Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed: The Fourth Power

I like how the game offers this choice, as if saying "no" doesn't doom you to an inability to finish the game.

           

I ended the first session with two missions: find Dr. Chade on Earth and some gravitational expert in the Venusian lowlands. I decided to do the second first because it seemed more subversive to do the second one first. The setting describes Venus as having been partially terraformed. It's still ungodly hot, with clouds of dangerous gases. Venusians are human, but bio-engineered to handle the conditions. The planet has one spaceport, New Elysium, controlled by the theocratic Ishtarians. The lowlands are the domain of Aphroditian farmers and miners. A third Venusian population called Aerostators "float above the lands and make their living primarily as tradesmen and herders," a statement that raises far more questions than it answers. A non-human population of "gennies" (bio-engineered creatures) called Lowlanders live in an acid jungle and produce Gravitol, which is crucial to space travel. The human population is allied with Earth against RAM, but the Lowlanders will sell to anyone.
        

The party lands an entire map away from our destination.

        

As we landed, SCOT.DOS reported that his scans showed that Lowlanders had been digging extensive mines, which is a bit of a mystery since Venus has no minerals. He also intercepted a radio communication from someone on the planet to Mariposa Spaceport on Mercury, indicating they were also searching for the scientist.

    

Encouraged to move quickly--I don't know why we landed so far away--we made our way across the overland map towards the Lowlander village on the other side. The overland maps in the Buck Rogers series are much like those in Pool of Radiance, Pools of Darkness, and the two Krynn games, except I'm not sure there's much to discover if you were to explore systematically. On the way to the village, we were attacked by "Venusian dinosaurs" that look a lot like T-Rexes. Why anyone would "bio-engineer" such a creature is another mystery, but it reminded me that "gennies" are an easy way to inject Dungeons and Dragons-style monsters into a science fiction setting. On the Earth map later, for instance, we fought giant rats, giant grasshoppers, and something that looks a lot like demons.
      

Why would anybody make these things?

These aren't fantasy creatures clearly designed for a fantasy game. They're "gennies."

        
Anyway, the creatures were hugely dangerous except when encountered in forests, where the dense tree coverage meant that they couldn't really move. They were worth a lot of experience points--like ten times the experience points of random RAM soldier battles.

     

Soon after, a random battle with some Lowlanders (which look like lizard men), accompanied by acid frogs, left my party in tatters. I had to retreat to the ship and use the clinic before setting out again. On the next attempt, I found a Lowlander village that had been destroyed by PURGE, and I got slaughtered by PURGE forces. I didn't have the most remote chance.

The keys to success.

          
I thus reloaded and spent a few minutes circling the outer asteroid rim, visiting spaceports for equipment upgrades. It took a few false stops before I finally found a shop selling grenades. Although they didn't have any explosive grenades, they had plenty of other types, including stun grenades. I bought about 25 of those for each character, running through most of my funds.
       
On the way back to Venus, I won my first battle against a light RAM cruiser. This was good because I was running out of "space funds" to pay for fuel.
        

This fighter has one-tenth the statistics of the RAM cruiser that beat me last time.

           
I found my time on Venus a bit easier with the grenades, but it wasn't at all easy. Matrix Cubed definitely kicked combat up a notch, and if you didn't experiment much with grenades in Countdown to Doomsday, you definitely feel it here. Grenades and other explosives, as we've discussed, are the one way that the authors introduced some spell-like abilities into the combat system. They use much of the same mechanics (and, I suspect, much of the same code) as "Fireball," "Stinking Cloud," and "Cloud Kill" spells from the Dungeons and Dragons titles. For instance, aerosol mist grenades create a cloud that diffuse laser fire and chaff grenades release a cloud of metallic pieces that intercept explosives and rounds from rocket pistols and rifles. You can throw these on top of your own party to prevent these things from getting in, although explosives will still detonate at the perimeter and potentially damage party members, so a slightly safer solution is to have multiple characters throw the grenades in such a way as to surround the party.

