Master of Orion holds a special place in my heart, one of long hours and begging, �Just one more turn, Mom!� Both its prequels were very clever; they�re empire building games in space, and such games have existed before/around MOO (Pax Imperia, Stars! and Spaceward Ho!, just to name a few), but there�s just something about Master of Orion that makes it stand out in my mind. There�s the diplomacy, simple, yes, but a needed part of the game, there�s the sense of satisfaction when you see your empire growing, and because of that, a deep personal sense of vengeance when your opponent bites off a chunk of it. Yes, long hours of mine were spent researching new technologies, building vast armadas of technically superior warships, and burning the homeworlds of these horrible aliens until none dared stand to challenge me.
And so, with such optimism, I entered the third in the trilogy. Sure, it�s going to be more of the same. Just with prettier graphics and some more neat features. But c�mon, it�s a space empire building game, what could go wrong?
Prepare thyself for what could go wrong.
The Plot: There is a whole crapload of backstory to MOO3; a lot of it is spelled out in insanely boring history lessons in the disorganized manual. Actually, pretty much all of it is. There is a �secret� of the Antarans that you can ferret out for a victory in the game, but I think I have a guess as to what it is; the manual more or less blurts it out. But I�ll feign dull surprise if it turns out I�m right anyway. You�ll probably know what it is after reading this section.
For those of you new to Master of Orion, it�s a space empire building game. Civilization with lasers, if you will. To keep it from just being that, Microprose put in Orion, which is essentially the delicious cookie star system everybody wants, but nobody dares send an unarmed colony ship there, because the Orion Guardian will eat your liver with a fine chianti. In the first game (second game, too, really), that�s all Orion ever was; a system full of sweet goodies. By the time you took it over, you probably had enough technology and fleet strength to mop up the other races, but doing this with the Death Ray, an Orion-only technology, was more stylish than just bombing them into the stone age.
In the second game, they added in Antarans, who essentially were the barbarians of Civilization. Space jerks who would occasionally show up, attack your fleets, blow the tar out of some poor world, and then sail off snickering. There really was no point to the Antarans except to harass you; you got a 3 or 4 turn warning that they were incoming, and by the later point of the game, you could mobilize a fleet in time to have a very warm welcome, preferably served by the barrel of your latest frap ray cannon. The other nice thing they did was give you good technology if ever you got to board and capture one of their ships.
*** Now would be a good time to skip to the next section, if you don't care for interminable and pointless plots in your video game cup of soup.***
In the third game, and forgive me if I don�t get this completely accurate, the Antarans basically take over. The Antarans were the criminal outcasts of a perfect harmonious society (who would later become the Orions), and they were shipped off into the wormhole to go die somewhere in space. The same thing more or less happened to Australians and Siberians, too. Anyhow, these space Siberians sorta waited in the wings while the Orions, fleeing their dying sun, entered the wormhole and started spreading out across the galaxy. Not all of the Orion fleets landed together, so they formed several societies which later would come back into contact, each believing they were the direct descendents of the master race. This led to interstellar ass kicking. The Antarans decided to play their cards and jump into the fight. The biggest group of Orions made a PU-38 Elodium Space Modulator and poinked the Antarans out of the galaxy, and in doing so, disrupted hyperspace travel. During the collapse of Hyperspace, the Orions went into rebellion (mostly �cuz they broke space) and killed themselves. The only thing left of their civilization was their nice homeworld.. and the robotic Guardian, which kept others from learning their terrible, space breaking secrets.
The Antarans managed to find a way to bleb out of their alternate dimension existence, and started monkeying around with the races in the Orion sector, one of them including us. They genetically engineered a few of �em, and then, as the locals started fighting each other, they would show up from their alternate dimension, kick some ass, and then leave. Essentially, this is the second game.
