Dungeons of Dredmor (Windows, Mac, and Linux)

The evil lich Dredmor held the world hostage with his host of monsters and magical ability. The wizards of the age, a little drunk and completely tired of Dredmor’s shenanigans, locked him away magically and physically deep beneath the earth. Dredmor, tenacious as he was, wiggled his body and soul until he was able to slip the bonds. The King and his court are certain that he means to take over the world again. He’s sent you, an eager young adventurer, to “prove your worth” by slaying Dredmor. With skill sets like Tourist, Fungal Arts Student, and Tinkersmith uh…. good luck kiddo.

Hop to it, Eyebrows.

History

Dungeons of Dredmor was published and developed by Gaslamp Games and a small team of five people. The main developer, Nicholas Vining, had been working on the game since 2006 and when Gaslamp formed in 2010 things really got in gear. Vining is known in the game’s industry for making something so bad that it inspired Penny Arcade to create the Fruit Fucker 2000 apparently — whatever it was Vining has redeemed himself by making Dredmor. PC Gamer US awarded Dungeons of Dredmor the Indie Game of the Year for 2011.

Dungeons of Dredmor was released on July 13, 2011. It’s competition was Bastion (XBLA), Ms. Splosion Man (XBLA), and Catherine (PS3 and XBox 360).

Experiences.

I’ve been playing Dungeons of Dredmor for three years and I’ve seen Dredmor once — at which point he threw a spell at me that obliterated my face. I cannot think of another game in which I’ve had such trouble. My latest and most successful run was interrupted by a vacation to Diggle Hell in which I got bushwhacked by Vlad Digula. In short, this game is hard. I created skill combinations that made me unable to defeat the first enemy I ran into. And yet, I can’t stop playing. I can’t stop trying to kill Dredmor with weirder and weirder skills. I know I can probably beat him with a martial artist, shield master, archeologist but can I beat him with a perceptive, burgling, Tourist?

For reference, that’s a diggle on the left — look at the cute little guy. That’s Vlad Digula on the right. The jump in difficulty is equivalent to the jump in creepy.

 Gameplay

Dungeons of Dredmor is a dungeon crawling Roguelike. It’s got everything a growing dungeon needs, item-crafting, traps, levers, secrets, side-quests, magical anvils, vending machines, shops, and monsters — a fuckton of monsters. Every floor is randomly generated from randomly generated rooms with random items on the floor and bequeeth to you randomly generated artifacts — items that have additional random stat ups and downs with randomly generated names — oh yeah, and all the rooms have random names. You can even randomly select your skills but I wouldn’t recommend it. Your goal is to get to the bottom floor and kill Dredmor, leveling up along the way, and trying to find good loot. The game is turn based so when you move or act so will everything else, in turn — although it all looks instantaneous.

And you’ll die… a lot. But dying is fun too!

The Gush

I love this games sense of humor. Sometimes monsters taunt with bizarre and funny phrases — I’ve seen screenshots of Vlad Digula remarking that he’ll “be in his bunk.” You can destroy statues of Dredmor in the dungeon and are awarded experience points for engaging in heroic vandalism — or so the narrator booms. There are even skills like Totally Not Drizzt — for all you Forgotten Realms fans.

Seriously, there are a lot of skills.

I love how crafting tools have a bunch of incidental crafting recipes that aren’t related to their primary use. It’s super cool that I can use my ingot press to make grilled cheese sandwiches and omelets.

I really like the design of all the different dungeon levels. Each floor of the dungeon is like an entire dungeon from another series. There’s the fungus floor, the ship floor, the sewer floor, the space ship floor, IT’S GREAT!

The monster design is bizarre and interesting and they don’t pallet swap too many monsters. I mean, I’m totally comfortable fighting a mustache spirit on one floor and then a grandfather mustache 3 floors down because that’s hilarious. The funniest monsters are the ones they reuse.

And every floor has a new kind of diggle who wants to kill you.

The Kvetch

The game is meant to be played on a meticulous level that really breaks the flow. Don’t want to step on a trap? Then you’d best take your steps really slowly unless you’ve got skills that increase your trap spotting range. But this is all in line with it’s Rogue roots.

