Games for Lunch chronicles the first hour of a different game every weekday. Each hour ends with the answer to the only question that matters at that point: Do I want to keep playing? For more information, check out the Frequently Asked Questions.
 |
Publisher: Interplay
Release Date: 1991 (original version)
Systems: Windows (reviewed), roughly 10 billion others.
ESRB Rating: T
In a nutshell: Death, dead-ends and disintegration rays
0:00 I never had much interest in this one as a kid, but today, it's considered one of the classics of the medium, and highly influential on everything from platformers to adventure games to survival horror. At $10 on GOG.com, I couldn't resist. (By the by, the game is also known as Out of this World in the States).
0:01 No loading, no company logos, just the stylish, angular Another World logo zooming in to reveal the menu screen. In the background, a hand-painted scene of a blasted landscape with rocky outcroppings and a few odd-looking figures.
0:02 Since this game is almost 20 years old, my crappy computer can actually run it at full 1280 x 1024 resolution. Feels nice to be relatively ahead of the curve, for once.
0:03 A black car screeches to a halt outside a rectangular building. A dark, thin figure walks in (nice cinematic camera angles) and goes down an elevator. The elevator doors open and we see our protagonist, with shocking orange hair and a simple black T-shirt. The blocky, polygons and solid-color textures remind me of a darker Super Mario 64, in a way.
0:04 Our protagonist enters a keycode into a number pad and some laser system IDs him biometrically. "Good evening professor." says a screen. "I see you have driven here in your Ferrari!" A scientist with a Ferrari? I guess this game really is science fiction.
0:05 This guy has a cool 3D volumetric display, but it can only display shades of green, like a 1970's APPLE II monitor or something. Anyway, he alters some particle accelerator parameters and runs an experiment. I think I know where this is headed...
0:06 He opens a can of something to drink as he waits for the experiment to start. Dramatic music as we cut to outside, where an ominous wind blows. Lightning in the background, and a huge bolt hits the particle accelerator. The electricity comes out an anode in the wall by the computer and leaves a SMOKING CRATER where our protagonist and his desk were. Eep!
0:07 The protagonist and the desk appear in a deep, wide expanse of water. I realize I'm in control and swim up and out hold up, coughing as I do.
0:08 As I was writing up the 0:07 update, a tentacle reached out of the water and dragged me to a watery demise. "Press button to continue. Access Code: KBAB." That's gotta be a new record for quickest death, yeah?
0:09 I walk to the left to find a narrow cliff ledge, like the one on the cover of Where The Sidewalk Ends. The ground rumbles and bits of rock fall in the background. No music, just the sound of wind. Creepy.
0:10 Holding down the Ctrl key makes me run. Shift does a little Prince of Persia style jump (that's the original Prince of Persia, not the recent one). I discover this just as I run over a little black centipede thing. It unleashes a single pearly white fangs and cuts through my pants, drawing blood. I collapse, dead. "Press button to continue." It's gonna be one of those days...
0:11 I jump over the first centipede, but then I run into a group of three. Jumping over the first sends me right into the others. Hmmm...
0:12 Ah, if I duck and hit Ctrl, I can squish the centipedes with my triangular foot. On the next screen, though, a huge black lion-like beast appears in my path. My little squish move fails to stop him from lunging and killing me violently.
0:14 After a few more failures to try to take out the beast, instinct takes over. I run away in the opposite direction, (the beast lunges at me but just misses). I make it back to that ledge and make a desperate jump for it. I grab onto a vine, which snaps and sends me back to the other side of the beast. I run some more and... get taken out by a centipede I had missed before. At least I'm on the right track, I think.
0:15 This time I avoid the centipede and return to where the beast first found me. Just as he's about to kill me a laser blast from off screen takes him out. In a cut scene, I see a large, albino, black-robed figure in my path. I put up a hand in a silent greeting. He stares silently as a cohort hits me with a laser. I come to in a cage suspended over a pit. In the background, miners toil away. There's another hulking albino in the cage with me, and an albino guard on a ledge to the right.
0:17 I realize I can tilt the cell left and right. The guard notices, and fires off some warning shots, but he's too late -- I've broken the chain and crushed him with the cage, which is now open. My fellow prisoner taps me on the shoulder, speaks in an alien tongue, and points to the right. I run after him, only to get disintegrated by a guard two rooms down. Oh well.
0:18 Ah ha... this time I notice the dead guard's blaster on the ground. I use it to disintegrate the second guard. Then, we come to a locked door. My buddy plays with the access panel while I try to cover him. But a guard with a protective forcefield runs after us and blasts us to bits. Hmmm.
0:20 After a dozen or so failed attempts, I finally manage to run past the guard's vertical force-field before it appears, taking him out in the next room. Then a second guard runs in and takes me out. This can't be the intended solution, can it?
 |
0:21 I stay in the far room and fire at three guards that come in. When I return to the access panel, my buddy is nowhere to be found. Hmmm.
