tj@pons.cis.ohio-state.edu (Todd R Johnson) (12/16/90)
I bought Chaos Strikes Back (CSB) today and have been playing it all evening. The package comes with two disks, a thin manual, a diagram, a coin, an FTL sticker, and a sample of the CSB Hint Book. The cover of CSB has "Expansion Set #1" printed across the top, and the mean it. Although you don't need the DM disk or characters to play CSB, the manual doesn't say anything about the CSB interface or spells. Instead, you are referred to the DM manual. The story in CSB is that Chaos is back and getting stronger. He has four chunks of Corbum that he is using to drain Mana from the world. Each chunk is hidden at the end of dungeon maze. To defeat Chaos you must find the chunks and destroy them by throwing them in a special pit. Of the two disks, one of the disks is a utility disk that has a nice animated intro to CSB (complete with music), a utility to transfer characters from a Dungeon Master saved game disk, and the hint oracle. The transfer utility will also let you change the picture and names of each of your characters. 24 new pictures are provided (one for each DM character) that reflect the more advanced stage of each character. The utility reads your old saved game file and rights a CSB saved game file to a new floppy. You must have a DM saved game disk to play CSB, but you can construct one using the second disk. The hint oracle is designed to read a CSB saved game disk and offer a list of hints on the area surrounding your characters. I haven't tried this yes, because I'm not ready for hints. To use the oracle you have to quit CSB and reboot with the utility disk, so there is some incentive to only consult the oracle when you are really stuck. I'm not sure if I'll use this, but it seems like a good idea. I play games to be entertained not to get frustrated. To many game designers seem to forget this. The second disk contains the actual game and a prison of characters. The prison is just a single level dungeon like the first level of DM in which there are pictures of heros (upgraded for CSB) on the walls. You can select 4 of these and then save the game, which will construct a DM saved game disk. You must then use the transfer utility to create a CSB saved game. [Note: This is from the manual. I didn't try selecting heros this way, but it seems strange that they wouldn't directly save a CSB game from the prison. Perhaps the saved game disk also has some extra data on it that the game needs.] Once you have your CSB saved game disk, you boot with the CSB game disk and resume the game just as in DM. Your characters start the game completely stripped of all belongings. The dungeon graphics are identical to DM, but most of the monsters look different and I've run into a few new monsters. The interface is completely unchanged from DM except for one small detail which greatly helps exploration. [If you want to know or just want a hint, mail me.] In terms of difficulty, the game picks right up where DM left off. The manual warns you to only transfer DM characters if they were good enough to have seen Chaos. The dungeon is filled with traps, teleportors, pits, and fake walls. You can easily get trapped so that you can't get back to certain parts of the dungeon. So far I haven't run into any explicit puzzles like those in DM. Instead, the whole dungeon appears to be one big puzzle in that you need to figure out how to get into certain areas. I've also run into switches that I can't connect to actions. The monsters (even those from DM) seem more difficult to kill. I have yet to kill a single knight, which is what I am stuck trying to do right now. Finally, mapping is a little bit tougher than in DM. CSB feels quite a bit different from DM. There is a lot less guidance, unlike DM which provided a lot of hints at the start of the game. Your characters are also at an immediate disadvantage because they don't have any posessions. Despite this, you can usually survive in CSB as long as you are smart. I ended up killing myself by fireballing walls because I wanted to explore a particular part of the dungeon that I kept falling out of, but I could have kept on going. My initial impressions after playing CSB for about 6 hours is that it is just as much fun as DM. Now for the technical details: CSB runs on my A2620. The game does not multi-task, and is not hard disk installable. I was able to run the utility and flip between it and the CLI, but there is no way to exit the utility without rebooting. I couldn't get the game to run from my HD. I copied all the files to HD, put the original in the floppy drive and tried to run the loader. The loader runs and starts to load the game from floppy, then dies with an error. If I don't put the disk in, I get a screen with "Master Disk Damaged" on it. My biggest gripe is that CSB doesn't support my hard disk for saved games. I can live without multi-tasking and hard-disk installation for CSB, but I would like to be able to save several named games to my HD (as in Leisure Suit Larry II). When you initially start the game, it takes a long time to start up. It's possible that it's reading all the data into memory, since I have 4 megs, but the manual doesn't say anything about this. Once you start (and even when you resume a game) the disk accesses are very infrequent and extremely short. I'm planning on writing FTL to tell them how much I like their DM and CSB and to request HD support in future products. There really is no excuse for not saving games to the HD. I also suspect that there is little reason to not multi-task, especially on an enhanced system. Overall, though, I'm satisfied with DM. I payed $30 for it, and it was definitely worth it. [Though I'm not sure why it took so long to get it out, since the interface hasn't really changed.] I wish I could say the same about Captive and Corporation. ---Todd -- Todd R. Johnson tj@cis.ohio-state.edu Laboratory for AI Research The Ohio State University
f140003@pollux (12/16/90)
(No specific spoilers, but this review contains some material which
may be considered "too informative")
I got the game last night and I'm probably almost 1/2 way done
with it without hints, maps, or doctored characters. It's not *that* hard.
