Learning Curve: 5 Hours with Tombs and Treasure

I never could figure out what this game was.  Based on the initial interface it looked like a Shadowgate style game where you interacted with the world through a window using commands.  But the next series of screens acted more like a world-exploring RPG with a party of characters and turn-based battles. Honestly, every time I popped it in, I rarely got much farther than the first few screens.  It just looked like more than I cared to unpack in a casual gaming session.  Despite its awesome Mayan theming and Mexico setting, it failed to have a really strong hook that pulled me in for more.  That means it is a perfect candidate for the Learning Curve, although in this instance it might be more of an “interest curve” as in, how long will it take for this game to pull me into its world and keep me playing until the end.  Over the next five hours we’ll get the answer to that question.

Hour 1

As previously stated, this game is an amalgam of other game types.  At its core it is very much like Shadowgate or Uninvited.  You interact with the world through a window using commands such as “put,” “use,” and “look.”  Tombs and Treasure (T&T henceforth) even gives you a few commands you use only once or maybe never…  Notwithstanding, the main game is conducted just like that.  However, the window interactions are separated by RPG-esque exploration as you take your team through the Mexican jungle searching out various locations for more interactions.  There is literally nothing you can do during these sequences except roam the world, but it does break things up a bit and creates some nice atmosphere, so I think it’s a nice bonus.

I spent the first hour wandering about the world map to get a general sense of what I was going to be dealing with.  I discovered 3 pyramids, a bunch of wall sections, two lakes (which turn out to be “wells” in this game), a sprawling ancient ball court, and a LOT of jungle.  All in all this game probably has 3 times as many “empty” or useless screens as it does meaningful ones.  That’s just fine when you are trying to create a sense of scale, but it leaves me wanting more of the screens to have something to do in them.  Not a big deal, just means there is a big world out there with lots to find tucked away here and there.

Most of the places I ventured into featured monsters far too strong for me to fight, all of which resulted in my death.  The good news, however, is that death isn’t a big deal in this game.  You pretty much continue from where you left off with no penalty.  Even better, the combat is extremely basic (just use the “fight” command to swing your sword) and you can always run away.  Furthermore, leaving any building or fight instantly recovers all of your health.  From that it’s pretty obvious the combat in this game is more there to serve the story than to provide challenge.  I’m not upset about that in the slightest.

One pyramid was not heavily guarded and I was able to find a secret passage to the crypt of the Hi-Priest.  A tile on his coffin enabled me to open a hidden door in another nearby location, the Castillo Pyramid.  I was successful in defeating a few of the lesser monsters and was rewarded with a literal treasure trove of items.  Oh, what untold adventures they might lead to!  One hour in and I was starting to get hooked.

Hour 2

Wandering about the map with my new inventory of fabulous items, I stumbled across a few locations I had missed during Hour 1.  Indulge me while I backtrack a bit.  Your mission in this game is to locate a missing professor who was lost while studying these ruins.  Your party is made up of the professor’s daughter and Jose, your guide.  The only clues you have come from the professor’s journal which was one of the few things recovered when he went missing.  Why wait to tell you all of this now?  1. I forgot.  2.  Because in the journal the professor mentions a secret path through the forest that lead to something great.  That something great is the voice of Kukulcan.  This is important if you are going to play the game without a walkthrough because the voice imparts wisdom in the form a hint about what to do next in the game.  I would visit this location many times in the next four hours.  T&T is a little bit dense sometimes in being clear where to go or what to do next, so the hints are very helpful.  It was just such a hint that lead to my discovery of an entire structure I missed:  El Caracol!  When I found the Silver Globe, it was hinted that I take it El Caracol.  The problem was, I had not located such a place, nor even knew it existed.  Further exploration would reveal this structure and advance the plot considerably.  It would also lead to an encounter with the game’s most unusual monster:  El Slug.  A slimy green creature that looked a lot like a sheepdog.  Defeating monsters increases your level and basically makes it possible for you to defeat the next monster in the story.  If you cannot beat a given monster it’s because you are taking them on out of order.  With this in mind, I soon found I was able to beat pretty much any of the monsters that had previously been vexing me as long as I took them down in the correct order.  It doesn’t hurt that you can increase the power of your sword by inserting into them the different colored jewels you find.  Ultimately, I was finally able to obtain the Sun Necklace, one of the game’s key items that allows you to know the position of the sun.  This is vital to solving the game’s three main riddles.

