Reply To: First impressions

[Pix]

#2231

I’ve had a few attempts with Life and Death 2 now but I can’t say that I’m getting on with it particularly. It’s very much more of the same and brain surgery by guesswork is proving difficult believe it or not. Without the benefit of foreknowledge, I’ve not managed to get near to completing an operation yet. I’ve mastered the diagnosis stage but it’s really tedious compared to L&D1, with lots of banging of knees and elbows and the like. I’ve noticed in L&D1 that once you’ve mastered certain diagnoses, they are much less likely to come up. So if you keep failing at surgery, the next patient will usually need the same op so you can quickly give it another go. That doesn’t seem to be happening here and repeating the same steps over and over is seriously frustrating.

I’m also having technical issues. There is some sort of buffering problem with the mouse input and holding the mouse button down for a while often sets the PC speaker off beeping like I have a stuck key. Worse still, when drilling into the skull you have to hold the button down to drill the right distance and then release when it breaks through. Except the release never happens so I end up drilling into the brain instead. I’ve tried slowing my PC down which hasn’t helped – I may resort to trying DOSBox instead.

It’s certainly more of a challenge than part 1 anyway and the graphics are a lot better in VGA. There is in game documentation now to help with the diagnosis which is a nice touch but curiously no guidance whatsoever on the surgery sections.