GameWTFs.com

Another week, another game I sold long ago and bought again recently. But this time there's a twist: I already did a (really brief) write-up of this game in the past. So, I guess I already have a pretty good start on what I remembered about this game.

And the game is...

Well, I remember it being a no-win situation most of the time, for several reasons:

Well, since I played it last, I've learned a little something about perseverance. And more importantly, I also learned the amusement factor of playing a video game that expects you to figure out how to 'game' the horrible game mechanics to make progress.

So I dug in to Athena's quest with a vengence, trying to see what the designers expected of the blue-haired moppet of Wisdom. Here's the highlights of my search!

There are no bottomless pits... All pits either move you to upper/lower parts of the level. This sounds good so far, but instead of "death pits" for dead-ends, some of the pits...

I'm not sure HOW that's better than taking a life away...especially because (like every game so far this month), losing your last life has almost no greater penalty than losing every other life. When you get Game Over, you have unlimited continues...so if you choose Continue, you just start again at the beginning of the latest level with 3 more lives. Actually, I AM sure that these dead-end pits are WORSE than losing a life: everything else is identical to what happens when you lose a life, BUT YOU DON'T GET A FRESH TIMER.

Having lots of armor-ups and weapon-ups to collect is fun, but both the weapon power-up and armor power-up systems are flawed:

It definitely suffers from the Shoot-em-Up curse, If you're powered-up good and then die, sometimes you might just want to press RESET.

Stage 3, The Ocean level, is a good example of this: whatever you're carrying, you'd better power-up to a projectile weapon to fight the octopus boss. And fortunately, this level throws lots of fishmen at you, who drop either Arrows or Wands. UNfortunately, you can never tell which weapon a given fishman will drop.

The end result is: you'll have to spend a lot of time trying to get to Level 2 of either weapon (so you have the ability to break blocks, thus get the Armor you need to survive)...and even if you have exactly what you want, all of that goes down the drain if you accidentally kill an enemy who drops the other weapon right on your head.

If you die (while trying to gather the right gear, or failing to kill the boss), you go all the way back to the beginning of the level to start again. It's quite exhausting!

Then, there's the obscure power-ups with no in-game explanation --

For example, did you know that if you get this Lamp item, AND get to a specific dead-end in the level, you can warp to the next level WITHOUT fighting the boss? (yes, just like in the SNES version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein!).

Oh, and even if you knew that -- did you know if you die or get ANOTHER "item" power-up before the end of the level, that REPLACES the lamp, so that dead-end will just loop you to the beginning of the level again? Now try to figure out what's an "item" power-up (it's not a new weapon...or a new armor...or an Armor or Weapon power-up, or an Armor or Weapon power-down, that's for sure!

Maybe life would be easier if they, oh, I don't know...showed which Item Power Up is in effect, to both let you know there's some lingering effect from something (say, the Lamp), and moreover, let you know that SOMETHING ELSE REPLACED THE LAMP when you picked it up!?

The Last Action Hero's bemused detatchment at bad game design will only take me far. I've only found more fascets of this game's poor execution, and I think my initial summary should have been plenty sufficient.