2400 A.D.: Final Ranking

The most honest NPC ever encountered.

       

2400 A.D.

United States

Origin Systems (developer and publisher)

Released 1988 for Apple II and DOS

Date Started: 14 October 2010

Date Ended: 22 October 2010

Total Hours: 8

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)

Final Rating: 34

Ranking at Time of Posting: 16/28 (57%)

Ranking at Game #453: 325/453 (72%) 

     

Again, I find myself in conflict with Dungeons & Desktops author Matt Barton, who says, "2400 A.D. is a very creative game that should have been a great deal more successful" (p. 122).

I'll give him that the game is creative. There aren't many sci-fi RPGs out there, and this one creates a relatively interesting story, a different landscape full of things you generally don't see in CRPGs: moving walkways, subways, transport tubes. The weapons and equipment are unique, and the method of attribute development is rare for the era. Reading a walkthrough later, I realized I barely used half of the equipment available, which included holograph generators that confuse robots and various weapons that stun them.

But I can guess why it's not successful: it's a bit boring. While I love the Ultima IV-style dialog, and I like games that make you rely on NPCs for clues, there are too many NPCs in too tight an area with too few things to say. As for the variety of equipment, most is unnecessary, since the robots fall quite willingly to a few basic weapons. Once you have the plasma rifle, the game is basically over.

Let's break it down on the GIMLET scale:

1. Game world. We have to give 2400 A.D. credit for a unique game world and a somewhat interesting back story covered in the type of thickly-written manual that only Origin could produce. The thing I noticed is the back story could have been written a bunch of different ways without changing the gameplay. For instance, instead of an alien race called the "Tzorg" taking over the colony and staffing it with robots, it could have been a robot revolution against human rule. The Tzorg, after all, are oddly absent from things. (By the way, Barton has a mistake here, calling the enemies as "alien robots called the Tzorg"; the robots are creations of the Tzorg, not Tzorg themselves.) Anyway, your character and quest are quite clear. Nothing you do changes the game world much, though, until the end. Final score: 6.

      

If there's one thing Origin excels at, it's game manuals.

    

2. Character creation and development. I give the game credit for its use-based attribute development. Your energy (strength) goes up by repeatedly running and climbing, and your IQ by fixing your broken equipment, and so on. I can't think of an earlier game that builds your skills this way, a system that will be seen again in the Quest for Glory series and will reach full potential in The Elder Scrolls games. Everything else about character development is fairly basic. There are no choices in character type, alignment, and so on. Treating strength and hit points as the same thing is a bit odd. Final score: 4.

3. NPC interaction. As I said, I have a weakness for the handful of games, almost all Origin Systems titles, where you speak to NPCs by typing keywords. And 2400 A.D. is full of NPCs, most of whom are necessary to find your way along the main quest. They have very little to say, unfortunately, and your dialog with them doesn't offer real choices or opportunities for role-playing. Final score: 5.

       

       

4. Encounters & foes. There are a bunch of different types of robots, basically distinguishable only by icons and how much damage they do. They die too easily and offer little challenge. Most of the encounters are random, though, and foes do respawn. Final score: 3.

5. Magic & combat. There's no magic system in the game, and combat is a rote matter of hitting (a)ttack and pressing a direction. Except in a few cases, where it's good to use obstacles and corridors to limit how many enemies can attack you, there are really no tactics in combat. Final score: 2.

6. Equipment. There are a handful of weapons, three armor choices, and some other equipment in the game. Some of the items are unusual and fun, like time bombs and holograph projectors. I didn't see any need for pass cards and zone access cards; you can just sneak around zones and bash robots. Other than that, nothing terribly special. Final score: 4.

    

Donovan uses his jetpack for no other reason than he can.

      

7. Economy. You need about 7000 credits to get the equipment necessary to win the game, obtained 0-99 at a time from each robot slain. After that, money builds up for no reason. Final score: 3.

8. Quests. There is but one main quest with no twists. No side-quests. The main quest has one outcome and no role-playing opportunities. Final score: 2.

9. Graphics, sound, inputs. The game features basic keyboard controls. The graphics are good enough for the gameplay, although the grey boxes around the sprites are distracting. Sound is still in the better-to-play-it-silent era. Final score: 3.

