Walker (Amiga)

Walker is one of DMA Design's post Lemmings, pre GTA games, released 20 years ago alongside Lemmings 2. It'd be fair to say that DMA were primarily Amiga developers before they moved to consoles (and eventually changed their name to Rockstar North), but everything they'd made up to this point had all gotten a multiplatform release eventually. Poor Walker on the other hand never made it off the Amiga for whatever reason, dooming it to a lonely future of relative obscurity.

I actually had a go of this a few years back so there's no way you could call this a blind playthrough, but I'm playing it again anyway. Just because I can.

Okay I'm actually playing it just because I wanted a gif of this loading animation on my site.

It's pretty flickery on a modern sharp monitor screen (and probably just as bad on a crappy CRT TV as well to be honest), but I love the idea of it, forming messages and shapes out of a spinning cloud of dots. They could have just thrown up a picture of a floppy disk like everyone else, no one would've cared, but they did something original and it's a sign that they had ambitions beyond just making a another generic shooter.

Either that or the programmer was just bored out of his mind working on the game code and made this as a distraction in a desperate attempt to keep himself sane.

The game begins with a short clip of our walker pilot keeping himself entertained one miserable dystopian night with a bit of urban pacification. You might think lethal force is a little harsh in this situation (after all, even ED-209 gives people 20 seconds to comply before shooting them dead regardless), but come on this is clearly self defence. That shotgun he's carrying could do serious damage to our mech's paintwork.

Plus no one wants to climb out of their nice cosy mech at two in the morning to put some cuffs on a violent psychopath if they can help it. Especially when he's a gross mutant with orange blood.

And so the game begins. Right to left scrolling, how weird is that?

It seems that we've been sent to Berlin, Germany during the tail end of World War II to, uh, "proceed to the mission waypoint" and "destroy ALL TARGETS". That's all the mission briefing I get really. If there's any explanation for why I've been sent to the past (and why my mech is apparently only 6 feet tall judging by that background), then it must be hidden away in the manual.

I can stomp left and right with the joystick or keyboard, but I aim the targeting reticule with the mouse. I'm sure it's not the earliest game to have basically a modern mouse and keyboard control setup, but would have been pretty unusual at the time.

Damn, you think it was a deliberate choice to have such a massive scale mismatch between the soldiers and the background? They're so tiny!

Actually don't answer that, as I can't hear you over the sound of me cutting through a whole wave of the little bastards with twin chainguns! The audio design is actually pretty great for the time; I can hear my guns spinning up, metal debris clanging against the floor, my guns spinning back down again for no reason... hey what the fuck, why'd my guns stop firing?

Oh I see, there's a TEMP gauge on the level which fills up if I hold the trigger down for more than a few seconds. When it reaches critical my guns seize up until I release the button. I'm got a SHIELD gauge on the other side of the screen too, which so far is mostly good for showing how nearly useless WW2 mortal fire is against a bipedal murder machine from a distant sci-fi future. They're basically throwing their lives away like lemmings here.

Lemmings 2: The Tribes (Amiga)

Speaking of lemmings, our walker actually makes a surprise cameo in the Amiga version of Lemmings 2, with much the same outcome. I looked for him in the SNES version as well, but they'd taken him out! It's like they were determined not to let him out onto consoles.

Imagine if the walker had gotten anywhere near the respect the lemmings did, he could've been on his third sequel by now. Walker 2, Walker 3D, All New World of Walker (or Walker Chronicles I suppose for US gamers).

Though now that I think about it, DMA's Body Harvest had a bit of a time travel plot to it didn't it? Noticeably lacking in walkers though, from what I played of it.

Oh shit, that looks a bit more dangerous than a few mortar shells.

These planes are almost too fast to shoot down and they take so many hits that they're already basically off screen before they explode. It's their bombs I need to worry about though really, as they tend to land squarely on my shiny blue roof while I'm wasting my infinite ammo on planes that never even come back around for a second pass.

It seems that after every few steps forward the screen is locked down and a new wave of enemies is triggered. I've got to wipe them all out before moving on, scrolling beat 'em up style. There's so much on screen I need to keep track of though: tanks, planes, enemies spilling out of vans etc. And I while I'm focused on my aiming, I'm doing a shitty job at dodging their attacks, and my lost shield energy never comes back.

Plus P-51 Mustangs are single seat fighter-bombers, they shouldn't even have room for paratroopers! So unfair! Also... that's an American plane, so who am I even fighting here?

Oh cool, right mouse button locks onto enemies That'll be handy next time I've got bombs to shoot out of the air.

If I'm fast (and accurate) enough things like these trains can be be destroyed as they're passing by, potentially giving me an advantage. Or I could just leave the poor thing alone and let it disappear off screen like a nice walker.

And then 9 minutes into level one... BOOM, it's all over! I was so busy trying to snipe the little dudes scurrying around my feet that I failed to give due attention to the Zeppelin emptying out its bomb bay onto my head.

Damn, they put me all the way back here again? Not that I know exactly where this is. I mean I'm grateful I wasn't sent isn't the very start of the level, but this must be a fair distance back.