After the second game, all the alien races banded together, used similar technology that the Antarans use to enter our space, and burned their homeworld. The Antaran fleets, busy wiping out some of the splinter colonies from the original Orion settlers, were taken by surprise, but then came around and subjugated everybody around here. During the thousand or so years of slavery, pretty much everybody forgets all the technology they invented over the last 2 games. The Antarans studied their slaves, and started tinkering with an incredibly adaptive parasite which was intelligent, could adapt to any life form it encountered, and render them into helpless drones for the parasites� masters. �Coincidently,� most of the Antarans vanish during this time. Hunh. A super adaptive organism, designed to infect other intelligent organisms and enslave them. No, I can�t see that possibly going awry.
That which was left of the Antarans, knowing that, if the word ever got out about 99% of their species going extinct, they�d get pummeled, made up a story about them being the New Orions, and made diplomatic overtures. They took over the senate that the humans had started, let everybody say their peace about the Antarans, and then the Antarans� er, �New Orions� annihilated any races that spoke mean about them. In game terms, this means the Bulrathi, Mrrshan, Gnolam, Alkari and Darlok races are now gone. This is where the third game starts off � with your pretty much ignorant race, a benevolent overseer who is in all actuality impotent, and a lot of other shell shocked alien jerk neighbors. Oh, and there�s this race of alien parasites around, too. They�re intelligent. And they don�t really have many skills in diplomacy. Hrmm�
(If you�re a big fan of the Star Control series, you should probably notice a LOT of common elements. I won�t tut too much, but there�s just too many similarities here to overlook.)
The alien races never were particularly deep in the first two games, and the same is true here. The manual tries to give them some amount of development by throwing in some back story, but that�s really not terribly worthwhile. More or less, take any animal with one defining trait, put the word �space� in front of that animal�s name, and you have a MOO race. Bulrathi? Space bears. Mrrshan? Space cats. Psilon? Space nerds. Sakkra? Space lizards. Klakon? Space ants. Silicoids? Space rocks. Meklar? Space robots. There are new races now, and they all fall under the exact same rule. Cynoids? More space robots. Raas? More space lizards. Grendarl? Even more space lizards. Trilarians? Space fish. Nommo? Space squids. Tachidi? More space ants. You get the point. There are a few oddball races, 2 gas giant races, a dark skinned humanoid, and the Ithkul, the previously mentioned space parasites, but essentially, they�re one note wonders. Don�t pay �em any heed; they all blow up the same.
The Gameplay: You�re building an empire, your empire meets others, and you then blow them up and take their stuff. It sounds simple, but it�s been a working formula of civ building games since they�ve existed. I broke each one down in to subsections.
Planetology:
The appeal of Moo3, to me, is the idea that somebody else will do all the crap work for me. I hate micromanagement. I hate it with a passion. We all micromanage enough in life, at work, at home, wherever. Video games are play time for me, not work. In this game, I�m an emperor, I can�t be bothered with every trivial decision! So the idea that your planets will develop without your supervision appeals to me. Unfortunately, it�s really not very smart.
Each planet is divided up into regions; larger planets get more, although the size of the planet doesn�t always equate to the number of people who can live there. No, I don�t know why that is, either. Each region can be used for 2 and only 2 things, and depending on the landscape, it may or may not be appropriate. Fertility ranges from Lush to Toxic, and flat plains are really better suited for bioharvesting (=food). However, any of the land types can be fertile, so if you get a planet with toxic plains and lush mountains, too bad for you, buddy. Mining is best done in the mountains. If a planet is Rich or Very Rich, definitely mine those mountains. If a planet is anything less than Rich, don�t bother. You�ll get so many minerals from rich and very rich worlds that it�s pointless to scrape around crap worlds for shiny things. The other occupations, from industrial, research, military, recreation and government, can be done with equal success regardless of what land type they�re on. Of course, three of those, recreation, government, and military, do you no real good, and are wastes of space better dedicated to industry and research. So basically, when you colonize a new planet, fill it up with industry and maybe a mine or a farm, and just go away. Once your world is a production dynamo, you can come back and have it grind out ships later.