10. Gameplay. Within the world, gameplay is fairly non-linear, allowing you to go wherever from the start. But the world is small and confining, so it's not as if you can use the non-linearity to really wander and explore. Overall, it is too easy (you cannot die!), too quick, and not in any way replayable. Final score: 2.

This gives us a total score for 2400 A.D. of: 34. That puts it in the range of Shard of Spring, which I once described as "meh." That's pretty much how I feel about 2400 A.D.

The next game is an interesting one: a construction set that comes with a playable single-player module. I'm ready for something new.

2400 A.D.: Won!

You have to wonder what kind of security system allows all the robots to be destroyed by entering three words.

Well, that was a bit anticlimactic. At the end of my last 2400 A.D. posting, I suggested that I thought the game would be a quick one. I was right. I continued wandering through the streets of Metropolis, killing robots, building my statistics, and making money. I visited each building and got all the available clues from the denizens. The picture that emerged was that to win, I would need to:

• Visit several computer consoles under the administration building, enter a code, and get each of three "deactivation codes."
• Sneak in to the Authority Complex through a maze that began in the junk yard, fighting robots and solving puzzles along the way.
• Find my way to the top level of the Authority Complex and enter the three deactivation codes.

To accomplish all of this, I needed several pieces of equipment:

• A field disperser, the best armor in the game, which also allows the wearer to pass through force fields
• A plasma rifle, the best weapon in the game (I'm not sure if it has a 40-watt range).
  
• A transporter guidance device to make my way through a transporter maze
• A jetpack, to get over some obstacles

One by one, I collected the clues and visited the locations to find these items. The plasma rifle was most difficult. I wasn't sure where to get it, but I sort-of lucked into it after I bought several lesser weapons from Wes the weapons dealer.


He ended up just giving me the plasma rifle, but it was broken. I took it to Hugo in the repair shop, and he outlined what I needed.


These spare parts came from a couple of electronics dealers. Once I had it, I was unstoppable, to both robots and doors. I broke in to the Social Rehabilitation Center just to slaughter the robot guards and speak to the prisoners.


The field disperser was a bit easier, requiring only that I find a set of blueprints and pay an absurd amount of money to a guy named "Les" to make the armor.


I picked up the other items along the way, too, but didn't take screen shots. It wasn't all that exciting. The game was far too easy by this point--no robot could really damage me, and they all died in just a couple of shots.

A random pop culture reference. Origin likes these.

Perhaps knowing that robots were no longer a challenge, the game threw some different puzzles at me as I explored the depths of the Administration Center, looking for the deactivation codes.

First there was a moving sidewalk maze. I didn't bother with it; I just fired up my jetpack and flew over it.


Then we had a maze that required me to shove crates around until I found the path to the computer terminal. It took a little time, but we're not talking Wizardry IV-level difficulty, here.


Once I had the codes, it was a simple matter to sneak into the Authority Complex, work my way to the top, and enter the deactivation codes into the main console. I took a video of the last five minutes, starting with the end of a battle with some reasonably difficult robots.

The greatest disappointment? I never got to see what a Tzorg looked like! I guess they're saving that for the sequel.



Alas, according to Wikipedia, the sequel--2500 A.D. (guess it took the Tzorg a while to get there)--was canceled in development.

If this whole post seems a little lackluster, that reflects my feelings about the game. Maybe it was what I needed after Wizardry IV, but it was horribly easy and quick. I'll do a quick summary posting next and then hopefully head on to something more challenging.

2400 A.D.: Die Hard

Soy-278 is robots!

I've gotten the hang of 2400 A.D., and it isn't too hard, particularly given that (as far as I can tell) you cannot die. If robots shoot you enough, you fall unconscious and you wake up in the Social Rehab Center. As some of my readers pointed out in my last posting, this isn't so bad. If you search around, you find a secret door that lets you escape into the underground, at which point you can find your way to the surface.

Now, you don't have any of your equipment, but a helpful hint from a guy named Guido...


...clued me in to where I could go and find it. There's no security on it or anything:


So "dying" and going to rehab actually becomes useful at some points. It certainly isn't any detriment that I can see--you don't lose any statistics, and you even have your check-in timer reset--so the only drawback is that it's a slight pain in the neck wandering out of jail.