It’s really easy to get screwed really fast. Open up the wrong door, take the wrong path, or walk on the wrong satanic displacement glyph and your adventure will be over faster than you can say Diggle. This game is designed to kill your character and it’s difficult to get it not to.

They have entire rooms devoted to it — but but but… loot!

The music is this sort of 16 bit synth stuff and I kind of like it although I’d rather listen to my own music or a podcast in the background as I play.

The Verdict

This game is a heckuva deal. For 5 dollars, and three pieces of DLC — total cost being 11 dollars. This game is definitely worth a look if any of the above aspects seemed interesting to you. This game is a solid and difficult adventure that will test your skills and ingenuity. The systems have a lot of depth. Dungeons of Dredmor will have you laughing through the fury.

The Bard’s Tale (2004 Release for PS2, Xbox, PC, Mac, Blackberry Playbook, Android, Linux, and Ouya)

And I think this game is the most widely available title released since Tetris.

A long time ago in that fantasy land that’s pretty accurate to actual legends and tales while still being campy and hilarious — you know the one– there lived a young boy who was tired of being hungry. He learned that travelers were paid just to sing songs at the local tavern. He dreamed of doing that someday. Having learned a magical tune that summoned a rat he stole a musical instrument and headed for the hills. He then traveled from town to town eliminating rat infestations he created with his rat summoning tune. You play as the sarcastic, pragmatic, sardonic, insufferable, kleptomaniacal, and rather roguishly handsome Bard as he uses his magical tunes and power of summoning to free a capture enchantress –seems pretty straight forward, what could possibly go wrong?

Everything probably.

History

The Bard’s Tale is a game with a pedigree that goes back to the barely graphical text adventures of the 80s. The classic games didn’t actually feature the Bard as a playable character. The stories were the stories the Bard was telling to his audience. The final game in the Bard’s Tale trilogy was released in 1991. It came as a mild surprise to people when a new Bard’s Tale game was announced to be released in 2004 — I just imagine the conversation that lead to the game’s creation. At InXile headquarters two old nerds are chatting. “Do you remember those Bard Tales games?” one game dev asks. The other looks to him and says, “Yeah. But we never did figure out what the Bard’s story was, like where he came from.” Then I imagine they both start shouting in unison like a crescendo broken only by them running to their computers, getting to work, frothing at the mouth, and shouting “Make it! Print it!” repeatedly.

The class games were real groundbreaking stuff. It had color and everything.

It was 1985 and this was state of the fucking art.

The game is a lot like Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance and that would probably be because they both run on the same engine — which seems to happen a lot with fantasy games. One fantasy game comes out with a good engine and the other developers all jump on it.

The Bard’s Tale was released October 24th, 2004. It’s competition was The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (PS2, XBox, and Gameboy advanced), Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (Gamecube), and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2).

Experiences

I can’t think of the last time I had as much fun or laughed as hard when I was playing a game. The Banter between the Narrator and The Bard is comedy gold — especially when it’s ripping on videogame tropes. It was one of the games I played where I was having so much fun I didn’t care if I found all the loot. I stopped worrying about what I had missed or what would have happened if I had acted differently. It was one of the first games where I relaxed and had a good time.

Gameplay

In the game you control the Bard as he travels and completes various quests — and argues with the narrator. The signature system of the game is the snarky vs. straight dialogue system. In conversation the game will prompt the player to make the Bard respond with a sarcastic snarky quip or to play it straight. It might seem worthwhile to spend the whole game being honest and at least a little polite but that’s not the case. It’s very important to learn when the Bard can throw his weight around or whether he should just keep his mouth relatively shut — besides, being snarky is much more fun anyway!

It’s always tempting which to choose just to see what The Bard will say.

The Bard isn’t the greatest of fighters or thinkers. Thankfully, if he upgrades his instrument, he can employ various allies to help him in and out of combat. Some summoned minions help in combat like the Mercenary who can dish out immense amounts of damage with his axe or the Witch who only ever learned healing spells. Some minions help in other situations like the elderly Explorer who can disarm traps, pick up loot, and find secret passages –if you’re going dungeon delving this guy is a necessity– or the rat who can earn you extra coin by frightening tavern keepers or frighten other enemies in combat. The Bard’s adventures will take him far and wide across the countryside so it’s important to mix up his minions to match the situation.

