B.A.T.: Won!* (With Final Rating)

This is the second game in a row to just dump me onto a screen like this at the end.

B.A.T.

France

Computer's Dream (Developer) / Ubi Soft (Publisher)

Released in 1989 for Atari ST, 1990 for DOS

Date Started: 06 July 2012

Date Ended: 10 July 2012

Total Hours: 11

Difficulty: Moderate (2.5/5)

Final Rating: 29

Ranking at Time of Posting: 28/64 (44%)

B.A.T. ought to stand for "Bait and Tswitch." The game promises to be a CRPG/adventure hybrid and almost entirely fails to deliver on the CRPG part.

I spent a lot of time--too much time--winning the game yesterday. My winning character was probably my eighth; most of the first seven died of starvation rather than experiencing "walking dead" moments. There were only a few puzzles, and the game world is fairly small. The key to winning involved doing things in a particular sequence (as is often true in adventure games) and "searching" every area and after every combat to pick up the few vital inventory items.

Failure to search after killing Merigo puts you in a "walking dead" situation.

The basic winning sequence (obviously major spoilers for anyone playing the game) was to do the following:

1. Equipped myself with one good weapon, a couple of clips of ammunition, at least one force field, and a number of units of food. Medicine was sometimes useful but I learned to flee most combats, and in my final play-through, it wasn't necessary as I only fought Merigo and Vrangor.

2. Headed to the arcade and played the "Bizzy Game" until I had about 500 more credits than I started with. Changed those credits for local currency and that lasted for the rest of the game. This might have been cheating a bit, as I used Notepad to write down the sequence of shapes for each level and then just repeated them. I think you're supposed to memorize it.

3. Went into a bar and ask a woman about Merigo. She told me that some random alien or robot was talking about him.

4. Wandered around the city until I find the right alien or robot. He told me to meet him at the museum at a particular time. Met him there and got a clue that Merigo was in the Xifo club. Bought an access pass to the club from the same NPC or wandered around until I found another NPC that had one.

Who goes to a nightclub at 6 o'clock in the morning?!

5. Visited the Xifo club at the right time, encountered Merigo, and defeated him in combat. Searched his corpse for an electronic key that would get me into the underground area in #10.

What happened to this guy? I just shot him! I didn't cut off his nose and burn him!

6. Visited the nightclub at a particular time (around 03:00), danced with Lydia, and got her to join me.

7. Visited the arcade again at a particular time (around 13:00), used the "Bizzy" machine, and met Sloan. Agreed to his challenge about who could reach the highest level. Watched him play five or six levels (the game actually makes you watch the entire thing) and then beat his level. Asked him to join me as a reward.

"Sloan" looks oddly Native American.

8. Used Sloan to get through the airlock. Talked to a guy who would rent me a "drag" for $5,900. Lydia suggested that I contact Crisa Kortakis for financial help and gave me her number.

I have no idea what he meant by "arrangements for personal cover."

9. Used the payphone on the first screen to call Kortakis, got an appointment with her, and visited her--she turned out to be a morbidly obese, emotionally unstable, unclothed woman--in her apartment. Got her to give me a bunch of extra cash. I could have skipped this step with all the money I won at the "Bizzy game," but she also gave Lydia a gem needed for #11.

10. Went into the underground and navigated a very frustrating, complicated 3D maze. I found it impossible to map, because I didn't realize that the game randomly turns you every time you exit a door. I finally buckled and looked at an online map, which is why there's an asterisk after "Won!" in the title.

This took bloody forever.

11. In the underground city on the other side of the maze, used Lydia's gem to activate a control panel and get me an Epsilon Card that showed the way to Vrangor's hiding place at Epsilon Station (needed for #13). Returned to the city, which forced me to re-navigate the maze because some of the doors I used on the way there were now locked.

I can't quite make a double entendre out of this.

12. Checked into a hotel in the city and searched the room for an access card for the technician's panel at the airlock. Visited the airlock and got the access code for Epsilon Station.

13. Paid the guy in the airlock $5,900 for the drag. Headed out into the desert and drove around randomly until I saw a blinking light indicating where Epsilon Station was.

There wasn't much to this complicated-looking interface. Left-click to speed up, right-click to slow down, mouse to turn.

14. Entered the station, input the code from #12, went through a door, and encountered Vrangor. Defeated him in combat (he was the easiest foe in the game) and immediately got tossed into the "The End" screen at the top of this posting.

Vrangor went down so easily that I had time to take my hand off the mouse and take this screen shot.