Dazzle grenades cause blindness; gas grenades incapacitate enemies for a couple of rounds; and stun grenades affect a 9 x 9 area with the "Stun" spell. There are three levels of explosive grenades--mini, regular, and efanite. The range of all grenades can be greatly improved with a grenade launcher, although you can only use it once every other turn.
          

Stun grenades are incredibly useful, when they work.

         
I like defensive grenades in theory, but they don't discriminate between enemy and friendly explosives, and they thus prevent me from firing out of the cloud as well as enemies firing in. Thus, I typically only use chaff grenades when I'm outclassed in the explosive department. I could stand to experiment more with aerosol mist grenades and dazzle grenades, but when I'm facing non-robot enemies, stun grenades are so useful that it's hard to justify using anything else. Three or four characters can incapacitate a huge party of enemies with them.
 
They were responsible for my victory in the Lowlander village, where I rescued a small child. The game made me take him in to my party, unarmed and with 8 hit points, just in time for a major combat against PURGE forces. We recognized the child as Zane, who we had saved from RAM forces during events in Countdown. What are the odds. After combat, Zane's father thankfully showed up to take him to safety. He related that the PURGE agents seem to be after the secret to mining Gravitol, but the morons attacked a food-producing farm rather than a Gravitol operation.
         

Do these kids ever grow up?

         

As if PURGE wasn't enough, we also ran into a party of Mercurian forces on the way to the Lowlanders' Gravitol village. Their conversation indicated that they weren't working with PURGE, but neither are they clearly RAM allies, so I guess maybe we have a four-way conflict brewing.

When we arrived, the Lowlander village was abandoned. As we explored the buildings, we saw lots of signs that the village had been deliberately set up to seem low-tech, but often with more advanced technology under the surface; for instance, a "primitive" cooker powered by a "lightweight atomic generator hidden under a hide blanket." Soon we blasted a door into a clearly more advanced part of the city, which contained manufacturing plants for the hide shields and crystal-tipped spears that the Lowlanders carry.
           

This whole village is a front.

         
Ultimately, we made our way to an elevator shaft to the mines below, a relatively linear map. We fought a couple of skirmishes with Lowlander parties before they ambushed us with stun grenades, disarmed us, and dragged us to their leader, Llorok. He had just ordered our execution when an earthquake struck, sending the Lowlanders scattering. Llorok fell down an open mine shaft.
        

I actually try to keep it painless when I kill cattle.

          
Another Lowlander begged us to save him, but we still had no equipment, which was a big problem for the two combats we had to fight at the bottom of the shaft with "Ursadders," some kind of monster that seems like a cross between a human and a slug. We had to fight two battles with these enemies, one against three and one against four, and in several tries I couldn't survive them both. Without any arms or equipment, there's not much you can do but concentrate your attacks and hope the dice go your way. They wouldn't go my way, and for probably the first time ever with a Gold Box game, I considered lowering the difficulty. (I probably should have replaced one of my engineers with a second warrior when the game started.) In a fifth try, I got out with Austin alive, but no one else, which was hardly enough to heal anyone after the battle. In the sixth try, I got lucky with a couple of "backstabs" (hard to do with fists, I imagine) and took my doctor out of the fighting before he could die, and we finally got past the obstacle without the ignominy of lowering the difficulty. I was close, though.
         

The idea of punching these things to death is pretty disgusting.

         
We rescued Llorok and brought him back to his people, who thereafter stopped attacking us. This was just in time for PURGE to invade the base, though.
 
The caverns led to a secret laboratory run by a Lowlander scientist named Leander, who was briefly an NPC companion in Countdown. Leander turned out to be the gravitational field expert we were searching for. The game made a big deal about how we were surprised the scientist making such waves was a Lowlander and not a human living among the Lowlanders, but I'd like to say for the record that I never assumed it would be anything but a Lowlander, so it's my party that's racist, not me.
         