The Gush

The voice acting cast in this is really good. The Bard is voiced by Cary Elwes– though you might know him better as Wesley from the Princess Bride– and the Narrator is voiced by Tony Jay — though you might know him better as the Claude Frollo from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Oh yeah, and all the dialogue from the lowliest NPC is great.

A game about bard’s has got to have music! And music the Bard’s Tale has. Every tavern features a new song for the Bard to perform or listen to. Every minion has a different tune that The Bard plays on instruments from the lute to the Shadow Axe — minions can even be upgraded by finding more music for their song.

The Bard’s only loyalties are to food, coin, and cleavage — not necessarily in that order– and I love that about him. Saving the world is just a means to the end of getting into the Enchantress’ pants — well it is if you’re snarky. To him, it’s not about saving the world and I’m able to connect to the character more because he doesn’t have a lofty quest.

Even the game advertisements showcased this perfectly.

Something small but I really liked how the enemies dropped sellable loot instead of money. What Trow runs around with a coinpurse? None of them. But someone would pay some silver for a Viking’s sword.

The Kvetch

The Minions actually have personality, in some situations they can offer important advice and that’s good. What’s not good is listening to the crone wail, “Be healed!” Or hearing the Mercenary talk about how much The Bard is gonna owe him for this one for the thousandth time.

That being said, they at least all look awesome.

The combat in this game is really clunky. Thankfully the minions do most of the fighting for you but in the early sections of the game The Bard will have to do the fighting himself. So it creates a weird downward difficulty curve where the game starts off more difficult that it ends… and that’s not how difficulty curves are supposed to work.

The game isn’t really great to look at. I liked the character designs but the background designs were usually stock and uninteresting.

The Verdict

This game is awesome. It’s for anyone who’s played Baldur’s Gate, Dragon Age, Icewind Dale, and Planescape Torment and needs to take a break and have a laugh. The combats a little clunky but it couldn’t kill my good mood. This is a marvelous title and if you buy it on Steam then you get the original Bard’s Tale games for free if you feel like pulling your hair out through he laughs.

Next Week: Dungeon’s of Dredmor.

Zoe’s (MMO)RPG Corner: TERA: Rising

TERA, which stands for “The Exiled Realm of Arboria”, is a free to play third-person fantasy MMORPG set in the magical world of – okay, who am I kidding, this entire blog post is just going to be a rant about horrible, terrible armor design and if you don’t want to deal with this, just stop reading now.

History and Development

I’m going to pretend that I’m a professional and that I want to talk about other things so I’m going to go through all the sections here.  TERA was developed by Bluehole Studio out of South Korea. There’s not a whole lot of info on the development process – Wikipedia is really failing me today – but I’m honestly just going to assume that it’s like all those other Korean MMOs and it just sort of happened for money.

Further research tells me that TERA uses the “Unreal Engine 3” which apparently allowed developers a lot of freedom in the creation of the game and stopped some issues they were having in 2007 development about productivity.  They were using an early, slightly buggy version of the engine so they struggled with that side of game development.  At the time of its release in 2011, the graphics were considered to be spectacular and they still hold up pretty okay.  The quality of the graphics are not my complaint with this game visually.

Conceptual work on the game came from high fantasy (World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings were mentioned by name) and also from Greek and Roman mythology.  Actually, now that I think about it, the Greco-Roman thing is really clear which is kind of cool to see that woven into the story.

You see it, right?

I was pretty…reticent to play this game.  This actually marks the first game I picked up specifically to play for this blog and I did so because this game is massive.  Everyone  knows TERA, whether they like it or not.  I’d never played it. A few years ago when I was looking for a new game, I glanced at it in sort of an “Oh, maybe that’d be nice” way but research showed me that I would honestly just be kind of ticked off about it.

But then here I was two years later downloading TERA.

It’s not an exciting story. It’s a mostly ticked off story.

Character Creation

Oh Lady Jesus on her throne, character creation.

Okay, so you have a lot of customization in TERA.  There are seven races including: demons, more demons, giant round metallic dudes, elves, humans, fat dogs, and bunny girls. Insert a deep sigh of pain from the gamer feminist at this point because the Elins, the animal girls, cause me deep physical pain.

Can anyone guess why? It starts with “P” and ends with “edophelia”.

