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| F. Pohl's Gateway #2 - Review Part 1 by Commander Tansin A. Darcos 09/08/2013, 5:26pm PDT | ||||
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| I'll do an initial exposition while the first impressions are fresh in my mind.
After I was able to download a zip file of the game, I look at the zip file using 7Zip for Windows, and there are two .exe files, HOME and HOMEMAIN. There's also an INSTALL.TXT I can look at, and I find out that once it is installed from the CD, to run HOME when rerunning it. So I unpack the zip file to a directory that's in a subdirectory below my desktop. And discover it's a 16-bit application, which means, again, you can't run it on my Quad Core 3GHZ 64-bit machine with 64-bit Windows 7 because you can't run 16-bit apps any more and even 32-bit ones have to run through a trap layer called "WOW". But that's okay, I still have the DOS Box I think I got when I was trying the first game, which emulates PC DOS and allows such apps to run by emulating a PC. So, I start up DOS BOX and mount the directory that it's in as a substitute disk, and I try running it. The damned irritating music starts up, and it's a blank screen except for a message it can't find a file. Spacebar doesn't work and I remember the ESCAPE key is used in some contexts and I try it; that works. I get to the main screen and it's similar to the one in the first Gateway game, which is a list of commands, the list of objects around, a type in and reply window, and the screen showing the area. Only this time it recognizes the mouse and you can click on things which it takes as a request to describe the item clicked on. Slick. This is so good I'm thinking of going back and doing this for Tripkey, the text adventure game I wrote. There aren't that many locations or that many things, it wouldn't be that hard to do. But I'm going off tangent, let me go back to Gateway 2. So going through the game and trying things, looking around, and discovering essentially none of the directions will get me out of the living room, I get an incoming message telling me that they can't hear me, but they can send me a message, and that they need me to advise someone after Assassins from the Assassins Guild of the first game, killed the original Ambassador they're sending to the object and the new one needs training. (There's a back story I learn about later; I'll get to that later in this article.) Then I get an emergency one-way message from someone else, audio only. It seems that there's been a hit team sent specifically to target me, they will kill me, they blocked my entertainment system's ability to place phone calls, they've also blocked the elevator, which is how they'll come get me. That I need to use the stairs as soon as possible, and I'm probably on my own on this because he's with the FBI and was refused official permission to warn me, either the FBI figures I'm expendable or it's been infiltrated by the Assassin's Guild, either way I've got to get to the stairs. The conversation is broken, possibly he's been caught. So I discover that SE is the only way out, taking me to the foyer where the elevator is. I find the stairs but - unbelievably - they're sealed unless there's an emergency, in which case they unlock. (Didn't the New York City Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1912 tell us that you need to leave the stairs unlocked even if there's not an emergency yet? I know it's a game device, but I have never heard of any building completely locking the stairs; even in today's buildings, they might have an alarm on the door if you open it, or at worst you find if you use the door into the stairwells you can only exit into the roof or first floor, not that you can't open it at all.) Well, anyway, I can't find my way out of there, the Assassins come and I'm killed. Which i can expect, I'm new to the game. So from the options it offers, I try to restart, and that message from before, that it can't find the file - which turns out to be C:\restart.dat\gateway2 - and then it goes back to the screen I was on, tells me the game has ended, and asks if I want to start over, undo, load a saved game or quit. So I quit. As it turned out, the subdirectory I'm using is named "gateway2". So, in DOS Box I can mount the directory I placed gateway 2 into, as the C drive, then CD to gateway 2, and as far as the game is concerned, I am now running from C:gateway2. Try executing HOME. Now I get to see the lovely cutscene describing the backstory, it all works. Again, like I was in the first one, I am amazed that a software emulation of MS DOS runs this program at essentially real-time speed, and the graphics of this program, running in a window, are flawless. (And it's from 1993, and makes Gemini Rue, a much more recent game, look like something done with a cheap CGA card as opposed to VGA.) So I get to see the whole backstory, about how they found an artifact ship and it will be necessary to investigate it. Then it cuts to my room, and I get to look around. This time, I examine the trash and discover the piece of paper is a bill from the cable company - the people supplying services of over 2,000 channels to the TV set, as well as phone service - and the guy is ticked about the bill being $285 for a month despite his being worth $50 million. Oh come on, this game is set 100 years in the future from now (literally 2112), about 115 years after this video game was written, and he's complaining about the bill being $285. I had service from Comcast in 1997, and triple play - phone, internet and Cable - with connections in 3 bedrooms and the living room of the house I was at, plus DVRs in two rooms, and included several movie channels, cost me $194 a month. Has no one heard of inflation? If inflation is 1% a year, in 100 years, $285 then will be like $3 now. Right now, in 2012, triple play from Verizon or Comcast is around $90. And when does someone who have $50 million even care about a bill that small? I mean, I'm a disabled guy on Social Security, money is critical to me but even I'm not going to care if I can get burritos for exactly $1 at Dollar Tree when I'm at Target down the street from where I live and they cost $1.25 here even though I have a card allowing me free transportation on bus or rail, it's too much trouble to take the extra couple of hours to go to a Dollar Tree just to save 25c each on a few burritos. (Now, if I was going to buy a whole bunch of things and spend maybe $50 then it would be worth bothering, but even 25% more isn't worth it for a purchase of $12 worth of burritos.) And this guy is going to even care about a cost that, if his $50 million produces a mere 1% interest on the deposit, means he's making $500,000 a year in interest income without even touching the money he has. So he's earning in excess of $40,000 a month, or more than $1500 a day, without even touching the $50 million and he's bothered by a monthly bill of $285? If a guy who is earning a minimum of $500,000 and has $50 million in assets has to grouse about a $285 triple play cable bill, he's got waaaay too much time on his hands. And this is enough for this article, I'll play some more with the game later, my hands are starting to get sore. |
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F. Pohl's Gateway #2 - Review Part 1 by 09/08/2013, 5:26pm PDT  Re: F. Pohl's Gateway #2 - Review Part 1a (correction) by 09/08/2013, 5:34pm PDT My greatest adventure game triumph by 09/08/2013, 8:10pm PDT Mine was the mime in Gabriel Knight 1 by 09/08/2013, 9:55pm PDT F. Pohl's Gateway #2 - Review Part 2 by 09/26/2013, 12:35pm PDT hahaha by 09/27/2013, 10:18pm PDT |
