Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 18: Gold Box - Buck Rogers XXVc: Countdown to Doomsday (MS-DOS) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing a little bit more of sci-fi RPG Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday. I just want to get up to the bit where you get to fly your own spaceship and see how that works. (Click HERE to return to part one.)

The game was released in 1990, for DOS, C64 and Amiga, and then the Genesis/Mega Drive in 1991. This means it's the first and only Gold Box title to get a release on a Sega system. It wasn't the first Dungeons & Dragons game to get ported over however, as a: it's not a D&D game, and b: Heroes of the Lance was released on the Master System a little earlier.

I've heard that a few of the releases included the novel First Power Play by John Miller, which is the kind of extra I like to see in a game box. Though I'd be happy to get any extras in the box these days. Or a box.

Speaking of relics from ancient times, here's a fun fact for you: the character of Buck Rogers debuted in 1929, so he predates Conan the Barbarian by 3 years and Superman by 9. The premise of his story is that he's a pilot from the present day who gets frozen in suspended animation until the 25th century. That's a massive 500 years, or at least it used to be. The present day has moved forward a bit since then, so if they announce they're making a new movie in time for his 100th birthday in 2029, he'll start off already 1/5th of the way there.

Note: this is a game with a story, so there will be SPOILERS below. Not for all of it though, I'm not going to end up finishing it.

---

Previously, in Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday:

My team of six NEO recruits did so well on their first day that they were given a spaceship and sent out to look for salvage. They came across a derelict ship that seems abandoned, aside from the genetic monsters and security robots wandering the decks.

They need to investigate further and they should probably hurry as one of them has started experiencing suspicious symptoms.

And now, the continuation:

I was going to describe how I'm exploring the ship and finding log entries when I enter rooms, but then it occurred to me I could just show you. Here, have a 2 minute GIF of the entire first floor, why not? (The loop starts at 02:40).

I did edit the footage a bit, to remove the part where I left the game paused for a minute while reading logbook entry 38. I also cut a couple of random encounters; you can tell how much of a struggle they were by looking at my characters' unchanging HP. They didn't give me any good loot though.

One floor isn't large enough to be much of a maze, but the ship seems to have a lot of decks. And while I'm looking around, my characters' mysterious symptoms keep getting worse and my worry intensifies. I'd try giving them some poison antidotes from my backpack but it won't let me use them.

There's a lot of text in this game, more than I expected. It's like I'm exploring a doomed Fallout vault seven years early.

The sounds and smells of this room begin to relax the heroes, and Dan thinks back to a quiet afternoon with an old girlfriend... Fortunately Isaac snaps out of it in time to spot Dan wrapped in thorny vines that pulse in time with his heartbeat, and now it's up to me to decide what he does about it.

Uh... attack the plant Isaac! I hate creepy sci-fi plants. Burn it with fire if you've got any.

Well, we got XP from the evil plant experience at least, and another log entry from Dr. Williams about the mad science these folks were up to on this ship.

Oh crap, Flash Gordon just keeled over and now his name's red. I'm getting ready to start panicking.

I found the diary of a crewmember called Dr. Conchitez, written when Dr. Williams' gennies escaped. She says she needs 'Scot' online to deal with the situation, which seems like a hint to what I should be doing. She also mentions that she was stung by something and found an itchy rash on her leg, and she looked through Dr Williams' files to see if it was anything serious.

The last entry in the diary says "Oh no! THE RASH IS SPREADING! I HAVE LITTLE TIME!" So I'm thinking it probably was serious.

Man, I hate time limits, they stress me out. And I haven't even reached the actual countdown to doomsday yet!

Alright I hope deck 5 is more useful, because I'm running out of people, and I need at least a few of them conscious so I can fight the robots (along with the occasional gennie).

I also need Isaac Clarke to learn zero-G manoeuvring already because he's just embarrassing himself here. 

LATER

Well I guess I found out what happened to Dr. Conchitez. It turns out that the infection knocking out my team is actually brain parasites and it seems like she instructed the machine in sickbay to tear her apart to find a cure.

This is good news for me as it means I can use the machine to remove the brain parasites and heal my wounded. Just in the nick of time too.

