Game #9 : Zone (1988)
"Note that "little aggressive" does not mean friendly." that's what my cat reminds me every day.
Should we go wipe out the stinkers once and for all? I'm all for punching, preferably punching someone who's already down.
Quote from Gubisson on 18 April 2023, 11h09"Note that "little aggressive" does not mean friendly." that's what my cat reminds me every day.
Should we go wipe out the stinkers once and for all? I'm all for punching, preferably punching someone who's already down.
By "wipe out the stinkers", do you mean IFV raid where we go pew-pew-pew on the remaining ones outside, or more dungeon-crawling ?
I meant pew-pew-pew. There's probably no point going back in the dungeon until we can figure out how to get the 4-digit code.
Clean up the Stinkers. Or maybe we can try to raid the other dungeon, maybe they're easier targets. My vote is for extra North scouting and maybe a foray into killing the other raiders, failing that Stinker clean-up and then we proceed to the next bunch.
Maybe we're just sitting on empty barrels, and then fill them and sit on full barrels? You don't want a full barrel without a stead presence on top, given how short the process of building a new IFV is, I guess we skimp on the suspension!
I'm not against punching, obviously, but I'd vote for trying to punch someone else - no need to punch Stinkers while we still have no way of actually clearing that base up, and maybe we can hit other people in the face just as hard? I'm assuming they don't regrow all that fast...
We could try and take one of the bikers with us this time, just to check if they are doing any better than non-bike-wielding us (and if they do, build an extra bike or something).
VII. The formula
Given the split votes between finishing the Stinkers and exploring the Skinhead base, I moved against the Skinhead. Main reason : we can't heal, and I don't want to lose health before clearing the Skinhead base.
I take everyone who can hit, Tanith for her poison-detection power, and BG (the healthiest biker) just in case. Strange is exploring Fapisia.
After a short trip, we are at our target :
After the usual combat (long, I underperform and Rambo is wounded), we get inside the base... which looks exactly like the Stinkers' base.
One key difference soon becomes clear : there are very few monsters inside. I only meet one (usual type) initially... and Rambo gains one star fighting it.
... on the other hand, there is a lot of that s**t :
Radioactive products depot
Damnit. Those guys previous game - TERA - which was popular and not totally unknown like this one had the same thing :
It drains the health of everyone a bit, so not great. I guess it is Zone's counter to megagroups ?
We also find something view :
Dynamites ! Some character seem to prefer it over bazooka to open doors, but that's all there is to it so far.
As Tanith is full health, I can use her to medidate. As a good weirdo, she then sees what's around her, including enemies (but not radioactive depots, sadly). And so I try meditation :
Uh ? What's this West of my position ?
I enter the suspicious room, and this happens, taking over my whole screen and replacing the view of the room (which, conveniently, has 4 exits)
"A hologram lights up... A Priest-Doctor whispers : In my laboratory in Hawk, the WOQN formula will save you !"
Two notes about the magic mouth hologram :
- I would have appreciated being given a bit more plot...
- Yes it is WOQN and not WOON. I know because the game was nice enough to add the code in the "status" screen
Well, I am not done. I carry on walking on the dungeon and find a healing flask (Tanith had identified and discarded a poison flask earlier on) and a map :
Soon after, I find another staple (clearly) of dungeons in Zone :
The Crazed Guy goes down in one attack, but brings Rambo to two stars minus at the same time. Given the number of radioactive depots, Rambo can now die by entering the wrong room, so I beeline for the exit, only exploring a few tiles to avoid known depots. I encounter a second and last monster, easily dispatched by Karbon.
We head home, and I am very happy to discover that we found some antibiotics. Once home, I take everyone for a long tour, exploring new areas (one is empty, the other fuel, food and tank parts) :
On the last part of the journey, there are no more antibiotics to heal us, which brings me to today, the 30th of May
The group is fine, except Rambo :
We have enough stuff until the end of the game - except moto parts. Last time I show this screen I guess :
Our notebook :
The map :
I think we know where we go next ...
On the other hand, we are running out of places to explore that are not under a radioactive cloud. After we finish Ymroel and Crom, should we risk sending the bikers East ?
"Yes it is WOQN and not WOON" Is that an artisanal Breton cider or are these 4-letter codes randomized?
Since everyone is in pretty good shape, should we just go directly to TAGH where we know for sure there are low-aggressivity KILLERS to wipe out? (and yes, agree to send out bikers to check out the cloud. I'm sure it's only 3.6 roentgen.)
Given that we lack the medicine anyway, we can try visiting Tagh... But I'd rather learn to punch better before that. We could stash Rambo somewhere safe-ish and go back to the dungeon, maybe I can find something to punch in the face too?
