Pix's Origin Adventures

Unless there are more out there that I haven’t found yet, I think this in the penultimate demo that I’ve actually got the hardware to play at the moment. I got this one from Echo Sector.

It consists of the entire first level of the game, and as such I don’t have a huge amount to say about it since I’ve blogged through it once already. I’m not entirely convinced that this wasn’t made slightly easier as I got the best battery in the game early on making me very safe from most of the guards after that point. I can’t pretend to know the game well enough to know without checking though. In fact being dropped straight into it, I took a little while to get used to the controls again and I couldn’t even survive the first 5 seconds until I’d had 4 or 5 stabs at it.

After the teething troubles, I was soon blasting my way through the level blowing everything in sight up on the way (albeit saving every few steps). The levels in No Regret were truly massive, not to mention challenging giving this demo a huge slice of gameplay. I was having too much fun to be paying much attention to the clock but I probably took an hour+ to get through to the end.

There isn’t much reason to play this if you own the full game but if you aren’t convinced it’s worth your $6 on GOG, I’d fully recommend downloading this and playing through it. If you still aren’t convinced after that, then play it again.

As far as hardware goes, I bought myself a complete Pentium II system today for the grand sum of £10 off Ebay. It should be spot on for my joint Windows 98/DOS PC but I’ve got to go and pick it up which is a bit of drag as it’s further away than I would have liked. At least it’s a nice area so I can make a day trip out of it. It’s surprisingly difficult to find PC’s of that sort of age around here with only a handful to choose from. I much preferred to buy this one with it not being ex-office.

It was fun trying to find out what the specs were with a seller who in his own words “only did Apple Macs”. He was selling it on behalf of a friend and figuring out which type of AGP it had on the motherboard was especially challenging. My Voodoo 3 needs the original 3.3V slot to work correctly so it was crucial it wasn’t AGP2. Luckily I managed to track down the motherboard model from a serial number bareley visible on one of the photos he sent through. I still don’t know what speed of Pentium II it is but anything will do.

Once I’ve got the PC, the next question will be whether any of the cards I’m planning to slot into it will still work or not. I’m also wondering if I still have an MPEG2 decoder card kicking around in the parents loft somewhere. Even if I have finding it could be tricky. My parent’s loft is like some sort of Aladdin’s cave of junk. Every time I go in there looking for anything I completely fail to find it but discover something else instead.

I get to the core with about half my 15 minutes still left. I just have to walk up to it and use it to stop the countdown. It kind of looked like a giant door to me so I had thought for a while I needed to open it up and do something inside which threw me for a bit.

I’m told the chairman is trying to escape from the base on a shuttle and I’m to go and intercept him next. I should have figured this couldn’t be a 15 minute mission so I have to carrying on working my way down but I can at least take my time about it.

Near the entrance to the level below I find another hidden grate which gets me into a really long shaft.

Down the end there is a floor grate which I can blow up to enter a hidden area with a few goodies. In the end I have to turn around from this area and go back to the start though as I can’t find an exit from it.

I enter an office area which is highly radioactive – not somewhere you would really want to be working. I’m surprised all the staff haven’t grown extra limbs or something.

These last two levels are full of little optional routes. I head down one of these and get a warning on my way back about two incoming cryobots. Shepherd reroutes a telepad for me so I can turn round and bypass them.

This works out ok and I shortly after get to the a tram door which marks the end of the level although I haven’t seen any sign of the chairman yet.

In the between mission cutscene, the chairman is ordered to remain on the moon until the problem is solved. He isn’t pleased about this but he looks to have some sort of fancy combat suit to use in just such a contingency. I feel a boss fight coming on.

Shepherd sends me off to blow up the reactor which will take the moon base with it.

Right from the start this mission is full of those elite guards in the silly suits I’ve been seeing in the cutscenes. Every one of these has top grade weaponry and I can’t afford to take too many hits. I go through energy cubes and medikits very quickly on this level.

We’ve got some slightly new graphics on this level and again there are alternative routes through it.

With no way to tell which way is best I pick a route and it works out ok as I end up at the reactor.

I blow this up with a detpac – I’ve now got just 5 minutes to get out of here.

I take the teleport out and Denning is straight back with another message.

Something big is two rooms North of me and I have to go through it. I’m still operating within a time limit as well so I’d better be quick about it.

I more or less ignore the enemies in the next two rooms and just make a dash for it. When I enter the boss fight room, the door shuts behind me.

It may be a big suit but I take it out in absolutely no time. This is a really, really easy boss fight. I just roll in and out a few times,fire off my biggest gun as quick as I can and hes down in about 3 seconds.

Killing the boss opens up a teleport at the back of the room.

