Showing posts with label submarine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label submarine. Show all posts

Friday, April 10, 2009

Codename: Iceman Let's Play Part Fifteen: Out The Hatch

John Westland goes for a swim.



Alright mateys, it's time to get off this boat. John takes a look around using the Captain's large, shiny shaft (ahem) and spots the harbor and the oil right. He makes a note of the heading and sets off to get his diving gear. A brief tour of the sub later and he's out the hatch, swimming around in the briny deep.

Holy crap the ocean is big and dark and easy to get lost in! (FUCK THE OCEAN!)

John find the oil rig and plants the explosives, then swims off towards the harbor. He uses his awesome KGB whizbang to defuse an electronic field and swims up to find the net dangling in the water. He puts his hard-won bottle in it, then receives the all-clear signal. John hides his motorized diver and comes ashore in sunny Tunisia.

Now it's time to get all spy on this game!

Codename: Iceman Let's Play Part Fourteen: Sink The Alpha!

John Westland sinks a Russian sub.



We start off with John at the helm, who must have received a premonition of danger because he suddenly orders the sub to dive like a motherfucker. The sonar team then report an inversion layer right where John is heading, which is good because inversion layers block enemy sonar.

Oddly enough, very soon after that they report a Russian Alpha sub which starts firing torpedoes at the Blackhawk like they're going out of style. John shuts off the engine, fires four fish back at the Alpha, and waits. And waits. And waits.

The first two torpedoes miss...

But the second two hit. Bye bye Alpha!

But there's still two torpedoes incoming. John begins evasive maneuvers and drops two decoys, which thankfully the torpedoes follow. (You'll note in the subtitles that it took me about an hour to get this right.. crazytime.)

After that, we're suddenly off the coast of Portugal, where we follow the USS Koontz through the Straight of Gibraltar in yet another stupid driving minigame. Once we're safely through, the Captain - miraculously recovered now that our mission is almost over - tells John to have a look through the periscope.

Next update, we'll actually start playing a real adventure game, with like, adventure game puzzles and stuff!

Codename: Iceman Let's Play Parts Twelve and Thirteen: John Versus The Destroyer and Ice Ice Baby

John Westland sinks a Russian destroyer and gets a perfect 10 in the Ice Slalom.





Alrighty then! Two videos this update because the first one was so short. John calmly takes control of the Blackhawk and orders the sub to dive below 600 feet, but not before turning off the active sonar and engaging the caterpillar drive. Err, whatever silent running mechanism the sub has.

The object of the battle is to hit the destroyer four times and sink it. Each Harpoon missile has exactly a 30% chance of hitting. So, the object of the battle is to save each time you get a successful hit, and load when you don't.

I wish I was kidding.

I tried to cobble the video together well but there are still a few rough edits, so sorry about that. It would have been fucking boring to watch me save/load for 20 minutes.

Then, we have to survive the incoming torpedoes - which is actually OK because we dove, turned our engines off and fired our Harpoons early - the game seems to recognize precautionary measures like this and responds accordingly.

After the fight radio reports that we've got new coded messages. Looks like we're on our own from here on out. Time to proceed to the next checkpoint. This involves a slalom through a field of icebergs, or keeping the sub roughly pointed in the correct direction and not whacking into the upside-down mountains of frozen water. It's actually easier than it looks, something that should be obvious by the perfect score and zero editing marks.

Then it's another coded message - we need to cause a diversion once we're in the harbor. OK. Easy enough. Now where was that bazooka?

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Codename: Iceman Let's Play Parts Eight and Nine: Decoding and Roll 5d6

Where we discover just how absolutely shitty this game is.





Oh. My. God.

This is literally - LITERALLY!!!! - the most un-fun sequence in any adventure game I have ever played. I think that everyone involved in the creation of this game, and the producer who approved this, should be legally barred from making any games ever again, ever.

So.

We start off in video numero uno with Major Westland cracking the codes he just received over the radio. Which cannot be done without the help of the game's manual making for yet another copy protection sequence. Not that anyone would ever want to pirate this game, but never mind.

Then John actually gets the freedom to go exploring a little and discovers that there is more to this railroaded adventure game than he originally thought - the sub has OTHER ROOMS! Amazing! There's a kitchen, and.. a tube. We'll stop in the kitchen where a bottle of rum (like in the code!) sits tantalizingly on a table. When he goes to pick it up in video deux, he is approached by a salty old seaman who demands John play dice for it.

Alrighty.

Just so you understand how much time this took: I started around 8 pm last night, quit around 11.30, and started again at 6.30 this morning and wrapped up around 8.30. So about five and a half hours to get to the end, which I have mercifully condensed into 10 minutes so you guys get the highlights. I explain the game and the tricks behind solving it in the subtitles, but suffice to say that I'm glad I never, ever, ever have to play that sequence ever again.

The sub battles better be easy, that's all I'm gonna say...