Figuring out this sequence involved a lot of trial-and-error, of course. The first time I bought the drag, I drove it around aimlessly and found nothing. The first time I entered the maze, it was before I had Lydia's gem, so I got all the way to the underground city and couldn't finish. As you heard last time, I didn't realize that some of the events (such as meeting Lydia and Sloan) were time-sensitive, so I spent a lot of time wondering what to do next. It took me forever to figure out that the technician access card was in the hotel room; I thought the hotel room was just a place to sleep.

It actually turns out you can sleep anywhere, which was good because I used the option to wait out the time before the time-sensitive events. Time passes very slowly in the game; so much so that I was only on day 3 of my 10-day limit when I won.

I doze in a dark, dangerous alley.

Just for fun, after I won, I had a character sleep solidly for 12 days, and the world didn't end, so the 10-day limit seems to be something of a red herring.

All humans were supposed to be dead two days ago.

The puzzles exemplified many of the things that I don't like about adventure games. Too many of them required me to pick up obscure cards in obscure places. If y'all hadn't clued me in to wait around the arcade until the right time, I probably never would have met Sloan (even meeting Lydia was a fluke; I just happened to enter the club at the right time the first time I played). And then we have the issue, discussed last time, of having to click in just the right place to find the arrow to a new area. It was very late in the game that I found the path to the underground city on a screen I'd visited 500 times without noticing an alternate exit.

But it bothers me more how the game works--or doesn't work--as a CRPG. Let's move on to the GIMLET and we'll talk about that.

1. Game world. This is the first cyberpunk-influenced game that I've played, and while I'll never love the genre, I am grateful for the chance to play something other than the typical sword-and-sorcery CRPG. The game manual offers a fairly good history of the setting and describes the different alien and robot races to an extent frankly not required by the actual gameplay. The player's role and quest are fairly clear, and the game world does a good job responding to your actions. Mercilessly blast NPCs and the entire world turns against you, offering combat on every corner. Steal from shopkeepers and get caught, and no one will do business with you. There are neat little touches as you explore, such as flyers that give phone numbers for the club and the police station; you can call them from the payphone for somewhat useless information. There are a cinema and a police station that seem to be there just for atmosphere. All in all, not a bad world. It's just not very big, and they didn't do much with it. Score: 6.

Fiddling around with the phone allows you to call Ubi Soft, the game publisher.

2. Character Creation and Development. This was very disappointing. The game is offered as a CRPG and adventure hybrid, and the opening screen seems specifically designed to appeal to CRPG players, with a standard set of attributes and various skills, and with the ability to select your name. But the joke's on the CRPG player because no one ever refers to you by name, and if the attributes and skills play any role, it's very subtle. I didn't see a single place in which "electronics," "climbing," "evaluate," "mechanics," "truck," "locate," "pick locks," or many of the other skills would be used. It's possible that some of the attributes had an effect on speed and effectiveness in combat, but combat wasn't hard enough to require such tweaking. The character does gain "levels" throughout the course of play, but again, the influence of this is essentially undetectable.

Just for fun, I tried different combinations. I created a character who had no intelligence, charisma, and perception and was all force, energy, and reflexes, and I created a second character who was the opposite. The only thing notably different was the speed at which combat began and the character's effectiveness in combat. NPC interaction, use of other computer consoles, even the price charged for goods by shopkeepers, all seemed exactly the same. It feels like the creators came up with an engine that supports a CRPG/adventure hybrid but didn't come up with a scenario that actually makes use of the engine. Score: 2.

Stuff like this fools you into thinking that this is a real CRPG.

3. NPC Interaction. Admittedly better than a lot of standard CRPGs. There are a wide variety of robots and aliens to talk with, get hints from, buy things from, steal from, and attack. They just don't have much to say. Like many things in the game, the interface is better than the substance; ultimately, it is only strictly necessary to talk to two or three of them. Nonetheless, the ability to steal from and attack them gives more role-playing options than many games. Having to pick up a couple of NPCs to follow you around was vaguely interesting. Score: 4.

4. Encounters. Although there are different types of aliens in the game, they are essentially indistinguishable from each other in attitude and helpfulness, and you don't really role-play your encounters with them. Neither are there any role-playing choices in the puzzles. Not a strong part of the gameplay. Score: 3.

5. Magic and Combat. No magic, of course, and combat is extremely basic. You click on your weapon and shield to activate them, and then click on your foe until he's dead (or you are). There are no tactics save the option to flee. Again the developers half-assed the RPG part of the game here. I can't complain that it's not an RPG, because combat effectiveness is clearly based on attributes (it's pretty much the only thing that is), but the overall combat system is still very weak.