I’ve still not got out of here yet and I’m out of energy cubes. I don’t have to hold back on ammo now though and play this last section just blasting away with the grenade launcher.

The final exit is guarded by some shielded guns. I have to time my run through carefully and that gets me to the tram and the final cutscene.

The ending is shorter than I might have expected although I have to say that a lot of video was packed onto this games single CD. The base blows up, Ely congratulates me but says there is still work to do thereby setting up a sequel and the news reports the chairmans death.

This hasn’t been a bad game but I’ve had enough of this formula now and wouldn’t want to have to play a Crusader 3 without major changes being made. I suppose a new sequel in full 3D could work well if the series were ever revived but that is never going to happen. At the time both Crusader games were very well received by the gaming press so its curious that I’ve not been quite as keen on them. I think the problem stems from the fact that they had a huge novelty value with all the ways you could kill people and blow things up but these days we’ve seen it all before and in full 3D.

That finishes up 1996 and the DOS era – just 3 games left. 1997 was the year Ultima Online was released. This isn’t a game I’ll be playing since its pretty much dead now and apart from anything else it has no end anyway. I was always interested in the story elements of Ultima and this sort of online version never had any appeal to me. It was arguably a little too close to real life to be entertaining in my eyes and the idea of spending days grinding stats is not what I’d call fun either. I remember ebay auctions for UO accounts selling for thousands back at this time to people with too much money who wanted to avoid this groundwork. Whatever I think about it, the game was genre defining, massively popular, clearly made a lot of money and ultimately killed off Origin as they became a company dedicated to a single product. Like most Origin games produced under EA, UO was also full of bugs on first release which led to huge problems as Origin attempted to fix these. Other games like Privateer 3, Bioforge 2 and Crusader 3 ended up getting cancelled and I gather one of the main reasons for the delay with Ultima 9 itself was caused by the same thing when all the staff were pulled off to work on UO instead. U9 (the only full game Origin released after UO) ended up being all but remade, rushed to release before it was ready and received more criticism for its bugs than any other game I’ve encountered before or since. Richard Garriot left Origin shortly after this debacle and Origin effectively ceased to exist at this point although I gather UO expansions are still being made (but not marketed under the Origin logo).

I look at a company like Lucasarts these days and can’t help but think that we may be better off that the brand died off when it did. Some of their ex-employees still know how to make a decent game but Lucasarts themselves seem to do little more than churn out never ending Star Wars titles. Their last attempt at an adventure game (Escape From Monkey Island) was so awful that I’d be happier if they never made another one. This is a far cry from their glory days when they turned out one classic after another and clearly had a very different attitude to the quality required in one of their games. I would dearly like to have played some of the Origin games that got cancelled but at least the company went out on a relative high. Ultima 9 might not have been the best ending for one of the founding giants of the games industry but it could have been a lot worse.

I’ve still not got there yet though….

Next: Wing Commander Prophecy

Ely tells me that there is a heavily guarded area coming up and I can bypass it by using a secret door to the North with the keycode he gives me.

The secret passage is so secret I can’t find it so I just go into the next area – its not really much better guarded than anywhere else.

I’m still having to keep my eyes open for hidden switches like these two above where I have to blow stuff up to be able to see them at all.

When I get the next lift Ely tells me I only have a few minutes left to activate the guns.

He’s not kidding about the time limit and before I get there he gets attacked by Enforcers and I lose the game. Thankfully I saved the moment I started the floor – you could easily get into an unwinnable position here if you just use quicksave.

I have to quickly activate this bridge then run over and use the machine at the other side. This bridge is seriously well guarded – the time limit is tight also. I have to ignore most of the defenses and just go for it.

I go for it a bit too much on my first attempt – I press the switch but get gunned down straight after.

I get an FMV with the ship being shot down.

Ely is a lot more relaxed now and sends me off to get the tram back.

The end level cutscene shows the director being dragged off by the chairmans guards for her constant failure. He starts the self destruct sequence for the base which is a bit extreme for getting rid of 3 rebels. This level has definitely been the most difficult in either Crusader so far and took me quite a while to get through. Quicksave is essential in this game and I’m using it constantly. Whilst I definitely am better at playing this than I was at first, you do get into situations where your bullets just don’t hit for some reason, or it takes longer than normal to kill an enemy and pure luck is a major factor in some of the battles.

I don’t get to return to base in the meanwhile but am ordered to go and stop the countdown.

I only have 15 minutes to complete this mission which means it must be a bit shorter than all the others I’ve played but I’ll have to be careful not to waste time. I need to get to the computer core behind the door here. I maybe get halfway through the level – I’m certainly about halfway through my time – I’ve been careful not to mess around and replay any bits where I’m losing time so I’m hoping the 15 minute time limit won’t be a problem.

