The Horrors of the Lab
Given the departure in the game's structure at the start of its second episode, players entering the lab really have no idea what they're getting themselves into. From the very first steps inside, it's obvious that things have changed. The first thing to do is lament the loss of the game's vibrant levels. This is a dark lab and as such, you'll be thankful for even the darkest colors that contribute something other than the dull oppressive grays that plague the scene.
The changes aren't entirely for the worse. Episode one's levels were extremely linear. While they had their share of secrets, and the world map had some small amount of wiggle room for players to play levels outside of a prescribed order, once you were in one it was very much a simple matter of getting the player from the entrance passage to the exit.
The lab immediately presents players with a branching path, using a sign placed by the entrance to let them decide where they'd like to explore first. ZZT bathrooms are present and thus were my first choice.
Regardless of which direction is chosen, it won't be long before players have their first run in with the aliens. Alex no longer relies exclusively on built-ins for standard combat, favoring objects heavily in the lab chapter. These aliens aren't that far removed from ZZT's lions. They move mostly randomly, sometimes seeking, and take a bite out of players who wander too closely.
Some part of this may be due to the sentiment of built-ins being inferior to unique enemies, though the aliens have some tweaks that diversify the two species. Like lions, if they bite they destroy themselves in the process. They're a bit sturdier, taking two shots and leaving behind a red fake bloodstain when killed. They do unfortunately lack the ferocity of a ZZT built-in, only checking if they can attack once in their loop, making it very easy to sneak past them.
This is especially true in more open rooms where the aimlessness of their movement makes it unlikely they'll reach the player without the player voluntarily getting closer. It undercuts what players are told by the story, that these are horrifying flesh-eating creatures that cannot be stopped. You can mostly just leave them be, since it's quite rare that they're in the way of important items or objects.
When it comes to enemies going from built-ins to these alien objects is a debatable improvement. The desire for enemies to take multiple shots does require objects. Yet that alone isn't a very drastic change. A pair of lions would be more threatening due to taking up more space as well as being harder to hit two moving targets rather than one. If the aliens were in some way more dangerous than anything in Sweeney's zoo, making them faster in general, or rushing at players when aligned, they'd better fit the role of a deadly creature from outer space.
The pivot to objects is easier to appreciate when it comes to items, where the flexibility and efficiency is far more worth the trade off of players not stepping on top of objects to collect them. For Battle Tech, ammo can now be acquired via clips that provide twenty shots rather than having to grab clusters of built-in ammo. Medkits, the ammo clip's favorite cousin, provide an equivalent amount of life, eliminating the need to vacuum up dozens of gems and then to feel obligated to lets players spend them.
As for the bathrooms, they too are par for the course. Some gory messes take a stab at providing a survival horror kind of atmosphere. Alex can't help but kid however, doing things like placing a survivor in one of the stalls that's entirely unaware of the carnage outside, who takes you for a pervert.
The first episode's puzzles were a welcome addition, providing a nice reprieve from the action before it got too repetitive. It wasn't all that challenging perhaps, but it keep the game from getting stale and showcased a few different implementations that really rounded out the game, while keeping it clearly action-focused.
The puzzles going forward are far less frequent and far less positive to speak of. This boulder blockade is a reliable premise, presenting players with three paths to a room with a keycard. It's stupidly easy to get through. Almost no thought is required regardless of which of three paths is tackled. So long as you move one boulder out of the way of the doorway to the keycard, you can just hold up to win. The other paths have little reason to engage with them. Rest assured that if you do, they can also get you to the keycard by just slamming into boxes.
It will get somehow get worse than this.
The lab seems to have been constructed in a beach cave. In one of those rare bursts of color, a side exit becomes a dead end with a small cove surrounded by high cliffs preventing further exploration until the player can find dynamite to blast a hole in the wall. Alex is kindly upfront about it, marking the point of interaction with a different color and specifically noting that dynamite is required so there's no confusion when players reach what seems to be end of the path and have nothing to show for it.