Unfortunately there's a catch: no one here is covered by RAM health insurance. I either need to give it the correct code or attempt to reprogram it.

I've played Deus Ex and Doom 3 before, I'm used to finding logs with codes in them, but I don't recall finding anything on this ship so far or else I would've written it down. I do have a character trained in the programming skill and I made sure to give them lots of skill points. Trouble is that it's Flash Gordon, the guy who is currently in a coma due to brain parasites.

Screw it, I'll tell Dan Dare to have a go at reprogramming and see how lucky he is today.

Dan failed so badly that the security system activated and when I wrecked the lasers it also broke the automated brain parasite surgeon. Oops.

So have I lost? It hasn't given me a game over message, or warned me that it's unwinnable now, but I don't have a good feeling about this. Man, I hate not knowing if I've ended up in a dead man walking situation. This is exactly why I never play Sierra adventure games.

I could load my last save game, but I'm trying to get better at rolling with failures instead of just loading every time something doesn't go my way. Besides, I still wouldn't know the code and my only programmer would still be in a coma. I suppose I should go look for another sickbay and see how long I can hold out against the security robots as my heroes collapse one by one.

NOT LONG LATER

Damn.

Well at least I found the security console that controls the robots first. If my programmer hadn't been in a coma I could've used it to turn them off and then they wouldn't have killed everyone.

Okay I give up. I'm going to load the other backup save I made right at the beginning of the mission when we first arrived on the ship. And then I'm going to check a walkthrough.

This is what I needed to read to get the code: it's logbook entry 38, from right at the start of the mission.

The trouble is the game had given me his Sigma number before I knew that it was going to ask me for codes, so I had no reason to notice it or make a note. You could point out that I didn't actually need to write my own note, because it's printed right there in the log book! But the log entries aren't in order, so I'd have to read through paragraphs of spoilers before I found it.

It's not very well designed in my opinion.

On the plus side you can keep trying the automated surgeon over and over even if you get the code wrong, or fail to reprogram it. The game only becomes unwinnable if you break the machine, or if everyone collapses before you find the code. Or if you have the bright idea to try using Dr. Conchitez's code instead, apparently.

Mega Drive

I was curious if I had this problem when I wrote about the Mega Drive version a few years back, and yeah it turns out my adventure on the derelict ship pretty much played out the same way. Only back then I had the sense to not smash the sickbay security and after a few tries I got the reprogramming to work.

Okay I used the code on the sickbay machine and now I've got a fully healed crew with all the time in the world. Plus I know where the security bot console is, so I can go turn them off. Fewer fights does mean less XP, but I'm bored of watching my team smash these things on autopilot.

Further on I found more journal entries, revealing the scientists' plans to destroy Earth's ecosystem and repopulate with their genetically engineered organisms. I've also learned that they have built a weakness into the creatures for their own protection, and they can be shut down with a harmless chemical. They're not broadcasting what it is though, for obvious reasons.

I've found the ship's computer, Scot.dos, and it turns out that he was the reason everything went wrong here! He didn't mean to go all SHODAN on his own crew, he was just trying to sabotage their evil plans in order to preserve Earth's beautiful ecosystem. At least, that's what he says.

Scot has determined that the gennies' weakness is argon gas, so now I need to go back down through the ship and find where it's stored. It's weird that the decks on this spaceship are numbered from bottom to top like a building. Also it's got a deck 0 as a basement.

There are two ways to get between decks, the airshafts and the ladders. The game warns me that if I use a narrow airshaft and enemies attack, I'll be fighting them with one character alone, and there really doesn't seem to be any benefit to using the shafts instead of the ladders.

But I'm gonna use the shafts anyway, because it'll be a laugh. I'm trusting a computer who got his whole crew killed when he claims that pumping deadly gas through the vents will be a good thing for me, so I'm already living dangerously.

Oh no it's a Klingon Predator! Or an Umber Hulk from Secret of the Silver Blades without the disco eyes! Okay, lesson learned, I do not want to be using the airshafts.

Still, getting ambushed by monsters on a spaceship is basically the story of Isaac Clarke's life. And he actually beat three of them alone and got all the XP for it... after an incredible number of missed attacks. The dude really needs to level up and get some zero-G combat skills already.