All in all, a solid second hour.  By this time I was definitely hooked into the game and it’s world, and very excited to find out what discoveries lay in wait during the next hour of adventure!

Hour 3

The discoveries of the third hour were somewhat less than the second hour had anticipated.  The three main riddles of the game all involved the position of the sun.  You were to locate the censer at dusk, turn the Jaguar into a statue at noon, and drink a shrinking potion at midnight.  All three of these required you to be in the right place at the right time.  I had no luck with the censer or the potion, but I knew where to find the jaguar.  In the Warrior’s Tomb there were three statues:  a girl, a warrior, and a jaguar.  The jaguar statue was drawn differently than the other two so it was obvious that it was going to come to life.  Clues in the game had told me that the jaguar could be tamed (reverted to statue form) by playing the pan pipes (found earlier in the Well of Paradise).  So I went to the Warrior’s Tomb and to my surprise, the jaguar was gone.  Gone, I tell you.  In the wall behind where his statue was perched, I found a small hole.  In the hole was an iron key, but the hole was too small for anyone’s hand to fish it out properly.  A hint was given that a magnet would be useful in such a situation.  Back in the treasure room of Hour 1, I had found a metal rod that was magnetic, however I had already joined that rod to a small bowl found in the same room to make a compass, so it would not be able to help me solve this problem.  (This would prove to be significant later in our tale)  But there was little time to ruminate on this problem as the hour struck noon and the jaguar suddenly appeared in the room before us.  Luckily, this was not a combat situation, just a puzzle.  However, it was during this encounter that I learned another one of the game’s key strategies:  switch characters whenever you aren’t sure what to do.  Turns out the main character is terrible at playing the pan flute, but the girl character is a maverick.  So to tame the jaguar, switch to the girl character and have her use the pipes.  Problem solved, the fearsome cat becomes a statue permanently (another significant act) and the team is able to continue their adventure (at least somewhat…)

With nothing else to do in the Warrior’s Tomb, I decided to explore the other “too tough to beat” part of the game: the Ball Court.  Having defeated the monster in the Warrior’s Tomb I was now strong enough to defeat the monster in the Ball Court as well.  This opened the area up for exploration.  It also introduced me to the first element of the game’s major, major downfall.  You see, in the Ball Court there is a room you can uncover wherein you find the most powerful item in the game, a jewel that significantly weakens demons.  If you remove this jewel from its stand, the door you came through slams behind you forever.  You cannot die, there is no monster to kill you.  All you can do is stand in the room, look at things, and have the game taunt you with too-late hints like “you should have opened another exit before taking the jewel. Better hit reset.” 

That wouldn’t be so bad if hitting reset didn’t mean entering both of your characters’ names and the ridiculously long password just to start over wherever you last obtained your password (passwords can be obtained at any time by looking at the Ixmol Jewel you pick up at the start of the game).  So unless you are in the habit of writing down 32 character passwords before every single action in the game, this means you are going to be doing a LOT of data entry just to trial-and-error your way through some of the game’s more menacing puzzles.  This is a fun killer.  A big one.  After three unsuccessful attempts to obtain the powerful green jewel from the room, each one followed by several minutes of password entry, I decided Hour 3 was over.