Perhaps more egregiously, there's hardly any combat in the game. My final character had just two fights, with the two main villains. They were both considerably easier than the random encounters I occasionally had with robots before I started fleeing them. Score: 1.

6. Equipment. A non-puzzle-solving inventory is one of my criteria for a CRPG, and this game has it. You can carry around various types of weapons, shields, ammunition, medicine, food, and quest items. But while this seems to offer some kind of choice to the player, in reality every player will end up with the same one or two weapons, respective ammunition, a shield, and a couple of meals to prevent starvation. I do like that you can buy or loot some of these items from random NPCs. Score: 2.

"Steak and chips" sounded so good I had it for dinner in real life.

7. Economy. It's kind-of stupid. You start out with a moderate amount, and the only way to make more is to play the arcade game. Through the game, you end up with all the cash you'll ever need in about 30 minutes. (It would have been more along the lines of a CRPG if you got cash for killing foes.) The process of exchanging credits for local cash seemed tedious and purposeless, and aside from food and beverages, which are cheap, there's not much to buy. Score: 1.

It's no wonder the world is so depressing and grimy if this is all people have to do for money.

8. Quests. There is one clear main quest, of the simple "kill the bad guy" variety, with no side quests. There are no alternate endings or opportunities to role-play the main quest. Score: 2.

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. As we've seen, the graphics are lovely--probably the best thing about the game, and perhaps the best graphics we've seen so far on this blog. There are no sound effects--just a series of repetitive, annoying techno tunes that I muted. The interface is all-mouse, and while I often don't like that (cf. Dungeon Master, Galdregon's Domain), it didn't work too badly here. The bigger problem is having to hover carefully over every pixel on the screen to make sure you aren't missing something vital to click on. I would have appreciated clearer highlighting of paths. Score: 4.

10. Gameplay. Like many adventure games of the era, B.A.T. is very linear and offers only one gameplay experience. Once you figure out its quirks and secrets, it's quite brief, and there would be no reason to replay it once you've won. Its level of challenge feels about right, even if I wish the nature of the challenges were a little more sophisticated. Score: 3.

I'm going to give the game a bonus point for the programmable computer, which I didn't really explore beyond a simple program (offered by the manual) to allow easy switching between alien and robot translation. Apparently, there was a lot more I could have done with it, including setting up automatic alerts for hunger, thirst, and alien pursuit. I've never seen anything like it in a game.

There are a lot of games for which this kind of macro would be extremely helpful.

The final rating of 29 puts the game slightly above some CRPGs that I didn't like and didn't finish. That feels right; I didn't hate the game, but I was a bit disappointed by it. Its score is notably below Beyond Zork's of 46; the latter game is really the first RPG/adventure hybrid, and even though it was non-graphical, it showed what a hybrid could really be, with statistics and equipment that mattered, complex (but logical) puzzles, and far more interesting encounters.

An ad for B.A.T. from the November 1990 Computer Gaming World.

I haven't been able to find a lot of contemporary reviews for B.A.T., but I am amused by the advertisement's promise that you can "pilot the DRAG, a genuine flight simulator shown in 3D." Some reviewers seem to have picked this up and offered it as a game "feature." The DRAG part of the game lasts about 30 seconds, and there is nothing about it that remotely approximates a flight simulator.

B.A.T.'s developer, Computer's Dream, made only one other game: a sequel called The Koshan Conspiracy (1992). It appears that they abandoned any pretense of making it a CRPG; MobyGames lists it as an adventure/strategy hybrid. The company was renamed Haiku Studios in 1993 and made one other game, an adventure game called Down in the Dumps, before it went out of business. Of the two developers, Herve Lange appears to still be active, but his credits have shifted to kids' games. Olivier Cordoleani seems to have gone into marketing and advertising. In any event, I am encountering all of them for my one and only time.

Bloodwych, of which I know absolutely nothing, is next.

B.A.T.: High-Tech and Low-Life

The agent finds Bourbon Street.

The title comes from a quote in Wikipedia's entry on cyberpunk, a genre with which I am not terribly familiar and will probably never really love. The atmosphere reminds me unfavorably of Blade Runner, and I know I'm risking the wrath of thousands of commenters in saying that I never liked the film and the crapsack world it depicts. Cyberpunk always seems unnaturally pessimistic. Take this computer that my B.A.T. agent has lodged uncomfortably in his arm (wouldn't it catch on things?):

I've given up trying to feed and water myself during my exploration phase, but I haven't really noticed that it makes a difference.