Your researchers will constantly come up with improvements, such as better farms, better mines, space ports and the like. This gives your planets something to build, and the AI will take care of this for you. That I like; I don�t want to have to tell each planet to build the new Space Toilet. However, if you leave the planet AI on, it will also decide to make military decisions for you. Some things, like planetary shield generators, missile batteries, and armed forces are a good decision, and I salute the AI for thinking ahead about making those. However, wasting time making the same laser shooting defense ship from turn 1 at turn 300, when lasers couldn�t cut Space Butter, is not a good decision. If you mark a ship as obsolete (yes, you have to do so, because the AI won�t figure it out), it will just go on and build some random type of ship. Since each planetary AI has something that says, �If no winky defense ships, build winky defense ships� logic flaw, it will constantly spray out garbage ships.
For an example: At one point, I had over 200 troop ships. I didn�t have enough standing army to need 200 troop ships. I didn�t have enough standing army to even fill 100. As soon as I found the planets responsible, I cleared off their military buffer and assigned them to make some useful ships for me. Other planets immediately went into troop ship production. I don�t know why it thought I needed more troop ships; yes, I was using troops, but the troop ships get recycled, and any surviving troopers go back into the reserves. I guess the AI assumes, without looking at battle reports, that if you�re using troop ships, you�ll want more troop ships to replace the fallen ones. Unfortunately, I hadn�t ever lost any of them. Meaning I was paying a lot of upkeep on a lot of troop ships, and as soon as I scrapped them down to a manageable number, the AI ground out more of them.
There�s no big list of colonies to manage. I suppose that�s part of their micromanagement scheme, but if I want to see what a given planet is doing, I can do so. Of course, I have to find the system, double click on it, find the planet, double click on it, click the window for planetary spending and then double click the military or planetary build cue to see what they�re up to. That�s a pain in the ass, and if I was truly meant to not micromanage, I shouldn�t have the ability to do so. As it stands, it�s like micromanaging with very clumsy tweezers. And unless you do so, you�ll be swamped with troop ships and pointless laser ships.
Interstellar Relations:
The original Moo�s were of a type of diplomacy I and a good buddy of mine refer to as �Pleasedad� negotiation. Since everything is based on a percent chance of success, if you keep asking, statistically speaking, eventually they�ll say yes. Pleasedad? No. Pleasedad? No. Pleasedad? NO! Pleasedad? OK ALREADY! This one�s slightly different � the AI pleasedads you. If a nonthreatening, powerless, feeb race asks you for a nonaggression pact, and you�re strongly considering pushing them over for their lunch money, you can stall or refuse. Next turn, they ask you again. Keep stalling? Next turn, they ask you again. The ships can be on their door step ready to drop bombs, and they�ll keep asking you.
The AI logic on diplomacy is pretty transparently % based, particularly when it comes down to war. Some races start off generally surly, and in one game, war was declared on my by turn three. I hadn�t even done anything yet! When I met the Ithkul, the alien parasite race, they also declared war on me. Neither of my blood enemies had done jack to me, but here I was, in bewilderment of what I had done to provoke them. Finally, turns of non-aggression later, one of them called off the war. I figured I�d make nice, and I made peaceful overtures of my own by lowering sanctions against them. Next turn, they declare war. The turn after that, they respond to my peace gesture by increasing sanctions against me. Still, no hostility. After that, I just ignored �em when, about ten turns later, they knocked off their war, and the very next turn, they declared war again. Whatever.
Frankly, there�s no reason to even pay attention to the other races. I guess you get some spacebucks for entering into trade pacts with them, but I�ll be damned if I could ever see any benefit to it. And forget alliances. All that allows is them to run around behind your lines, colonizing everything in sight, so that when you eventually turn on them, or they you (as the AI WILL do in the later parts of the game; the �Must expand!� AI demands ultimate betrayal), you have to blow up crap in your own territory before you can expand outward. If you get attacked, they might make a limp effort to show up, but since the AI is terrible at ship use, don�t expect much help. And, of course, you can blithely ignore them while they�re getting attacked, because I don�t think they ever get attacked. The only time I saw two enemies together is when they had both colonized the same system, often by sending an unarmed colony fleet into a system and plunking down on some other world. I suppose, hundreds of years down the road, they�d carry on the ancient war their forefathers spoke of, but in terms of actual game play, they might as well have moved in with each other.
