Tuesday, December 6, 2022

Live-a-Live #12 - A Space Odyssey

Time for the creepiest chapter yet.




Here's the last of the Stage Select chapters. It transpires in the far future, and reminds me a bit of Xenosaga. It would be a really cool chapter if it weren't super time-consuming. And THAT wouldn't be a problem if it weren't time-consuming in a boring way; you spend all of your time looking for this person or that person. At least in the remake (coming soon) there are objective markers.

Nostromo?

This large quadruped is intriguing. The ship is bringing it back to Earth. Will this turn into an Alien situation or a Xenogears Eldridge situation?

Looks like a Romulan bird of prey. Am I nerdy enough yet?

My God! It's Kato Kaelin of OJ Simpson case fame!

At this point I get access to the sound test and can listen to all of the music in the game. The text is super messed-up, though. As you can see.

James T. Kirk? Well, no way this isn't intentional. Check out their Nostromo hypersleep pods.

Everyone is waking up from hypersleep as we near Earth. Corporal Darth? Seriously?

Captain Square is the ship's arcade game, and the sole means of entertainment aboard this vessel that presumably crawls through space for years and years. It better be a deep game.

The game is... a bunch of battles where you control Captain Square. You don't get exp or anything for these battles, but the music is cool and he has all kinds of sweet powers.

Settle down, Ripley.

Kirk is always angry. So...who am I playing as, you ask?

Dude! Settle down!

As I was saying, you play as Cube. He's a robot. A friendly little droid. He's also round... go figure.

What? Is OJ thumping on one of the ship windows?

Actually, Kirk's space suit failed, and he died outside. This is suspicious because apparently the suits never, ever fail. Who would have a motive to take out Kirk, though? ...besides everybody?

Next thing we know, all kinds of equipment is failing on the ship. I bet it's the quadriped in the ship's cargo hold. It's Deus-ing us!

With this, I can save my game when I play Captain Square. Though I still don't know what the point of that game is.

WHO TOOK KIRK'S BODY?

...his girlfriend, Rachel, who is losing her mind.

He's dead, Jim!

Things go from bad to worse, as the alien has broken out of containment. There's no way in hell I can fight it, so I have to run away as it follows me around the ship.

Apparently the captain (who isn't Kirk) has been hiding in his room for days with the door locked. Everyone wants him to come out and help solve all the problems that are going on, but he refuses.

...because he's really DEAD, and the image of him on the screen is an illusion created by the malevolent ship's computer! I KNEW this game wouldn't miss another chance to rip off 2001!

I play some more Captain Square (Arcade, 2099). He's got a sweet pair of breasts, apparently.

"The best thing about me," says one of the creepy dolls, "Is there's so many of me."

That was the final battle, game is done. Ten minutes of content at best? That isn't going to cut it on a decades-long expeditionary voyage.

While the crew fights amongst themselves, Cube runs into the alien again. RUN!

The main computer finally reveals itself with a Star Trek quote. Turns out that IT released the alien from the hold, hoping it would kill off the crew.

Hal 9000 IS EVERYWHERE.

Most of the crew is now dead, with the couple of survivors trapped in a small room. This is the stuff of nightmares.

There's only one way to hack into the computer: Via the Captain Square game.

The computer insists that humans are incapable of harmony, and must be destroyed.

The computer's final message as I enter the Captain Square digital-world Holodeck-style.

Here's the first (and final) battle as Cube, as I fight a horrifying manifestation of the AI's hatred. First you need to take out the pods on the left and right, since they heal the central unit.

From there, run right up to it and... just stand there, healing every turn. It auto-heals if you attack it, but not if you counterattack. And like many other characters, Cube has extremely strong counterattacks. Thus, you can stand here and heal repeatedly while the boss essentially kills itself off.

The computer is fixed. Just like that?

Unfortunately... the whole crew is dead. And so is the alien. What happened here?

Roll credits. Well, that was all very eerie.

I find the central mainframe, where I can access all of the ship's files.

Seems the AI was keeping tabs on everyone's personalities.

The ship is found by Earthlings and taken back to Earth, where Cube the robot...lived happily ever after?

And thus...the game ends on a fairly odd and low-key note.

Wait, what? An eighth scenario has appeared! It's a medieval chapter, which means it covers the usual RPG tropes that the rest of the game completely avoided up to now. Interesting. More on this later.

More Live-a-Live Posts HERE

3 comments:

  1. Holy shit. Glad this wasn't an android dream. I'll give it points for originality despite the 2001-ness because RPGs never do this.

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  2. If you need to play Captain Square to hack into the computer, does that mean beating the game is required?

    As for everything else... man, I'm just glad Cube didn't take the fall for this.

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  3. A couple things you missed :

    Huey wanted to fuck the hell out of Rachel and he wanted to become the captain of his own ship, after this he was planning on confessing to Rachel.

    However after he dies and has Cube you can look up a mail he didn't read saying he failed his exam and will never be a captain. This game is truly trying to fuck over everybody lol.

    And the alien thing was supposed to be used as a weapon but the corporal faced off with it and ended up killing it which could cause him to lose his job. Also the whole theme of it was that the corporal absolutely hated robots but he grew up to like Cube.

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