I found the argon down on deck 0 and the heroes strapped the canisters to their backs. Scot told me to take them up to deck 3, so I need to run to the ladder and find another control panel. Or whatever the gas pipe looks like.

Agh dammit, the gennies have been evolving to become superintelligent and they're reversing the flow of the gas! I need to get down to engineering and use the panel there to override the airflow. Okay, what deck was engineering on?

Only two names have turned purple? I'm surprised everyone isn't ready for a level up with all the random encounters I've been fighting.

Okay, I need to pick who should repair the panel and get the gas flowing again. Who did I give the repair spaceship skills to? Who's my engineer? Oh, hang on, I think I remember the answer to this.

Get wrecked gennies! Isaac Clarke saves the day.

The robots have been shut down, the monsters have been shut down. Space adventure completed. This level wasn't exactly System Shock but it definitely had a story to it and I can appreciate that.

You are joking.

Alright, the countdown is working on Superhot rules - time only moves forward when I do. So I don't need to panic, I don't need to rush, but I do need to be efficient. Some graph paper with all the decks drawn out and clearly labelled would be very handy right now, as Gold Box Companion wasn't really built to map multiple floors. Oh screw it, I'll just go from memory and hope for the best.

When the counter hit 10 it started interrupting 9 me every single 8 step to remind 7 me that I was 6 fast running out 5 of time. But I made it to the panel and shut the destruct sequence down. Now I can finally relax. And hopefully save!

Oh piss off.

We don't want any fights right now, thanks. We just want to save the game and collapse on a chair. Okay fine, let's go kill this guy and earn Beckett Mariner her level up. Everyone else has one ready, it would be a shame for her to be left out.

I beat the guy but didn't quite get enough XP. I did get her some cool Martian loot though, including a mono sword, which she specialises in! Alright that's everything done, can I leave this bloody spaceship now?

Dude...

Okay, I try to be a benevolent 'phasers on stun' type of space hero in my RPGs, I give people the benefit of the doubt, I show mercy, I try to find a way to get the ideal outcome. But I'm shooting this guy without any hesitation because I am just done with this level right now.

He ended up getting launched off into space in an escape pod along with his bomb and then exploded. That's it, the last gennie. The ship is ours. And seeing as our own ship got detached and went missing somehow, the heroes decide to pilot it back to Salvation Station.

BACK AT SALVATION STATION

Awesome, we're getting a new ship! Maybe they'll let me actually see what it looks like this time.

No, hang on, does Turabian mean we're getting the ship I came in on? The cursed Martian ship full of science experiments and mind control parasites and sinister plants? The one with blood dripping off every wall? I suppose it was legitimate salvage at least.

Turabian is giving me a choice of three missions this time:

• A Martian RAM base, Gradivus Mons, has been unusually active.
• Heur.dos uncovered the coordinates of a manufacturing base in the Venusian Lowlands.
• There is a secret RAM base near Ceres in the asteroid belt.

This is so Mass Effect! And I guess a little bit Curse of the Azure Bonds. He recommends going to Ceres first as the ship was scheduled to return there. I'm going to assume this means that the other two are designed for a higher levelled team and will be more of an uphill struggle.

Okay, before I leave I need to do essential preparations. 

First I gave everyone training so they could get their level ups, and raised their skills. Lots of zero G training, programming training, and I'm boosting astrogation and navigation some more. I don't know what they do, but I'm piloting a spaceship, so I think I'll need them.

Then I reloaded all my guns and I saved the game, in three different slots (just to be safe).

It's funny how it doesn't tell you the status of your ship, so you can't tell if you need repair, fuel, ammo etc. It's all free here though so I'm just going to pick everything and hope one of the options gets someone to remove all the corpses and evil plants. Plus I've seen enough sci-fi series to know we've got to get stocked up on coffee.

Oh, I get to fly the ship around myself! It's nice to finally see what it looks like, and it's not the black ship with red stripes I saw at the start of the last mission. Unless they repainted it blue.

Moving around space is like moving on the overworld in the other Gold Box games, except it costs fuel for every step. This is a bit of a problem when all of the destinations are unmarked. It kind of discourages exploration.

I can find my way around the Solar System well enough when it comes to flying to different planets and I even know some of the moons, but finding Ceres is going to be a problem. There's a map in the manual with the planets labelled, but even that has the asteroids unmarked!