The Orion Senate is pointless. Basically, it�s completely random whether or not you�re a member of the Orion Senate, unless you waste points at race creation on it. The number of votes you have is based on the number of worlds and people you control, so for the first 150 turns or so, the Orions outvote you on every issue. Every now and again, a bill floats up, usually something to the tune of �Something gets better at the cost of something else� or �Something you like gets outlawed.� It doesn�t matter if you bother to vote; if the Orions vote for it, it passes. After you expand sufficiently, you may get a majority of votes. Which would be cool, except that the only bills you can raise are �Love x player� �Hate x player� �Invite x player to join the senate� or �Punt x player out of the senate.� If you get voted in as president, and you had that as a victory condition, yay, you win. However, since this is completely based on how fast you spread out, you should probably turn that off. I lost my first game because I wasn�t a member of the senate, and one of the other scrubby races who was had the 2nd most planets in the galaxy (maybe half of the ones I had). He got voted president, and I instantly lost. Oh, whee, that�s fun.
The only thing other races do to you is spy on you and get in your way. The only defense against spies is to hire spies of your own, and there are 6 types of spies, from sociopolitical to production and so on. If you don�t have the right type of spy, or enough types of spies, you occasionally get blitzed where buildings get blown up and research stolen or messed with. Very rarely, you get a leader (most of whom are pretty awful) to show up, and if you don�t have enough diplomacy spies, he gets assassinated and you lose whatever bonuses they conferred. The annoyance of spies has been a constant complaint of mine in all three MOOs and in Civilization � I realize it�s a logical part of any contact between two potential rivals, but when your allies are actively sabotaging you, you quickly learn to dread contact with any new race, because that�s just one more set of spies to fight off.
Alien races become funny looking targets after a while. �Lookee, maw, a new species. Lookit �im pester us fer some space bucks. Lets all done blow �im up!� Since that�s the only thing you really ever do with aliens, I�ll transition right along to the ship building and killing portions of the game.
Fleet Assembly:
I sorta like the idea of task forces. You can create a detachment of 1-2 ships if you just need a ship real quick, but these get quickly outmoded by larger fleets. Of course, armada is somewhat of a misnomer, it's really just "A lot of ships that do one thing, surrounded by ships that do something else defensive," but Infogrames gets points for trying. The assembly screen is a little annoying, considering that every time you change the mission, it defaults to Lancer sized, Orbital class ships, but that's a small caveat and likely an easy one to tweak.
It took me a while to figure out "Reserves," particularly when struggling over armada ship restrictions. I had been creating task forces at one world, flying them to an "assembly" point, then disbanding the force so that all the scout ships, point defense ships (I just named them Plinker, because that's all they can do) and the core ships (invariably missile trawlers) could be in orbit around the same world. So I was losing about 10 turns per ship just because what I was doing made sense.
Silly me! Once I figured out that, once a world has a Mobilization Center, ships instantly pop into being right then and there. So if one world 50 light years away is making the scout ships, they are instantly FedExed to my front line Mobilization Center so that I can launch another death armada. If, and I should say, when, a fleet gets all of its escort ships shot off by missile fire, all I have to do is disband them, and they instantly and safely go away, to be returned to the nether dimension where ships go before they can be recalled into a new formation. Never mind that they were deep in enemy territory at the time, they safely wink out of reality and nobody seems to bother them as they travel home.
The whole concept of mobilization centers baffles me. Apparently these wondrous hospitality centers are full of doughnuts and coffee, and even the most elite ship commanders won't mix crews anywhere else but here. Why don't fleets have a Combine option? If all my core ships got blown up, shouldn't the escort ships go flank a fleet that lacks them? And, more importantly, can't these military geniuses figure out how to do this on the fly, in deep space, on assignment, when it's most needed?