This is a good thing, because I was shot unconscious about 20 times tonight as I explored the city of Metropolis. First of all, the quest advanced as I returned to Spider with the password, was given some equipment (including a better blaster), and advised to find out about the underground.


On my way to the underground, I was pursued by another Follower. I got sick of him shadowing me, and I shot him dead. This turned out to be an extraordinary bit of luck because I haven't been able to kill another Follower since.


When a robot "dies," nothing in the game tells you it's dead; it just stops moving. I didn't realize this the first time, so I kept shooting and shooting it until my weapon broke. Then I realized he wasn't shooting back, and I searched him for a cool 8 credits.

As you fight, run, climb, talk to people, and repair weapons in this game, your energy (strength), agility, IQ, and affinity increase. This is the first game I can think of in which your ability scores increase through use instead of through magical means or allocating experience points to them.

In the Underground.

In the Underground (literally an area beneath the city you access via ladders), I was recruited into the Rebellion by someone named "Pinkie" and given a list of individuals to consult. As I did in Ultima IV, I've been taking careful notes of character locations and clues. The game is similar to Ultima IV in that you speak to characters by typing keywords, and often you get a clue from one character to mention something in particular to another. It is dissimilar to Ultima IV in that the characters don't have as much to say, and they don't respond to standard keywords like NAME, JOB, and HEALTH.

My growing clues file.

The clues are telling me a little about a secret entrance to the Authority Complex, and code words I'll need to shut down the robot servers--the game's main quest.

As I explore and talk to people, I've also been finding out about different modes of transportation in the City of Metropolis. First, you can walk anywhere, obviously. But there's also a conveyor belt that reaches most of the parts of the town, and a subway that runs underneath it. Finally, there are occasional transporters that you need a code word to use, but I just got it: LETSGO.

"Now, did he ever return? No, he never returned..."

My main goal now is to make some money and upgrade my weapons, armor, and equipment, and the only way I've found to make money is by killing robots. After numerous attempts and subsequent sojourns in the Rehab Center, I thought to consult the book, and I realized there are different "levels" of robots. Right now, I can basically only take on Level 1:

If I limit myself to "police" robots and "sentry" robots, I've actually been doing pretty well. Here's a shot of me looting the bodies of two police robots:

Boo-ya.

I'm up to about 500 credits, but good weapons and armor cost in the thousands, so I have a long way to go. My plan right now is to keep exploring, talking, and killing, and see where it gets me. Somehow the game doesn't feel like it's going to take very long, but perhaps I'm deceiving myself.

2400 A.D.: Feeling My Way Around the Future

They do not, after all, call it the "Permissiveness Complex."

I spent a little time this evening just wandering around Nova Athens, as a way to learn a bit more about 2400 A.D. and get myself back into the swing of CRPG playing. I'm just going to share a few discoveries and promise a longer post tomorrow.

1. The "T" value is a countdown timer that tells you how long you have to check in with the "Registration." If you let it get to 0 all the robots turn hostile and attack you. In the world of 2400 A.D., you're like a sex offender: you have to keep registering with the authorities to be legal.

Am I Level 2 or 3?

2. There are little power cells on corners (they look a bit like round mirrors), at which you can charge your weapons and devices. But apparently this is illegal, because if the robots see you they will attack you.

I shot something. It didn't do me much good.

3. You are restricted to certain "Zones" of the city. If you stray outside your zone, and a robot catches you, you get a "social demerit." Collect enough social demerits and the robots attack you.


4. There are really annoying robots called "followers" that, you guessed it, mercilessly follow you around. One of them trapped me in a corner and I had to re-load.

Try being a leader.

5. It doesn't appear that you can die in this game--at least, not through regular robot attacks. Instead, you fall unconscious and wake up in "the Social Rehabilitation Center." There's a locked door here, which I managed to bash open, only to immediately encounter a robot that shot me unconscious, and I woke up in...the Social Rehabilitation Center.

Vicious cycle, that.

But among the discoveries, I found a couple pieces of wisdom. First, thanks to the surface map that we decided last week I was allowed to have, I found Johnny's Bar and talked to Reggie, who gave me the Resistance password.

