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	Message: : http://lion-o-cyborg-iii.tumblr.com/post/121829315112 "/> : Good day fellow Vidmasters. I was planning to do some write-ups at some point : on Pathways into Darkness and I write this review in preparation for the : task ahead. This is just a subjective viewpoint based on my experience : with the game. All similarities to any other writing is purely : coincidental. All screenshots I found on google images and I don’t know : where they were sourced except for the death dialogs which I found on the : PID story page. : With games in constant development hell and a lack of decent classic or indie : games on XBLA I feel it’s time to reminisce the S’pht out of retro PC : gaming. And it appears Bungie and Apple agree because they finally : re-released Pathways into Darkness for OSX two years ago. Notice I said : they re-released it for OSX. Not Windows, Linux and OSX. Just OSX, because : they are too lazy to port the source code to Windows. I had to download an : emulator and scan my PC offline a few days afterward as my anti-virus : software freaked out and thought it was a Trojan. Still, I am looking : forward to the Windows fan port complete with a port of the Torch engine. : And while we are still talking about Halo, Marathon, Destiny and Halo’s : Destiny for Marathon; we have plenty of time to look back on how that all : started. Well, the first 3D attempt at how that started anyway but Bungie : wasn’t that well known before Minotaur: the labyrinths of Crete was made. : Not only would I be hard pressed to find a copy for my emulator and others : willing to get and play it with me if it even if I can get it to run, let : alone allow modem play between proper Apple hardware and bootlegged : firmware without eating up my RAM, but the only gameplay I saw of it was a : Hanukah angel shifting its way around a stone marble-run doing an air : traffic controller impression so personally I can’t count it. Looks : awesome though, like a polished version of Ultima 1 through 4. (Windows : Port for Minotaur anyone?) : http://lion-o-cyborg-iii.tumblr.com/post/121829385912 : In Pathways into Darkness, you play a random marine about whom all we know : going in is that he knows his way around a gun or two, he is perfectly : capable of speaking although we never hear him do so and when he is : supposed to be, he is usually straight to the point; combinations of which : would soon become the grand tradition of sci-fi FPS’s developed by Bungie. : The game’s backstory is rather simple at first glance: “a mysterious : meteorite impacts Mexico” sums it up. In the present day, Bill Clinton is : having an MJ12 tea party in the Pentagon with Princess Celestia and : Wallace Breen when one of the Jjaro –yes the same Jjaro race from : Marathon- appears and warns him that there’s a big ol’ god sleeping away : under a pyramid built on the exact same meteor crater. He’s 9/10 of the : way through REM and if we don’t go and baptise him in some Holy : Chloroform, humanity’s more damned then they will be in 2013 and up. : We’re airlifted and para-dropped in to the site of the pyramid carrying a : nuclear bomb but our chute fails and we wake up hours later to find most : of our equipment either lost or pancaked in the crash and our squad gone : on without us, believing us to be dead. Never the quitter, we track them : down to the pyramid’s base and dive inside into the titular darkness after : them at which point actual gameplay starts outside the manual text. Also : the pyramid is infested with very accurate representations of the original : Thundercats villains who got lost on the way to the MLP FIM maps because : sprite-based graphics hadn’t quite shaven off their pixelated bum-fluff : and epileptic goose-stepping just yet. : : http://lion-o-cyborg-iii.tumblr.com/post/121830576832/the-text-above-says-it-all-this-is-also-from : : http://lion-o-cyborg-iii.tumblr.com/post/121830651617/same-deal-as-the-green-oozes-but-with-a-ghoul-and : : http://lion-o-cyborg-iii.tumblr.com/post/121830713807/this-is-a-picture-of-an-wrkncacnter-below-and : We set off to recover the nuke to continue our mission and look for our : missing squad mates, all named after the Bungie development team at the : time. Although you won’t find them alive (spoiler alert) because like many : other games of its time, Pathways into Darkness was released on at least : two or three floppy disks first and then one CD-ROM later. The main reason : being that there wasn’t nearly enough room on floppies to have friendly : NPCs outside really bad RPGs or mostly good point n click adventure games : like Eternam or Day of the Tentacle. Even when Marathon introduced them : the game had no way of stopping you from whimsically lighting them on fire : with a flamethrower so they’d make their fire-death scream that I think is : equal parts terrifying and very funny. Much like how I find the : tree-tentacle porn scene in Evil Dead 1 both terrifying and hot. (Is it : wrong to think that? I must be mad.) : Again, setting the tone for Marathon and Halo, there’s more behind the plot : than the game itself and by extension, the developers can be arsed to tell : you although one who hasn’t spoiled it by watching a let’s play and : reading the PID story page months beforehand could have figured it out : from Marathon Infinity’s story. “Hey.” It says. “There’s an evil godlike : being trapped in the sun and if it gets free we’re all going to die. It : can also alter the fabric of reality using nothing but the power of its : own subconscious. Sound familiar, hmm, hmm?” To which I reply “No it does : not sound familiar. Why did you bring it up?” “Erm… no reason. This game’s : plot does not reference our past work in any way. Also if you have one of : the really early builds of Aleph One and M1A1, try to ignore the dark tomb : you start in with the red dude in the middle.” : And so the adventure begins. And stops 2 seconds later when