Then you have your eight to nine classes: Archer, Berserker, Lancer, Mystic, Priest, Slayer, Sorcerer, and Warrior, plus Reaper if you play an Elin and have a high level character already, and I guess they just added a Gunner class but I haven’t researched that.  Your class determines the type of armor you wear (your race/gender determines how it looks) and what weapon you use.  Each class has one type of weapon.

Physically it’s not bad.  It’s a little basic and there are some sliders I would rather do without (like the “how much does my character hold their mouth slightly open like a porn star” slider, I’m not a fan of that one) and the faces pretty much stay close to the generic no matter how much you drag them around.  It’s fun though.  I had some fun making characters like “Tilda Swinton Elf” and “Ticked Off Five-Year-Old” so that was kind of a good time.

Story

I honestly don’t know.

Okay, I sort of know.  I haven’t looked it up specifically because I want to write my impressions.  What I have is: there is a big god and he is an asshole and trying to frak shit up so stop him. There’s a lot of back story on the Gods and the world before the start of the game.  There was a big war between the good guys and the bad guys and some of the bad guys joined the good guys and now there are seven good races and I guess a bunch of assholes.  There’s a big government organization that keeps everyone sort of in line and also just spews quests at you.

The reason I have trouble figuring out the story line is that it’s all done through this really large blocks of text and sometimes it’s a little hard to follow what’s going on all the time. I will admit to just casually clicking through a lot of it because I coudn’t be bothered to care about why they were sending me off to kill ten tree monsters or lizards or whatever. I tried to read the main quest more but when every quest is introduced with “Oh my gosh, here’s a big write-up on my problem” but boils down to “kill some shit” I stop caring.

Gameplay

TERA is the most stereotypical MMO ever. Like, it’s more MMO than World of Warcraft is.  It’s everything you think of when someone says “MMO”. There are like, three gameplay things that are interesting, but lets go through the ones that are not first.

Quests. Kill X number of Y creature and come back for a reward.  That’s like, literally all it is. Over and over again.  Kill, XP, get more quests.  At least you don’t run out of quests so that’s nice.  Very little unsupervised level grinding, and I’ve never had a time with no story quest, even if I wasn’t high enough level to do it yet.

Combat’s not half bad, but it’s a little stale. There’s this cool dodging mechanic that can actually be a lot of fun if you do it right, but I am apparently bad at it.  Like, sometimes enemies telegraph their attacks but sometimes they don’t and it can be a little frustrating to be like “Are you gonna hit me or nah?” and then have a monster punch you right in the mouth.

Get wrecked.

Because I chose to play murder town characters (tanks, mostly, but at least heavy armor) I chose the Beserker which fits my play style pretty well.  She’s slow as shit, don’t get me wrong, but when she hits, she hits hard.  Sometimes it’s a pain to get my defenses up in time and I do get my ass handed to me on occasion, but it’s honestly kind of fun.  I tried sorcerer too and I’m…not as good at that.  But that’s always been my personal curse with mages so I’m not going to say it reflects on the game.

The Good

Combat and mechanics aren’t bad, though they’re a little unremarkable.  Most of the good is a little unremarkable.  There’s a lot of solid shit, sure, but on the other hand, there’s nothing I want to write home about. When I talk about TERA, I’m certainly not going to be talking about mediocre story and uninspired gameplay.

The design has a lot of potential.  It’s got a unique style and gorgeous vistas that strech out over the whole game. It feels big.  The vast majority of the monster designs are great (maybe a little cluttered for my taste, but it’s got something going on).

I mean, look how much detail they put into this guy here.

It’s a real pity they squander this later.

The Bad

Story mostly.  I mean, I want to care about the story, I really do.  I tried and I can sort of keep up with it, but it’s iffy.  It really does boil down to “kill some evil cultist dudes, go to the next town, kill some more dudes.”  There are a couple of places where it clearly tries to break away from it and there’s some interesting betrayal stuff, but it really does just boil down to the same basic thing over and over again.

Some of the animation is a little weird.  Some of the races run funny and you’re just like “Can we talk about your form here? I feel like you’d cover more ground if you didn’t flap your arms around like that all the time.”

The Ugly

LET’S TALK ARMOR.