Would I really need a cybernetic attachment to tell me that I'm hungry? All of the other stuff that this computer does, and a lot more, I could happily accomplish with the iPhone in my pocket, thanks. At first, I was going to question how I could possibly shower with this thing, but of course one of the defining characteristics of cyberpunk is that no one ever appears to bathe.

A wretched hive of scum and villainy.

I'm on the fence on the game itself. On one hand, I like the note-taking and mapping that accompanies a good adventure game. On the other, the interface is very confusing. Many times, you cannot return to a map screen using the same path that you took to leave it; for instance, the path from the pub to the astroport is north, but the path from the astroport back to the pub is west. That's fine: plenty of adventure games do this. But it's very difficult in this game to figure out what directions you can go from a screen. Certain directional arrows only appear when hovering over about four pixels of the screen--pixels that don't seem to depict a passageway or door--so it's extremely easy to overlook certain paths of movement.

It took forever to find this path (see arrow on the left) back to the starting area.

A few hours ago, I was ready to give up on the game, but I realized I'd been playing badly. I somehow expected that this game, as an early hybrid, would be very quick--almost more like a demonstration than a real game--so I got impatient fairly quickly. When I slowed down and started keeping detailed paperwork, I started to enjoy it a bit more. At this point, I've mapped 21 unique areas and 8 shops and buildings within them. It's tough to come up with a precise number because the window tends to sub-divide into sections of areas and then buildings within those sections.

A specific theater within a cinema within a quarter within a neighborhood.

I've yet to see much in the way of the RPG half of the game. Maybe a little in combat, which I will describe anon, but so far, unless it's happening in the background, I've yet to use a single skill (pick locks, climbing, mechanics, truck) that the game showed me on the character creation screen.

What are these attributes actually for?

Combat is rare in the game, but it's very deadly unless you're quick. When it starts, the game gives you a few seconds to equip your weapon and shield, and then you start blasting away, simply by clicking on the enemy's portrait. There are no tactics involved. As far as I can tell, the only benefits to defeating foes are that a) you survive, and b) you get some "experience." Then again, I've yet to see what experience actually does for me.

Thus far, all of my combats have come in the form of random attacks by robots. I have to react too quickly to those to take screenshots, so I deliberately attacked some harmless aliens to take the shot below. I guess you could play the game "evil" and attack every alien and robot you see, but that probably has long-term consequences.

1) I didn't notice the "Escape" button until just now. That may come in handy. 2) You cannot shoot the helpless fleeing people on the side of the screen. I have tried.

Combat is made a little less deadly through shields, which I purchased at a shop in an alleyway.

After each battle, if injured, I have to head over to the doctor's office and get "surgery" to get back to normal.

This guy is going to buy a summer home on Corellia thanks to me.

 
This has drained my cash fairly quickly, but on another screen, there's an arcade where you can play a memory game and win some back. You then have to convert your "credits" into local cash at another machine. I'm not sure if the different types of money and conversion serve any plot purpose later.

"The bizzy game" is kind of fun, but it gets harder and harder as you play along.

The memory game isn't the only mini-game. On another memorable screen, I entered a dance club and met a woman named Lydia who asked me to dance with her. I didn't realize the dance screen was a mini-game in which you have to alternately click the right and left mouse buttons to "dance" (the image changes to show your PC busting all kinds of moves, which was moderately amusing).

I'm having flashbacks to my prom.

After failing the first time, I reloaded and danced like a pro. Lydia said she'd accompany me throughout the city, but I haven't seen a sign of her since then.

I don't know. I could never be with a woman who spaces punctuation like that.

I otherwise haven't made a lot of progress. In a bar, a woman told me that a "stickrob" (a type of robot) was talking about Merigo...

...but every stickrob I can find says he just arrived in town or offers something bland.

Yeah, that's oodles of help.

There are only a few overt mysteries that I cannot solve or places that I cannot pass. Namely:

• There's a payphone but I don't have any idea what number to dial

• An entrance to "Miss Kortakis's" compound is guarded by The Guardian from Ultima VII. I can't pass without an invitation.

Is that some kind of vampire peeking up at the bottom?

• There's an exit to the planet's surface, but I need the credentials of a pilot or technician to pass.

And pick up that can!

However, there are plenty of places that seem like they ought to have more going on--including a multi-screen museum, a cinema, and a police station--so I'm partly worried that I just haven't clicked on the right places. My plan, thus, is to revisit every screen and carefully hover over every pixel and make sure I haven't missed anything. I'll also re-talk to every NPC, but so far they've been mostly worthless. Light hints of the "consider spending more time in the X area" variety are appreciated.