Second, these centers, which I guess are the Pokemon Centers of the Moo3 universe, give you instant access to every ship in the fleet that you have. I remember huge rally lines from Moo2, where ships streamed across the galaxy to get to my front lines, and once enough power had assembled, I would move most -- but not all -- of them forward to challenge my foes. There's no need to hold anything back in Moo3. Once you have enough ships in reserve, as soon as you see an enemy approaching a world, you just cobble together as many task forces at the nearby mobilization center, and next turn, you have an instant armada where there was none before. How is this remotely fair? In Multiplayer, I imagine it's a contest on how quickly you get noticed en route to attack; if the defender sees your expedition fleet approaching, you get bushwhacked by an armada literally appearing out of the void.
It finally dawned on me how laughable this was when trying to tackle the Orions around their homeworld. They had sent out their massive fleet, which was only flying around, peering curiously at my planets, but not actually engaging my forces (I set all encounters with them on Defend, and they just sailed right on by). I had a massive fleet from waging war elsewhere, and decided to press my luck. After a few initial feints, I streamed missiles at all their orbitals and planets, and blew up every one of them. Next turn, I'm confronted by a massive fleet, which forced my beaten up cadre to retreat. I assemble more front line ships (aka bullet stops; I even made a ship type called "Bait" just to absorb the oncoming rush of missiles and fighters long enough for the missile frigates to fire three times and call a retreat) and return in two turns. Their planetary defenses were still destroyed, but their armada had doubled. I inflict massive casualties, retreat, rebuild, return, and surprise, 80+ ships in their armada. Thanks to the presense of a nearby Mobilization Center, I'm back up to full fleet strength in 3 turns. Apparently, so are they. Repeat. Attack, retreat, rebuild, return. Guess what? 80+ ships. I'm sure, eventually, I would have depleted their reserves of ships and gotten a turn or two to lay some troops down on their planet. But I had been at this for about an hour, and I was getting awful tired of this crap. Also, I can't rule out the possibility of cheating on the part of the Orions.
Ship combat: I don't mind tactical strikes, and certainly I am guilty of abusing a certain flaw in the armor. Particularly when it comes to missiles. Armored missiles completely break the game. They fly faster than fighters (who will make a half hearted effort to intercept them), fly too fast to be seriously damaged by point defense ships, and annihilate anything they touch. Then, any unused portion of your missiles will lock onto a new target, after a brief space dance. They're almost thinking, "Gee, whaddya want to do tonight, Brain?" "The same thing we do every night, Pinky: Try to take over the universe!" Once any particular ship's missiles are exhausted, it will be ready to fire again, so having enough armadas of missile batteries is like watching beautiful fireworks of doom on your foes. Unless they have missiles too.
Other ship classes are completely inferior. Unless you get a bad starting point too close to enemy lines, the long range attacker ships are always out of range of the missile ships. Having long range attacker ships only serves as speed bumps for missiles. It doesn't really matter what you built; missiles do so much damage that your carefully planned frap ray armada will be torn to shreds by the first few volleys, often without even so much as firing a shot. Your foe has them too, and you can more or less ignore them. Carriers aren't even much of a threat once you have enough point defense ships; they don't do enough damage as missiles, and once your missile frigates cluster on top of each other, their combined point defense will turn fighters into scrap. One wave of missiles and they're gone, gone, gone.
I've gone through entire fights out of range of the defender's attacks. Since missiles have infinite range, the missile armadas will back up to the farthest point they can, and lob missiles at any target they notice. Ships have a weird habit of vanishing from sight from time to time, so often it turns into a space bound sub hunt, and as soon as your foe materializes on the screen, 10 missile packs of doom start erupting from your ships. One is enough to kill them, the rest just peer around for something more to destroy. Even worse, if your foe has missiles, and you were attacking, you have the option of retreating. As soon as you notice their missiles incoming, retreat. Odds are, your fleets will bug out before the first missiles even strike you, but since your missiles are autonomous, they will continue to destroy everything they can bury themselves into. The combat will continue until all of your missiles ram into something, and invariably this leads to the total destruction of everything your foe had, with you safely backing off towards the nearest friendly planet.
