Fighting With The Fight Force
The Kane Project is structured as a trip through the unnamed city where Kane is causing his mayhem. Raze takes an unconventional approach to laying out the game. Cities in ZZT worlds, especially when they're the sole setting of a game, tend to sprawl across boards in all directions, even if the gameplay ends up being rather linear as it is here. It's so linear in fact, that only once in the entire game will the player walk off the edge of board in a direction other than right.
In some ways, this makes the the game feel repetitive. So many boards of the game amount to Cameron walking along the bottom third of screen with some stylized buildings drawn in the background. In other ways it almost feels like an homage to the beat-em-up genre with games like Final Fight or Double Dragon sending players deep into the heart of a dangerous city where allies are few and far between. The repetition is really only an issue because the game offers so little variety in its combat scenarios, which are intended to be the core focus of The Kane Project. With some more varied encounters, I suspect the long walk through the city wouldn't feel so samey.
In addition to wandering hostile streets, Cameron on occasion has to infiltrate buildings to accomplish goals like finding keys and rescuing hostages. They look like this, so you won't be too surprised to hear that the action isn't all that impressive. Interiors feel like Raze was scribbling some walls rather than making attempts at more realistic interiors even for non-STK worlds like Crime Ring, or setting aside logical floor plans in the name of well crafted encounters.
In the AOL-era, a board that looked like this might not mean a game is of poor quality necessarily, but this is from 2001 and just feels so dated. We're two years beyond Lebensraum setting a new standard, and while it's not reasonable to expect that level of quality from somebody's second ever release, it's hard to to find the silver lining here. The action here is mostly done with ZZT's built-ins, which can be used effectively by those that know what they're doing. At this point in Raze's ZZT career, he does not.
Boards are so wide that players can freely shoot from across the screen with worry. There's enough ammo that this would be safe to do even if enemies were good at dodging. Raze has cranked up the intelligence on most foes so once they're aligned with the player, they tend to stay that way, making these long distance snipes very consistent. Flipping through my screenshots, there are quite a number of boards where I defeat every enemy while taking zero damage. Even being generous and assuming Raze is going for a John Wick unstoppable gunman character, this tilts the odds so far in the players favor that it mitigates the fun of it, effectively removing any sense of challenge from the game.
In the later parts of the game the usual ruffians and tigers (and sometimes lions) are replaced with original enemy designs instead. Taking a quick look at Raze's first release The Tribe, reveals the game to exclusively use built-in enemies, (plus a complete lack of code). Embracing ZZT-OOP throughout the game is still a step up as far as understanding how to create a ZZT world goes, but it's still another instance where coding objects is treated as inherently superior to relying on built-ins for enemies. These enemies just run at the player and shoot, effectively suffering from the same issues the built-ins do in terms of difficult, except now they kill themselves with friendly fire almost immediately, making The Kane Project yet another victim of the ZZT action game curse.
Even the climactic showdown between Kane and Cameron uses the same code. The only difference is that Kane shoots twice before moving towards the player.
As one final insult to injury, when these objects are killed they play a sound effect consisting of #play CCCC which sounds miserable on the ears, and is (at least for me) almost anxiety inducing as it sounds as if your computer locked up and was repeating a sound just as it started to play. It's one thing to struggle with creating full musical compositions in ZZT. It's quite another for these half-second long sound effects. It's even more impressive to create a grating sound effect that becomes unpleasant to hear the very first time.
When Cameron isn't running and gunning his way down the streets, he can instead be found patronizing local businesses. Doctors, both on the streets and in hospitals can sell services to restore health. An "AMMO'S" store lets players buy more ammunition, as well as getting some information on Kane via a bulletin board. It also provides information on a stolen bicycle, a rare instance of trying to make the world of The Kane Project exist beyond what Cameron is seeing at any given moment.
Cameron can confirm himself to be a doofus and hand a random guy on the street twenty gems to buy a cellular phone only to immediately get ripped off. Now it's a real city. The funny thing about this scene though, is that while something like this should immediately be recognized as a scam, thanks to the odd nature of the game I had to consider whether or not Cameron would end up needing to have a phone at a later point in the game and opted to try my luck.
I'm not owned. I swear.
A pawn shop is perhaps the most interesting interior, thanks to giving players the ability to sell ammo for gems which gives players some decent control over how their resources get allocated afterwards. Again, the game provides plenty of health and ammo to begin with, so there's little need for such a system, but it helps make the city feel more like a city.
At two points the game tries to shake things up a little bit by offering players a choice in how to move forward. Thanks to Sophie losing the map the player won't know which route to take to the camp where the hostages are being held. One route is just a single shooting sequence before arriving at the camp, while the other is three boards of shooting, but includes the pawn shop and a hospital to visit. The other split is a bit more interesting since players are told what they'll face on each path, rather than just being a matter of the player guessing which path is the ideal one. Cameron can either remain on the streets and have to get through three action boards with the opportunity to visit another doctor at the end, or he can opt to head into the underground which is free of Kane's men.
The underground starts by giving the player a lot of torches before they're let loose in a multi-board long dark maze. It consists of nothing but walls torches. It's not fun. At the very least, I get what Raze was going for here, offering players the trade-off of taking a safe route at the cost of their time. It's not a trade worth taking unless you were somehow in incredibly dire straits at this point. It is, at the very least, a maze that has a reason to exist.