It could be that all I have to do is fly to the asteroid belt, so I'll give that a try first. It's in literally every direction so I can't really miss it! Shouldn't take long to cover 200 million miles.

Well I didn't find Ceres but when Scot told me about a comm centre monitoring our communications I figured I should check it out. 

I wasn't expecting a RAM combat robot to be waiting there to fire a rocket at my whole team on the first turn. My doctor has 28 hit points and ended up losing 27 of them before I got a chance to move! It seems like I should reposition my units when I get the chance, and I'm reposition him into another room as far away as possible.

So now I've got another choice here between continuing with a hopeless situation and seeing if my luck improves, or just loading a save game and going somewhere with fewer rocket bots waiting behind the doors.

A COUPLE OF FIGHTS LATER

I decided to stay at the comm centre and the fights here are really paying off. That's more like what I expect from a Gold Box game! After a whole derelict spaceship without loot I was starting to think the game was going to be restrained with the amount of gear you have to look through after each battle. 

This is probably going to be the last time I'm actually happy to look through a list like this, as it'll just be piles of the same stuff over and over, but right now this is proper treasure to me. I don't know what these grenades and protective goggles do, but heavy body armour sounds like something I want everyone to be wearing. Maybe then I'll have more luck fighting rocket bots.

These robots are a real problem and perfectly capable of wiping out your whole team on their own, even if you had a chance to split the group apart first. Part of what makes them so awkward is that I keep missing on almost every turn, and when I do hit I do 0 damage. And that's after passing the zero-G combat roll!

Fortunately I found some explosive grenades while wandering the hallways and they're a lot more effective against them. I haven't actually figured out how to equip them myself yet, but I tried switching my characters to auto and they decided on their own to have some fun with explosives. The members of my team who were standing in the blast radius probably weren't all that amused though.

It's fine, I can recover from this, I have a plan.

There's no way to regain health without another character around who has medical skills... unless your ship is docked and accessible. I think the encounters on this comm centre are all scripted and even if they're not I reckon Flash can make a run back to the ship and get everyone healed before the next fight. It's not something I can make a habit of, my ship only has limited supplies, so I hope they only have limited robots here.

I also hope Flash can remember the Sigma number as we still don't have RAM health insurance.

I've been coming across these control panels along the way and my heroes love smashing them to shut down this spy operation. They gleefully wreck every one they see.

I've also been chasing the base commander around. He threw everything he had at me in fight after fight, until all he had left was the last few technicians running the command centre. They weren't quite as difficult as fighting bots.

Then he made the mistake of hiding behind the last control panel...

... it's like he hadn't been paying attention.

Well I guess we're not taking prisoners then, or showing any kind of mercy whatsoever. Dude hides behind a control panel, he gets the firing squad.

Alright, that was a nice little optional side-quest, aside from the bit where I had to fight a bunch of near-unkillable robots. I like that the game doesn't force you into one of the three missions, it lets you go off and do something entirely different instead. Even if you did it by accident because they didn't label the map.

And now I need to fly back to Salvation Station to get my ship's medical supplies restocked.

I like how the planets slowly move around in their orbits over time, even if it does imply that it's taking me weeks to get anywhere. I really hope this countdown to doomsday lasts a while and there's no hidden timer.

Hang on, sensors have identified a RAM heavy cruiser! I've been hoping for this, as I want to see what the space combat is like. So I'm going to select 'Attack' and hope my captured vessel has some significant firepower.

Actually no, my ship's numbers are rubbish, at least compared to a heavy cruiser. Everything I have, this thing has three times as much.

I like my ship's name though...

Maelstrom Rider.

I told my pilot to 'close in' on the enemy vessel and then the game switched to give me control of the next character. Each of them got a turn to fire a weapon at a component (and fix the ship in my engineer's case), until it cycled back to the pilot. That's pretty much all combat is it seems, I'm not choosing different manoeuvres or anything tactical like that.

So I don't feel so bad about them blowing my ship to pieces. It's not that I was a bad captain, I just got us into a near-unwinnable fight. Like a bad captain.