This is what I really wanted to get to.  TERA has what I am going to call literally the worst female armor design of any game I have ever seen.  Like, individual sets from other games might be bad (lookin’ at you here Guild Wars 2) but every single goddamn piece of armor I pick up in TERA is absolutely terrible. I feel like the rest of this review should just be pictures of female armor interspersed with pictures of the Daily Show’s John Stewart making horrible faces but I’ll try to be a little more in depth about the horror here.

Not one to do things by halves, I chose to play a Castanic, a race of demon people with an aversion to clothing in general.  And no, do not tell me I can “just play something else”, their lore and appearance is cool and I should never judge something on how good it can be but always on its low points.

Here are some examples of armor my Castanic Beserker (that’s a heavy armor class, mind you) has picked up.

Why?

Who did this?

I hope they’ve been fired.

Okay, if you don’t understand what’s wrong here, I can’t help you.

These are terrible and I honestly have nothing more to say than “Who allowed this to happen?”  Like, why do we live in a world where this is a thing? (That question is rhetorical, I am a 23-year-old feminist, I know why) It’s so hard to focus on the game when I’m into this utter nonsense.   I don’t buy the argument “but the men don’t wear much either” because like, at least they get pants.  I clearly don’t get pants.  I don’t think my character has had pants once since character creation.  She has an axe that’s bigger than she is, but no, she doesn’t need any goddamn pants to go with it, apparently. It’s almost worse with the Elin who look like little girls and wear very little clothing as well or like, cutesie but sexy clothing. Very gross.

From here…?

Here’s the weird thing. I kind of enjoy this game. Oh, not like, it’s good.  It’s the potato chip of the gaming world. You just do it.  It’s mindless and I don’t really give a shit about any of it, but then I look back and I’m level 20 or whatever. Like, don’t play this game. I’m not going to ever encourage anyone to play this game. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just boring as hell.  There are better ones out there that do the same thing and keep your interest and don’t sexualize little girls.

 

Honestly, it reminds me most of WildStar, which is going free-to-play in the fall of 2015 so like…play that instead.

Next Month: Mass Effect! You can fight like a Krogan and run like a leopard but you’ll never be better than Commander Shepard.

Poker Night at the Inventory and Trusting the Designers (Windows and Mac)

Deep in the bowels of the city there’s a secret speakeasy, The Inventory. It was established in 1919 in anticipation of the passing of American Prohibition. The owners of the establishment had also heard that the 18th Amendment was going to outlaw games and amusements, something they would not stand for– as proprietors of a games and amusement company. The Inventory served game enthusiasts and creators for years and began to cater to game characters as well. They remained hidden for 90 years and they’re still open for business, offering games, gambling, and liquor to those who find their establishment. You are a gambler of some renown who has come to The Inventory to make some scratch playing some high stakes Texas Hold ‘Em.

And down we go via secret street elevator. You can even see Sam in the background.

History

Poker Night at the Inventory was born of the desire to create a sequel to Telltale’s Texas Hold ‘Em, that game’s focus on banter, and a conversation between Telltale employees about “what videogame characters do when they’re not ‘on the clock int he games we play.” Telltale already had the license to Strong Bad and Sam and Max because of their work on the modern Sam and Max installments and Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People. They then focused on acquiring a Team Fortress 2 character as the designer’s themselves enjoyed the game immensely. It was these talks with Valve that created a healthy relationship between them later on.

Poker Night at the Inventory was released on November 22nd, 2010. It’s competition was Super Meat Boy (PC), Call of Duty Black Ops (PC, Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii), and Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii).

Gameplay

Texas Hold ‘Em is one of the most popular and simple iterations of Poker. At the beginning of each round each player is dealt two cards face down. These cards belong to them and only they can use them to build a five card hand– the game automatically chooses the best hand your cards can make. There’s a round of betting. Three cards are dealt face up, these cards may be utilized by anyone to build a their hand. There’s a round of betting. A fourth card is dealt. Another round of betting. The final card is dealt followed by more betting. Then everyone reveals their cards and the most statistically unlikely hand is declared the most superior.

Ranked from most rare to least.

The real draw of the game is learning the tells of the other players. They don’t have perfect poker faces, they let go of little bits of information regarding the quality of their hands all the time. It’s up to the player to figure out what action correlates to what hand state. For example, if the Heavy slams his fist on the table he’s got bad cards. It’s most difficult to learn the tells of the cartoonish characters Max and Strong Bad but they do have them and I think they’re pretty funny.