I�m sure this will be balanced in a patch later on. But it will probably mean that one of the other attack types will become the dominant force of terror.
Ground Combat: RPS strategy. You land your troop ships, which are the same, slow engined monstrosities you�ve been building since turn one, and your units spill out. Theoretically, you should use your space supremacy to blow up their armed forces before your army lands, but if you bombard the planet, you just destroy every single building they own and kill massive numbers of the populace � the very resources you had wanted to take over to begin with! The army on that planet survives shelling even down to the last civilian casualty. So basically, you wait around in high orbit around a planet until your troop ships show up, then you land them all.
Your armies have finite options, all of them are annoying. Basically, there�s a list of attacker maneuvers, and each has a specific counter by the defense. If you flank them while they�re trying a massed assault, you crush them. If they tried a trap, however, you get hammered. Numbers and superior firepower really don�t matter so much; even the militia will handily dispose of your legions of battle mechs if you picked the wrong assault type. Fights can persist for multiple turns if you remain in orbit, with your invasion fleet giving or taking ground as the fight continues, until either you or your foe die out.
In addition to this �strategy,� you can authorize heavy collateral damage or not. I suppose allowing your forces to blow up everything they see may give them some minor bonus modifier in combat, but since this invariably kills every single building and population unit on a planet, you might as well have just saved your army the trouble and nuked the world from high orbit. Authorizing nukes, chemical and biological weapons, and heavy collateral damage basically just saves you the trouble of sending a colony ship. Otherwise, the planet is reduced to a smoking crater. So this isn�t really an option at all, but it was nice of Infogrames to let you screw yourself by selecting these.
Once you do take over a planet, that�s it. No insurrections, no underground resistance, no nothing. Your conquered people, like the good little worker bees they are, accept their new master and get right to work rebuilding their ravaged home with no ill will towards you whatsoever. I really enjoyed that element in Moo2 � taking over Mrrshan or Bulrathi worlds was always more trouble than it was worth; the Bulrathi especially were excellent ground fighters, and were nearly impossible to displace, and once you did so, they were constantly in rebellion. If you did manage to subdue them, they made for excellent ground troops for your own invasion, but often they were so troublesome that it was easier just to gas them off of a planet and seed it with your own kind.
The aesthetics: Somewhat of a mixed bag, so much so that it needs broken down.
Ship combat: Dear god, 486s had better graphics. The original MOOs used sprites on tiles, and combat was really 2D and silly, with your �tile� of ships sliding forward into frapping range and shooting the bejeebers out of anything approaching them. It was dippy, sure, but it was fun enough, and several ship weapons had small radius effects that would only affect ships very close to them, so it was fun to try to sneak these little bombers in to close range through all the bigger capital ships. Still, that�s so early 90�s.
Now you get grainy microfleets on a flat black background drifting towards each other in real time. To simplify things, I suppose, there are only four combat options � move, attack, patrol and retreat. If you move, you just drift thataway, if you attack-move, you drift thataway, if you attack a ship formation, you�ll drift into firing range and open fire, and I don�t know if anything ever happens if you retreat, because it never does any good. Since your sight range is limited by your scanning technology, often you don�t see anything to shoot at, so mostly it�s a matter of carefully bobbing around until a target rears its ugly head. And that�s all there is to combat. Grainy, ugly grey ships wafting around a black field and shooting colored lines at each other. That�s not a real improvement, guys.
My big complaint about the endeavor is zooming. Essentially, you can�t, at least not to any level that matters. You can�t zoom out to scan the whole battlefield; you have to scan around with your mouse to find your target, which I suppose simulates your commanders craning their necks out of the view ports. But it�s not fun. You also can�t really zoom in. You can get close enough to see your horrible grey fleet shooting little frap rays at tiny fighters, but the opening video suggests a nice space fight where you can see fighters punching holes in a ship�s core until it explodes. Well, you get nothing like that during the game; even at max zoom, fighters are whirling pixels. It�s like watching small grey moths being attacked by gnats. Considering how significant combat is to victory in MOO, you would think they�d spend time making it, y�know, good.
