is the guy on the left on the title screen with the yellow mustache. He’s the fighter of the group. He can attack enemies with his sword or his arrows. He can also hit switches with his arrows from a distance. Erik the Swift is the guy in the middle with the red beard. He’s the most maneuverable of the group. As his name suggests, he does run faster than the others. He’s also the only one in the group who can jump (I guess the other guys are weighed down by their gear). He can lower his head like a battering ram, which can knock down walls and kill some enemies. Olaf the Stout is the, uh, stout guy on the right with the shield. He’s the defender. His shield can block most enemies and projectiles. In addition he can raise his shield above his head for the other Vikings to use as a platform and this allows him to hang glide slowly down from high places. You can switch between any of these Vikings at any time with the push of a button, and the screen will zoom to their location. But always keep in mind that the Vikings you’re not directly controlling are simply standing there immobile. If you leave them in danger they will die.

The game is infused with a good sense of humor. The expressions when the Vikings fall too far is cartoonish and comical, and at the end of each level they bicker amongst themselves and make fun of each other.

As the game progresses, you travel through a series of time periods, each with their unique puzzle sets and enemies. The game keeps a great amount of variety this way. So in the “sweat shop” stages, there is a magnet crane which any character can jump in to move metal blocks around. If Olaf moves his shield above his head it can also be used to carry him around. Each time period has inherent features like this to keep things interesting.


Finally at the end the Vikings return to Tomator’s ship for a final confrontation. This is the only real boss battle in the game as each Viking faces off against Tomator using their own unique skills, and finally facing up against him with their skills combined in a single confrontation. To finally use the warriors’ skills in combat is gratifying and challenging after being up against

Each Viking has three bars on their health meter which can be replenished by eating food that can be carried with you. There are also lots of environmental dangers that cause instant death, so beware! If one of your Vikings dies, then you will not be able to complete the level, but you are still free to explore with your remaining characters as long as you want, letting you scout ahead. When you’re finished you can quit and restart. When you do this you’ll see a traditional Viking funeral with a burning ship, and then lightning bolts will strike and bring the dead Vikings back from the dead. Why? I don’t know, but the burning ship sequence is cool. There is no limit to the number of times you can restart a level, so

The game is on a password-based system, so all you have to do to come back to a level is remember a 4 digit password. This game is reasonably challenging. If you’ve never played it before, some of the levels will take you multiple tries to make it through. Some of the puzzles and levels are downright difficult, though the game never stopped being fun.

Unfortunately, this one’s not available for download for Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console, but finding this game shouldn’t be any trouble, and shouldn’t cost you too much as long as you don’t demand a factory-sealed copy. A quick eBay search comes up with dozens of hits for multiple systems, most with “Buy It Now” prices under $20, as long as you are okay with “acceptable” condition. Alternatively, you can always search around for an emulator and a ROM for this game.

The Lost Vikings II

This article’s a two in one! The Lost Vikings II (known as Norse by Norsewest on certain game systems) is similar in most ways to the Lost Vikings. The first game was one of a kind, like nothing I’d ever seen before. The sequel was more of the same, but enhanced. If you liked the original, try this one out to fill your Lost Vikings craving.

In this one hey’ve done a nice job adding some new features to keep things fresh. Tomator abducts the Vikings again to enact revenge. The Vikings see him coming this time and get away in a fight, stealing some futuristic equipment on their way. Erik the Swift gets a new helmet that lets him breathe underwater and boots that let him jump once in mid-air. Baleog gets a bionic extendable arm which can grab things from a distance and allows him to swing from strategically placed swinging points. Olaf has a shrinking device that allows him to enter small spaces. Also, he has been eating gassy foods and has gained the “ability” to fart, which allows to smash certain blocks, and give him a boost in mid-air.

In addition to extra abilities, there are two new characters they pick up as they travel. Fang, a werewolf, can attack with his claws (nice to have another attacker in the group), can climb walls, and can jump. Scorch, a dragon, can “fly” to a limited degree, which is really just five midair jumps. He can also use his wings to glide slowly down to land safely from heights, and he has fireball projectiles.

The concept is basically the same. Your group travels through different time periods. Only 3 characters are in any given level, and all 3 characters must reach the end of a level to complete it. And, once again, you return to Tomator’s ship for a final confrontation. Easy peasy? Not so much. This game is as much a challenge as the last one, well worth the time it takes to complete.