Given the nature of the game, you'd think there would be more to do in the police station.

Game 73: B.A.T. (1989)

       

B.A.T.

France

Computer's Dream (Developer) / Ubi Soft (Publisher)

Released 1989 for Atari ST; 1990 for DOS

Date Started: 06 July 2012

     
A few months ago, I was musing about how role-playing games relate to the hemispheres of the brain. I suggested that pen-and-paper RPGs were curious in that they appeal to both halves: open-ended storytelling for the right side and hard statistics and probabilities for the left side. I noted that the earliest developers of computer RPGs essentially took the left-brained stuff and nothing else; all the storytelling went into adventure games--first text, then graphical. These are no less "role-playing" games than what we call CRPGs, as you definitely play a role, but they didn't get that title.

Thinking about it now, I think my reasoning was a bit flawed. While storytelling and statistical halves of tabletop RPGs definitely peeled off into two separate game genres, I'm not sure you can really call computer adventure games "right-brained," since they don't really appeal to the player's creativity. Quite the opposite: many of them require the player to progress through a series of steps in a specific order. I wouldn't necessarily call them "left-brained," either, since those steps are often nonsensical or counter-intuitive. You spend more time figuring out what the developer possibly had in mind than what your character would do in a real situation. It's probably this reason that's kept me from embracing adventure games most of my life. There have been some exceptions. I have a fondness for the Infocom text adventures because they were very well-written and had a great sense of humor. The first Myst game blew me away with its graphics, atmosphere, and complexity of the puzzles. Beyond that, though, the genre often leaves me flat. I love reading Trickster's writing at The Adventure Gamer, but I can't say I love the games.

We're entering an era now, though, in which the genres are starting to blend. Programming limitations became less of an issue in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and it was possible for developers to include strong narratives along with flexible inventories and probability-based combats. B.A.T. is the first game to appear on both Wikipedia's chronology of computer role-playing games and its list of graphical adventure games. Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero? will soon follow. We'll have several per year throughout the 1990s. This game will demonstrate how well I ease into these hybrids. (Technically, Beyond Zork was the first hybrid, albeit non-graphical. But it's hard to take that game as a serious example of anything.)

Every secret agent needs a gun.

When I heard the name, I thought that B.A.T. might take place in a future where firearms are completely legal, but we still needed agents to investigate alcohol and tobacco. Instead, though, the initialism stands for the Bureau of Astral Troubleshooters--essentially the Secret Service of the 22nd century. Actually, apparently in the original French version, it stood for Bureau des Affaires Temporelles ("Bureau of Temporal Affairs"), which sounds a bit cooler, although the manual doesn't suggest anything about time travel.

The B.A.T. manual (I suddenly just thought of The Tick) is clearly translated from French by someone with a limited grasp of English, but from what I can gather, it's the twenty-second century. Humanity has colonized the stars through "artificial black holes," has met up with different alien races, and has formed a Confederation of Galaxies. As a B.A.T. agent,

You will travel around various worlds, all different from each other, meeting strange or frightening characters. You will have to achieve perilous missions but you will have the fabulous chance to visit an integral world and to discover mysteries through adventures that we offer you.

My specific mission is apparently to find a terrorist named Vrangor and "blow his brains out" (the 4th Amendment clearly didn't survive transition to galactic government) within 10 days from the start of the game. The reason for this time limit became clear after the beginning of the game.

I know there's some question as to whether this is a CRPG, but it certainly starts like one. It's got a neat character creation process in which you can raise or lower six attributes--force, intelligence, charisma, perception, energy, and reflexes--and see in real-time (via a graph at the top of the screen) the corresponding effects on a selection of 13 skills, including pick locks, firing, and psychology.

I'm suppressing the part of me that's screaming, "You can't use line graphs to represent nominal data!!"

You then select a couple of weapons. The manual warns you that your choice is "crucial for the rest of the game" but doesn't offer much help. I went with something called the Hacker 30, described as "the butcher's weapon" and "beautiful weapon for you acupuncture experts!!!" plus a little "Voktrasof," that I gather is very concealable. After giving yourself a name, you are then deposited in a spaceport with a computer embedded in your arm and not much direction.

After a few futile conversations with a couple aliens and robots, I went to the only place the game would let me go: a nearby restroom. There, I encountered another B.A.T. agent, who gave me my mission: track down an escaped prisoner named Vrangor by first finding his co-escapee, Merigo. Vrangor is exerting some influence over the ruler of Selenia, who has issued a decree that every human has to leave within 10 days or face execution.

