Ecstatica

[Discoalucard]

www.hardcoregaming101.net/ecstatica/ecstatica.htm

This is that funny little survival horror game where everyone is made of balls. But they're really neat, if pretty flawed. The first one has a particularly amusing and dark sense of humor too.

[zzz]

We had Siren recently; Now this... And Clock Tower is coming up...

Does that make this the Spring of Survival Horror at HG101?

FAKE EDIT: "Gullivers Island"? Is that some kind of obscure cross-over between Gulliver's Travels and Gilligan's Island?

[Ganelon]

Nice! I really like this series for some reason. Definitely agree that the 2nd game is a classic.

[Discoalucard]

Apr 16, 2009 20:36:52 GMT -5 zzz said:

We had Siren recently; Now this... And Clock Tower is coming up...

Does that make this the Spring of Survival Horror at HG101?

FAKE EDIT: "Gullivers Island"? Is that some kind of obscure cross-over between Gulliver's Travels and Gilligan's Island?

Vyse wanted to do a Clock Tower one in the near future. Also, Gullivers Island sounds accidentally brilliant.

I actually prefer the first game over the second. It's too fighty, not weird enough.

[justjustin]

Wow. Quite a strange pair of games! I spotted some technical stuff that needed some fixing:

"Right at the beginning, if you unsubtly charge into the village, you'll be pounced by a werewolf, beaten into unconsciousness, dragged into one of the houses, hung by your feet, and then wailed senseless until he gets bored of it."

-split into two sentences; period after werewolf then the sentence that describes specifically what happens. also, maybe make it "beaten unconscious." also, it's assumed its unsubtle when one charges into anywhere. reminds me of "let's attack aggressively!"

"The FAQs online say it's possible to kill him by wailing on him for five straight minutes or so, but that's almost unfathomable."

-The FAQs, eh? This is just a pet peeve, but perhaps mentioning FAQs can be left out of this article.

"You can punch or attack with a your sword"

-cut out the "a" in there.

"Most of the rest of the puzzles simply involving fetching stuff."

-would sound better as "most of the remaining puzzles..."

"it'll probably take a bit longer without a FAQ"

-seems unnecessary to mention, as this is true with every game similar to this.

"Their good fortune doesn't last forever, though, as the couple is beaten by a horde of monsters and captured within a gigantic castle fortress."

-needs rewording, maybe. "captured within" sounds funny.

"The game can now run in SVGA, with much smoother ellipsoids, and the models are far more detailed, to the point where they more closely resemble humans, although they still aren't textured."

-should be two sentences-- a period after ellipsoids. or, reworded, since the sentence is a bit long.

"But it's not onlt that - the random NPCs are gone too."

-change to "only."

"The visuals are much darker than its brightly colored predecessor, although the permanently blood red sky is a nice touch."

- cut out "although," since the blood red sky is part of the darker visuals; not contrasting anything.

"The sequel, on the other hand, is far more action focused. It loses much of the intensity, and instead trades it in for a sense of never ending chaos."

-reword. not sure how it can lose intensity when there's never ending chaos!

"Furthermore, they respawn indefinitely, and will almost never relent in their pursuit, requiring that you spot and fight every time sometimes runs on to the screen."

-probably meant "stop and fight."

"you now control your character with the arrow keys, while holding down Control will activate the attack stance, and holding Alt will allow for a variety of acrobatic dodges."

-should be "... arrow keys, and holding down Control will activate the attack stance while holding Alt will allow for a variety of acrobatic dodges."

"The enemies are fast, too but they're also significantly weaker than in the first game, especially if you put it on Easy mode."

-comma after "too."

"Despite all of the new weapons and attack abilities, the amount of combar is excessive."

-unless combar is a delicious candy bar made from a computer, you probably mean "combat." Also, cut out "despite," since new weapons and attack abilities assume is will be more combat oriented.

"Its ambitions should be applauded, because it's still a fantastic, spooky world to explore, but one that, once again, probably should've been refined a bit further."

-reword to something like: "Although it could have been more refined, it's ambitions should be applauded. It offers a fantastic, spooky world to explore..." and add a few more points summing up how it's ambitious. right now it doesn't sound like much of a concluding sentence.

Hope this helps.

[roushimsx]

Ohh, I've always wanted to pick up the CD version of the first game but I've never gotten around to it. Thanks for reminding me...looks like I'll be hitting up a BIN on eBay in the near future.

