ROSS’S GAME DUNGEON: MARTIAN GOTHIC

I wish a Happy Halloween to everyone reading this comment

They're a bunch of professional soldiers in a modern base, they could easily fashion a make shift chainsaw to lob the heads off of the incapacitated zombies and lob that head somewhere where even if it grows back a body it would be incapable of annoying them any further (or at least lock it in the closest locker available)

Oh yes, this is definitely a treat. I didn't laugh so hard since Sonic episode, I think.

When in the after-credits stinger you started kicking the headcrab again, and again, and again, and just kept going, I swear it took me a lot of effort to not soil myself from laughter.

The Seinfeld thing had me dying.

 

Also this game was giving me vibes from the HL1 mod Paranoia.

I think this one is going to be one of those endlessly rewatcheable episodes.

Really interesting game. The intro and the premise made me want to play it pretty much right away, but the rest of the video dissuaded me. Maybe I'll watch a longplay.

 

Also, the Playstation version of this game has pretty awesome cover art: The three heroes trapped inside a single helmet and screaming. That's a good visual metaphor.

The Martian atmosphere used to be a lot thicker in the past and may have been lost due to meteor bombardment. Retaining an atmosphere is more complicated than gravity--for example, Venus has much less mass than earth but its atmosphere is much thicker.

Hey folks, happy Halloween!

 

Hey Ross!

THX a lot for this great (again) hw trilogy!

I share your view on FMV Games...they mostly vacuum! (....Wing Commander 4 rules, though!)

Nevertheless, you made some great Points in the first and scnd vid, making it well worth it, imo.

For the main course: "chef kiss!"

On 11/1/2021 at 4:59 AM, Interlinked said:

I think this one is going to be one of those endlessly rewatcheable episodes.

Nuff said! Besides, maybe: i haven't found a GD, not beeing in that category, yet! 

On 11/3/2021 at 6:11 PM, HUBERTfromAUSTRIA said:

I share your view on FMV Games...they mostly vacuum! (....Wing Commander 4 rules, though!)

I've only played WC3 and Prophecy, but man it was good (WC3 that is). I actually own 4 on GOG but I haven't played it yet. Need to get around to that someday, but been putting it off until I have a joystick again, which has been a low priority.

The real horror of this game is of how buggy and broken everything is, I bet that if Civvie were the one doing this video he would have used a Gordon Ramsay clip at least four times.

 

Oddly enough, this game reminds me of another Resident Evil clone called Deep Fear, maybe because it's also set in a isolated facility, a research lab deep into the ocean in Deep Fear's case. Thing is, Martian Gothic is even more baffling in the voice acting and general writing department than that game, which is saying something since many consider DF's writing and dialogue to be even more cheesy than the first RE.

I think the bug in the simultaneous buttons puzzle is that the first two times, you hand-pressed one button first and then shot the other one second, when the game only properly responded to you shooting the first and then hand-pressing second, even though the button lights clearly stay on long enough to indicate there should be enough time to do it in either order.

On 10/31/2021 at 11:01 PM, ScumCoder said:

Oh yes, this is definitely a treat. I didn't laugh so hard since Sonic episode, I think.

When in the after-credits stinger you started kicking the headcrab again, and again, and again, and just kept going, I swear it took me a lot of effort to not soil myself from laughter.

There is nothing, nothing, more satisfying than managing to finally turn the tables in a game that likes to trap you in inescapable hit-reaction loops, and exploit that bullshit mechanic for yourself.  The time I managed to beat the ghost pirate back into a corner and then whale on him without him able to get a single strike in in Alone in the Dark is probably my own personal crowning moment of glory; that smugly chuckling bastard's nigh unbeatable otherwise, even if you do have the one-and-only weapon in the entire game that's actually capable of damaging him at all.

 

Clunky and frustrating though the Old Ways were, however, I just have to say this: I like tank controls.

I played this on PlayStation back in the day and it was impossible and there were no Action Replay (our version of GameShark or the next gen Game Genie for all you SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis gamers lol).

Hello Ross! I realize you don't read comments on YouTube very much because YouTube actively makes them horrible so here is a crosspost to your forums; I am here to say that I played through this game a lot when it was new on release for both PC and the Play Station. I hope I can sure up some of your questions at the end and shed some light on things you missed because of fan patches.

 

“What is the significance of the Antarctica Meteor Crash”
It is indeed what set these events in motion and helped motivate the building of Vita base as it was determined the source of the Meteor was from Mars.

 

“Why was the corpse floating?”

Yes it was telekinesis from the Queen but the real answer is it was an interesting set piece the developers wanted to put in to draw interest for the slow opening of the game. It was a plot hook basically.

 

“Why did the kitchen guy float?”

You are correct, the Telekinesis from the queen. When he says the Kurakarak are everywhere it is referring to the fact the bacteria is airborne and the bacteria IS the Kurakarak encoded into said bacteria. More will be answered about this in the question “why didn't we merge with the kitchen guy?”