Apparently, he'll give it to anyone who walks up to him and says "password."

The second bit of information I got from a guy in a house that I entered to escape the Follower robot. He found some reference to a device that would protect people from force fields.


And that, unfortunately, is it for the evening. Again, a longer post tomorrow after I've had a chance to explore for a solid 3-4 hours. Oh, here's that surface map. It doesn't look like a very big game, but then some of these houses have multiple levels. I guess I'll just try a systematic pattern of movement until I get specific clues.

Game 28: 2400 A.D. (1987)

Lord British's jester found time to make a game.

With this posting, we move into a new year: 1987. This is important because the years pass slowly these days. 1983 had three games; 1984 had only five. But 1986 had 11, and 1987 has 22. I'm sure they'll stop doubling eventually, but from now on, any time a new year rolls around, it's a major event.

2400 A.D. takes place at some unspecified point in the future on a planet technically known as XK-120 but called "Nova Athens" by the residents. Colonized by Earth for its mining potential, it became a major center for learning and culture, but over the course of a few decades it was conquered--along with many other Earth colonies--by an alien race called the Tzorg. To keep order among the human populace of Nova Athens, and in its capital city of Metropolis, the Tzorg staffed the planet with robot patrols. Although the planet still nominally functions, it has gone to seed, and an underground Resistance network works to find and deactivate the robots' control center.

You play a computer specialist who has been reassigned to Nova Athens from another Tzorg-controlled colony. Somehow the Resistance has gotten you a member's journal detailing a member's attempts to infiltrate the center, and a recent project to build a secret underground tunnel to the center. Attached to the journal is a desperate note encouraging you to find someone named "Spider." After allocating 99 points to energy, IQ, agility, and "affinity" (basically charisma), you are dumped into the middle of Metropolis.

The desperate plea that starts the game.

The game was developed by "Chuckles" at Origin Systems, and its lineage shows. The interface is very reminiscent of Ultima IV, with a top-down map occupying one half of the screen and dialog and game notes occupying the other half. Commands and movement are entirely through the keyboard, of course, with easy-to-remember actions like "(a)ttack" and "(g)et."

And there's dialog like Ultima IV! At least, with some of the characters, there is. Others just say one thing, like in Ultima III. Unfortunately, the dialog is tough to get into. The characters aren't like the friendly inhabitants of Britannia--they don't respond to inquiries about NAME, HEALTH, and JOB. You have to know more about what to say. But I did already get a clue from a guy named Eddie at a lunch counter that the enigmatic "Spider" is at Joe's Bar.

"Left" and "right" are tough concepts in a top-down game.

I found Joe's Bar easy enough, but it took me a good 15 minutes of screwing around to figure out that the way to get into the "back" of the bar to see Spider was to (C)limb over the bar itself. I can tell that the interface is going to take some getting used to. Anyway, Spider wants me to find someone named Reggie at Jonnie's Corner and get a password from him.

Yes! We all want to change the world.

    

After leaving the bar, I got stuck in an alleyway between some kid and an innocuous-looking robot (these robots flit about and look so harmless it's hard to believe I'm going to be shooting them soon).

Hey, it's called "personal space." Check it out.

 

Since at this point in the game, I didn't have an energy pack for my weapon, and since neither of my companions seemed inclined to move, I started to get pretty steamed at what I thought was an idiotic design interface. But it turned out the solution was, again, to (c)limb over them. Seems pretty rude, but it worked.

Now notice the number after the "T" in the screenshot above. This value started at something like 2000 and has been steadily counting down, second-by-second, since then. What happens when it gets to 0? Do I have to enter 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 into the interface?

I'm also wondering if I ever get to meet a Tzorg. The manual suggests that the Tzorgs took off and left the planet in the care of their robot servants. I'd like to know what they look like.

Going from Wizardry IV to 2400 A.D. feels a bit like stalking away from a chess tournament to go play tick-tack-toe. Maybe it gets a lot harder--after all, I've yet to fire a weapon--but something about the interface is lulling me into a feeling that it's an easy game. We'll see how it goes. I won't blog again until I've shot something.