[savagepencil]

Are the Relentless series next?!?

[zellsf]

Never knew there was a second game, too bad about the excessive amount of combar in it.

[Blake Casimir]

I've tried both games, found the first's dodgy controls really put me off but the atmosphere was fascinating. The second became too convoluted, and the backtracking did my head in. Interesting as "period pieces" perhaps.

Apr 17, 2009 9:38:08 GMT -5 savagepencil said:

Are the Relentless series next?!?

Please, someone do an article on Little Big Adventure!

And talking of Gallic insanity, seeing HG101 has been on a point-and-click trip of late, an article on the Gobliiins series would be nice.

[Discoalucard]

Thanks for the corrections. Some of that's just my weird writing style (like a fetish for run-on sentences) but yeah, some parts were otherwise pretty wonky.

My roommate just suggested Twinsen's Odyssey to me a few weeks ago. I've only mucked with Relentless (I have it around here somewhere) but never played the sequel. It seems a bit pricey to buy but I grabbed the ISO for it.

As for Gobliins...I had one of them (the third one, I think?) but there were sound compatibilities with my old 486 so I never got very far. I should give it another go though, lots of people have been requesting it.

[mainpatr]

Ecstatica 2 sounds like the spiritual predecessor to the GBA/DS Castlevania games.

[roushimsx]

Apr 17, 2009 16:10:49 GMT -5 Discoalucard said:

My roommate just suggested Twinsen's Odyssey to me a few weeks ago. I've only mucked with Relentless (I have it around here somewhere) but never played the sequel. It seems a bit pricey to buy but I grabbed the ISO for it.

Twinsen's Adventure is fucking glorious. Twinsen's Odyssey is even better. It seems like just yesterday I was replaying through them, but it's been something like three and a half years now

I recall having some funky problem with the kart track in WinXP on modern hardware in Twinsen's Odyssey, but the first game ran like a champ w/ LBAwin. If you get bored and have some old Next Generation issues laying around from '96/'97, I recall the preview for the second game clearly indicating that it was slated for a PS1 release as well as PC, though maybe they were just confused with the PS1 release of Twinsen's Adventure (which wasn't a very good port ).

[Gendo Ikari]

Apr 17, 2009 12:50:10 GMT -5 Blake Casimir said:

And talking of Gallic insanity, seeing HG101 has been on a point-and-click trip of late, an article on the Gobliiins series would be nice.

There couldn't be a more appropriate timing, since surprisingly, a fourth episode was released just a few weeks ago! I must admit that the 3D illustration on the official French website (http://www.gobliiins4.com/) looks very bad though, almost amateurish, and the overall productions is apparently quite low-budgeted. The English website is much, much better, with hand-drawn illustrations. Nice that they brought the three characters from the first game back, though.


Back on topic: very good articles on the Ecstaticas (grammar and typos aside), I've never played the second episode and I'm now curious, though the negative points reported correspond to reviews I read at the time - one also pointed at the doubt that practically all people in the fortress were dead, to solve the problems of programming NPC interaction at the root. The technology was quite bizarre - for what I remember, programmer Andrew B. Spencer was working on the engine since the late '80s, probably at a time when such rapid development of polygon graphics in video games was not expected.

[kal]

A couple of things you could potentially add

Andrew Spencer seems to have fallen off the face of the planet and no one seems to be able to track him down. There was a 3rd non-sequel game planned that was to use the same Ellipsoid technology called Urban Decay.

Also there's the superb red herring amour you can find on a wall that all it does is make you slow and you will eventually trip and die. (This is in the 1st game).

Ecstatica is one of my favourite games it's a damn shame the game went downhill with 2 despite it being more playable.

[Blake Casimir]

Apr 18, 2009 3:22:23 GMT -5 Gendo Ikari said:

There couldn't be a more appropriate timing, since surprisingly, a fourth episode was released just a few weeks ago!

That is what prompted me to mention it! I used to have Gobliins 2 boxed somewhere (floppy disks and the copy protection colour chart, phew)... sold it at some point.

And sod it, whilst I'm at it, there was at least one Sherlock Holmes adventure (NOT the FMV games) that Kurt and co. may wish to cover, if further PC point-and-click history is required.

And to drag this post mildly on-topic, surely it's worth covering Alone In The Dark at some point? The first game has to have been a big influence on Ecstatica.