you realise you : have to rebind the controls, and finding you can’t and are stuck with the : keys the game gives you at least in the OSX port which only lets you have : Hi-res textures that I didn’t notice apart from the dramatic lag increase, : and turning off floor and ceiling textures. The result of which makes the : maps look like arse. : Left and right cursor keys to turn rather than strafe, with those functions : mapped to Z and X? Space bar to fire instead of Left Mouse button? : Windows/Command key+S to save instead of CTRL+S or F5 or F6? Are you : taking the piss? : It isn’t Ultima Underworld bad because it’s still 100% playable with the : defaults; : However, it’s a bad thing that Pathways was never ported to PC but on the : other hand it’s a good thing it was never ported to a console. You’d : probably have to fire weapons by tea-bagging the expansion slot. Then : again, you can’t port Pathways into Darkness to a console unless someone : invents a controller with a mouse attachment and more buttons than a : microwave installed in Willy Wonka’s great glass elevator. : It’s very much biased toward the PC gamer audience, much like Looking Glass : studios’ cheap DOS plagiarisms of this game and Marathon; Ultima : Underworld and the Shock series. You either have to memorise 10000000 : keyboard shortcuts which use the Windows or Command keys instead of CTRL, : or you can needlessly hunt around for them in their respective dropdown : menus or just use the game’s GUI interface arranged on your desktop in : multiple windows. The windows all try to convey more information than a : children’s “Apple visual design for dummies” textbook: You’ve got your : world view window, your inventory, your backpack contents, your health, : your crystal power, your short-term memory, your clock, your calendar, : your automap, your depth, your experience points, your money’s worth, your : skills, your hopes, your dreams, your secret fantasies involving yourself : and Cheetara 2011, (sorry. I’m projecting) and you getting blatted in the : face by a ball of green butt lint spat at you by a pair of orange trousers : with teeth in the flies while simultaneously getting whacked in the back : in the head by a skeleton throwing its own bones at you. : Neither of whom you saw coming because your vision was covered in mostly : useless crap like an ad infected YouTube video and you were taking a nap : in the corner to heal yourself. And if you die, the game mocks you with : humorous death messages instead of a standard “game over” screen, later : done again by Brutal Doom and Rise of the Triad 2013 (as examples). : : http://lion-o-cyborg-iii.tumblr.com/post/121830886127/another-random-google-image-of-pid-in-combat-with : So Marathon fans can see clearly why that game toned down the gameplay in : direct proportion to its level design and story depth but in all fairness : it didn’t come down that much. If a shuttle adjusts its position from an : outer orbit to a geosynchronous orbit, the houses on the ground don’t get : evacuated quite yet. : The thing about Pathways is I know that plenty of people have played it and : have fond memories of it, but virtually none of them can claim to have : actually finished it. Or at least finished it and got the best ending the : first time through. It’s the kind of RPG where you can’t even blow your : nose without overturning every loose rock on the floor for boxes of : Kleenex. But also remembering to hurry along because the entire game has a : time limit of 5 days in real time. : It doesn’t sound very threatening but sleeping in-game uses up time faster : and you’re going to need to do this very often to recover lost hit points : because healing bottles of colloidal silver are rare and they are also the : only way to cure poison from poo potions and the horny spider enemies. : There’s even a puzzle late in the game that forces you to wait three hours : by sleeping when using a specific piece of treasure to escape from a : sealed room. : You also have six colored crystals that increase your XP and have various : elemental powers, used for killing monsters and solving one or two : puzzles. : There’s the element of Kindness that allows you to speak with the corpses you : find on a few of the floors, the Element of Generosity which freezes : monsters for a short time and deals a small amount of damage, the Element : of Honesty which is an area of effect earthquake attack that you will : almost never use because it takes about an hour to recharge, the Element : of Laughter which lights monsters on fire, (i.e. colors them red and deals : more damage than Generosity, due to the Torch Engine’s technical : limitations) the Element of Loyalty that chains electrical arcs between a : cone of monsters and the black petrification crystal where this analogy : breaks down. All crystals except the yellow dead-talk crystal have a : finite number of uses with the more powerful ones having less before they : break and become from then on only useful as Lovecraftian coke. : Ammo for guns is rare to start with and it only grows fewer further down, : meaning you have to rely on a special wooden box that duplicates whatever : weapon rounds you place in it after a few minutes. : There is also treasure hidden in the pyramid; most of it useless but some of : it has an effect on gameplay; such as the red velvet Forever Bag that : holds an infinite amount of items, or the ruby ring that decreases crystal : charge times. All treasure items give you XP only when finding them for : the first time but they will always increase your money value AKA bonus : multiplier that gives you extra points at the end of the game. You need : all treasure you can get because every 4 experience points earned gives : you 2 extra health points which you need to survive the later levels. : You also have weapon skill levels that increase the more you use them, : increasing that weapon’s power, but you should never waste ammo on lesser : monsters for the sake of levelling up. The knife, Colt.45 and M16 skills : are always at maximum but the latter two skills are completely worthless : because there is no ammo for the Colt pistol despite you’re having the gun : itself and all M16s in the game are broken and can’t be used anyway. : In brief, you have to be very careful how long to take in any level, how much : ammo you use and occasionally reloading your game after taking too many : hits to avoid having to sleep because you can be as far as 1 quarter of : the way through the game before you get to play Celestial Roulette and : find out if you’ve been playing sensibly all along: “Oh no! Looks like you : wasted all your toilet paper on arse-wiping practice to get past the : typhoid poo monster section but not only do they never show up again; but : they are completely invincible, the only way to get past them is to poison : yourself by drinking a bottle of diarrhoea and since you wasted all your : ammo and health potions in trying, you no longer have enough time to : finish the game. Better luck next time!” : Still, it makes for a rare kind of tension. Doing the knife dance with an : earthquake skeleton or flying electric koi is kind of hard but with the : cedar box around halfway through alongside an assault rifle or grenade : launcher, and the occasional save-game pentagrams on the floor; it’s more : of a bouldering wall than a stumbling hurdle. : : http://lion-o-cyborg-iii.tumblr.com/post/121831071907/the-earliest-incarnation-of-a-pattern-buffer : : http://lion-o-cyborg-iii.tumblr.com/post/121831128752/after-the-event-that-makes-you-see-this-you-wont : The real tension lies in knowing that once you’ve saved your game, any time : you wasted groping the walls for secret teleporters or looking for shiny : things is never coming back unless you have other saves. Oh, the : paralysing agony of when you reach Tuesday morning and have only just : found the randomised labyrinth level but if you just hold out a bit : longer, you could find the game’s main Easter egg: literary a gold and : chocolate Easter egg that not only gives you 2 XP when you find it, but : also teleports you directly to the final level upon eating it. Wait, why : would you want to do that for? You wouldn’t have half the necessary items : to complete the game upon finding it without ludicrous backtracking so you : might as well use the element of Cadence to inflate your scrotum and try : to bounce your way to victory. : Not that the rest of the game isn’t tense with all the creeping slowly down : dark catacombs, taking gambles on when it is and isn’t safe to cower in a : hidden dead end and fall into a troubled sleep full of nightmares, or : talking to the dead people using the yellow crystal with one of the best : dialog systems I’ve ever seen in games; whose characters are either in : despair from decades of torture from being trapped in their decaying : bodies or have grown at least a little jaded and got a minor sense of dark : humour. : : http://lion-o-cyborg-iii.tumblr.com/post/121831271042/you-may-need-to-zoom-in-to-read-this-properly-i : No sound is more unnerving than none at all in this game. There is no music : nor ambient sound other than doors opening, teleporters warping you to : other levels, gunfire and monsters. : Monsters only make noises when attacking, getting hurt or dying; so you never : know they’re there until you turn around and see a blue lightning koi : floating down the passage to eat you. Snap decision: either dive round a : corner to avoid its guided electric ball, or try to smash it with an HE : grenade from a distance before it fires as anything else other than SABOT : rounds or crystals won’t work, optionally while screaming “This is my : Boomstick!” : So it’s a very tense game with great sound design. At least it is if you : don’t play your own music over the game and thus, ruin the atmosphere; : something that people who have done complete let’s plays of the game did : and their quality suffered for it. As well as deliberately left out : important tricks to decrease chances of losing, like finding hidden warp : zones or the Easter egg. But isn’t that the beauty of playing it yourself : or making your own let’s play? You can show everyone what you’ve found and : the play the game as you usually do while teaching them how to beat it. : Even Bungie or at least the guy who made the OSX port now know this. : For example, if you thought it was bad for the game to have to hunt around : for a strategy guide in order to find your way around the repetitive : levels, you’ll be pleased to hear that the OSX port has an in-game link to : the story page to address that issue. And someone else is trying to make a : fan-port of the game to Windows complete with a Windows version of the : Torch engine. Although when I tried it a few years back, it was nowhere : near finished as there was no interface and no collision detection. : The more of this I write, I think about why I like Pathways into Darkness : better than some other RPGs. Maybe it’s because despite all the : fiddleiness, the easy to make mistakes of unforgiving puzzles or going to : the wrong level the first time through, the time limit and the weird : movement physics that feel like you’re moving around in lead ice skates; : it’s a game of dizzying depth in both gameplay and writing, especially as : it’s the same universe as Marathon. : I could spend hours reading the flavour text on every new inventory item : until a blue Baron of Hell toasts me by shooting dual fireballs out of its : hands like a cross between a Hellknight and a Mancubus. But I would die : content with knowledge that Bungie would write something really funny on : my tombstone. : : http://lion-o-cyborg-iii.tumblr.com/post/121831374867/what-happened-when-i-slept-too-close-to-a-blue : Hope to get started on the PID ToD in the not too distant future. : Lion O Cyborg.
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