Some Genuinely Nice Things To Say
It's easy to be turned away by The Kane Project. Its portrayals of women are not great. Its portrayals of men aren't all that much better.
While the game has a huge clash between style and subject matter, the city streets are frequented with people to talk with. Many of them are rude, some even going so far as to scam the player out of their money. The city has no obligation to be kind. So while the game may look like it's contemporary with City of ZZT, the city is much more alive than Sweeney's empty streets.
Raze's idea of too much text isn't something I agree with in every world. It's definitely bogged down games before and so I appreciate the intent behind promising a game that can let players focus on getting to the next action scene as quickly as possible. Raze doesn't hold himself to his own standards as well as he could have, with a few instances of forced conversations with McGee and making the game's ending sequence a mandatory watch before the game over.
Despite not adhering to the self-imposed rules perfectly, the fact is that a lot of this game's dialog can be passed over if players choose to. On your first playthrough, there's little reason you'd want to as everything is new content. The benefits become more clear when you consider the branching paths. It's not much, but they do encourage replays to see everything the game has to offer. On that second playthrough, you can run past all those NPCs, and even skip a number of conversations with McGee. This does require you to play the game once and still want more, so perhaps I'm just being generous.
Those branching paths themselves deserve mention on their own. There was an audience for this style of game, at least aside from its tone. That audience was also probably one that had mostly vanished by 2001. The Kane Project is a game about cleaning up the streets from bad guys by shooting a bunch of ruffians. That's classic ZZT action right there. I would definitely have gobbled this up at a younger age, being too ignorant to think twice about how the game's characters were portrayed. Were this the mid-90s title it could be mistaken for, I could definitely see it having a few fans, and if those fans are revisiting a game they enjoy, being able to mix and match the experience a little by mixing and matching your route would help give the game a bit of longevity.
Some of the boards don't look half bad either! Lots of the interiors are just mono-colored walls that fill up space, but the outdoor environments on more than one occasion had me impressed. After a few boards using skyscrapers as a background, this giant tree was an unexpected surprise. It gave me some real Smiley Guy vibes, which given the mature themes was an amusing thing to imagine combining.
I also genuinely love this exterior. This is only a few boards into the game, before Raze begins to settle for just exporting/importing the same skyline background for almost every outdoor board. Sure, it's an incredibly simple design, but it's one that makes the city home to more things than just what Cameron needs at any given moment. Something as basic as some labeled buildings go a long way into making the city more memorable. I just wish Raze had kept at it, as even rectangles plus text is enough to liven up the world.
The lead up to Kane provides players with one final board that pops. This special K is surely Kane's logo. It's certainly stylized at least.
Lastly, and only because of how frequently this isn't the case, it's worth stating that The Kane Project appears to be entirely devoid of bugs. The code is all simple enough that this shouldn't be a worry, but I've played enough previously unpreserved worlds to know you can't take anything for granted. There's not a single warning needed to prevent objects from breaking, becoming stuck, or misfiring in some way. It all plays exactly how Raze intended. Although you can shoot through the breakables on the last screenshot to run directly to the first ending board if you want to be rude.
Final Thoughts
By 2001, the tone of The Kane Project wasn't too far off from what was seen in more successful ZZT worlds even if it's considerably more unappealing today. While the tone was something ZZTers could enjoy then, it's still far too basic of a story to have made the game a hit for its writing at the time of release. Look at how this game handles its serious subject matter with The Thief 3, an award winner from the same year with an emphasis on a cop getting violent with organized criminals, which can still be off-putting, but offers far more than a simple cops and robbers premise.
The aesthetics of the game fare far worse. I'm honestly surprised the game was added to z2 given the site's requirements for STK graphics which the game lacks entirely. z2's news archive doesn't go back far enough to see when it was published. Though it does reveal that the "committee" for Game of the Month awards going 5-2 for Slime Line over The Kane Project 3, which is enough to confirm the series had its fans.
Obviously the series improves as things go on, eventually clinching a respect community award. There's a part of me that's interested in seeing what that process looks like as the screenshots of later games show considerable improvement in Raze's visuals, but let's face it, I'm not that interested. The game's writing is already enough of a turn off in this initial entry, with everything I've looked at in the later games indicating that this aspect of the game remains as troubling as it was here, if not more so.
This one ending up being quite different from my initial expectations, playing like a game from an older era. Even held to older standards, there's really very little going on for the game. The story is unappealing in more ways than one. The graphics would be below average for a game half a decade older. The sound is painful. Most importantly, the action just doesn't entertain. There are better action games out there whether you're looking for something that understands how to use built-ins or one that focuses on objects. Most of the appeal to this game comes from when Cameron screws up. You're supposed to be rooting for his victory, but this kind of character isn't appealing to modern audiences.
If the women portrayed in this game weren't just conquests for Cameron, there could be some interest in the game being fun to stream. A game that gets some laughs that it wasn't aiming for, like with Secret Agent Chronicles. Instead, The Kane Project is a game where it's challenging to see the appeal, even if the later entries of the series clearly got some following. You can play through this one rather quickly to see for yourself, but it won't leave you feeling satisfied with the use of your time.
