Planet Bob

Huh. I thought the whole point behind GOG was the games would "just work" on WinXP.

Huh. I thought the whole point behind GOG was the games would "just work" on WinXP.

 

Well, I guess they actually would work on XP as advertised. But on Win98SE they already crash midway during the installation

 

I'm not dissing gog.com though. I assume it's a great service if you have XP or better and 3GHz or more. I just wish they'd additionally offer plain untinkered ISO images, as well as better manuals. The manual in my Shattered Steel box has at least thrice the content than the PDF that came with the download.

Screenshot reminded me of the Amiga game Walker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzmEJWjcwms

Ah, I remember reading about this one. From the video it looks like it should have control issues, no?

 

It's from 1993, so considering my current progress I might feature it in the "Playing..." series approx. in 2014

The controls were the mouse to aim and joystick/keyboard to walk. You could have one person drive and other shoot, though I never played it that way.

Meanwhile I had a splendid time with another half a dozen Shattered Steel missions. They're pretty diverse, ranging from convoy protecting to convoy destroying, from base protecting to base destroying, from destroy all enemy forces to plain survival.

 

Some mission requires two or more runs to figure out the precise mission goals and how to best achieve them. The hardest bit in some is to figure out when and where to destroy a certain kind of... hm... let's call them monster generators. You'll have to leave your base in order to destroy them, but all nearby enemies will wreck havoc while you're away from home...

 

There's an interesting plot tying the missions together. It's branching out occasionally, leaving the player with two choices of approaching the next milestone. E.g. I'm currently supposed to take out a major base next and I have the choice between two plans, where one means a few hard battles, the other more but easier ones. Heavens, what only should I do tomorrow?

My first exposure to mech games was Virtual World, back in '94 or so. It was an arcade where you'd sit inside fully-enclosed cockpits, and play networked games with (I think) up to eight players. The had a hovercraft racing game, and a mech game. It was a lot of fun and very advanced for the time. Crazy expensive though, if memory serves. Of course within a year or two, home consoles made the whole thing obsolete.

 

But their "training videos" were pretty cool.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHSmuBxqlG4

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIPMK4L_Qv4

had forgotten about those, played it here in Houston, but couldn't afford to play often at the time.

Hm... I don't think we had this game over here... at least I've never seen it. Is it the one from Microprose? B.O.T.I.C.S. or so? I remember reading about that

 

=================

 

Time sure flies when fighting an intergalactic war. I managed to defeat the Alien headquarters on Lanios III tonight and finally got to see another story movie. A pretty generic one I must say though, not half as impressive as the introduction

 

I then got sent to help on another planet, where the same Aliens are attacking. Of course, with all my experience, I'm the best choice to defend mankind here as well

BWAAAAHHHHH! What a fucked up mission was that tonight?!?

 

Are they nuts or what? I tried it for 2 hours on normal and another hour on easy, before I finally gave up. That's 20-30 tries. What an unfair bitch!

 

At least when trying to find a solution for this I found a poor soulmate of mine, facing the same problems. Unlike me, he had a lucky run on the 9th try already though:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEp18pQ2H4c

 

In the end I learned from gamefaqs that to end this torture for today,

I could just type

<ENTER>imouttahere<ENTER>

to win this mission nevertheless and so I did

After cheating through one very hard mission two days ago, I managed to play through some more missions tonight, until I hit another brick wall in the ~26th. It isn't that much depending on luck, but this time you're lacking the fire power. It plays a bit like "Empire Strikes Back" for the 2600, just in 3D. You're supposed to stop three enemy supply convoys and well, I usually run out of ammo long before the third one arrives. Those At-At like walkers can take an incredible amount of hits until they fall appart - and you're supposed to stop 18 of them!

 

So while this article started with shattered steel, it ended with shattered pride

 

Anyway, it's a cool game despite its flaws, one of the best I've Interplayed so far.

 

For some unrelated Interplay news, after Earthworm Jim, Clayfighter and Stonekeep they just announced a 4th franchise returning to life on WiiWare: Descent ;)

 

Let's hope that they don't just continue announcing things, but also start delivering soon!

 

Watch this space for "Blood & Magic", the next game I'll be Interplaying!