That's mighty progressive of you, SCOT.DOS.

         
The two levels of the secret base consisted primarily of the party saving various Lowlander groups from PURGE forces. At one point, we found a "brochure" on a fallen PURGE soldier, explaining a bit more about the group.

LOOK around, friend! Genetic MONSTERS have taken over! They were made to serve us . . . but instead HAVE BECOME OUR MASTERS! We of PURGE are DEDICATED to ridding the Earth of the EVIL of GENETIC RESEARCH! Join us as we FIGHT TO SAVE HUMANITY FOR THE HUMANS!

The acronym means "Prevention of Unwanted Research and Genetic Engineering." Since I keep getting into battles with them--including freaking dinosaurs--I'm perfectly happy to admit that "gennies" are more trouble than they're worth. Where PURGE's logic breaks down for me is when they say that these creatures are our "masters." I don't recall taking any orders from acid frogs. Everyone associated with the NEO and RAM hierarchies so far have been human--except for the ones that are artificial intelligence. It would be as if some modern world group was not only against cloning sheep but also believed that Dolly was pulling the strings at the U.N.
       

PURGE soldiers trying to steal the secrets to Gravitol.

      
The maps culminated in a large battle against PURGE agents led by a cyborg--I guess they have no problem with that--named Sid Refuge. In a battle greatly assisted by our stun grenades, we killed Refuge and his forces and made the base safe for the Lowlanders again. (I was annoyed because during combat, Refuge had a plasma thrower, but it didn't show up in the post-combat loot.) Leander agreed to accompany us back to the NEO base and help in our efforts with the Matrix Device.
         

When did we tell you about our cause?

          
But just as we were backtracking to the surface, Mercurians invaded. Again, I don't know what their deal is. In the first mission, we had protected the new Sun King, who was supposed to be a NEO ally, but clearly Chancellor De Sade was up to something. The upshot is that instead of just NEO and PURGE to worry about, we have this uncertain fourth variable.

All of the battles against the Mercurians were random, but they were also much harder. They attacked with multiple combat robots, each of which can fire explosive missiles. We protected ourselves with chaff grenades, but this prevented us from using our best weapons against the robots. The battles were long and hard, but finally we made our way back to the surface.
        

I guess this guy isn't dead.

         
As we journeyed back to the ship--again, why did we park so far away?--we came upon Sid Refuge tangling with some Lowlanders as he made his own escape. Apparently, the cyborg can heal himself from near-fatal damage. We'll thus meet him again.
        

The next overland map. We can't visit the downtown buildings yet.

        
After healing, training, and restocking, we decided to head for "Losangelorg" and look for Dr. Chade. Like Venus, L.A. had a sprawling outdoor map with multiple random encounters. We couldn't yet visit most of the places in the city proper, but we spent some time in the "sprawls" (slums) to the north. I love the idea that Burbank and Pasadena somehow turned into slums. (FYI, if you get a quick chance, Google the actual city limits of Los Angeles. A lot of what people think is L.A. isn't L.A., and yet a lot of L.A. is in places most people don't think is L.A. San Diego is arguably even weirder.) At one point, we responded to the cries of some townsfolk and rescued some children from giant rats (called "ratwurst") in a sewer.
          

Even in the future, we can't avoid giant rats.

         
Most of the action took place in a four-story building in the far northeast of the outdoor map. It was a fun map, with a complexity to the encounter options that reminded me of Pool of Radiance. Basically, the area was controlled by three gangs: the Leeches, the Grotesques, and the White Monks. Rumors said that one of the gangs had him, but each gang claimed it was one of the others and wanted our help in battling the others and securing weapons to fight them. Meanwhile, a "social reformer" named Isha asked us to favor none of the gangs and to give the weapons to her instead. All of them promised Chade as a reward.
          

This guy turned out to be lying.