0:24 My wife, overhearing the game from the next room: "What are you doing in there?" Me: "Firing lasers" Wife: "Of course. What a silly question."
0:26 This time I actually see my buddy duck past the black bars blocking our progress. When I try to do the same, I can't make it through. What is going on here?
0:28 OK, this time I run out and kill two guards, then run back just in time for my buddy to open the gate. I'm almost sure this was not the intended solution, but whatever... it worked. In an elevator shaft now. We got up to a small domed room, with a barred window looking out over a town full of stone spires, including one that rises up amid imposing mountains. Ominous music.
0:30 Going down now. There's a black wall in the way on one level, and a guard who blasts me on the second, I have to be quicker on the draw, I guess.
0:31 I killed the basement guard this time, but his room is a dead end as far as I can tell. The wall on the higher floor is still impassable. I can't even go back the way I came, because the gate my buddy hacked is closed again. This game is just a series of seeming dead ends, ain't it?
0:33 I just realized that I can create a force field by holding down Ctrl for a second. This may have been an easier way to protect me and my buddy earlier. I'm still stuck, though, and my blaster seems to have run out of juice. With the guard dead, there's not even a good way to kill myself and try again.
0:35 Yay! A guard came through the locked gate and killed me! This means my blaster works again! Huzzah!
0:36 On the bottom floor again, I kill the guard and notice a power conduit going up through the ceiling above me. There's a green light in front of me. I shoot it and the power stops flowing. I'm pretty sure I did that without noticing before. Anyway, there's still a wall in the way on the upper floor, so...
0:38 Ah... if I hold down Ctrl even longer, a big white ball appears and fires an energy shot that blasts the wall to bits. Of course this alerts a guard below, who blasts through his own three-walled prison slowly and puts up an impassable line of fire. Still, progress!
0:40 Turns out killing the electric conduit is key to keeping the guard locked up long enough for me to run by. Then I run into another locked door, which a guard opens and summarily kills me. Sigh.
 |
0:41 Ah... I'm a bit more observant this time and notice my buddy opening a manhole cover as we reach the locked door. I fall down and roll in some narrow catacombs. When I roll to the left, some sort of bursting steam vent kills me. When I roll to the right, a long drop kills me. Did the developers have some sort of snuff fetish or something?
0:43 Apparently I have to inch right up to the steam vents and wait for them to turn off so I can roll past. I also have to remember which way to travel to avoid the deadly drops.
0:44 I finally make it through the rolling section and fall into yet another cavern. I walk into a vertical line of blue dots and an electrical crackle makes my hair stand on end for a second. Was that a save point? Perhaps it re-energized my gun. The latter seems most likely, since there are three walls to bust with my power-shot to the right.
0:45 Out a hallway and into open air bridge, where I take out a guard. In foreground, huge lasers fly by as three robed guys chase what looks like my buddy. But who can tell. All those hulking albino aliens look alike, amirite?
0:46 Aaaaand the bridge just gave way to a pit of spikes, which I ran right into, of course.
0:48 After a few failed attempts, I finally time my jumping correctly. I don't make it across the gap, but I do make it to low ledge just above the spikes. And then... it's another dead end. I try to jump the spikes from this side, but I die again. Harumph!
0:49 When in doubt, blast a huge hole in the impassable rock face, that's my motto.
0:50 The paths in this cavern are starting to branch a bit. I jump over a pit, blast a door open and go up some steps in the background. I run too fast and end up falling into a waterfall, of all things.
0:51 I try a different route this time, falling down a pit to a new area. There are more pits here, most of which lead to deadly spikes, of course.
0:52 I follow one pit down to an open area with tons of falling rocks, which crush me as I try to run past. The game restarts me at the bottom of the pit, with no way to get back up, so I guess I'm on the right track?
0:54 Careful observation shows that the rocks fall in a set pattern, and only in set places. With patience and timing and I can run by. As soon as I'm past, of course, I run into some tentacles hanging from the ceiling. You know what they say... "If the falling rocks don't get you, the tentacles will." And it's SO TRUE!
0:55 So I dodge the tentacles and walk up a slight incline to the left, back to the other side of that broken bridge from before. Seems like another dead end.
0:57 Back down the incline, I find I can shoot the tentacles and run by them. Same goes for the next room, with three hanging tentacles and some chomping sets of teeth on the ground, which I have to jump over. Of course, I get past those just to fall in a pit and die on yet another spike.
0:59 The wonky controls make it kind of hard to get past the ground teeth again, but I finally make it and reach another dead end room with sharp, perpendicular walls. Looks like that'll be my last dead end for the hour.
Would I play this game for more than an hour? Yes.
Why? The constant dead-ends have been a bit frustrating, but there hasn't been a problem that's taken more than five minutes to work my way past, which is nice. I'm loving the sense of atmosphere and outside-the-box puzzles and the spare, almost word-free storytelling. Basically, I just want to see what's next.
Join The Joystick Division!
Become part of the Joystick Division community by following us on Twitter and Digg and Liking us on Facebook.
