Freaking.Space.Lasers

Today I’m going to be a complete asshole. First I’m going to tell you about two fantastic PC games from a bygone era, ones which should really be played by everyone. Classics. Then I’m going to suggest that you go out and buy them as soon as possible. And when you go out to find them and realise they’re both no longer available new and very rare second-hand, I’ll be too busy doing your mother.

Thousands of years ago, there was no need to have a fancy computer to play games on. The rolling juggernaut of corporate greed and the lumbering titan of technological progress took care of that, but luckily those of us who are still using glorified calculators can still play games that were released almost 20 years ago. What follows details two of these games, and they both also fall into a genre (sadly) more dead than the idea of low-tech gaming - POINT-AND-CLICK ADVENTURES.

Blade Runner

If you’ve read the book (Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep) your response to the idea of a game might be somewhat positive, if you’ve seen the film then you probably just involuntarily spat on your monitor.

Set in a universe which seems to straddle both Phillip K Dick’s novel and Ridley Scott’s film, Blade Runner is a point-and-click style adventure/detective game from the now defunct Westwood Studios. It features a new story in a recycled setting from the film, following Blade Runner (the catchy title for cops who murder robots) Ray McCoy as he tries to solve various unsolvables. What begins as a simple case of animal murder quickly spirals into a full-blown hunt for Replicant fugitives through the city.

The game has you play as Ray, moving through locations and collecting clues as the story unravels. As mentioned, it’s a point-and-click game, and just so happens to be the first 3D game for the genre. Given the source material of the book, it’s not hard to see why this would make a fantastic adventure, what with a crumbling society and shaky ideas of wrong/right (and human/not). Given the source material from the movie, it’s amazing that the game didn’t make you want to gouge out your eyes, put them back in, and gouge them out again before setting fire to your head.

Instead what it offers is amazing looking sets (many of which are practically-perfect recreations of scenes from the film’s admittedly pretty designs), a cast of memorable characters, an intriguing storyline and a fun game. By far my favourite feature, and one that still fails to impress in modern games, is the branching nature of the plot itself: multiple endings. There are 13 endings in total for the game, and the real feat is that none of them feel tacked on. Each playthrough offers up a multitude of small and large differences which eventually funnel you towards an inevitable conclusion, some changes directly a result of the player’s actions (or words) and others being completely out of your control. The result is a world which truly feels alive, despite the restrictive nature of clicking on things with a computer mouse.

Good luck finding it 12 years after it was released, but certainly worth the trouble. Try to avoid becoming a pedophile, though.

Sanitarium

Pointing at something else, we click through to Sanitarium. In response, it burrows into our brain and lays eggs made of disturbing psychological goo. You are cast as a man who wakes up in a mental asylum with no memory and a severely bandaged head. Naturally your first act is to walk around picking up everything, but following that your task is to find out who you are and what brought you to the looney bin.

Sequences in the aformentioned crackpot lounge are interspersed with strange, dream-like visits to horrible and twisted worlds which may or may not be a product of the main character’s imagination. Is he really crazy? Has he crossed into another world? Do Androids Dream? Settings include an awful town populated entirely by hideously mutated bitch children, a circus, a creepy organic spaceship, and South America BC. You’ll have to solve puzzles and battle evil crows (yes) in order to find yourself and answers, and as things build towards the climax you might have to confront some unpleasant internal issues.

From the gothic architecture to the mad inmates beating their heads against the walls because it feels good, a lot of effort has gone into pushing the theme of insanity, and many of the themes and ideas may stay with you after youswitch off and go to bed at night. Thankfully, just as much care has gone into the story itself, so it isn’t just a bunch of scares with no backbone. The gameplay is interesting too, with not too much of the randomness that ruins many adventure games - combine the gumball with the wrench to dislodge the rope and make the clown move sideways to reveal a news clipping which has a code that lets you open the safe that holds your will to live.

This one is probably even more impossible to find, considering it was much lower profile than the likes of Blade Runner, which was able to piggyback off the film. My copy came straight from eBay for a damn expensive price considering how old it is.

Remember, old games are good for your street cred.