First impressions

[Evil Taco]

#10653

They’re not great.

😅

The controls are clunky. The walking and scrolling have no inertia to them, it feels like the character has no physics. There’s no jump, instead you have a jetpack. Great! What could be better than a jetpack? Well.. there’s this little pause when you lift off from the ground. So moving around isn’t very satisfying, there’s no inherent joy to movement like the best platform games have.

It would help a lot if there was. The levels are the type where you wander around in a maze and look for switches to open doors, and look for fake walls to find the switches, and then walk back to the door, and walk around and around to look for that fake wall you missed, and then walk back to the other end of the level to do more of that because you missed a hostage …

The very first room you start from has a fake ceiling, even! I gotta say I went “this doesn’t seem promising”.

There’s even sort of puzzles you have to do to proceed. I won’t spoil the joy of discovery 😉 but even though I guessed what I needed to do it sort of wasn’t obvious how to do it at first.

That all said. I played through two levels and I have to admit I got a sense of satisfaction from beating them. I figured out what to do to proceed and it made sense once I figured out how. The first two levels aren’t too big, so even if I had to go back and forth and look for what I might have missed, it didn’t at least yet feel to me that the levels were too big to do that.

I played Jazz the Jackrabbit earlier this year and it really felt clunky and unsatisfying until I played enough and “got it”, and even though it wasn’t the best game ever I still played through all the levels except I think one or two final Holiday Hare levels (enough was enough!). Might be the same here, the game has its flaws but it could end up fun once I get to know it properly.

I certainly appreciate the cut scenes and some of the music, it’s kind of fun to see a shareware DOS game of this era investing in presenting the story, such as it is.

[TigerQuoll]

#10655

It certainly isn’t as good as I remember it. The controls don’t bother me too much, except when there’s fast enemies, like that dang flying baby thing.

For the record, I’m playing the Australian release where the office block is episode 1.

The levels are kind of samey and maze-like, as you said. But I’m about halfway through episode 2 (factory), and I feel like the levels are getting better as I go along.
Reliance on finding secret walls isn’t a deal breaker for me though, because they’re generally pretty easy to find.

I found the music in episode 1 to be pretty sub-par. Just one track for the whole episode that didn’t make a lot of sense, either musically or in how it set the tone.
Episode 2’s music is a bit better, but forgettable.

The checkpoint system and lack of mid-level saving is annoying, and health pickups seem too few and poorly spaced.

I don’t hate it, but my overall impression is it’s just a bit frustrating, and lacks some kind of “pop”.
As I’ve indicated, it’s getting better the further I go, so my opinion might change, but for now I’m reconsidering whether I like this better or Duke Nukem II…

[TigerQuoll]

#10656

Yeah, all finished now. Man, it’s really a short game!

I think I have to give the win to Duke Nukem II by a nose (I’m not sure why I’m so obsessed with comparing these two games in particular!)
The graphics may be better in HH, and I don’t really think it’s any more frustrating, but the levels in DN2 are just more varied, interesting and memorable, and that’s more important to me.

If I had to compare various similar DOS era sci-fi platform shooters that I have played (a surprisingly fruitful genre), this would be my order:
[Keen 4, 5, 6] > [Duke Nukem I] > [Keen 1, 2, 3] > [Crystal Caves] > [Duke Nukem II] > [Halloween Harry] > [Earthworm Jim] > [Jazz Jackrabbit]

That list os in no way objective by the way – nostalgia plays a lot into it!

[Evil Taco]

#10660

I like the sounds of “short”, that makes me more motivated to return to the game and finish it. 😀

From that list I’ve only played Keens and JJ. I’d probably swap HH and JJ on my list so far.

How about Bio Menace?

[TigerQuoll]

#10665

Yeah, it’s definitely not long!
There’s only 4 levels and a boss per episode, and I can’t imagine most levels taking much more than 10 minutes, so that’s like 45 minutes per episode. I didn’t time myself, so I could be wrong, but I don’t think it’s far off.

I haven’t really played much bio menace, which is why I left it off my list.
I’m sure I’ll get to it one day, but I guess I would probably put it directly before or after DN2.