Actually, I think it might be helpful if I heard the long story.

The agent gave me a hologram of Merigo to show people and sent me off.

Although the views in the game are first-person, you can't do anything fancy like turn or rotate. Instead, you move from screen to screen and interact with the elements on the screen the same way you do in a lot of adventure games, clicking on people to talk to them, machines to use them, and so forth. Sometimes, the places you can click are non-obvious, so you need to hover over pretty much everything.

This screen has a variety of buildings I can enter and people I can talk to.

At first, every alien just responded to me in gibberish, but then I realized I had to set my computer to translate "alien" instead of "robot." When I talk to robots, I need to set it back. This is a bit tedious.

This thing looks kind of disgusting.

So far, the NPC dialogue has been a little unproductive, but the interface isn't bad. You click on the NPC and select from a list of topics. One is to show Merigo's hologram, but so far no one has recognized him.

Indeed.

 
Thus far, I'm not seeing a lot of RPG elements, but then again, I haven't encountered any combat yet. You do have a certain number of credits, with which you can buy things like ammunition and food. (To my mind, flexible spending options are not usually a hallmark of adventure games.) This is good, because I had none of the former when I started, and my computer told me I was both hungry and thirsty.
 

At least I see the "next" arrow on this one.

 
While I was exploring and typing this entry, the game screen flashed a few times, and then showed me an image of Selenia in which humans are dead in the streets, so I guess I failed somehow. I wonder if time passes when you're just standing around. If that's the case, I probably need to adjust my CPU speed downwards in DOSBox.

I had no idea so much was on the line.

As you can see, the visuals are pretty good. Of course, this DOS version came out in 1991, two years after the original Atari ST version. We're only a couple years away from Myst at this point. On the sound, so far I haven't heard any except for a relentlessly looping techno-beat that sent me for the "mute" button on my keyboard. This is the second game in which the developers seem to have thrown up their hands and said "screw it" when adapting sound for the DOS port.

I'm not in love with the game so far, but I'm eager to finish this first RPG/adventure hybrid. One major difference between RPGs and adventure games is that you generally start RPGs only one or two times and play through with your initial party, for better or worse. With adventure games, I often restart the game numerous times to explore and try out different things, and my winning character might be my 20th (e.g., Beyond Zork, Journey: The Quest Begins). I'm curious what happens, therefore, with hybrids.

Later edit: Make sure to read the comments on this one. Helm has a brilliant bit of philosophy.

New Master Game List ("What is a CRPG?" Revisited)

There was so much discussion on my master game listing posting over the last few weeks that I decided to take the time to review the list. I ended up cross-checking it against numerous sources (MobyGames, Wikipedia, GOG, a couple of independent sites) and updating it through the end of 2011. I also tried to nail down the specific release dates for the games. The result was a new, updated Google spreadsheet. I did my best to eliminate MMORPGs with no single-player mode and collections, but a few might have sneaked by.

The list now has 1,155 games. I will not, of course, be playing all of them. A game appears on my list if anyone lists it as an RPG; whether I play it will be determined by whether I think it's an RPG when I reach it.

In one of my earliest "special topics" postings, I asked "What Is a CRPG?" I covered a few definitions from elsewhere on the web and offered some of my own suggestions (many of which helped inform my GIMLET a few weeks later). The various definitions on the web are mostly similar. Three key points that show up repeatedly are:

• That the player "plays a role" does not make the game a "role-playing game." There are plenty of shooters and adventure games in which you "play a role." The "RP" part of "CRPG" doesn't derive so much from the presence of role-playing so much as seeing CRPGs as a direct adaptation of pen-and-paper RPGs.

• Player-driven character development is a key element. As MobyGames's glossary puts it, "a role-playing game can be seen as such when player-controlled characters become stronger because of the player's actions rather than being upgraded automatically as dictated by the storyline."

• Combat is driven by probabilities and statistics rather than player skill or speed with the controller. Granted, some action RPGs include skill and speed as an element, but almost all of them depend at least partly on statistics derived from inventory and attributes.