My second attempt went a lot better, mostly because I ran away from the big cruiser and attacked a small scout ship instead. I like the game's semi-retro looking spaceships. They've got a bit of '30s rocketship to them, while also being very '80s.

Unfortunately I kept hitting the hull, which worked out great until the ship completely exploded. I wanted to board them and plunder their holds for booty!

For my third attempt I told my characters to target the controls and engines only, destroying their ability to manoeuvre. This let me use the 'board' option to dock.

Though now I have to get inside and kill all the enemy crew with the standard tactical battles.

This scout ship was basically laid out like my own ship, with small decks stacked like a skyscraper, only it's far less interesting. It's all bunks and cargo holds instead of sinister labs full of creepy experiments. I like the purple though.

Completing the boarding operation was a lot like winning a regular battle, except it was my ship that got healed. Now I'm in good shape to carry on looking for this asteroid base.

FORTUNA

Oh, there are no missions on this rock. It's just another menu town like Sanctuary Station.

This place has a bank to store money though. In the other Gold Box games I'd be relieved to finally get rid of some of the weight, but I don't think money weighs anything in this, so it's not something I need to worry about. I do need to have some cash in my NEO account though, for... some reason. I'll look it up later.

I also got my first opportunity to use the 'library search' skill to look up information from the colony's computers...

Wow 'library search' is a really useful skill, I'm glad I've been investing some of my precious skill points into it every level up. I suppose this acid frogs fact did get me a little XP.

I headed down to Guns R' Us next, but the wares were less than awesome. I was able to refill the ammo in my own weapons at least. USEM Grenades had a more interesting list of products, including an 'ECM package'. This apparently isn't a grenade at all, it's a jamming device that stops rocket pistols from aiming at you. So now it's the enemy's turn to miss with every shot... at least until they switch to a different gun.

Okay, back to space. My rogue's name has turned purple so I need to get her over to HQ for level up training before I go back to the asteroids to look for Ceres.

LATER, ON THE RAM ASTEROID BASE

I've found the RAM asteroid base next to Ceres! Seems like they're having a bit of a bioemergency at the moment, but what else is new?

It's a good thing I levelled up my rogue because now she needs to use her fast-talk skill to bluff her way into this base. They were expecting the Maelstrom Rider to come here, so we have that to our advantage, but the original crew is all dead so they're not seeing any of the faces they expected to see.

And my rogue... passed the skill check! We're in. Well fast-talk may not come in use often (in fact I may never get to use it again), but it really paid off here as now I can walk around the enemy base freely.

Man, this is like Secret of the Silver Blades all over again. It's doing tricks to extend the map past the engine's 16x16 bounds, so Gold Box Companion's auto map is useless here. 

These guards who keep trying to give me directions are useless too, though that may be my own fault for being bad at following what they say.

I haven't been using the cluebook as I'd rather explore on my own, but I get the feeling I'm going to have a better time here if I just cheat and look at a map, so I'm going to do that.

Hey, this place isn't all that complicated. It's just absolutely bloody massive. Maps are usually 16x16 tiles across, maximum. This is more like 60x60.

These identical hallways are a problem, as I'm finding it hard to keep track of I am and where I've been, and they have so many doors. Look at all those bloody doors! One corridor can have 32 rooms to search, and I do have to search them, in order to save the kids, rescue the bunnies, and find the crucial information on where to go next.

Screw it, I'm using the clue book as a guide and going directly to all the rooms with numbers. Because the game is taking the piss right now.

LATER

Alright, I rescued the kids, I fought a million hypersnakes, I found the keycard and password, I saved the bunnies, and I used a rope to climb back out of the basement. See, I knew that rope I bought would be important! In fact, I needed it here for basically the same reason that I needed it in Fallout.

Then I found out that RAM had poisoned their own workers to save them the trouble of evacuating them! So I healed the poisoned workers, grabbed Jim's grandad, fought some space rats, and got everyone to the rescue ship. I think that's pretty nice of me really, considering that this is an enemy base.

Okay, so where's my own ship docked?

Oh crap, I may be done with the story on this base, but the story's not done with me yet. There's a pirate cruiser coming right at me.

I tried to pick the most sensible and/or heroic options, but they managed to board my ship. On the bright side, this saves me the trouble of trying to disable and board their ship. I just have to defeat their crew and then I can fly back home for medals and level ups.