Also, if you look really, really closely, there's like one pixel on the third letter in that code that's darker than corresponding one in the second letter, "clearly" marking it as the "Q". Clearly. Just as this game was clearly well-tested.
Well, well, well
I was about to do a short update about opening a certain door... but the code does not work, which may or may not be a bug. But more likely is a bug.
I tried WOQN, WOON, ZOAN because Azerty, everything but to no avail.
I check every. other. tile. in the Stinkers' base and that's the only special place. On the other hand, I found some other "excités" so my theory about the "excité" being a boss is gone.
@Porkbelly : Is there something you can do with the hexadecimal file ? Else, we are likely to be stuck, I think. The code in the Stinker's base IS 4-letters, so it should be this one.
@KarbonKitty : Clearly well-tested indeed ^^.
Dudes!
I've wandered the lonely highway of the mind. I've been one with the road, man. Every day an endless struggle for survival. What's left? I don't know, man. I'm here, but I don't know where here is, or how I got here. All I know is, I'm still kickin'.
All this to say I'm sorry for signing up and then buggering off. I'll try and catch up to you cool cats as ASAP as possible. The last two comments appear to suggest certain things about what this game is like. I will see.
Meat thrashes a piece of scrap with his crowbar until it resembles a door bypass widget.
"Try this. Maybe work... maybe not"
Quote from Strange Fellow on 21 April 2023, 1h01Dudes!
I've wandered the lonely highway of the mind. I've been one with the road, man. Every day an endless struggle for survival. What's left? I don't know, man. I'm here, but I don't know where here is, or how I got here. All I know is, I'm still kickin'.
All this to say I'm sorry for signing up and then buggering off. I'll try and catch up to you cool cats as ASAP as possible. The last two comments appear to suggest certain things about what this game is like. I will see.
Thanks for chiming in.
The "Subscribe from this topic" button is broken, as anything that sends mail automatically (including, you know, new account confirmation). I am fixing this, but ain't easy for me.
Quote from The Wargaming Scribe on 19 April 2023, 23h58
"A hologram lights up... A Priest-Doctor whispers : In my laboratory in Hawk, the WOQN formula will save you !"
Two notes about the
magic mouthhologram :- I would have appreciated being given a bit more plot...
- Yes it is WOQN and not WOON. I know because the game was nice enough to add the code in the "status" screen.
Quote from The Wargaming Scribe on 21 April 2023, 0h00Well, well, well
I was about to do a short update about opening a certain door... but the code does not work, which may or may not be a bug. But more likely is a bug.
I tried WOQN, WOON, ZOAN because Azerty, everything but to no avail.
Damn you Sheltem with your shitty handwriting.
We learn that [...] Strange is actually a girl (she is at some point "blessée" which is the feminine form of wounded)
Wait...
*looks down*
Holy shit!
I'll be right back, dudes.
Strange is exploring Fapisia.
But enough of remembering things that happened while I was psychotic. This is the here and now, man. And the reality is this: The cloud is calling to me. I want, I need, to breathe its air, feel it upon my skin. Send me in, man.
VIII. Loss of time
So just as Strange was getting out of his psychotic episode, I travelled to Hawk to reach the laboratory.
On the way, I met a Stinker patrol in Tartar, and then of course the defenders of Hawk. Very small groups in both cases.
In the dungeon, I can't open the door of the laboratory, but then the weird dudes meditate very strongly and tell me "Nah man, it is normal, you have the formula of the laboratory, but what you need is the code of the laboratory proper, first" !
Frustrated, I explore the rest of the dungeon, where I find another healing flask (yeh !). I also meet some more "excités", which I use to train Meat a bit. And meat learns : 
I also meet another one of those good damn radioactive things !
Returning to base, I take everyone wounded for a grand healing tour. Alas, the skinheads attack while I am out of the base, and 4 defenders (Meat, Dayyalu, BG and Strange, the two latter back from a patrol) must defend alone.
When I return, the team is worse than it used to be, BUT Meat has earned a fourth star in combat !
The cloud moved just East enough to allow us to explore Nork and Yage safely, but nothing worthwhile there. On the other hand, we found the Red Angels (a friendly tribe which can train us in Ridin' in Crom.
I guess the next step is Tagh, except if there is something hidden in the 4 remaining regions.
IX. The end
I am going to have two weeks with little time for the blog and there were not that many courses of action left, so I took the liberty to move fast.
After sending BG and Strange under the cloud, I mounted an expedition for Tagh :
/
Leaving Meat at home so someone defends properly.
It is a long trek Tartar-Hirgael-Sombrie-Tagh. In Sombrie, I meet some Killers. After a combat, Rambo is wounded.