Aliens: Nice try. The alien races are neat enough looking, and when they communicate with you (which they only do in the diplomacy channels), they have two animations � peaceful and hostile. Races speak with their voice, which in some races are language, in others are just a series of snarls and grunts. That�s pretty neat. Unfortunately, the animations and speeches are of unequal length. The Ithkul, who I got to hear declaring war on me every turn or two, would lunge their bodies at me for a few seconds of nice animation, and then just stop in mid thrust, while their voice continued yapping at me. �Hurb grosh vlork urbo doish�� the ambassador grumbles, then, suddenly freezes solid. From his unmoving lips, he continues: �Vorgash hroug fnord gassha!�
It�s notable because it�s otherwise solid. Why screw that up? Keep �em wiggling around for as long as it takes them to complete their speech!
Interface: Menuitis. Menus beget menus, those menus beget more menus, and those menus beget even more menus. In the future, you�ll be so overwhelmed by the need to open, close, and maximize windows that you won�t get any real work done. Oh, wait, that�s what our current operating systems are like. Your empire essentially runs on Windows 3.1, except between each window opening, you get a pointless animation where it swooshes away and a new one swooshes up.
It�s a cute effect for five minutes. Then it gets old. Then it gets annoying. Then you long for one big list of functions. Then you learn to hate the big list that is the Situation Report you get at the beginning of each turn. Then you just ignore the damn thing and start checking your individual worlds to see if they finally built that thing you wanted yet. There�s literally about 30 menus, each of whom contain little or no information, so you glance at them for one second and go to the next menu, which also has no information. 90% of your turn is surfing through windows, only about 10% is making real decisions. It�s like surfing your hard drive for one file, but you don�t remember exactly where it is, and you don�t want to bother using search. Also, you set the open and close sound effect on your windows sound scheme to an obnoxious whoosh sound, and set the delay of window closings and openings to about 30 seconds.
Final thoughts: Why oh why did this have to be so bad? The first two games, while hardly stellar examples of gaming perfection, were pretty fun games for their time. This game is redeemable only because apparently it�s very easy to mod. Well, that�s great, and I hope there�s a wide and thoughtful fan base who can fix this game. However, to be expected to shell out $50 for a game and then wait for its disappointed users to, of their own free goodwill, fix said game, is too much for me. I�m going to return my copy.
We started playing Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker around 9:30pm last night and didn't stop until 6:30am. That's nine hours where I didn't think about sleep, about tomorrow, or about anything but Legend of Zelda. At 9:30pm we were clearing up the Deku Tree's unfortunate skin condition and at 6:30am I had uncovered the secret of the King of Red Lions's true identity.
Here's how it works. You hook up a GBA to your GameCube and activate the Tingle Tuner. The game downloads the entire Tingle program to the GBA, and as long as the GBA is turned on, it will continually exchange info with the GameCube. The Tingle player can then buy items on the GBA screen (using Link's money) to help out: bombs, health, etc. The GBA also acts as a secondary location display, showing the current wind direction, area map and hidden items. Tingle himself will spout hints and chatter as he follows along with Link's adventure, in the form of text on the GBA screen. For example, he will suddenly mention that he sees some writings on the wall of the cave Link is standing in, or he will try to direct you towards a hidden treasure.
I did a lot of laps around the map as I searched for the next plot point. Yes, it was largely aimless wandering, which I usually abhor (see my comments on Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past,) but in the world of Pokemon, wandering can be a distinct benefit. Firstly, the battles you trigger during your travels are always helpful: your pokemon gain experience and you learn more about their attacks, strengths and weaknesses. And in Sapphire, you get to harvest delicious berries.
Captured a wild Skitty tonight, lv8, and promptly delivered it to the Day Care. If I can raise the Skitty into its evolution, it might make a nice partner for Gringo. While at the Day Care, I picked up my Nincada, now at level 23, and also dropped off a Tentacool. The next Gym Leader I need to face, Flannery, looks to specialize in fire types, so I figured I should get a strong water type in my party.