I've got everyone wearing protective goggles, but the enemy clearly don't know this as they keep throwing dazzle grenades at me. And I've got my team on automatic, so they keep throwing dazzle grenades right back at them. I should really investigate if there's a way to turn that off, because it's not like I'm going to stop using auto fights in easy fights.

It's not that I'm playing the whole game on autopilot, I do take manual control in a lot of these battles. But there are so many of them, and when the odds are clearly in my favour I just don't see the point in micromanaging my crew. It's boring to manually win a fight that I was never going to lose.

In fact I've been kicking their asses so badly that I managed to move this boarding party over to their house. But then I got a scripted failure scene and was taken to meet the pirate captain.

Oh damn, the graphics have gone full Timeslaughter for a moment.

The pirate captain wanted me to choose a character to fight him hand to hand, so I sent in one of my warriors. The one with the mono sword. Unfortunately he really did mean 'hand to hand', no weapons, and his armour class is so good that he's basically impossible to beat unarmed. I think the game's just trolling me.

So my team was thrown into the brig. 

Here I was given another chance to choose a character, this time to pick the lock. The first one I've come across in the game so far! Fortunately my rogue has been training for this, so I gave her the task and she... passed the skill check! Her skills have only been tested twice so far, but she hasn't let me down once.

Oh damn it's TV's Buck Rogers! It's a bit weird to find him lurking around outside my cell on a pirate ship, but I suppose someone had to be here to get me out if my rogue wasn't up to the task.

The dude is joining my team for a bit and he's level 10, two levels higher than the game's level cap, so he'll be very useful in a fight. He'd be useful in a ship too, as his piloting skills are in the 200s. I don't even know if there's any point in raising skills above 100! (And the manual doesn't either.)

Speaking of level ups, I need to get off this ship and back to HQ as all the names are turning purple. Characters temporarily stop getting XP when they have just about enough to get trained twice in a row, so I'd like to get back before then.

LATER, IN A MISSION ON MARS

Hey I went to a Desert Runner village on Mars and finally found out what they look like. They're like Cat from Red Dwarf, except with pointy elf ears. So that's what Flash Gordon and Beckett Mariner look like, not that anyone in the game ever notices or cares. Race only affects stats, not story.

I was going to turn the game off after meeting Buck Rogers, because that was pretty much the last box on my checklist I had left to tick (aside from meeting Wilma Deering, which hasn't happened yet). But when I went back to HQ to level up I realised I was right on the threshold of levelling up again, so I thought I'd just rush out and quickly do another mission first. See, this is how RPGs get you - there's always one last thing you want to get done.

It's nice to finally be outside in the daylight for once. This is the closest the game's come to feeling like the other Gold Box games. I'm also on a planet with actual gravity, so the game doesn't roll to check my characters' zero-G skill every turn for once.

Unfortunately I was in such a rush to get back out into another mission that I didn't think to reload my needle guns first. It wasn't a big deal, I thought, as I picked up tons of new weapons from the pirate ship. 

In fact I've made sure everyone's got two kinds of guns on them, just in case the enemies are resistant to one of them.

Unfortunately I'm fighting robots that are immune to my rocket pistols, and the enemies are throwing aerosol grenades that make my laser pistols useless. All the clever tactics in the world won't help when my attacks do 0 damage.

This would've been a great time to start throwing some robot-wrecking explosive grenades, or some chaff grenades to hopefully shut down their attacks. But my characters automatically threw all my good grenades away ages ago. Sometimes I was the one who threw them because I didn't notice what the computer had put in their hands.

Oh, speaking of switching weapons, this was one of the most annoying things to have to do in the previous Gold Box games, because you had to unequip your old weapon and shield first. Countdown to Doomsday hasn't fixed that, but it has made it so you have to view someone's character sheet first before going into their inventory, so there's a whole extra step involved! If a game's tactics are based around picking the right tool for the job, it shouldn't make choosing tools a pain in the ass. That's what I think anyway. 

I also think I'm done here. I'd have to go all the way back to my last save on the space station to get the appropriate weapons, so I may as well call it a day.