In Tagh on the other hand, there are no defenders. I guess they are still "not aggressive".
The Killer base is described as a cargo wreck, so the Britanny hypothesis is reinforced.
Inside, the look is indeed a bit different :
The enemies are exactly the same as usual. On the other hand, a new skill is used to open doors : the characters "work on the mechanism" and "fixin'" characters like Karbon seem better than say Rambo.
Most of the time, the team just blow the door with TNT. Stealthy !
I am using the psy guys to try to navigate, by asking them to show me the map :
Soon, I don't need them anymore because I find a map :
I inspect the rooms surrounded by the red doors and bingo, one of them has "inscription in letters of blood". [R]eading them - I mean - [L]iring them shows this :
"You think you can read : OXEA"
That's all I needed. With Karbon and Rambo two arrows down, I leave the base by the shortest route and return home.
At this point, I have explored the whole map, finding the Road Kings in Larmor. The Road Kings are the biker trainers, while the Red Angels in Crom are the "punchin'" trainers - and not the biker trainers as I claimed in the last message. The rest of the areas below the cloud has either resources or nothing.
In any case, the gang is not looking good :
- The Bikers received damage while exploring below the cloud
- Rambo and Karbon are out of health
I take a small team with just Gubisson, Meat and myself, theorically there is only one combat left...
... but actually there is none. There are no stinkers left to defend their base. On the other hand, like every 15th and end of month, I receive the message :
"The strength of the men and women of your tribe declines ! Hurry up !"
And the next message I receive is this one :
Rambo died ! I guess the event damages everyone a bit, and Rambo had like 1 HP left.
I enter the Stinker's hideout, find the keypad and type "OXEA"...
... nothing.
Checking my notes :
...
I type QXEA and this time the door opens. I get inside and find...
... a lab !
The game then proposes me to type a formula to synthetize a vaccine :
And one WOQN later :
This vaccine will save your tribe !
And... that's it ! The endgame sequence starts :
Bravo Scribe ! Now may mankind rebuild the world !
Top left : "Heroes entered in the legend" with among other the name of the designer (Ulysses)
And return to DOS !
We made it folks. It was... a terrible game. But you folks were incredibly fun, I am not sure I would have finished the game else !
- Economy is pointless, since you only need 1 IFV and you can easily find infinite food and resource
- Dungeon crawling is frustrating
- Arcade combat ? Boring and repetitive
- The most important skill is punching. Psychin' is useful, the rest seem useless. I don't see the point of "negotiating"
- Overall, it felt shallow and untested - possibly incomplete.
No wonder no one remembers this game. TERA was miles better...
... now I need to think what forgotten game to do next !
"so I took the liberty to move fast." I like a confident leader unencumbered by the technicalities of democracy.
I'm glad this group could provide playtesting for the game 35 years after launch. Back to the drawing board, Loriciels!
Scribe, you've done it! It's... wonderful. Amazing! I'm so proud of what you've accomplished, what you've endured. There's no way the people of the Zone can ever thank you enough for what you've done. You've saved all our lives. Who knows, maybe even saved the human race.
*Sigh*
That makes the rest of this even harder. Everyone will want to talk to you. Every youngster will look up to you, and want to emulate you. And then what? They'll want to leave. What happens to the collective if we lose the best of a generation? What if we are the only safe place in the world? You just gave us back all these lives... I can't take the chance of losing them. I've made a lot of tough decisions since I took this position. But none of them harder than this one. You saved us, but you'll kill us. I'm sorry. You're a hero... and you have to leave.
Goodbye, Scribe. You served us well through this terrible game. If it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't have understood a word, because it was all in French. I'll never forget that.
Thank you, Scribe, it's always nice to do some archeology.
That said, Zone is clearly a mess. I find the oldass Wasteland clunky, but there's depth in there. Here, there's pretty much nothing, the mechanics are half-baked and I bet a shitton of development time was wasted on the "arcade game" part (from your reviews, it seems like a trend of the time...).
There's not even enough weirdness going around, this being utterly generic post apoc derivative. I would honestly expect more from French developers, considering the pedigree of their entertainment industry: a better idea would have been to run deep into memery that only a Frenchman could understand or laugh at.
Instead, we get "Stinkers" "Raiders" and Mad Max bikers.
Well, that was nice, my friends, and we have saved the humanity, apparently? Could have been worse.
I'm sure that we can band together and possibly save and/or doom humanity and/or weird space alien race(s) and/or orks/orcs/elves/elfs/dwarves/dwarfs (what's with the fantasy games alternative spellings?) and/or Soviets/Allies/Axis etc. again!
And thank you, Scribe, for hosting those. They are really fun!