 

“How does two people joining kill the third if they're isolated?”

As mentioned earlier the Kurakarak are a race of telepathic beings and they can used telekinesis, this is very important when answering this question. There are three strains of bacteria that join together to form a rod, oval, and spiral which combine. Now then, when two people with a different bacteria come close to each other it forms a bimorph, when in this state they know exactly where the nearest host is that contains the third strain of bacteria (again through telepathic instincts). They seek them out relentlessly and if somehow the third person avoids them long enough in about 24h the bacteria will kill them. Also, when a strain of this bacteria enters a host it normally results in only mild disconfort within the first 12 hours, then death after 24 if they cannot form together into a Trimorph. Everyone who is a “zombie” on the station was a result of people either dying to Trimorphs or isolating themselves and dying to the bacteria.

 

“Why didn't we merge with the kitchen guy?”
This is not a plot hole at all, that guy's name is Dr. John Farr, he was working on a vaccine for the bacteria to harmlessly create an artificial joining of 'fake' bacteria so you would both not die from the infection and also not clump together and form a trimorph. Due to many factors such as limited time, himself dying of the Bacteria, and the entire base going to hell he had to basically do a rush job and only managed to get about halfway with the cure. This imperfect cure caused him to form a partial telepathic link to the “sovereign” aka the Kurakarak Queen, which played havoc with his mind as even a minimal connection to the hive mind basically overloaded his brain and nearly fried it.

 

“What was the other warning the lady on the radio was going to say?”

Not a solid answer but, based off one of the many long text logs you find in her computer it is suggested that yes, do not let the bacteria escape mars.

 

“What are the goals of the alien lifeforms besides propagation?”

This is the only question I don't have a solid answer for. Throughout the game in various computers with locked pass-worded files (most of which you get passwords from MOOD or it's the password on your character's watches) you can learn so much about the Kurakarak but never their ultimate goal. I am guessing the developers just didn't have the time to make a full answer.

 

Now for some bonus info from myself:

When I played through this game when it first came out there was (I think) a bug where if you died to the screaming pillar room, you know the one where you have to cut those seemingly useless rocks into shapes to fill it or it kills your characters overtime? That one? If you died to it, your save would delete, at least on the PC version. I have not played this game recently so I am not sure if this was patched out by the fan patches and it was indeed a bug or if it was intended and fan patches removed this feature because it was horrible.

 

I am actually quite surprised you glossed over this room so much in your video, this puzzle is a prime example of one of the hardest and worst put together puzzles in the entire game. You start it by finding what appears to be useless rocks throughout the game that your characters care very little about, only to realize they're extremely important in the worst possible way, not to mention you need to find a very obscure hint about the tuning fork that doesn't directly tell you exactly why you need it for the rock, and on top of this you would have to find that note with the scribbled down coordinate for the martin rover so you could find it without dying to trying to find it by guessing.

 

 

So let's frame this in my context, playing this game back when it was new: this is a puzzle that may intentionally or via bug unintentionally delete your save. You spend hours and hours going through the game, over half way through the entire game before you get to this room and have to solve this puzzle, throughout the entire game you are finding 'useless' rocks, and you need to find two obscure notes mentioning a tuning fork and a coordinate that isn't even part of the main message and you just have to know to put this all together and have this one character ready with all of these parts before you enter this room. Needlessly to say, I did not have this prepared the first, second, and even a third time before I got to this room and had to replay tons of the game over and over.

On 11/17/2021 at 3:56 PM, Kobold said:

“Why didn't we merge with the kitchen guy?”

This is not a plot hole at all, that guy's name is Dr. John Farr, he was working on a vaccine for the bacteria...

I thought it said his name was Ben Gunn?

On 11/23/2021 at 9:41 PM, Generic-User said:

I thought it said his name was Ben Gunn?

Maybe his addled mind made him think he was on treasure island

Someone tell ross about the game "Honey, I joined a CULT" it sounds like a game he wouldnt mind playing

On 11/23/2021 at 1:41 PM, Generic-User said:

I thought it said his name was Ben Gunn?

Sorry for the late response, yes the character in-game says his name is Ben Gunn, the main character of the book Treasure Island which the character quotes often. You see, he really is Dr. John Farr, he just went crazy because of the incomplete rushed cure he made for himself and things he likes such as Treasure Island and the Martian Madness are causing him to do wonky things.

On 1/20/2022 at 2:34 AM, Kobold said:

Sorry for the late response, yes the character in-game says his name is Ben Gunn, the main character of the book Treasure Island which the character quotes often. You see, he really is Dr. John Farr, he just went crazy because of the incomplete rushed cure he made for himself and things he likes such as Treasure Island and the Martian Madness are causing him to do wonky things.

 

Ah ok. Thanks for the explanation. I've never played the game, so I had a lot of random questions about it after seeing the video, which fortunately your original post seemed to answer almost all of.

On 6/7/2022 at 11:50 PM, inlineb said:

Comparing Ross to Doom