Hour 4

I set out in Hour 4 to just leave that stupid jewel alone and come back when I had a better idea of how to defeat the trap.  So instead I headed back out in to the jungle to see if there were more areas I had missed in previous ventures.  I explored everywhere for about 30 minutes and finally decided to seek out the wisdom of Kukulcan to see if that would point me in the right direction.  Turns out there is a second floor in El Caracol that I was not aware of.  Again, if you are stuck for what to do, try switching characters.  Turns out Jose, the guide, is strong, strong enough to move the pedestal in El Caracol to reveal a hidden staircase.  After discovering this, I was able to solve the riddle of the censer and locate the censer itself.  Now I just have to figure out what to do with the censer itself.  The Kukulcan clue about getting the iron key before turning the jaguar into a statue is neither helpful nor encouraging as I still no idea if there is any way to get that iron key since I don’t have the magnetic rod any more, and seeing as to how I had already stoned the jaguar…

Hour 5

I spent 45 minutes of Hour 5 desperately, and ultimately in futility, going about the time-honored tradition of traveling to every location and trying every command with every character with every object, just to see if I could accomplish anything.  I could not.  I did locate the hole that the iron key fits, but without the key this was a hollow discovery (slightly clever pun unintended, but pleasing).  Time was growing short and frustration was mounting, so I did the only thing a person in the modern era can possibly do when faced with such an impasse:  I spent my last 15 minutes searching the internet for a walkthrough that would explain what went wrong.

Remember that iron rod that I used to make a compass back in Hour 1 that seemed like a mistake by Hour 3?  It was.  Not only was it a mistake, it was a game-breaking mistake.  You can never remove the rod from the compass, so once it is joined, the rod is lost to you for the rest of the game.  Which means that if you did what I did, you can never get the iron key.  Not that it would have mattered, because you see, I got the hint about "getting the key before thwarting the jaguar" AFTER I thwarted the jaguar, another game breaking mistake.  Once the jaguar is reverted to statue form, it will never come alive again, meaning that unless you get the key first, you can never complete the game.  

Turns out T&T suffers from at least 5 of these game-breaking mistakes from which there is no return, unless, as I said before, you are writing down 32 character passwords before every single move in the game.

This is no end of frustrating and discouraging.  I completed my five hours with T&T utterly defeated and discouraged.  What had started out as a really fun explorative adventure was ground into utter aggravation by game-breaking mistakes that are way too easy to make.  It doesn’t seem like the game would allow this because it is constantly cautioning you against leaving a room too soon, or grabbing the wrong item.  There are tons of places where the game helps you not screw it completely up, but there are at least 5 times where you can make the game unwinnable by doing something very, very simple.  Maybe if the game had employed a SAVE system like Shadowgate does, these kinds of screw-ups wouldn’t be as galling, but with the massive password system, running into one of these honest mistakes is worthy of the controller throw.

This felt like the mantra for Hours 4 & 5

Final Appraisal:  

Tombs and Treasure is an incredibly fun adventure/puzzle game with a unique take on a classic formula, however it features several game-breaking mistakes you can make that cause the game to be unwinnable.  Furthermore, its cumbersome password feature makes trial-and-error puzzle solving tedious and frustrating.  There is a lot of fun to be had with this game, but the drawbacks for playing it wrong threaten to drain all of the enjoyment right out of it.  If you decide to take the game on, it can be a very rewarding play, just make sure you DO NOT join the rod and the bowl until you enter the maze, DO get the iron key before you freeze the jaguar, DO NOT grab the green jewel until you have two doorways open, and DO NOT take the handle from the Castillo machine.  If you do the converse of any of those things, you are doomed.  You have been warned.

Learning Curve:  

It doesn’t take as long as I thought to get really invested in this game.  It’s a lot of fun, it features a unique setting and theme, and there is a lot to explore.  While the game can be obtuse in telling you exactly what you need to do next, there are plenty of clues and if you learn a few of the games essential mechanics: look at everything, switch characters often, beat enemies in the right order, and avoid the game-breaking mistakes, you will be having a lot of fun in no time.  I would say it took me just over an hour to be fully committed to this game.

