Have no fear, Bombadiers, as I plan on doing a proper blog this week that will somehow link Lego Batman 2 and Asura's Wrath, of all the possible combinations in this great medium of ours. In the meantime, I'm getting a little esoteric with a look at Antony Crowther's 1990 sci-fi RPG Captive. Like most of the previous games this series has covered, Captive is a real-time first-person pseudo-3D dungeon crawler. Unlike the rest, you're controlling a band of previously inactive droids in a spaceship as directed by an amnesiac with a briefcase computer that has just awoken from a court-mandated 250 year cryogenic sleep. The goal is to direct the droids to an enemy base, find the probe that will reveal the location of the next base and then destroy the generators that are providing power to the shields around the space-station where the eponymous captive patiently awaits to be rescued. There's a few unique features to Captive that this Brief Jaunt (man, does that name not initialize well) will explain in further detail, but the major point (and one that ties in with the Roguelike-like discussion i had earlier this week) is that the bases are procedurally generated every time you start a game: The level of enemies remains consistant (so weaklings in base 1, tougher enemies in base 2, etc.) as does the mission in each base (find or buy explosives, find the planet probe that points out the next base and then find the generator room and skedaddle before the whole place explodes) but the actual layouts, items and obstacles will be different.
Back when I was a wee nipper with my beloved Atari ST, Captive was one of those games along with Elite and Space Crusade (both of which I intend to feature here at some point) that I poured days into. It certainly set a precedent for my future gameplaying habits, which of course lead to the slow transformation from a bright-eyed youth with his best years ahead of him to the tired, brow-beaten adult with nothing to live for and no future oh God what have these games done to me full to the brim with happy gaming memories that I am today.
The PC version of Captive, like Dungeon Master, can be found for free on many an abandonware site (though I'm not entirely convinced of the legality, since Mindscape was still a thing until it got annexed by EA relatively recently) and runs fine in DOSBox.
Part 1: "You're a Droid and I'm Annoyed?" That's the Worst Joke Ever, Guinan.
Have no fear, Bombadiers, as I plan on doing a proper blog this week that will somehow link Lego Batman 2 and Asura's Wrath, of all the possible combinations in this great medium of ours. In the meantime, I'm getting a little esoteric with a look at Antony Crowther's 1990 sci-fi RPG Captive. Like most of the previous games this series has covered, Captive is a real-time first-person pseudo-3D dungeon crawler. Unlike the rest, you're controlling a band of previously inactive droids in a spaceship as directed by an amnesiac with a briefcase computer that has just awoken from a court-mandated 250 year cryogenic sleep. The goal is to direct the droids to an enemy base, find the probe that will reveal the location of the next base and then destroy the generators that are providing power to the shields around the space-station where the eponymous captive patiently awaits to be rescued. There's a few unique features to Captive that this Brief Jaunt (man, does that name not initialize well) will explain in further detail, but the major point (and one that ties in with the Roguelike-like discussion i had earlier this week) is that the bases are procedurally generated every time you start a game: The level of enemies remains consistant (so weaklings in base 1, tougher enemies in base 2, etc.) as does the mission in each base (find or buy explosives, find the planet probe that points out the next base and then find the generator room and skedaddle before the whole place explodes) but the actual layouts, items and obstacles will be different.
Back when I was a wee nipper with my beloved Atari ST, Captive was one of those games along with Elite and Space Crusade (both of which I intend to feature here at some point) that I poured days into. It certainly set a precedent for my future gameplaying habits, which of course lead to the slow transformation from a bright-eyed youth with his best years ahead of him to the tired, brow-beaten adult with nothing to live for and no future oh God what have these games done to me full to the brim with happy gaming memories that I am today.
The PC version of Captive, like Dungeon Master, can be found for free on many an abandonware site (though I'm not entirely convinced of the legality, since Mindscape was still a thing until it got annexed by EA relatively recently) and runs fine in DOSBox.
Part 1: "You're a Droid and I'm Annoyed?" That's the Worst Joke Ever, Guinan.
Does this end with you going insane and posting a billion pictures from Legend of Grimrock or something? Because that game is like all these other games, including the whole "balls hard difficulty" thing.
@ArbitraryWater: That would be telling. (But yes, I did buy Grimrock in the sales and intend to play it soon.)
Captive isn't quite as balls-hard as Dungeon Master, but it's certainly got its share of crazy nonsense going on that you need to figure out. It's partly why I dig it though; there isn't any game (especially in this genre) that has anything like its emphasis on gadgets and the cool weird shit you can mess with later on, like Dalek remote control cameras and something that I don't want to spoil that's coming up in Part 2. Plus it's randomized, but not in the soul-crushing pointless way Dungeon Hack is (though I should totally cover that too!), so it's like a near endless selection of possible dungeons to scout out, loot from and blow the everloving shit out of.
@Video_Game_King: Sleep does literally nothing except make time move faster. Since the only time-sensitive thing I've encountered is the whole "base exploding in t-minus 30 seconds" routine, I fail to see a useful application for it. But then maybe there's some next level strategy shit I'm not privy to.
@Mento: You should. Dungeon Hack is preeeeety bad. One character only pretty much means you will be rocking the Fighter/Mage/Thief at all times, if not the Fighter/Mage/Priest, classes that are effectively gimped in any other situation. So clearly, when that remake of Baldur's Gate comes out I should make my character one of those.
This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for:
Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along
with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. This will likely
increase the time it takes for your changes to go live.
Comment and Save
Until you earn 1000 points all your submissions need to be vetted by other
Giant Bomb users. This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll
send you an email once approved.
Log in to comment