As the lab is explored, your goal becomes more clear. A keycard is needed to open the northern path. Along that path a fissure requires rope to cross. The other side has a door which requires a passcode. The code is acquired one half at a time via notes located on two corpses, one of which is found on the wall opposite of where the dynamite is used.
With aliens to shoot, an occasional puzzle as obstacles to overcome, and some small details (I'm particularly fond of the cryogenics chamber here) it's pretty fun, if a bit lackluster. My apprehension to praise it too strongly stems from the fact that this isn't the first story. Had this been how Battle Tech began, I'd have thought of it at this point as a average action game. After having seen what Alex can do with enemy placement, shading, and background detail, this comes off as uninspired. I worry Alex's confidence was shaken by his style being quite different from other games of this era. What made the first episode cool isn't anywhere to be found here.
Again, it's not bad at all. It just has a bit of an identity crisis here, abandoning the previous file's style in favor of one that's far more commonplace.
Okay. Well, the puzzle parts are bad actually.
Easy puzzles are one thing. This is just busywork. Here is the puzzle:
Place boulders in a body of water to create a bridge to reach the other side. Once again, a design that has no inherent flaws beyond being a bit overdone.
This exact format was already used last time. Clear a path to the barrels. Pick one up. Drop it in the goop. Rinse. Repeat.
Now, there's nothing to clear. All the boulders are unobstructed making the puzzle a simple chore as you walk back and forth through the forested area.
There could be a neat subversion here. Some aliens lurking between the trees that pop out after the first boulder is thrown in would be a clever twist of a puzzle actually being an action board. Yet there's no surprise to be had. Just build the bridge in tranquility.
Once the scavenger hunt has concluded and the player has made it past the fissure and passworded door, they finally get to meet the professor that invited them to check out the alien.
They hear his last words, getting tipped off as to the source of the aliens (well, one of two moons) so they can be dealt with before proceeding into the back of the lab to do battle with the original alien.
In perhaps the biggest departure of all, the boss battle isn't with a rinky-dink object that can be defeated in seven seconds, but rather a brand new RPG engine. This game finds itself released right in the middle of the period where ZZTers/MZXers were gushing over 16-bit RPGs, demonstrated by the instructions opening by telling players if they haven't played a Final Fantasy game, they need to.
It's also perhaps the oldest acknowledgment of Dragon Quest rather than Dragon Warrior from an English speaker.
In the long list of ZZT RPG engines, Alex's won't win any awards. It's very back and forth, rapidly trading blows with little thought needing to be put into them. The player apparently knows a fire spell that can be used once for extra damage. Shoot and Spread cost ammo to use, with the latter dealing more damage, and if players are somehow out of ammo, they can stab with a knife instead.
The animations are slight. Some circles showing up to shoot more than bullet at a time, the typical pair of slash characters used for the knife, and a little fireball in the corner made from invisibles that shows up when the time is right. The alien's full screen "Sonic Hypnosis" attack has multiple holes in it, revealing the position of all the invisible objects and other invisibles used for effects which does not look great..
For praise, it's clearly designed so that players can win. No waiting out RNG here, all the attacks hit every time, making it a race to out damage your foe. A race that's easily won when you see that the spread attack does five damage.
The RPG battles clearly aren't the real focus here, and I suppose don't actually address the previous problem of boss battles being too easy, merely changing the format and thus reason that they're too easy. The framing and inherent delays as you must trade blows rather than overwhelm make them an overall improvement regardless.
Rocket Site
Alien defeated and some moons name-dropped, players soon find themselves outside of a Jade Falcon launch site. To his credit, Alex does a good job hiding that this is going to be another action-oriented space, presenting it as a run of the mill building with no connection to the alien attack.
Inside, the chaos continues with the introduction of a new enemy. Dubbed the "Big Boss Alien" in its code, this is more of an enhanced variant of the alien hatchlings found in the lab. They move slightly slower (default speed), bite harder (-15), require five shots to kill, and most importantly have a few extra lines in their code to shoot at players on occasion. Their ranged attack makes them harder to ignore, while the extra health prolongs engagement. It's hard to say if they're particularly versatile though, as the two found in the lobby here are the only ones in the game. Slipping them into the lab probably would've helped out a little.