In what I thought at the time was an optional area, I find a new gun + a data pick.

The data pick allows me to get through a locked door – it seems to be a one use item so in effect its just a key. If there was another way through this door I don’t know what it was.

I get to the next level and Denning tells me I have a choice of routes. One involves rolling under some floating mines and the other takes me through a highly radioactive area. I’m supposed to go under the mines as far as I can tell.

I do this but get to a dead end – I’m sure there is some way through but I don’t find it and head South instead.

After I take this route Denning tells me where to get a radiation shield. It’s probably worth coming this way just to get it.

It’s just stashed in a footlocker to the West. Getting through the radioactive area is no big deal actually. I have to shoot through some barrels but its straightforward otherwise.

I’m having to jump up and over things more often in this game than Crusader 1. Here I have to get the conveyor belt up and running to deliver a few crates , then use them to climb over the railing and get to the keycard and lever.

The habit of hiding stuff behind crates could get annoying but so far its not been a problem – if I can’t get a door open I just blow everything up.

I’m getting to the prisons now and free a load of employees who don’t seem that grateful.

In the end I find our two prisoners. Torch isn’t here but my old pal Colonel Ely is + a scientist.

They are stuck behind a forcefield and I can’t get to them.

Denning powers up a telepad by them to get them out and I have to make my own way to the nearest tram. Why he couldn’t just power this up without me having to fight my way here I have no idea.

I get the usual cutscene at this point. The chairman is not impressed with how things are going and is sending for a squadron of Enforcers. The director blames him for interfering in the first place.

I get to meet one of the prisoners I just rescued at the base although her name escapes me for now. She was working on alternative energy sources and apparently got somewhere but her research was stolen.

I get a joint briefing from the Colonel + Shepherd now. The security up here is looking for us and we want to distract them by stopping the mining operation. I have to go and blow up a refining machine in the mines.

So it’s back to a mining style level again with similar graphics to the last mining level.

I’m also being guided by Torch again who has shown up unharmed after all.

I find myself one of those nifty triple rocket launcher guns that proved so useful in Crusader 1. I have to kill load of bots to get it but its worth the effort.

Torch tells me to blow the floor away to get to the next level. I use a det pack on it, then walking on it collapses the tiles and I fall to the level below.

I make my way to the mining machine without any big drama. Torch tells me to use a fusion pack on the conveyors. I do this but the conveyors don’t move. I have to jump on them myself then run off at the last minute before I fall in along with the explosives. This gives me two minutes to get off the level before it goes bang.

I escape in time, and the news reports the further difficulties with the mining operation.

A fusion battery is waiting for me back at the base. This will help no end as my power meter now goes all the way up to 100%.

We have intercepted a message from the director and she is planning to introduce a toxin into the air systems here at the base to kill us off. There are three possible sources so I get sent to one, Shepherd and Ely to 2, and Denning gets one on his own despite the fact that he’s about to keel over at any moment.

This level is a bit more office like.

I run into a sliding floor trap – I’m stuck in the area with a slowly moving floor revealing a big hole under me. Fortunately I just have to shoot a wall switch to remove the force field holding me in here.

There is a semi-secret area which I have to get to by using the burning temperature of paper as the code. This is actually different depending on what sort of paper as you would expect + it doesn’t tell me whether to use Celsius or Fahrenheit but this is a reference to the book Fahrenheit 451 so 451 gets me in.

There is a new type of bot in here with a freezing gun. I can control this one through the screen but there is no one in the room outside left to kill. I’ll be fighting a few of these from here on out.

There is also a Graviton shield which combined with my fusion battery means I’m well set up for the coming missions.

I keep finding new guns although I confess I usually stick to the machine gun and the super shotgun as every thing else tends to either use energy up or burn/freeze my victims leaving me with no ammo to pick up.

To get out of this room its another hidden grate behind crates.

Sekada (no wonder I couldn’t remember the name) is on the comm for this mission and she warns me about some incoming bots and tells me to head to the room to the North.

This gives me control of a floor turret and I can quickly kill all the bots with impunity.

More hidden grates later I get to the end of the level.

Just when I’m getting to my goal we discover it was all a trap and there never was a plan to release the toxin. Shepherd and Ely make it out but Denning goes down fighting.

Sekada gives me directions to the nearest tram.

On the way there I manage to end up standing on one of the troopers heads and he just stands still ignoring me.

The director and the chairman are arguing again, about the failure of the trap this time. They have Dennings communicator and realise we must have a base on the moon. The chairman sends us a personal message that we will die soon.

We know that the Enforcers are on the way. Rather than deal with them after they land the mission is to get to the moon base guns and shoot them down.