Will I Finish It?  

I did.  After Hour 5’s crushing revelations, I decided I would see the end of this game.  So I started a new game and played all the way through avoiding the game-breaking mistakes.  All in all it took me probably an hour and fifteen minutes to beat, knowing already how to complete 3/4 of the game before I started.  As I assumed, it was a very satisfying experience.  Again, this is a great game with a few very serious flaws.

The Learning Curve: 5 Hours with River City Ransom

The legendary hype surrounding this game has haunted me since bygone days of yore.  It was a Double Dragon RPG that combined everything you loved about scrolling fighting games and everything you loved about Final Fantasy.  People used to talk about it at school like it was the ultimate game. Yet I never got a chance to play it in its original era. It wasn’t until I was an adult gamer that I managed to track down a copy to finally find out what all the 30 year old buzz was about.  And I couldn’t have been less impressed.  Sure it played like a really great Double Dragon game, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of what I was supposed to do, how I was supposed to level up, or what I was supposed to buy at the mall.  It doesn’t help that I didn’t have an instruction manual, but that is easily remedied these days with the internet, so that’s not a valid excuse.  Despite numerous attempts to immerse myself in the world, I just couldn’t get River City Ransom to click, which makes it a perfect candidate for The Learning Curve!  So let’s spend 5 good hours with River City Ransom and see if I can recapture the magic I heard so much about all those years ago…

Hour 1:  

Having played this before, I know the general gist:  You roam the neighborhood fighting gang (the late 80’s high school kind, not the scary late 90’s LBC kind) members and taking their lunch money (who’s the bully now?!).  You can then go to the mall and buy stuff to help you be a better fighter.  A quick run through of the instruction manual confirms all of this, gives some insight to what you might want to buy at the mall, and provides a litany of moves to learn with the promise of more possibilities in the game.  Most importantly it outlines the objective of the game:  defeat the gang bosses, gain access to River City High School and rescue your girlfriend from Slick.  Things are always so much clearer when you read the manual…

That said, the first hour of game play still feels rather pointless.  Every street or area is occupied by a random gang, steadily increasing in difficulty as you progress.  Mini-boss battles are announced only by a change in music and an increased chattiness of the characters.  But ALL battles in this game are COMPLETELY optional.  Don’t want to fight Moose right now?  No big deal, just walk past him and exit the area.  On the one hand, this is kind of great.  You must beat all of the bosses to progress, so you can skip all you want, you’re not getting to the end of the game until you fight them.  One the other hand, this makes it really hard to know where you need to go and what you need to do next.  

The game is also very frustrating out of the gate.  Prepare to “die” a lot.  And your pocket money is cut in half every time you die.  So everything in the game is prohibitively expensive.  One of the keys to success is buying books and gear to improve your fighting stats, but when beating a bad guy nets you 25 cents and the book costs $25 and you die pretty regularly, amassing $25 is a monumental task.  It’s hard enough scraping up enough dough to buy some food to stay alive.  This means that for my first hour I am spending most of my time beating up bad guys, getting my butt kicked, and using all of my savings to eat enough to stay alive.  Sadly, due to the penalty for dying, this is a process of diminishing returns.

Since your stats only improve by eating the right foods, reading the right books or equipping the right gear, “leveling up” is very slow and very tedious.  I spent a great deal of my first hour grinding with very little pay off.

On the up side, the game really is the Double Dragon RPG you always wanted.  The game plays silky smooth and while the combat, at least for now, feels like a lot of button mashing, there are a lot of moves to learn and execute.  I like the design and feel of the game quite a bit, I’m just very frustrated at an hour spent with not much progress.  I managed to defeat the first boss and buy the Arc Circus jump attack, but that’s about it.  Let’s hope Hour 2 brings more progress.