In a 2007 posting on Armchair Arcade, Matt Barton tackled the question by looking at many games that we call "RPGs" and analyzing them for their common characteristics. He didn't come to a final "definition," but that wasn't really his purpose. Instead, he listed 12 characteristics common to "RPGs" but suggested that a game need not have all of them to fit within the category. This approach informs my own. I'm not looking to establish absolute criteria but rather a set of shared characteristics that a game must have "most of" to appear on my list. In a posting on War in Middle Earth, I distilled my own list down to three items:

1. Inventories not dependent on puzzle-solving. This term confuses some people, but I don't know any other way to say it. Here, I'm contrasting CRPGs to adventure games, which have "inventories," but the items you pick up are meant to be used in some way at a particular location to advance the game. CRPGs, on the other hand, let you load up your inventories with weapons, potions, scrolls, and other items to use whenever you want.

2. Player-driven leveling and development. It's "player-driven" if the player can exercise some choice on how fast to level (e.g., "grinding"), how to improve the character (other than through inventory improvements), or both.

3. Combat based at least partly on probabilities and statistics, as derived from character attributes, as I discussed above.

Games only need have two of these three elements for me to consider it a CRPG. Plenty of games only have two. Galdregon's Domain, which I just finished, didn't have any leveling and development. Wizardry IV did, but it wasn't player-driven. Paladin didn't have any player-controlled inventory. Starflight's combat was all based on your aim and ability to hit the SPACE bar at the right time. But each of these games had the other two.

Aside from the question of whether a game is an RPG, there are a few other reasons I might not play it:

• I can't find it. It's only happened a few times, but sometimes a game simply no longer exists anywhere.

• Technical limitations keep me from playing it. DOSBox has been a god-send, but I worry that when I get into some of the early Windows games, I'll run into a host of tech problems.

• The game is only available in a foreign language, and I can't make heads or tails of it. I tried gamely with Le Maitre des Ames and Tera, but I didn't finish them despite knowing a little French. My list has a lot of Japanese and Chinese games that I have put there optimistically, but I can't say for sure what will happen when I reach them.

That said, I continue to welcome your comments on the master game list, particularly on the following issues:

• A game that I'm missing. I've discovered there are a lot of independent games that don't show up on any of the existing master lists. I welcome their inclusion, but please ensure that they meet two of the three criteria above.

• Games on the list that don't meet two of the above three criteria. I might not delete it immediately just on your say-so, but I'll make a note of it, and if I get multiple comments on the same game, I'll investigate and make a decision.

• Corrections to release dates. This has been a huge pain in the neck. For many of the 1990s games, the original release dates have been lost. The release date I care about is its original platform. If the DOS or Windows version had a different release year, I note it in the adjacent column.

• Your opinions on expansions and DLCs. This has also been a huge pain in the neck. Generally, I have listed them as separate games if they are meant to be played after the main quest and introduce significant new plot material. I have listed them with the original game if they just offer upgrades or side-quests within the main plot. But in doing either, I'm relying on MobyGames's or Wikipedia's descriptions, so it would be good to hear from people who have actually played.

In the future, I might expand the list with other columns such as the publisher and such, but I've been working on it too much lately, so I think I'll leave it as it is for now. Thank you all for your contributions!

NetHack: Documentation

Attacked by a pack of jackals.

Thanks to a series of postings on my last NetHack entry, I discovered that there is a guidebook that comes with the game (I overlooked it in the downloaded files). I got three important things from it:

1. A little more backstory. The dungeon is called the Mazes of Menace, and I'm there to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor. "According to legend, the gods will grant immortality to the one who recovers this artifact," and retrieving it will grant me "full guild membership." Wow. I have to navigate a 20-plus-level dungeon and become immortal just for membership? What's the next quest after that?

2. Weapon damages are based on AD&D tables. I was wondering how I could reliably figure out what weapons do the most damage. I'm hoping I can just use the table in the back of Pool of Radiance.

3. "Elbereth." Apparently, this word engraved on the floor will cause monsters to ignore you as long as you're standing on it. I keep meaning to use it when things get tight, but so many of my deaths just pounce on me.

I've had a tough time figuring out how to organize my notes, but I've created a Google document with spreadsheet tabs for monsters, characters, items, miscellaneous notes, and a "record" of my attempts. The record is a little embarrassing--none of my characters have exceeded Level 7, and many have died on Level 1--but keep in mind that I've been experimenting with things rather than simply taking care.

A healer named Cainan had perhaps my most interesting outing. I've generally done well with healers because they start with a bunch of healing potions and spells. It also turns out they have a neat tool--a stethoscope--that gives you the stats of the monsters you encounter. The thought of my PC putting the stethoscope up to a goblin's chest in the middle of combat is a bit amusing, but there you have it. With the healers, I've been starting to record hit points and AC on my "monsters" table.

The doctor diagnoses a hostile jackal.