(Of course, I kind of went nuts with DM 1 and played it through about 3 times
-- my characters were all in the 600 HP range)
Anyway, it's great. Runs on my 3000. Some noteable aspects of CSB:
no real linear progression to game. You don't finish level 1 and go to level 2, proceding down in a logical manner; you do part of level 1, fall down some pits to level 2, climb back up to 1, fall vertically alligned pits to 3-4, down to 5down to 6 up to 5, ... you get the idea. You see small pieces of many levels. 90% of the time you don't know which level you're on -- and it doesn't matter -- after a while you start to think of the game as a big 3-d puzzle. And a little while after that, you think of
it as one giant 2-d maze where teleporters, pits, , and stairs just bring you to different sections of the maze.
Secondly, it's very hard. Lots of knights, and dragons. Easy monsters and sometimes medium-difficulty monsters come in hordes (10-20 groups). Don't
be too discouraged though, some monsters aren't as tough as you think --
most knights really only have 100-200 hp. Dragons and knights are pretty much
{any spell} proof.
C. Manual dexterity is a plus. You get to learn how to control the
characters on the keyboard with your left hand and manipulate icons with the right. CSB takes full advantage of its real-time interface. It's much more fast
paced -- almost arcade in some places. I take that back. A couple of rooms
are arcade quality (at least on my 3000). I found myself dodging my head left
and right to avoid fireballs -- my roommates loved it.
IV. Traps and pits replace puzzles. There are many great puzzles in
CSB. Overall, however, pits and false walls, and traps are the main deterrant
as opposed to tricky brain puzzles in DM.
BTW, has anyone gotten the cheat to work:
ie: find dragon, cast MON ZO GOR SAR. Pause.
type 'LORD LIBRASULUS SMITHES THEE DOWN'. Unpause. Kill dragon
Get firestaff.
Jason Freundcolas@avahi.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) (12/17/90)
Having already played CSB on an atari, I can In article <86793@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>, tj@pons.cis.ohio-state.edu (Todd R Johnson) writes: > The hint oracle is designed to read a CSB saved game disk and offer a > list of hints on the area surrounding your characters. I haven't tried this > yes, because I'm not ready for hints. The hint oracle is very well designed, because its hints are obscure enough not to spoil the game. You can use it without being afraid to lose interest in the game. > [Note: This is from the manual. I didn't try selecting heros this > way, but it seems strange that they wouldn't directly save a CSB game from > the prison. Perhaps the saved game disk also has some extra data on it that > the game needs.] It seems that the save game file has all the dungeon (all levels) stored in (monster position, stats...) etc, so it is very version-dependent. Besides, it is a way to reduce the size of the main code to fit it in 512K, since CSB can run on 512K Ataris. (On the amiga, the extra 512K is taken by the sounds, which are MUCH better than the atari ones...) > The dungeon is filled with traps, teleportors, > pits, and fake walls. Yes, you must always have an eye on your compass while playing. Moreover, if instead of just passing on some places, you sit there for more one second, you are teleported to a same-looking corridor elsewhere!!! (I played for 1 month before discovering this) > You can easily get trapped so that you can't get back > to certain parts of the dungeon. I don't think so, as far as I know, you can always get back, everything is reversible (but it can take time :-)). The only annoying situation is falling in the trap that says "drop your belonging", wher you must drop EVERYTHING to get out, and them go looking for your items that have been dispersed in the whole dungeon... (of course I always restarted when it happened to me!) > I have yet to kill a single > knight, which is what I am stuck trying to do right now. They are nearly insensitive to fireballs. The best way is to quaff 2 or 3 strenght and dexterity portion, and have your back row preparing VI potions to re-live your fighters during fight. > Finally, mapping is a little bit tougher than in DM. I thing much tougher :-), so DON'T look at maps, it will spoil much of the fun! be prepared to have tons of little bits of papers with parts of a level in it, since you spend your time climbing up/down to small parts of a level. One of the challenges is to put back all the pieces. Fortunately, you are always teleported on the same level. > CSB feels quite a bit different from DM. There is a lot less guidance, > unlike DM which provided a lot of hints at the start of the game. >... My initial impressions after playing CSB for > about 6 hours is that it is just as much fun as DM. ditto! > My biggest gripe is that CSB doesn't support my hard disk for saved games. My biggest gripe is that it is disk-protected. Imagine my panic when DM on my ST ceased to work due to disk failure!!! Fortunately it was some kind of dust, since it re-worked after blowing on the disk with a camera cleaner. So, I would advise you to try to backup CSB as soon as possible. (I bougth a hardcopier just for this purpose!) > I wish I could say the same about Captive and Corporation. Do you mean that they aren't good games, or just that you didn't try them? I am interested of review of Captive, especially by people having played both DM (or CSB) and captive. Corporation doesn't seem to be worth time or money. Ah, also: f140003@pollux writes: > I got the game last night and I'm probably almost 1/2 way done ??? Are you a mutant from outer space (I mean, somebody able to correctly fold a road map :-)), I think most mortals will spend a lot of time with CSB, if they don't look at posted maps, which will destroy game fun. parker@cs.wvu.wvnet.edu (James Parker) writes: > Have fun and save some dragons for me, guys!! You will enjoy the room with 3 regenerating tougher-than-DM-dragons, then :-) -- Colas Nahaboo, Bull Research France -- Koala Project -- GWM X11 Window Manager Internet: colas@mirsa.inria.fr, Phone: (33) 93.65.77.70, Fax: (33) 93 65 77 66 INRIA Sophia, 2004, rte des Lucioles, B.P.109 - 06561 Valbonne Cedex, FRANCE