I’ve done 7 out of the 10 missions now – I’ll probably take a couple more sessions to finish this game as 3 missions at a time is a bit much. I’m not quite as keen to carry on as I was, its all a bit too similar. There is no way I could have played Crusader 1 and 2 back to back without getting bored with the whole thing to be honest and I’ve just about reached the stage now where its starting to get monotonous. Attempting to play through the whole thing relatively quickly doesn’t help, it’s a game to play a level at a time over a couple of weeks really. It’s still a decent game but I’d much rather have had Bioforge 2.

I work through the next level until I get locked in a room with no obvious way out. Shepherd comes on the comm to help me out.

He tells me to blow my way through the air vent on the West wall. I can’t see a vent so I start blowing up boxes.

The vent shows up and I use a det pac to blast through it.

Shortly after I find a sneakily hidden keycard in the book on the table here.

This gets me access to an area with an energy recharger.

I then work my way through to the area with the network access terminal I was looking for.

I get a little video of my virus being introduced into the system, which I’ve entirely failed to get a decent screenshot of.

Then Shepherd finishes off whatever he was doing and tells me to take the tram out of here to get to the rebel base.

I have to fight through a load of troopers to get there but the tram is just a few screens away.

In a between mission cutscene, the news is reporting some of the problems being experienced on the moon mining base.

This doesn’t go down well with the director who orders her inept lackey to find me immediately.

I arrive at the base to find my old pal Denning polishing up his gun. He has still got the nasty (and unconvincing) cough that he’s been emphasising in every cutscene and says he hasn’t got long left after this many years in the mines but he is going to take a few people with him.

The rebel base here is a mini version of what we saw in Crusader 1. I can pick up some ammo and medikits and the like while I’m here.

Shepherd is in the North and I talk to him to get my next mission.

Torch and some other operatives have gone missing and are presumably being held prisoner somewhere. I need to go to the network access terminal so we can find out where.

I take the tram back out to get to the fourth mission. This next level is a bit more office-like as I search through the base for the terminal.

Shepherd is on the comm as before guiding me through. He tells me where I can get a plasma shield in a footlocker.

I pick this shield up. Its a bit more effective but I could also do with a new battery as the one I’ve got hardly stores any power.

Shepherd also warned my about some new enemies. These are morphing bots that look like part of the furniture until they morph into their more deadly form. Here the coke machine is morphing. They aren’t as dangerous as they sound actually, since you get a few seconds to aim before they start shooting. It’s a nice new enemy though and means I have to keep my eyes open. The animation for the morphing as ever in this game is very smooth

I get stuck for a while until I find a hidden switch behind this crate to get the lift doors open.

Shepherds back telling me that a load of bots are on the way and an inhibitor would be really useful.

“Coincidentally”, I happen upon an inhibitor almost immediately.

This inhibitor when used confuses any bot in the area making them helpless for a few seconds – easily long enough to take them out. It does use up quite a bit of energy but its seriously useful.

I start to see a change in scenery as I carry on progressing and we get a few of these radar dishes which must mean I’m near the terminal.

Sure enough I use the next screen I find, and it gets me details of two prisoners.

Shepherd sends me back to the tram which is just to the north and I get another post mission cutscene.

The news reports on Chairman Draygans visit to the moon – it looks a bit like the director is being set up for a fall to me.

Back at the base Shepherd gives me another mission. We know where the prisoners are so I have to go get them.

I see a new puzzle here where I have to depress two floor pads at once to open the door. I just use a detpac on one and it weighs it down.

The guys in suits with pistols are back in this level. They tend to be well armed but are not a big problem.

There is a hidden keypad here which using the code handily written on the wall opens the door….

and lets me get a new laser weapon.

That weapon will come in handy as I come across extra large bots later on.

I also find a safe in an optional area here which appears to contain just about every weapon in the game. In Crusader 1, I could only carry a few weapons. It appears that here I can carry as many as I like making this a very nice find. I prefer this system actually – one of the problems with finding weapons in Crusader 1 was that you just didn’t pick it up if you didn’t have room in your inventory. I couldn’t tell when this was happening at times meaning I missed out on picking up equipment. This system is the same as your usual FPS which is basically all Crusader is – a FPS using the Ultima 8 engine. The fact that it’s not in first person is obvious but the gameplay is the same sort of thing.

I’m actually enjoying this more than Crusader 1 although there isn’t much in it. There is just a bit more challenge in the combat and it’s balanced out by the levels being more linear and me not spending so much of my time looking for the next button to press. There seems to be at least as much gameplay in the 10 levels judging by how long its taken to get about halfway through the game. It is so similar to Crusader 1 though that I really don’t think Origin could have got away with a third sequel without coming up with something new.