Hour 2:  

Considering my frustration at the lack of progress in Hour 1, I decided to spend all of Hour 2 grinding.  Just good ol’ fashioned, slow and monotonous grinding to try and get enough money to improve my stats, learn some new moves, and get some gear.  It was slow going, but I was able to eat enough stuff to boost a few stats. This is not as easy as it sounds either, because eating certain food will boost your stats, but since it doesn’t happen on the stats screen you don’t really get an appreciation for what improved right away.  Considering the number of food options it is also tricky to remember exactly what food boosts which stat, so I spent a lot of time just eating everything and trying to boost whatever I could.  Eventually I noticed that my weapon stat was getting pretty high, as was my kick stat.  Whatever food I was eating to stay alive was giving me strong upgrades in those departments.

I also bought the Dragon Feet technique which essentially gives you Chun-Li kicking powers.  This is MUCH better than the Arc Circus move and should have been my first purchase.  It makes grinding much, much easier.  As you fight better enemies you make more money, so your buying power increases dramatically, but getting to that point takes a lot of work.  I think I’ve pinpointed this as the Learning Curve for this game, but we shall see.  I’m still only barely covering my food expenses, but slowly I am getting better at combat and improving my cash flow.  I did buy some sneakers and that has improved by kick power.

Not much actual progress towards the goal, though.  I think I may have gone one screen farther than I had in the last hour…

Hour 3:

Do NOT save your money.  Every time you get to a mall, spend it ALL.  When you die you get to keep your items, but your cash is cut in half.  Considering how often I die in this game, trying to save up money, when not actually grinding, is always a losing proposition.  So when you make it to the next mall, buy whatever you need.  Buy take-out food, because you can keep it and use it, even if you die.  That is Lesson #1 from Hour 3.

Lesson #2:  Spam Dragon Feet.  And spam it like crazy.  Even the toughest foes who block it constantly will eventually fall to its rapid barrage.  Also, because my weapon stat is so high: spam weapon attacks.  Basically my strategy during Hour 3 has been to enter a screen, fend off as many bad guys as I can with a bat or whip, then, should one get close enough to knock the weapon free, spam with Dragon Feet until all are dead or I can retrieve my weapon.  This strategy has made the game infinitely easier.

Employing this new cheesy technique I was able to make enough money to buy the Army Boots dramatically improving my kick skill.  I was also able to fight my way to the gates of River City High School, however, I clearly have missed several bosses along the way because the gates remain locked.  Bosses seem to appear after you have cleared all the regular goons from a screen, so I need to go back and clear all the screens to uncover the bosses I have missed.

Also, I went to the sauna, paid $3.50 and got to see Alex’s bare ass.

Ummmm....

Hour 4:

The Boss fights all start with a long winded speech by the boss during which they are immobile.  Use that time to wail on them, pin them against a wall, and blammo! instant win.  At least mostly.

This combined with the spamming strategy from Hour 3 allowed me to beat this game in about 15 minutes during Hour 4.  I tracked down each boss (when you beat a boss, they will tell you where to find the next one), pounced on them as soon as they appeared and started yakking.  Weapons kept the earlier, slower foes at bay, Dragon Feet handled the rest.  Once I got in to the school things got dramatically tougher, but I was still able to take out all three (four really) bosses on two tries with little difficulty.  The increased strength and speed of the foes inside the school took me by surprise the first time, but I went back in with plenty of food to keep me going and pretty much walked to the end on the back of spamming Dragon Feet.

Hour 5:  

With River City Ransom beaten I decided to use my extra hour to play a little Adventure of Link.  It’s been a few years and I’m WAY rustier than I used to be at this game.  Once upon a time I could beat it in a single sitting and usually with only one, maybe two continues.  Now I find myself exploring the palaces like it’s the first time and I’m already 7 continues deep.  With my 5th hour I was able to take out the fourth palace and get the general exploration of the Eastern Continent completed.  Love this game!

Brave New World!

Dating in Hyrule is super easy!

