Day 25

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I got about 30 minutes in last night. I really didn’t manage too much. I watched the intro, this is entirely unanimated but the text is nicely written. It tells of you being called back to Britannia by Shamino. This immediately gets the attention of the shadowlords who shoot him with a magic arrow. You ward them off with your ankh and then carry Shamino back to Iolo’s hut nearby. Iolo tells you of Lord British’s disappearance and how Blackthorn has made all your old companions outlaws so you have to set out to try to restore LB to the throne.

The game itself looks a little nicer than Ultima 4 but really not that much different. There are a lot more tile graphics but they don’t look much better. There are more sound effects but they are also of similar quality so far.

I’ve only got into one fight with some rats. The most obvious different is that I can finally attack diagonally. When you attack there is a little cursor to move round to choose where to attack. Presumably this means that range weapons can now be fired anywhere as opposed to having to line up with the foe but I can’t honestly remember its been that long since I played this.

I wandered over to Empath abbey near by and talked to everyone there. The conversations are massively more detailed and much better written. Its a huge improvement. People also have schedules and walk around. I don’t know if I like this or not, its more realistic certainly but makes exploring harder and its easier to miss clues. I don’t think its a big problem and I probably talked to everyone. There weren’t any major clues to be gained other than a hint to ask a demon in the desert about one of the shadowlords.

I’ve been pinching things at every possible opportunity. You can steal all the torches off the walls, which should save me a bit of cash later on. I’ve also found food and such in barrels. I’ve always had to push the barrels around to get to the one in a corner to actually get the food. This is new to Ultima 5 but I could push things around in 2400 AD also.

Julia joined my party at Empath abbey making 4 of us. The party size is down to 6 which is an improvment in my opinion. 8 was just too many people to control at the same time.

Thats as far as I’ve got so far. The changes do make the world come alive more than Ultima 4. I’m far more optimistic that I’m going to enjoy this now that I’ve started it but its a bit early to say.

Day 24 – Ultima 5

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I’ve only read the documentation so far and imported my avatar into the new game. The plot in the manual is by far and away the most detailed of any of the games I’ve played so far. In brief it describes the backstory of Lord British and how he made his way to Britannia by finding a serpent amulet, stepping through a moongate and immediately finding Shamino. It also states that he brought other companions from earth such as Iolo as can be evidenced by their long lives. Shamino lives as long as the rest of them though and he didn’t bring him with him so he should have a normal life span. Anyway, he rose to a position of power, set up a system of government, closed the dungeons, raised the codex and life was good. There is also a footnote at the end relating to his disappearance and the Lord Blackthorn is now enforcing the virtues a little strictly if his new laws are anything to go by.

A separate document in the box is a diary of Lord British’s journeys into the underworld describing his disappearance. In short, an entrance to the underworld was discovered and he set off with a small party in boats to sail into it. This proved to be dangerous and in the end he was seemingly killed by 3 wraiths (who will turn out to be the Shadowlords).

I’ve played Ultima 5 once before and I cheated with a hex editor. I’m not sure if I’m looking forward to playing this one or not. The way I remember it the game is very very large and extremely difficult even with a walkthrough. Importing my avatar should help out a bit. My experience is divided by 10 but my stats are now all starting out at 25/30 and I’m Level 5. Unfortunately the other character stats don’t get imported at the same time.

Day 22-23

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I managed to play through 2400AD after all this weekend. Worlds of Ultima with the Ultima 4 engine wouldn’t be a bad description but the gameplay is a little different in this case.

The multi-scale world of Ultima 4 is gone here. Instead the entire game takes place in the city. Its pretty much the equivalent of the towns in Ultima 4 except much much larger and its on 9 levels. The tileset is completely new – it reminded me immediately of the first Commander Keen games for some reason. The colours are a bit brighter than Ultima anyway.

The world is quite alive. There are loads of people around. The game has moving floors you can use to speed around on. If you go in the underground trains will move around (curiously these move at walking speed so you can outrun them).

The conversation system is pretty much the same as Ultima 4 except the usual queries of name and job don’t get you anywhere here. Quite a few characters just give a one line response as in Ultima 3. Others have more information but in general they have less to say than in Ultima 4. These characters don’t really have anything to say that isn’t related to a quest. If you don’t know what to ask them about, they often say nothing.

The controls are the same myriad of keys as in Ultima, except this time they all do different things. Its bad enough having every letter of the keyboard assigned to a particular action, but I am fairly used to the Ultima system. One thing I do like is the climb command which gets you over certain types of scenery. e.g. you can climb over a bar to get to the back room. You can also climb over people if they are in the way (which happens a lot).

There is no combat screen here. Its a one man RPG so there are no parties either. Theres a reasonable range of weapons but the only ones I ever used were various degrees of ray gun. One of the games quests involves fixing a broken plasma rifle you are given. This is the games ultimate weapon and kills all but the stronger robots in one hit. Fixing it involved running around between the cities electronics shops finding, buying and trading for the parts needed.

There is a similar quest to get the games ultimate shield. This time you have to find the blueprints in a particular building, take them to the right person and pay 3500. The clues for what to do are scattered between various people.

The role playing element is fairly light here. You are given three stats to assign at the start of the game affinity, energy, and iq. Energy is your hit points, iq dictates whether you will be able to fix your equipment if it breaks and affinity whether people will talk to you.
Its pretty easy to raise most of these stats. Affinity goes up every time you talk to someone. You can grind it to 99 in minutes, although its hardly neccessary. Energy goes up if you run everywhere. This also doesn’t take long. IQ is trickier, you actually have to be able to fix something before it goes up. I ended up just paying to get my stuff repaired. I did find a guy who increased my stats if I paid him 1000 credits but I still never fixed anything. The plasma rifle and field dispenser don’t appear to ever break so I really didn’t need to.

