Pathways into Darkness: No Safe Spaces

This wasn't a bad sequence.

      

In the gaming world, CRPGs will always be my first love, but that doesn't mean that my heart doesn't sometimes stray. Pirates!, Warlords, and Roadwar 2000 have all made appearances on my blog under the thinnest pretenses just because I found them as compelling as most CRPGs of their years. Off-blog, I have spent perhaps as much time with the Assassin's Creed, Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto, and Far Cry series as I have with any RPG.

    

Having now spent about five hours with Pathways into Darkness and having "leveled up" my skill with the Walther P4 exactly twice, to essentially no practical effect, I'm prepared to dismiss it as even a hybrid RPG. But it really does offer its own rewards, in particular the rewards of (rarely, for me at least) getting a series of action steps exactly right. On multiple levels during this session, I faced groups of zombies and headless. Realms of Darkness would have me fight these enemies in its tactical, turn-based interface, and I would occasionally enjoy the intellectual satisfaction of defeating a particularly tough mob of them. But the satisfaction of doing well in a first-person shooter is more visceral: run, stab, dodge, switch weapons, shoot, shoot, dodge, turn, shoot, switch weapons, round the pillar, stab, stab, hear the zombie behind you throw a bone, dodge, turn around, switch weapons, shoot, shoot, note with satisfaction that your health bar is still at 100% and that the once-crowded room is nothing but splatters of gore.

     

I earn "Novice" level with the Walther P4.

    

I have trouble with a lot of action games because of my colorblindness. Camouflage works very well on me, and in a game like Far Cry, I often have to get shot a few times before I can register where the shooter is coming from. I tend to rely on those games' generosity with healing. Pathways, on the other hand, is perfect for me graphically. The graphics aren't so complicated that they obscure what I need to see. I love the way enemies emerge from the darkness at the edges of the character's flashlight.

       

And let me mention again that the automap is awesome.

      

Sound is also particularly well done. Both headless and zombies have an associated sound when they fire their projectiles and a separate sound when the projectile connects (actually, two separate sounds—one when it connects with you, and one when it connects with a wall). Since enemies can spawn behind you, you have to keep your ears open as well as your eyes. Dodging plays a much bigger role in the game than I realized in its opening hours, and you have to be prepared to do it the moment you hear, rather than see, a missile weapon. You learn to walk on the edges of narrower corridors because if you're in the middle, there isn't enough room to dodge to either side if an enemy fires a missile. You have to avoid dead-ends at all costs.

  

Because of the importance of dodging, I've found that it's easier to play with my right hand on the arrow keys and my left hand on "X" and "Z" (dodge left and right) because it saves the second where I have to move my fingers to the "strafe" keys on the numberpad. I wouldn't have thought this key combination would work, but it was well-designed. My left thumb is on the SPACE bar to fire. The only problem I have is quickly hitting TAB when I need to use the blue crystal.

      

Always nice to find a cache of ammo.

     

In short, I'm really enjoying the game. That isn't to say that I'm good at it. I've spent a lot of time reloading at checkpoints hoping to get the next sequence of enemies more "perfect." I think I'm resting too often and using too much ammunition. But I decided that I wouldn't worry about it. I'm just going to keep following the right wall and see where it takes me, and if I run out of time or ammo, then that's what happens.

   

My right-wall approach means that I explored the temple's upper levels in halves. In other words, I found the ladder to "They May Be Slow . . ." after only exploring half of "Lock & Load." I then explored only half of that before finding the ladder to ". . . But They're Hungry." In this manner, I worked my way to the top level ("Ascension") and back down to "Ground Floor," exploring the second halves on the way down. Yes, I missed stuff in the middle of some of the levels. If this is the sort of game where you have to explore every level exhaustively, I'm not going to make it.

    

Headless and zombies remained the primary enemies throughout; as I ascended, I met more of the latter and fewer of the former. Phantoms appeared on ". . . But They're Hungry" and continued in greater numbers on the upper levels. They died with two blasts of the blue crystal—the only way to kill them, as far as I can tell—but they always managed to hit me before I saw them or could get close enough to blast them.

   

Freezing a phantom.

      

The penultimate level, "Evil Undead Phantoms Must Die," was a real bastard. After taking the ladder up, I was immediately swarmed by a couple of dozen enemies. It took me about six tries to figure out how to immediately run, find a slightly safe area, and pick them off one by one.

I found several more dead Germans on the way up. I talked to each of them with the yellow picture, and among them, I got a picture of their expedition. Fifteen of them entered the temple after spending the night in the jungle. They were led by a Captain Muller, who didn't tell them why they were there. Some of the other soldiers included Claude, Hans, Gunther, Behrens, and Joachim. None of the soldiers liked Muller. They lost half of their number on the way up to the top level, slowly picked off by the monsters. Eventually, Muller realized he was going the wrong way and turned around. Muller was carrying an instrument that opened some locked doors on "Ground Floor."