Unfortunately, this one’s not available for download for Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console, but finding this game shouldn’t be any trouble, and shouldn’t cost you too much as long as you don’t demand a factory-sealed copy. A quick eBay search comes up with dozens of hits for multiple systems on both games, most with “Buy It Now” prices under $20, as long as you are okay with “acceptable” condition. Alternatively, you can always search around for an emulator and a ROM for this game. Enjoy!

Niche Game: Body Harvest

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing because they’re something different, something special.

Body Harvest was released in 1998 by DMA Design, the company that later became Rockstar North, the makers of Grand Theft Auto III. This isn’t at all surprising if you play the game as the style is very similar with a wide open world, open-ended game play, a large collection of weapons, and the ability to acquire any vehicle you see. The graphics weren’t terribly impressive, even for the time, which might explain why this awesome game has been overlooked by so many.

The story begins in 2016, and humanity is on the brink of extinction, at war with an insect-like alien race. Every 25 years for the last century aliens have returned to Earth for one day and sealed off an area of the Earth behind an impenetrable shield which prevented any outside help from entering the area. The poor humans outside watch helplessly as the humans within are slaughtered, every single one.

Now, in 2016, the aliens are back again, poised to wipe out the last remnants of the human race. The human race has finally perfected time travel technology, and they’re able to send one soldier back in time to single-handedly take on the alien threat.

First stop, Greece in 1916. Shortly after you arrive, you receive an alert of suspicious alien activity in the area. Hordes of helpless local civilians are being dragged kicking and screaming out of their houses by bloblike aliens which are carrying them towards a bug the size of a tank to have their bodies harvested for unknown reasons. Many other aliens are defending the big “harvester” bug. Your job is to destroy the big bug as soon as possible, the more humans it harvests, the closer the aliens are to reaching their agenda. There’s a meter on the screen that keeps track of casualties. If you let too many people die, game over.

In each time period the vehicles and weapons are at least a semblance of era-appropriate, which gives a nice excuse for increasing the firepower of weapons and quality of vehicles as time goes on. Besides stopping Harvester waves, you also must defeat a major boss at several stages in each year. This will drop a teleport beacon to make transport easier as well as opening a hole in the shield to progress to the next level.

When this game first came out the ability to switch between such a multitude of vehicles had never been seen before. From normal cars, to tanks, helicopters, various boats, airplanes. There’s even an alien UFO. Weapons all have a variety of different stats. Most of the weapons are pretty standard fare, machine guns, shotguns, rifles, all with their strengths and weaknesses. My favorite weapon by far is the sun shield, a mythological weapon stripped from a Greek statue. It reflects and focuses the light of the sun into a powerful weapon. It requires no ammo, can cause damage as far as the eye can see, and makes quick work of even boss characters.

Besides the action component, there is also some degree of puzzle element. From time to time obstacles will block your progress and you must find a way through or around them, such as finding dynamite to blast a path through a rockslide, or to find a rifle to blast an alien sitting on the distantly perched tram car to free it to move. You can move indoors in certain places, sometimes finding people to talk to, or having to find switches to secret passageways inside. These challenges aren’t terribly difficult but they lend some welcome variety to the gameplay.

Most of the game has a reasonable challenge level. The progression of difficulty of the enemies escalates well with the progression of weapons and vehicles. The boss battles are epic struggles, but not impossible. But, alas, I never finished the game. There was a challenge in the 4th world that proved too much for my then-teenage gaming skills. It involved hauling a heavy explosive on the back of slow and unmaneuverable vehicle. I was given ample time to clear the path before driving it, but somehow new aliens ‘ported in and detonated the explosive no matter what I did. I would like to retry it now to see if I can overcome it now.

Getting your hands on this game won’t take much effort. Unfortunately, it is not available for a Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console download. At least not yet. Finding a copy used shouldn’t be difficult at all. A quick eBay search comes up with many results, some of them with “Buy it Now” prices of about $7, so if you have an N64 console, you’re set. If you don’t have the console, you might be able to find an N64 emulator and a ROM for the game.

Especially considering the low price tag buying this game used, if a lover of a good action shoot-’em-up with bug-eyed aliens, you can’t go wrong. Enjoy!