There are a number of different types of robot of varying toughness. Even right at the start of the game I could still take out two types easily provided I took them on one at a time. Once I got a reasonable weapon and shield, I beat them every time. The plasma rifle and field dispenser made combat in the city ridiculously easy but were essential for the final assault.

The plot of the game is very simple. Right at the start you join the underground who are resisting the robots and from then on you get a few minor quests to achieve. You basically have to get the best shield and weapon, find the access terminal in the underground to get the 3 passcodes to deactivate the robots. Then fight your way through to the terminal and type these codes in.

As a human, you have to report in at a particular building every 2000 ticks or the robots start attacking you. If you do report in you get an SD (Social Demerit?). 5 of these and you have to go to prison. Going to prison is not a big deal. You just climb on the bed and can get straight out again. All your stuff is hidden in a locker in the building but once you know where its easy to get it back every time.

I gather there is an alternative route to the terminal. The one I used meant a frontal assault and then I had to use a jetpack to go the wrong way down a conveyor belt. The building was absolutely full of the toughest robots in the game but its easy enough to take them out a couple at a time then find a corner to pass turns and get energy back. There is no food in this game so you can take as long as you want.

At the end of the game, you type in your codes and there is a brief message saying the Tzorgs will detect this and mobilize a response (hinting at a sequel) + a not too impressive firework display.

I rushed through this game with a walkthrough and now I’ve finished it kind of feel I didn’t really give it a fair chance and should possibly have held back on the walkthrough. Its a pretty short game and wouldn’t have taken that long to play properly. It’s not up to Ultima 4 standards but this is a fun light-RPG.

Day 21 – 2400AD

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This will be a short post as I haven’t actually played the game yet. I have quickly read the manual though so I can at least describe the storyline. The plot is that the planet the game takes place on was colonised by humans in the 23rd century with the help of Tzorg scientists. A city called Metropolis was set up, and the Tzorg’s gradually took the top positions in society over the next 100 years. The Tzorg diplomats were then withdrawn without explanation and shortly afterward the Tzorgs attacked. Metropolis was turned into a prison, but eventually the Tzorgs had to withdraw and leave the planet entirely run by cyborgs. Your mission is to get into the mainframe and flick the switch which will turn all the cyborgs off and free everyone.

From the little I know, the game plays very much like Ultima 4 even using the same conversation system. I’m guessing that this will be kind of like the World of Ultima games, with the Ultima 4 engine instead of Ultima 6. It should be a decent game if that is the case so I’ve fairly high hopes for this one. Not sure I’ll get chance to play it much this weekend though.

Day 20 – Ogre

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Ogre is based on a Steve Jackson board game. The plot as it goes, is that for various reasons warfare in the future in almost entirely tank based. The most powerful of these are cybernetic tanks known as Ogres. You have to defend your command post from an attack from a single ogre.

I don’t know anything about the board game but the game plays exactly like a board game so I assume that its an exact duplicate. There is a two player game, but if you play against the computer you can’t play as the ogre. I’m sure this will be due to the difficulties of getting the a.i. right – playing as the ogre is much simpler with just the one piece to control.

The game takes place on a hexagonally divided board. The board scrolls vertically and fills two screens. As the defender you have to place all your pieces in advance, up to a preset maximum of armour/infantry points (20 each for the larger of the 2 types of ogre). You also place your command base right at the back. This base has no defenses, and the ogre can destroy it in one hit.

You have a variety of units, some of which move faster, others do more damage or have a longer range. The howitzer doesn’t move at all but has a huge range and high damage and costs 2 armour units to build. Once the game starts, the ogre itself attacks from the bottom of the screen.

You would think that an army against one unit would be an unequal battle, but the ogre can file 6 missles, 2 main cannons, 6 secondaries and 12 anti-personnel rounds in one turn. It can also just run over any of your units, and is quite fast. Gameplay is turn based – first you move, then you fire weapons. Then the ogre does the same. The exception here are the hev’s which get a second movement after the firing stage. These are also your fastest units, the strategy here is to get close to ogre, shoot and then retreat out of range.

When you shoot the ogre, bits start to fall off it making it much less deadly. You choose what to aim at and get a percentage chance of hitting. You can combine attacks to increase this percentage but you will only do the same damage if you hit, as if the one unit attacked.

The game finishes when the ogre destroys your base and escapes off the bottom of the screen, or if you destroy every bit of the ogre. There are degrees of victory depending upon whether the command post survives and how many units you lose etc.

Probably the most notable thing about the game, is the fact that it can be controlled fully with a mouse. Its not exactly a big deal, but its got to be one of the earliest games to support one. The mouse interface works pretty well and is intuitive enough.

Thats the mechanics of the game dealt with, now my attempts to play it. Since there is no campaign with this, finishing it pretty much comes down to just winning a game against the tougher ogre as I see it. I tried a few strategies for this. Using gev’s to get in and out fast, didn’t work all that well. I couldn’t get them out far enough and they end up getting mowed down as soon as the ogre moved. In the end, my best strategy was to build my base right in a corner, surround it with howitzers and put a load of 1 man infantry units just down from it to slow the ogre down. With a lot of saving/restoring this strategy worked out ok. The ogre couldn’t get through to the base, quickly enough to stop the howitzers blasting away all its weaponary.

Without the saving and loading, winning this game would be quite challenging. Its really not my thing though. Theres nothing wrong with the adaptation as such but I wouldn’t have been interested in the board game either. If I was going to play a board game, chess would be far more interesting. Out of all the Origin games, I’ve played so far this has the least to recommend it but I only had to play it for a couple of hours so at least it was a quick one to tick off the list.