I have no idea who is addressing the player here.
What I do know, is that the board is a promising idea with an inadequate execution. Blue goop floods the room blocking off the stairs to the next floor and additionally to three of the four switches found around the room. Our old friend the tiger is the adversary here, and is why the room is unable to deliver a memorable action sequence. The complete lack of enemies to start means the duplicator is the sole source of hostilities.
The trouble isn't even from the simplicity of tanking the hit by standing in front of the duplicator and destroying its potency, a tactic I politely refrain from when possible. The trouble is two-fold. Firstly, the duplicator does its job very slowly. It's easy to get through the board with a total of two duplications occurring, which is enough to make the board come off as pointless.
Even if the duplicator was running at the maximum speed, the other conceit of the board would get in its way. The buttons clear away a layer of goop, removing the solid walls, then normal, and so on.
This causes the layout of the board to change, opening new paths to the buttons as the mess is cleaned up, and could potentially have been used to also free other pockets of monsters as players made progress. With just that one duplicator, what's far more likely to happen is the first button will be pressed and then the original tiger will be free to move away from the dupe possibly preventing any extra enemies from spawning in!
With a few tweaks, I think this could be a great basis for a board. The ever-changing layout could keep you on your toes, with tigers having clearer shots as the board opens up, especially when you consider the use of breakable walls that can be destroyed and water that can be shot over making the buttons have more of an impact than peeling away another layer. In its current state, it's actually most comparable to the boulder "puzzle". A time sink with nothing to make players think about where they're going or how they'll get there.
On the bright side, the teleporter to the moon Chazak does some gorgeous work with invisibles.
This is where the action gets put on the back-burner for awhile. Chazak is devoid of enemies as you march to an alien village. There players learn they aren't the horrible flesh eating ones, and get their ion cannon that makes the identical bullets that you shoot at least sound more menacing.
From the story side of things, here's where players escape the moon before Jade Falcon betrays them and blows it up so they can kill you before you destroy them. On the other moon you meet dad and the other rebels, try to get the pirates to join your alliance, and only then arrive at a new level twenty-seven boards later.
Not a problem. Those twenty-seven boards have plenty of story development plus things like the credits and password entry screens as the final file of the game begins with players getting their ion cannon prize. It's just a notable dry spell in what has been very much a game where players shoot bad guys.
The Pirate Mines
The next proper level is in the mines of the pirates. This one, while looking a bit like any other ZZT cave full of built-ins, does have a twist going for it thanks to its spot as the first level of the last file. Ammo is limited enough that you have to pick your battles!
In this first board, the split gives players a choice of how to approach, with the far more predictable bears being a much safe route than dealing with tigers. Some well executed jukes can get players through without firing a single shot.
This continues to hold true on the second board where dodging a centipede is preferable to fighting a horde of ruffians and then running into lions. At least here the extra supplies are tucked a little bit out of the way, making it a risk worth undertaking to profit from. It plays well, yet I still found it a little strange that I received this powerful ion cannon only to end up in situations where it was best to not play with my new toy. This cave seems like it would be a great spot to give players large quantities of ammunition while placing enemies in narrow paths that make it easy to burn through it while taking down large numbers of foes. Something to give the player a chance to feel like they're wielding something powerful.
The river section of the caves kind of alleviates the complaint. The path forward no longer has splits in it, encouraging players to park themselves in a long sight line and steadily fire into the clusters of enemies that gravitate their way towards the player. The enemy counts are large enough that missing your target doesn't mean you won't strike another. It's not the most powerful for players, but it is satisfying to amass enough ammo that you're no longer on the run.
As with the laboratory, the boss is fought via RPG engine. It's functionally no different than the first fight, lacking anything new that might impress players, only leaving them thankful that it's still a simple matter of using the spread shot until they win.
Beyond the mutant is the Jade Falcon loyalist that tricks our clueless protagonist into revealing the location of the rebel base, which leads into the next stage, a Jade Falcon outpost.
