It’s your own fault for sitting in the scary chair in the middle of an evil sorcerer’s mausoleum. Seriously, suck it up. No sympathy.
The name Realms of the Haunting summons up exactly two responses: a sigh of deep-seated nostalgia for a truly overlooked classic, or a more general look of confusion because you’ve never heard of it. Not surprising. It hit the shelves back in 1996, putting it up against Tomb Raider, with a graphics engine at least three years out of date, a truly hideous box that looked like a mad collage of poor quality images, no star power for its FMV sequences, and a demo that cut out almost instantly. It reviewed pretty well – surprisingly well, actually – but didn’t exactly fly off the shelves.
Replaying it now, it’s impressive how much of its atmosphere it’s managed to hold onto, even though it’s not likely to have you jumping out of your skin on a regular basis any more. More importantly though, it did some really interesting stuff that didn’t deserve to be forgotten.
Let’s do something about that, shall we?
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Our heroine, folks. First line in the game.
Traffic Department 2192 was a shareware game from 1994, originally published by Safari Software, and one that has a bit of a cult following amongst people who could get past the terrible title. Firstly, no, it has nothing to do with being a traffic cop. The Traffic Department here is simply the planet Seche’s last line of defence, fighting a guerilla war against an unstoppable galactic empire called the Vultures. Presumably at some point these people wrote speeding tickets.
Now, they have missiles.
This sounds like a simple setup, but with around 50,000 words of dialogue spread over three games, it quickly becomes anything but. Characters get killed on a regular basis, often returning as clones later on, people switch sides, new revelations throw in everything from doomsday weapons to shapeshifting aliens, and there are so many characters that by the end it’s tough to remember just who the hell everyone actually is. Thankfully, there’s some relief from this, like the Vultures all having purple face make-up, the characters getting their own text colours, and the fact that our heroine really couldn’t give a crap who she’s insulting anyway.
Her name is Marta Louise Velasquez, and she’s quite possibly the most unpleasant female lead character in the history of gaming. She’s also what makes TD2192 worth remembering.
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Had it been more honestly called ‘Not Even Half A Vampyre Story’, maybe the abrupt cut-to-credits wouldn’t have been so painful…
You fought your way through Hell, you beat the end boss with style and panache, you thought you’d saved the world… but no. Out of nowhere, your victory is torn from you, your triumph smashed into tiny little pieces. You’re not a winner. You’re no damn hero. But hey, maybe in the sequel…
To Be Continued endings are nothing short of a pox on the industry – one so common, we often forget just how insulting they can be after devoting hours of our time and no small amount of cash to a new game. There is precisely one situation where they’re acceptable, and it’s in an episodic game where the next instalment is not only guaranteed, but imminent. Beyond that, they don’t work, and the justifications for them don’t pull their weight. In short: they must die.
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“Aw, quit struggling. You’re only in this game for four minutes anyway.”
Everyone knows that sex sells, but that doesn’t necessarily make it safe. The games industry in particular is borderline terrified of crossing any real lines, knowing that so much as an exposed nipple or openly gay character will have the moral guardians leaping at it like an angry bear. At the same time, few industries are so eye-rolling when it comes to fan-service, to ridiculous outfits, and supposedly sexy scenes that frankly make you wonder about the creators.
This makes for an interesting culture clash – often eye-rolling to the point of pathetic, sometimes borderline offensive. More often, it’s a ridiculous, but ultimately ignorable reminder that gaming is still firmly considered a boys club, no matter how many studies come in about the number of women who like to game. Even top quality developers usually screw up here, and it’s hard to think of many characters specifically designed to appeal to women – with the exception of fluffy animal mascots and gung-ho girls running diners in casual games. But that’s another post.
Even with the many problems in mind, there’s more to creating a sexy character than simply creating an appealing 3D mesh. Sadly, it starts with remembering that blonde, brunette and redhead aren’t personality types – and even that’s already several steps more enlightened than most of the industry’s digital harem. Buckle up. Dangerous curves ahead…
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“Aaaaanimal,” repeated the demon. “Not…”
The most surprising thing isn’t that there’s a Doom novel. It’s that there’s six of the buggers. The original four, by Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver, came out in 1995-onwards, with a fresh trilogy by Doom 3’s actual scriptwriter, Matthew Costello, starting up in February 2008. I haven’t read any of the new ones. They may well be excellent. The original tetralogy however…
In a nutshell, they’re not as crazy as the infamous comic, but it’s close. Very, very close…
“The appearance was rather sci-fi, actually… utterly misplaced considering the monsters inhabiting it. But then, I didn’t subscribe to Better Homes and Demons…”
Doom isn’t exactly a story heavy game. It had exactly one friendly character – a silent marine nicknamed the Doomguy, currently under arrest for punching a superior officer – and a lot of monsters to introduce to the business end of a shotgun. The levels offered a basic sense of progression as the UAC bases that made up most of the levels morphed into the biotechnology of Hell, but even by Doom 2, id was bored of that, and making straight-up concept maps like The Gantlet, Tricks and Traps, and ‘city’ maps resembling obsidian cubes. With this in mind, you probably aren’t expecting much from the novels. And you really, really shouldn’t.
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