A special treat for all those who supported Worlds of ZZT with Twitch subscriptions!
The people demanded more MegaZeux. None of this ZZT stuff. And what better than to continue playing the original Zeux series, moving to the 3rd game "Chronos Stasis".
Back during the MonthaZeux I found myself disappointed at how Caverns ended, revealing that it was all an illusion, and you were actually being experimented on by robots which have conquered humanity. The ending featured a prison escape and a "To be continued..." but left me not super interested in seeing what came next.
But people kept telling me it was good, and I was a "dumb stupid idiot" (exact words). So I decided to play it and get a more informed opinion.
So the verdict: Eh. It's okay.
Chronos Statis shifts the gameplay dramatically to an almost purely action focused experience. Vince busts out of prison and has to clear out an entire complex 160-ish killer robots. That sounds like a fun premise for an MZX action game. Except it's got a lot of issues that I wouldn't expect a game by Janson, especially this point, to have. There are a lot of soft-lock situations which are kind enough to make it obvious when they happen. Setting off alarms pens players in with lasers forcing them to restart the game. Multiple passwords are entered by inputting digits on walls with no way of knowing which lock you have the combination for. Choose wrong and press an invalid key and you'll be forced to reload. Open up a control room and most controls can be used to open new areas, but touch the one that it turns out the guards in security room just so happened to be watching and you'll be caught instantl. A surprising number of gotchas lurk at every interaction.
The corridors are winding to create a very sprawling complex that mostly looks identical. Some signage is provided, but in other instances you'll have to check with robots (as in MZX objects) next to doors. These signs tell you what keycards are required as well making it highly advisable to take notes of what keys are needed where. A lot of effort could have been saved by just having some accent colors matching the keycard next to the entrances.
Some of the spaces are pretty creative, even connecting in unique ways. Draining a fountain in a terrarium lets you travel via pipes into an otherwise inaccessible aquatics research facility. Players get to find their way into ventilation shafts to sneak around security cameras.
The stealth approach can only do so much however, with the game really boiling down to finding out how to access a room, opening a heavy door within and picking off robots one by one. The basic robots are only ever alerted when aligned with Vince, letting players fight slowly. Robots can still shoot other robots as in ZZT so even when you do wake up several at once, the situation half resolves itself for you. Almost no other boards have enemies that aren't the same red killer robots making the game really repetitive. A very small handful of robots do a bit more, and some of the envrionments hint at a weird bureaucratic society being built by them, but at least in this chapter, it's not explored enough to hook players in.
It's not bad. It's just a lot more basic than expected. Caverns really showcased what you could do with the program having different weapons, player forms, a number of boss fights, and many surprises with how you navigate the cave system. Chonos Stasis comes off more like a vanilla ZZT action game with some nicer sound and some admittedly cool looking charset animations. There's still fun to be had, and I could definitely imagine a younger me getting into it, but I can't help but think about how I'd rather play Janson's ZZT titles over this one.
Someday, I'm sure I'll play the rest of the series, and perhaps that will help me see the game in a different light. For now, I'll stick to Cannible Isle.
