Just because it's the post-apocalyptic future, it doesn't mean the game is going to be anything like Bad Blood.
I'm picking the guy in the top left. If anybody is going to usher in a new world, it's going to be the guy with the beard.
This map scrolls and it's pretty big. I think it's a good idea to explore the tutorial town before I wander off without direction.
Unless it means I have to wait 6 days for water but I can have all the maggots I want right now. I'll pass.
It's difficult to do anything here. The characters buzz about randomly on screen and when you want to talk to somebody, you have to wait a while your guy runs around and tries to catch up to them first.
This game's got different music for every little thing. Conversations, the map, the menu, this screen.
Hey, a knife! Swiped!
I hope nobody misses this because I have no idea how to defend myself if they come looking for it.
I trade one of my spare knives for an empty canteen. I mean I assume that's what I've done. I don't understand the interface. He has my knife now and nobody's attacked me, so it seems like we're ready to go.
I can't believe I only have six inventory slots. If I'm ever thrown through time to a post-apocalyptic wasteland, I'm going to trade in inventory slots. I'll never want for anything!
To become the most powerful man, I have to take over the settlements surrounding the five major cities in the wasteland. After I've done that, the wasteland will be mine to control! That's a start, then. Thanks, guy.
I offer him a bottle of water and he agrees to work for me. Excellent. Not only can he attack, but he's got another six inventory slots.
I entered one of the ruined skyscrapers to see if there was anything of use, and this guy's face suddenly fills the screen and the music changes. His jaw was moving, but I couldn't hear anything. It was much scarier for the lack of sound. I had no idea what was going on.
He was just an ordinary merchant.
With skill and no small amount of patience, I fill all my inventory slots with dead dogs. Later, I realise that I'd never given Will a weapon so he was just standing around picking his nose. I decide to leave him here and I get a small fanfare. Leaving blokes behind counts as claiming territory! Ahhh!
South of Snake Hills is the Refinery. If my current goal is to secure some resources, it sounds like a good idea for me and a couple of mercenaries to gather some fuel.
Hey, why is my health going down?
Turns out that place was radioactive. Obviously. I mean, couldn't you tell?
Like most post-apocalyptic wasteland games, it's a perfect simulation of what would happen if you were plonked in the middle of the wasteland with no idea what to do. I could look up what I'm supposed to be doing, or how to keep my men alive while I'm away but I don't think there's any hidden awesome to be found in this game. You could sit there with a paper and pen, working out where all the resources are, how you use them, and in what order you're supposed to do things. You crack Burntime and your reward will be just two lines of mistranslated text. I guarantee it.
A completely abstract strategy game with almost no English documentation, even these days the majority of the community around the game is German, because this is a German game.
ReplyDeleteOnce you learn how to play this, it's actually pretty good, though it largely relies on the luck of items and people you find.
It had a cool little crafting interface, you collect scrap items and build them into useful tools.
You can win the game in two ways. The first way is to surround every city with your own green flags, becoming king of the wasteland. This is hard as you need certain items which may or may not appear, and to either micromanage or massively oversupply your followers.
The second way is to trick the enemy AI into a route where they can't get to a city, then overtake all the points on that route so your followers don't let the enemy NPC drink water, and he dies of dehydration a few days later. This way was my favorite.
I've read that you could actually fight the enemy NPC in the Amiga version, but you never see them in the DOS version.
Burntime is also pretty easy to hex edit with tools available these days. If you just want to see the endgame, load yourself up with loot, recruit followers with the loot, leave them defending a shack with the best weapons in the game, then repeat for every location on the map.
There was once a time when games didn't come with a tutorial, when you were supposed to actually READ the MANUAL.
ReplyDeleteOkay sorry, that sounded more harsh than intended, I guess. My point is, this is one of the more complex pre-tutorial games, so it's more or less necessary to read the manual in order to understand what to do. Like, what the town info screen says or how to produce stuff. If you play the guessing game, you will be frustrated and bored in no time.
ReplyDeleteYou have a fair point and mecha-neko would be the first to agree with it. He usually likes to read up on a game before playing and I actually asked him not to when he played games for the site.
DeleteI realise it may not be the ideal way to play classic games, but this is a site about kicking reason to the curb, and adventure, and figuring things out for ourselves etc. I decided early on that I wanted articles to be a player's initial reaction to the content in a game whenever possible, and manuals tend to give a lot away.
At least that was the original plan. These days I'll tend to resort to the manual or a walkthrough when I'm really stuck, as articles with just five pictures and a line saying "I have no clue what I'm doing any more so I'm turning it off now!" got old about three years back.
"Hey, it's the kids from Mixed-Up Fairy Tales all grown up!"
ReplyDeleteThis was rich because, out of an awesome coincidence, I had read the review for that game just before reading this one.