[Pix]

#10701

I think this may be my first time playing Halloween Harry this month. Maybe I ran into the shareware version years back – it’s didn’t leave an impression if so.

I’m feeling much the same as everyone else. The controls are OK, but I’d prefer something a bit more floaty for the jetpack really. Something more along the lines of Joust/Flappy Bird physics. I wouldn’t say it’s short myself, I’ve found some levels quite tricky and needed to learn my way around them before I could get through. I’ve made it to episode 3 at this point.

The 2 bosses haven’t had much going for them, about as basic as bosses get really. I struggled to get the game running also, it doesn’t run if you have a GUS sound card. You’d think it would have built in support with the mod music. The Alien Carnage freeware release thankfully behaves better so I’ve been playing that.

It’s definitely lacking something as has been said but it’s passable. Jazz Jackrabbit and Earthworm Jim were better. I do like the graphics still. The developer went on to make Flight Of The Amazon Queen I believe – it was a good idea to put all those pixel art skills in another genre I feel.

[dr_st]

#10702

I wanted to play the game before checking what others have posted in the First Impressions thread, to see how well they match my own.

Well, these aren’t strictly “first” impressions, since my save slots tell me I had played through Alien Carnage in 2002, but I certainly didn’t remember much from the experience, except that it was mildly annoying, yet not annoying enough to get me to quit mid-game.

So… first impressions are actually not the clunky controls, but the weird fade-in/fade-out screen (ADG mentioned that as well), and the fact that with cycles=max in DOSBOX parts of the game UI are a bit too fast. Picking a difficulty usually skips me past the next screen before I can select an episode, and some of the in-game menu needs to be pressed multiple times. Of course dialing down the cycles makes it go away, so this is not a problem of the game.

What bothered me more with the jetpack mechanics is not even the momentum issues, but the collision detection when trying to enter narrow sideways passages and tunnels. About half the time you cut off the jetpack while hitting left/right directional keys, but Harry misses the platform and falls right down like a sack of potatoes. Gets annoying. However I felt I got better at it eventually.

Graphics and music feel quite nice. Pretty good for a game in 1993.

I don’t like the fact that zombies (and sometimes other enemies) respawn. It makes it hard to know which parts of the level you haven’t visited yet, and I always forget about this possibility and end up taking damage while trying to speed through previously explored parts.

And now some replies. 🙂

>> The checkpoint system and lack of mid-level saving
>> is annoying, and health pickups seem too few and
>> poorly spaced.
Health pickups absolutely cannot be relied upon. Rescuing a hostage restores all of your health at once, so this is the mechanic I ended up using (sometimes strategically keeping some easy to reach hostage for when I need it).

>> I think I have to give the win to Duke Nukem II
>> by a nose (I’m not sure why I’m so obsessed with
>> comparing these two games in particular!)
Well, they are both platform games released by Apogee in the same year (1993), both with a similar story of a hero fighting single-handedly against alien invasion, with a humorous tone, both have 4 episodes with a boss level in the end, and have some gameplay similarities too. For example – different weapons with different behaviors, jetpack concept (in Duke Nukem II it is only specific levels and ammo was limited too).

>> The graphics may be better in HH, and I don’t really
>> think it’s any more frustrating, but the levels in
>> DN2 are just more varied, interesting and memorable,
>> and that’s more important to me.
Graphics in HH are definitely better (VGA vs EGA), but I have always been very impressed with how nice DN2 managed to look with only 16 colors, and how much variety in the levels and scenery was achieved. They really did a good job!

Gameplay things I liked more in HH:
* The radar which is indispensable for finding hostages
* More weapon variety + you get to have multiple weapons at once

Gameplay things I liked more in DN2:
* Health management seems more natural with a good amount of soda cans scattered around, and at least one six-pack per level. Never mind that I beat all DN2 levels without taking a single hit (after MANY attempts!) 😛
* Secrets feel less obtuse. You usually know which things can be shot to trigger walls collapsing and new passages opening
* No stupid respawning enemies!

>> How about Bio Menace?
I liked this game and it has even more secrets and easter eggs to find, including complete secret levels. I do remember it being much harder and less forgiving, even on ‘Easy’.