The trouble I'm having with the game is that it's an endurance run; there's no health pickups, the shield doesn't recharge, my defences just get eroded away through wave after wave until I'm basically a dead mech walking. I know some people love this kind of gameplay, but for me it's just demoralising.

Though on the plus side, no time limit!

Okay this is different. There's two missiles here guarded by a truck and a tank, and they have a shared health bar. If I shoot the missiles I get hammered by the enemies, but if I'm clearing out enemies I'm not shooting missiles. It's a dilemma.

Plus I keep getting distracted and letting my guns overheat. All I have to do is release the button every few seconds, but my poor brain is too preoccupied with destruction to remember.

Yes, blew one of those fuckers up! And... the other one has near full health and is practically off screen already. Yep, it's gone.

I guess I had a time limit after all. Bastard.

Crap, it's put me all the way back here again? But this is ages ago. This is before the Zeppelin fight!

The game's so intense it's tiring me out and I really don't want to have to fight all the way up to the missiles again. But yeah, it's still only level one and even I should be able to get past level one, dammit. I ain't quitting until I get to the next era.


A FEW MINUTES LATER.

I'm not going to make it past level one am I?

This time I focused my fire on the missiles instead of the enemies and of course the little bastards blew me up. I just didn't have enough health to last out.

Worn down and miserable I barely made it halfway through the stage on my final attempt. I've started getting frustrated and making dumb mistakes, like I always do when I'm forced to repeat something a few times. Whether that's a flaw in the game or a flaw with my head I'm not even sure anymore.

All I know is that the game isn't inspiring me to persevere.

Well I'm all out of lives and the game has no continues, so that's how my story ends. I imagine the Nazis reverse engineer the walker's technology and go on to conquer the world, leading to a future without walkers, a paradox that destroys the entire space time continuum.

It's funny how the walker is drawn in a different art style each time. It was even different looking in its Lemmings 2 cameo. You should see how the thing looks on the box art (mobygames link), it's got teeth! Or something.

I suppose I should try it again on easy difficulty shouldn't I? Fine then, one more shot. From the start.


10 MINUTES LATER.

This time I reached the end with half my shield left and found they'd only brought out one missile to shoot! Easy mode is far less stressful.

Okay missile you've got no health, you can blow up now. C'mon, I kind of have a time limit here and a freakin' tank is busy punching holes in my glossy blue bodywork while I'm focusing my fire on you, so could you explode please? Seriously man, blow the fuck up already!

Oh shit, I'm out of time, it's taking off!


LATER.

Well it turns out that I can apparently only make the killing blow on the missile when it's taking off. For the sake of drama or whatever.

Anyway I've finally reached level two, set in the far distant future of Los Angeles 2019, which is thankfully still in the future today. Unless you're reading this six years from now, in which case it is not. Sorry about that.

The denizens of this dystopian shithole are just as suicidally reckless as those I met in the last era, but they've got new and interesting ways to wreck my mech. They got helicopters, flamethrower tanks, mines, homing missiles and these guys on the left that like to shoot missiles horizontally across the screen I can't dodge. It seems that variety may have been the missing ingredient for me as I'm starting to get a bit more into the game now.


A QUARTER OF AN HOUR OR SO LATER.

I hate it when this happens. I've reached the last boss with the tiniest fraction of health left, but I just need to keep wearing him down and I can win this! The trouble is, I don't know what his weak point is and nothing I do seems to be damaging him.

Plus these bloody hand gliders are pelting me with bombs and every time I shoot one down it's immediately replaced.

I tried focusing on shooting down the infinite hand gliders instead and you can see how well that went. Looks, the bloody thing is still launching them as I explode.

Well I've got two lives left, I can probably come back and finish this guy off! There's only four eras in the game, so this is the halfway point. But I just can't face replaying the last three minutes or so all over again, I'm exhausted. So I quit. I am a quitter.

Here's one last picture of the walker for you though. I caught it in the split-second before it was covered up with the high scores of people that aren't me.


Well I just whined about the game for 20 something screenshots, but what did I REALLY think about Walker? I think... that's it's obvious why this game got good review scores at the time. It's slick, has great graphics and sound for the time, the controls are fantastic, and most importantly, the reviewers loved a challenge. I mean it got criticised for only lasting about an hour or so (if you're good at it), which is a fair point, but the idea of playing this for an hour straight wears me out just thinking about it. The game is bloody relentless and every slip up you make is etched into your shield and armour for the rest of the stage until it eventually collapses under the weight of it all and you're sent back a few minutes to try again. It'd take me a lot lot longer than an hour to ever finish it.

To be fair the player is in charge of triggering the waves by stepping forward, so it doesn't have to be a total marathon, and it's not like you lose powerups when you're killed. In fact there are no powerups, no upgrades, no lucky escapes, no advantages. It's just your skill with a mouse cursor versus a million angry lemmings. Well unless you turn on auto-fire to basically cheat your way around weapon heat up, but that's hardly good sportsmanship is it?

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