        
We started off favoring Isha, but later evidence exposed her as a RAM agent, so we killed her and instead threw in with the Leeches, led by Loa-Loa. I wish I could tell you I had a good reason, but it mostly came down to Loa-Loa being an attractive girl, while the leader of the Groteseques, "Gargoyle," was a "hideous skeletal boy" and the leader of the White Monks, Wink, was a weird old man. Also, rumors said that Gargoyle was on the verge of a RAM alliance.
            

Female privilege wins a round.

           
It turned out that the White Monks had imprisoned Chade and his daughter in their lair up on the building's roof. But when we finally defeated Wink and got into the place, it turned out that the father and daughter had escaped weeks earlier. Searching their former cell, the party found a device with a button and materials suggesting that Chade was heading for the desert. As we left, Loa-Loa promised to build a better life for the people in the slums.

A couple of minor encounters on the way out of town suggested that Chade's device was meant to disable holograms. Once in the desert, we headed for the one obvious feature, a large mesa, and found that it was a hologram concealing the old Museum of History.
      

That's an impressive hologram.

      
The building was another 16 x 16 map split into a main building and a mezzanine. RAM forces arrived about the same time we did, and they brought explosives with them. Every battle produced explosive grenades, rocket launchers, and plasma launchers, which we swiped greedily. I had intended to save them for battles in which I needed that kind of firepower, but pretty soon, we had so much that I just started using them in regular battles. Combats become a lot easier when you can "cast" the equivalent of six "Fireballs" every round.
           

The museum has a "Buck Rogers" exhibit.

         
We first met Dr. Chade's daughter, Stefi, who tried to convince us that Chade was dead. Then, we found Chade himself asleep in a closet. Chade led us around the museum erratically, searching for his "notes," while we fought a party of RAM soldiers in practically every room. After we saved Stefi from a group of them, he said he trusted us, but we still had to find his notes and destroy information about his experiments on the computers in the building.
         

At some point, "Dr. Chade's" fusion chamber, notes, and mission became Stefi's, and I'm not sure what happened.

           
Something happened at some point that I missed or misinterpreted. Chade disappeared or died after a climactic battle with RAM forces, and Stefi fled upstairs, barricading herself to avoid being captured while she destroyed Chade's research. Subsequent dialogue indicated that Stefi was just as knowledgeable as her father on fusion reaction, and indeed also seems to be a "Dr. Chade," and I'm not sure which of these three possibilities is the case:
        

• Stefi was always the "real" Dr. Chade, and people just assumed it was her father because he looked the part.

• Stefi was always the "real" Dr. Chade and her "father" was just a hologram.

• The father was the original Dr. Chade, but Stefi is also a physicist, and the father had taught enough of his science to Stefi that she can serve in his place.

          

Stefi shows some spine.

           
Whatever the case, we rescued her and got out of there. Buck Rogers congratulated us on our third successful mission and soon assigned us a fourth: the capture of Dr. Jerod Malcoln, a PURGE weapons scientist, who "has created an explosive gas with the radioactive properties that we need." Rogers asked that we go back to Losangelorg and infiltrate PURGE headquarters on Santa Catalina. Having been to Santa Catalina several times, it pains me to think of such a beautiful place in the hands of a group of extremists. Buck gave us a passcard to get into the central L.A. buildings and said we'd find an agent named Red Carrin in the "Newporg Archology."

I think you're just making up words.

    
Back on the base, I was surprised to find that the store allows you to purchase ammunition reloads for rocket launchers and plasma throwers. Was this true in the last game, too?! I remember never having enough of those weapons, but I also think I discarded them when they were empty. Being able to reload them would have made a huge difference and would have made me feel better about both the difficulty of the games and the economy.
          

Was this possible in the first game?

         
Matrix Cubed is a better game than I anticipated, and perhaps even better than the original game. I'm enjoying the challenging combats, even though grenades are no substitute for the variety of spells in the Gold Box system. I apologize for sounding so down about it last time. Arbitrating the gangs in the second mission was a lot of fun, and I hope that the game continues with this level of encounter quality.

Time so far: 12 hours