The other gamblers at the table are Strong Bad from Homestarrunner.com, Max from the Sam and Max adventure game duo, The Heavy from TF2, and Tycho from Penny arcade and they act just like you’d imagine them to. Every so often one of the characters will offer collateral instead of money. Defeating them will earn the player an in game trophy and out of game loot– as in special items in other games, not a pile of jewels or something.

Such as Strong Bad’s one-of-a-kind special Dangeresque prop glasses.

Experiences

The enjoyment a player derives from this game is directly related to how much they trust the designers. I told someone that I was playing this game and they said that it didn’t matter, that the game was rigged, and that the AI could just count cards whenever they wanted. I think that’s an unjust estimation. The big difference between me and my friend here is that I trust the designers not to allow the game to work that way and that he didn’t.

If the designer loses the player’s trust then there’s no way for the player to have fun. That being said, I saw time and again how the characters were loyal to their character– The Heavy or Max plays just about exactly as you’d expect him to. The game earned my trust by sticking to its rules. None of the players ever present a tell in an attempt to deceive– sometimes a character might perform the tell for a bad opening hand but turn it around by the end.

The Gush

The Banter is really where this game shines. I think it’s really funny and it doesn’t present the same conversations too often. Some of it’s way out there and really deep into the mythos of each of the characters but some of it’s based on something as simple as the character’s appearance.

There’s also something delightfully silly about someone scooping up poker chips with a shovel.

All of the characters have character and I really like that. It comes through in the repeated attitudes. Strong Bad dislikes Tycho and will often insult him. The Heavy considers Strong Bad to be a little Heavy. I hadn’t even heard of Sam and Max before this game and it’s Max’s playing… style that got me interested in them.

I mean, the resemblance is uncanny.

A deck of playing cards goes for anything between 2 and 20 dollars. At 5 dollars, Poker Night at the Inventory measures up pretty well to the cost of a deck and it throws in the experience of hanging out with a bunch of silly characters to sweeten the pot.

The Kvetch

Eventually every mine runs dry. It takes a long time but eventually you’ve heard everything they’ve had to say. I pick it up every once and awhile but I’m not sure if I’m hearing something new or if I forgot I had heard it.

The aesthetics can get a little dry after a long time. It’s always the same guys, table, and Inventory every game. There’s no way to change it up.

The Verdict

 I’m fond of poker and I’m fond of videogames. This game is like the peanut butter cup of these two ideas, it’s goddam delicious. This isn’t a game that brings on long play sessions it’s more of touch and go and come back to experience. It’s definitely worth the 5 dollar value if you purchase it on Steam. I’d say you’d enjoy the game if you’re familiar with at least half of the characters and enjoy poker.

Next Week: The Bard’s Tale

Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor (PC)

This game is a little confusing because it’s got two introductory cutscenes. The first of which depicts strange alien creatures washing up on a beach’s shore. They argue briefly and then part ways. When the player begins the game the cutscene depicts a scavenger hunt that’s going to determine who’s the rightful lord of the province of Harmondale — And you thought women distributing swords was a poor form of governmental selection. You’re playing a group of contestants enrolled in the scavenger contest because they’ve yet to realize what a pain in the ass leadership is — don’t worry about the beach people, the game will get back to them in about 20 hours.

History

This game was the adventure game tie-in to Heroes of Might and Magic III or it’s more likely that it’s the other way around considering that the Might and Magic series has been running way longer than the Heroes series. Where the Heroes series was just hitting it’s stride the Might and Magic series was just beginning its decline — so sayeth the fan base. Blood and Honor uses most of the monster designs from the Heroes series but sometimes there are inconsistencies that are a little baffling.

A comparison of goblins between Heroes (on the left) and Blood and honor (On the right). I’m not sure if there’s a lore inconsistency or if there’s a breed of sub-goblin or something.

Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor was released on May 1st 1999– a month after Heroes III. It’s competition was Ape Escape (PS1), Pokemon Stadium 2 (N64), and Street Fighter III: Third Strike (Arcades).