So last night we run out to get Wind Waker, and I stop by the display for the GBA SPs. They have little signs up reading "The Nintendo eReader is not compatible with the Game Boy Advance SP." Bullshit! Wrong! Incorrect! Every website and magazine asked this question months ago, and Nintendo has repeatedly assured us that the eReader does work with the SP. I was going to tear the little signs down, but I figured that would just look like simple vandalism and not conscientious objection, so I wrote "YES, IT DOES!" on the bottom of every sign.
I was out talking to my third grade neighbor Matt last night, and he was excitedly letting me know how his Sapphire game was going. He got the game a couple days after I did, but he has already passed me, and started and re-started several times. During one of his games, he only trained up his Torchic, ignoring the rest of his team, which I thought was an interesting way to toy with the game. When I see him next, hopefully we can do some battling or Secret Base trading.
9:00am. Aerobics with Copper. This is actually the one event you can participate in, and it's probably the most complex controller scheme you'll ever find in Animal Crossing. The C stick is used to perform various exercises, like touching your toes, jumping jacks, and windmill stretches. The best part is the music and watching any given animal inevitably fall out of pattern and get distressed. If you're good, you can try to accurately match your movements to Copper's routine, but it's difficult and you don't get anything for doing it, so why fight it. Freestyle.
11:00am. Sydney gets a pistol and goes on an Adamsvil rampage, plugging anyone she sees because no one wants to hear her offer suggestions on using your Gyroid to make money.
1:00pm. Ball Toss. This is where you start questioning the game. Why can't you pick up the balls and toss them into the baskets like Derwin? Seems like an easy thing to include. Also, why is no one keeping score. There are clearly two teams, and they are clearly giving their all, but no one is bothering to record points. Tortimer is damn near passed out behind the Well.
3:00pm. Tug o' War. This event really pales in comparison to the comedy value of the Ball Toss, so it leaves a bad taste in your mouth as the Spring Sports Fair draws to a close. Two teams of two are pulling and straining on a rope, but nobody ever wins. Just back and forth, and lots of sweat. Not even any tripping this time. At least, nothing happened during the brief time I watched. Just lots of groaning and Rio pointlessly waving a red flag.
The third Gym Leader, Wattson, proved to be my first real challenge. He only fields three pokemon - a Magnetite, a Self-Destruct-happy Voltorb, and a Magneton - but the prevalance of paralyzation moves and frigging Super Potions made it a frustrating affair.
The big news is that I achieved two evolutions tonight. My loyal Treecko evolved into a Grovyle, which turns it from a gecko-looking thing into a feathered reptile-looking thing. Much cooler, but it's always emotional to see one of your pals change form. The Cascoon came out of its shell and emerged as a Dustox, just as expected. I was hoping for something cooler - like the old Butterfree or Beedrill - so I may not keep the Dustox around for long. I'm curious to see the Poochyena evolve, so he has been moved to the top of the queue.
Just about every pokemon I've encountered has been an entirely new breed, which is to be expected for a sequel sequel. The only "original" series monsters I've seen is a Machop and a Magikarp. Three Magikarps actually, in a ridiculous battle against my one Cascoon. My stupid Cascoon is a lousy fighter, and it handled three Magikarps without taking any damage at all, since the Magikarps are even stupider. Splash attack. Some things never change.
This may be the last day I play Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. For I pick up Pokemon Sapphire tomorrow.
The story includes some important branching points, so seeing everything will require multiple attempts. Most choices are tied in to how you answer questions or choose to treat the female NPCs. There are two girls in the game, Karen Morris and Kelly Austin (although at one point the game calls Karen by Kelly's name.) It is possible to generate different endings depending on how you treat your tagalong... whether you Encourage or Ignore her feelings, or if you share your water stores with her. Karen is looking for her dog, and Kelly can't find her little brother, so each girl leads you on a different subpath through Stiver Island. (In Kelly's half, watch out for an extremely strange scene with a police officer who suddenly snaps.)
I'm planning a review of the PS2 earthquake survival game Disaster Report, but I want to play the game through another time before I rip into it.