Early on, Cainan unwisely equipped a knife that turned out to be cursed and did very little damage. I could neither drop it nor fight very effectively. But I found a couple of wands that did sleep and lightning damage, and a spellbook with the "fireball" spell in it. These, plus the healing potions, kept him alive until I found a scroll shop and took a bunch of chances buying and reading them until I found one that uncursed my knife. I also found three scrolls of identification for the ridiculously low price of $15 each; as far as I'm concerned, these are the most valuable items in the game.

The best moment in the game so far.

Three scrolls of armor enchanting boosted my splint mail to +4, and I left the shop feeling pretty good about the future. But a couple of bad corpses left me starving and I fainted in front of a Uruk-hai.

My most successful character was my last*: Canaan the Samurai (coincidence in names, I know). On Level 5, he found an Oracle who gave a couple of nonsense hints for gold. He ended up chasing a water nymph all over the level for about 15 minutes, eventually killing her and retrieving all the stuff she stole from him. Then he repeated the exercise with a leprechaun on the next level. Two potions of raise level got him to character Level 8 while he was still on dungeon Level 6. It really hurt when he got swarmed by Mordor orcs on Level 7 and died. I had a ton of gold I was looking forward to spending. That's when I decided to take a Star Saga break.

My knight cursed with a ball and chain.

The game is amusing in all the ways that it can kill you. Twice, I've been cursed with lycanthropy from fighting were-somethings, a condition that repeatedly causes you to shapeshift, shed your armor, and drop half your stuff. Apparently, the advantage is that you can summon and command other monsters of your type, but the frequent shifting is so annoying that I lost my will to live. In another episode, a cursed scroll outfitted me with a ball and chain that slammed into my back when I went down a flight of stairs and killed me instantly (I guess you're supposed to pick them up and carry them). A third character died when a mimic surprised me from within a pile of goods in a shop. A shopkeeper killed another (and gleefully looted my body) when I ignored his "closed" sign.

This is the only game I've played in which NPCs loot your corpse when you die.

Among all the deaths, I've started to discover some of the game's secrets. I'm not saying they're particularly deep secrets--I'm sure there are many more to come--but I know they'll  make the game easier when I start playing it seriously. Here are a few.

• Many of the starting pieces of equipment are extremely useful. The archaeologist's pick-axe smashes boulders and makes holes in walls. The tourist's credit card unlocks doors, and his camera blinds monsters. I've already talked about the healer's stethoscope. The priest has a magic marker useful for "engraving." The archaeologist also has a "tinning kit," which I assume keeps food from rotting.

• I haven't found many permanently useful effects from eating corpses yet, with the exception of the "floating eye," which grants telepathy for a time, allowing you to see locations of monsters on the level.

• If a monster is of your same alignment (I'm guessing, anyway), it is non-hostile, and the game asks you to confirm before attacking. I'm not sure if there's any compelling reason not to, though. Does it upset your god?

I don't think I've ever not wanted to attack a hobgoblin.

 

• Dipping things into the priest's jars of holy water "blesses" them. I haven't quite figured out what the blessings do, though.

• I've noticed that multiple monsters share the same icon, but are perhaps differentiated by color. That's going to be annoying, as I can't distinguish between red and green and lots of other variations.

• As I noted in 2.3e, you can encounter ghosts of your previous characters at the levels where they died. These ghosts seem to be un-hittable, though perhaps I just don't have the right stuff. This sucks when they trap you in a corridor.

Aren't adventurers supposed to have a certain alliance?

 

• You can break open locked chests by kicking them, although there's a chance of damaging your leg.

• Fortune cookies actually contain fortunes--which seem to be game hints.

This could be useful, though probably not to a "chaotic" character.

 

I can't say I've warmed to my dog or cat yet. I realize from previous hints that pets have uses, such as not stepping on cursed items and not eating bad corpses. (I'm not really sure how that helps, though. If they do eat the corpse, then I know it was a good corpse, but now it's gone.) I'll try my best to learn how to use and train them, but mostly I find them really annoying. They keep getting in the way. Plus, it's kind of heartbreaking when you accidentally kill them while blind or confused.

Dumb cat gets in the way again. Just like my real cat, always trying to trip me when I go downstairs.

This is going to be a year-long process, probably. I don't think I'll update every time I play a session of NetHack, but I'll try to keep track of the new things that happen.


*Addendum: After I wrote the above ("the most successful character was my last"), I began playing with a valkyrie named Magog. I had some extraordinary luck in the early levels and she is now on Level 14. I'm almost afraid to keep playing. I'll chronicle her adventures next time.