    

Talking with Gunther.

     

I found the instrument—a set of "alien pipes"—on the top level. As far as I can tell, these pipes and the blue crystal are the only reasons to visit the upper floors. If there were more things, I missed them. I also found a few treasures—an emerald, a silver medal, a large pearl—but the way the manual explains it, these just add to the final score. 

     

Back on "Ground Floor," I took stock of things. It was Monday at 02:41 at this point, about 20 hours in. My score was 10/41. I had risen from "Beginner" to "Expert" in the Walther P4 (passing through "Novice"). I was carrying two copies of Mein Kampf, plus three packets of "Nazi propaganda," all of which seemed worthless, and I dropped them in the entryway. I also dropped six extra Walther P4s (after making sure they were empty); the manual doesn't give any indication that weapons can be broken or stolen. Despite being fairly liberal with the use of the gun, I had 12 Walther P4 magazines with 87 combined rounds. I also had a magazine for an MP-42, a machine gun, but I haven't found the weapon. Veteran players, let me know what you think of these stats.

        

To be fair, it's hard to see how it would "do anything interesting" anywhere, let alone in an ancient ruin full of monsters.

      

(Can I tell you something random? While shopping at Hannaford the other day, I randomly decided to try these frozen Jamaican beef patties that caught my eye. I almost never buy frozen food, but something about them looked good. I'm eating them now as I write this, and they are perhaps the best prepared supermarket food I have ever eaten. And they're a bargain—three large pies for I think $5.99. I just looked up the company; they're out of Brooklyn and I guess run by authentic Jamaicans. Tower Isle Jamaican beef patties—highly recommended. I was not paid for this endorsement.)

   

Half of that ammo was gone a few minutes later. When I played the alien pipes on the blue rune on "Ground Floor," two doors opened to either side of me, and monsters came spilling out. There were a bunch of zombies, but the real headliner was a new monster, "ghouls," who hurl rocks much faster than the zombies' bones. I had a lot of trouble dodging them.

   

When I finally cleared them out, I had two ladders down. One led to a level called "Wrong Way," the other "Feel the Power." I decided to take these names at their word and went to the latter one, but immediately at the bottom of the latter, I got swarmed by half a dozen large oozy dudes, and I couldn't fight my way out of there in 10 tries. 

     

I guess I was here too soon.

    

"Wrong Way" wasn't much better. The ladder deposited me in a large, open room full of ghouls. After I cleared them, I found that the only ways out were two closed doors and four ladders down to the next level, "Welcome Tasty Primate." There was also another dead German, Behrens, whose head had been crushed by a ghoul.

    

I wonder where that machine pistol went.

    

"Wrong Way" and "Welcome Tasty Primate" were interconnected by several ladders. I kept to my right-wall pattern and eventually found a silver key that opened some doors on both levels. Elsewhere on the levels, I found a clear blue potion and an orange crystal.

    

The levels introduced a new enemy: flying figures that look like fish with mustaches. They're called "nightmares" here. They shoot balls of electricity and explode satisfyingly when killed.

        

This is the enemy. I'll get the exploding animation next time.

     

I experimented a bit with using my knife. With nightmares, that was a recipe for suicide, but I found that if I could avoid a ghoul's rock and then rush up to him, I could stun-lock him and prevent him from throwing another. It takes four stabs to kill a ghoul with a knife. This calculation became all the more important when I suddenly ran out of Walther P4 ammo. I found a dead German a few minutes later, plus some stray magazines, so I got reasonably well re-stocked, but the episode was still unnerving.

    

I also learned the hard way not to wait too long to rest. When you rest, there's a chance that an enemy will spawn in your area and attack. The game automatically wakes you up, but not until the enemy has scored a hit. Thus, if you wait to rest until you're almost dead, the one hit you suffer before you wake up could be enough to kill you.

      

Is the knife the only melee weapon in the game?

      

Eventually, I found the ladder down to the next level, titled "We Can See in the Dark . . . Can You?" Almost immediately, I got attacked by these giant bats (the death message calls them "squeaking rat-things") who just keep flying around my body, doing damage. Nothing seems to work to kill them. I tried the knife, the gun, and both blue and orange crystals. 

      

What the hell are these things?

      

So while I started this session feeling pretty powerful, I end it feeling a bit discouraged—but the game is meant to be hard, tense, and a bit ominous. The time limit, limited supply of ammo, limited save points, and enemy respawning all guarantee that you never feel safe. It has a proto-Dark Souls vibe, where every time you achieve something, the feeling comes with a bit of dread, as you know that the next leg of the journey is going to bring something even worse. I admire the authors' ability to do that, but I'm going to need a little break.

   

Time so far: 7 hours

    

P.S. The solution to my screenshot problem was to just record my gameplay and clip the images later. That's why I have so many GIFs. I should do this for all my games.