Experiences

Playing this game for the first time was like trying to bust down a brick wall like I was the cool-aid man but instead of the cool-aid man I’m just myself who is also naked. In short, it was an unpleasant experience that took a long time of getting used to but felt really rewarding when I finally succeeded. I finally started completing quests and figuring out how the game worked and it only took minimal looking at walkthroughs. I learned that I couldn’t just make a party of fighters and punch my way through the game. I tried again with a balanced party and it was now like I had clothes and some football pads while I threw myself against this wall.

Gameplay

You play as a four headed hydra made up of an adventuring party– which is apparently composed of some sort of hive-mind or consensus because they do what you say and never disagree on anything. They go everywhere in lock step and never split the party, these guys and gals all lock their arms wherever they go.

There are nine classes that mix and match between the magic of self (Body, mind, and spirit), arcane magic (earth, wind, water, and fire), thief skills, and combat skills. As usual, they can each make up for their weaknesses in a certain way, sorcerers can use telekinesis on trapped chests or knights can just eat trap damage with their faces. Each class can learn a series of skills but certain classes can reach levels of a skill that others cannot i.e. only knights can become Grand Masters of Full Plate and only Druids can become Grand Masters of Alchemy.

Of course there are rats too. Lots of rats.

The rest of the game is pretty simple. You walk around, travel, find quests, and complete them. That’s really all there is to the game. There are some ancient lost treasures to plunder and artifacts to find but the only reward is in itself.

The Gush

The sound design is lovely. The little noise that the game makes whenever I pick up some loot fills me with a feeling of glee. In a game where money and the acquisition thereof is vital it’s important to make it feel good.

There comes a point in the game where a well built party is unstoppable. Where me and the gang can fly around a battlefield, nearly immune to damage, showering the warriors below with magical barrages and laser weaponry — did I mention this game has goddam lasers? Well, it does… about 30-40 hours in.

Exploring is actually really fun and rewarding in this game. There are all sorts of lost treasures, characters, contests, and locations hidden around each and every map. You never know what you’ll find but it’s certain to be pretty cool at the very least.

For 1999 the visuals present a solid looking 3-D environment. I was never blown but that’s just a result of the times.

The Kvetch

I couldn’t find who did the music for this game but it couldn’t have been the guy who composed the Heroes soundtrack because the music in this game is garbage. It’s all very fantasy, with violins and chanting everywhere, but every area has music that repeats every 2 minutes or so. Sometimes it’s on point but it’s mostly boring.

Death can create a bizarre lock on the player. Dying empties the players treasury, breaks some of their possessions– usually the important stuff like armor, and drops them back at Harmondale. It’s possible, especially at early levels, to have so much broken gear that it’s nearly impossible to keep the game going. The only saving grace is that time passes in game, aging your characters, but also respawning enemies to grind for loot and XP. It’s like a saving grace, if grace were as frustrating as solving a rubix cube.

The characters in your party talk all the time. They shout something every time they get hit. I want nothing more than to hear, “Was that supposed to hurt?” every second. It’s great. Most of the voice actors have really grating voices. Thankfully each voice isn’t matched to a character portrait so it’s possible to mix and match but I shouldn’t have to dodge the voices that are annoying.

The early levels in this game are such a grind. Just for kicks I used a character editor to raise all my character’s stats to 300 and they were still losing an 8th of their health getting attacked my living trees. It’s basically all about gear and the character’s stats don’t really matter a lot and that’s something that’s rubbed me the wrong way about DnD for a long time. I don’t want to feel like a pile of loot and gear, I want to feel like I HAVE gear that helps me do things.

The only choice with any impact in the game is choosing between godly virtue and despicable malevolence. This impacts the ending and what promotions characters can get but there’s no real character impact from the decision. If you join the bad guys then you’re evil now and that’s all there is to it. There’s no deeper meaning to either decision really .

Oh… no… my portraits are all red and black. I’m evil now, better go be evil and do mean stuff like steal things and cast the Armageddon spell.

The Verdict

Playing this game is like revenge against a bully. There’s a sickening sweetness, a lot of maniacal laughter, and a lot of shit talking something that’s down and out. But it also involves getting pushed around until you’ve had enough and a lot of frustration. The reward for mastering this game is the very act of having mastered it. The sense of character is non-existent, the plot’s weak but funny, and the lore of the game is so deep and byzantine that it holds relevance only for those deeply familiar with the series.

Next Week: Poker Night at the Inventory