CONCLUSION

---

On paper Countdown to Doomsday is exactly what I want, as it's a story-driven tactical space RPG where you get to abandon the plot for a bit to go off and do your own thing on alien worlds and distant space stations. That's a description I don't see often enough on Steam. Give me XCOM Stargate, Star Trek Disgaea and Dragon Age Mass Effect. 

I think I'd describe Countdown to Doomsday as being Pool of Radiance in the Expanse universe, to the point where I have to wonder if it was one of the inspirations for the Expanse novels. I mean this isn't anything wildly inventive, it's based on the adventures of a hero created in 1929, but there are a lot of similarities.

Unfortunately the game has many of the same problems as the other Gold Box games, and none of the magic. I mean that literally, the game has no magic system. Instead you've got weapons and countermeasures, so there's lots of grenades getting thrown and lots of shots missing their targets until you dig out the right gun from your bag. And positioning doesn't matter so much when there's no cover and everyone's using guns. I just wasn't having as much fun with the combat.

On the plus side, it seems that SSI used the big shift in gameplay mechanics as an excuse to give the Gold Box engine an overhaul too. There are a bunch of small improvements that help make the experience less awkward, such as:

• VGA graphics
• You don't have to use the bloody character icon editor. 
• Names are highlighted purple when a character has enough XP to go for training.
• All the battle commands are visible at once.
• It remembers who you were aiming at.
• When you select 'Next', it targets the next enemy instead of cycling through your team first.

Plus there are skills now! Like 'treat light wounds', 'treat serious wounds', 'treat critical wounds' and 'diagnose', which are all used after a battle to heal you up... apparently. I don't know what happens if you pick only one of them and ignore the others, but I assume it makes a difference.

In the D&D games things get desperate quick if you can't find a place to rest and recover your health and spells, but here you can't rest at all. Instead health basically regenerates after fights as long as you've got a competent and conscious doctor.

Even when the doctor is taken down, having multiple save slots takes a lot of the risk out of continuing with a increasingly wounded team, as you don't have to replay much if it all goes wrong. As long as you still have a save from before you got your healer KO'd like a dumbass. This is also why I'm not that bothered that I ended up in a basically unwinnable situation on Mars, because I still had a save on the space station, where the ammo shop is, plus plenty of other destinations to try.

Only a few of the skills have come into play for me so far, in fact I could probably list every time I used one: 'First aid' saved my doctor at the start, 'zero-G manoeuvring' was useful on the derelict, I used 'library search' once, 'zero-G' was useful on the asteroid, 'programming' was helpful, 'zero-G' got checked when I plundered the scout ship, I 'fast-talk'ed my way into a base, then I did some 'zero-G' on the pirate ship... basically put your points into zero-G. The game doesn't come close to indicating how incredibly necessary it is, at least until you start noticing your heroes failing their rolls every turn.

The game also seems to have more of a story to it. The Gold Box RPGs have always had events that happen as you walk around, they love to interrupt you with a description of what's going on around you, but this is more focused on what's happening to you. It has lots of atmosphere, which is what you want in a space game really.

They haven't gone as far as adding music to the computer versions yet, but after hearing the Mega Drive game's soundtrack I'm okay with that. I've been using Gold Box Companion to play some appropriate XCOM and Mass Effect songs instead. (And I've been playing Queen's Flash Gordon soundtrack while doing my writing.)

Speaking of the Genesis/Mega Drive version, it's different! It's the most different that a Gold Box port has ever been. It's cut down a bit, with fewer classes, skills and ability scores etc., but it's also easier to find your way around with its isometric view, and I don't think it ever asks you to read a journal entry. For these Gold Box engine games I'll always say that it doesn't matter which port is prettiest or has the best soundtrack, you should go with the DOS version because of Gold Box Companion, but the game's Mega Drive port is the exception as it provides an alternative experience that might suit you better. Still doesn't look all that great for its time though.

Anyway, the gameplay was a bit of a pain, but I liked the story so I'm going to be nice and give it a star.

---

That's it, I'm finally done with 1990 now, but there were seven more D&D games released in 1991 so good luck figuring out the one I'm playing next!

What did you think about Countdown to Doomsday? Have I inspired you to play it yourself or do you feel like I may have saved you from one day making a terrible mistake?