I like to pretend this guy is the Evil Magician from story in the Instruction Manual

Final Appraisal:  

I totally get it.  I can totally see the charm of this game.  It truly is a Double Dragon RPG and once you understand how to progress against the bosses and how to grind for money, it’s a lot of fun.  However, it is also EXTREMELY short.  Knowing what I know now, I’m willing to bet I could beat it in under 2 hours.  Buy Dragon Feet, grind while spamming DF to amass enough money to buy the army boots and boost kick stat, beat all bosses, THE END.  But I now completely understand the charm of the game and why so many people like it.  

Learning Curve:  

Even though it took me 3 hours to really get a feel for what’s going on, I’m going to cut that in half and say that you can get over the learning curve in this game in 1.5 hours.  I feel it would take the uninitiated that long to get used to the way the combat works, grind their way up to a level of competency, and get a feel for how to best use trips to the mall.  Just make sure you read the instruction manual first.  Once you get over the learning curve, this game won’t take long to beat.

(Editor's Note:  As a mini-proof, I was able to beat all of the bosses and the game in about 10 minutes while taking screenshots for this article, so add about an hour of grinding, and I think it's an easy beat)

Will I Finish It?  

Already did.  Will I play it again?  Most definitely.  I can easily see River City Ransom being a fun afternoon’s diversion in much the same way I play through something like Castlevania or Legend of Zelda.  Great game.  Although I will say it’s worth finishing in a single sitting because it has a ridiculously long password for saving your game…

And this password doesn't even include the ridiculous punctuation some of the letters have!

The Learning Curve: 5 Hours with Dr. Chaos

I've tried many times to get into this game, but for some reason I cannot seem to crack the learning curve on Dr. Chaos.  No surprise it's another Pony Canyon/FCI effort.  Those folks really know how to get in there and design a deep and complex game that provides a really rewarding experience.  They also seem to need the player to invest heavily to reap the rewards they are sowing.  I've not encountered too many FCI games that didn't require me to really dig in before I was able to get into the groove (I spent untold hours playing Ultima: Exodus and only beat it some 20 years later as an adult...).  So it didn't really seem strange that I was having a hard time making heads or tails of Dr. Chaos.

On the surface it looks like an adventure/platformer, but then you enter one of the doors and it becomes a first person exploration game.  Open yet another door and you are whisked away to another action platforming level.  Initially the adventure levels felt really clunky and death was certain.  To make matters worse, while you could continue infinitely, death meant that you lost all of your accumulated weapons and health and you had to start pretty much from scratch each time.  You only get to keep your main quest items.  This makes early exploration deaths tedious and annoying.

Despite all of that I felt there was a good game in there somewhere.  The premise was cool and the game play was unique enough to make me believe that if I could just devote the time, I might find a really great game just past the learning curve I was bumping into.  It felt like a good game I just couldn't crack, and there were so many other games to play...

So, now it's Dr. Chaos' time to shine.  It's finally going to get the 5 good hours it needs to prove what I suspect.  Let's break it down hour by hour...

Hour 1:

Off to a decent start due to several previous forays into the house.  I kind of know where some of the basic stuff is in the first few rooms, so I have no trouble stocking up on weapons and making it through the first warp zone to collect the first piece of the laser and the warp zone detector.  I've been that successful it the past, but not much further.  I'm able to explore the first few rooms with little issue.  The skeleton ape kicks me out into the hallway a couple of times, but as long as you have your gun, he's little threat.  The one thing that is extremely annoying in the hallway is the rats.  They can run under your knife very easily and then ding you for lots of HP as they scamper about.  Which brings up the main hurdle for me in getting into this game: clunky action-platforming.  Enemies are finicky to hit and often require you to be on the same platform level as they are to successfully hit.  So even if that bat swoops down well within the range of your knife, you still have to jump to be able to hit it.  You should be able to stab that skull as it falls, but no, you have to wait until it lands and is already draining your HP before you can take it out.  These little things take the "action" out of action-platforming, but all is not lost.  On my way to finding the second boss, I had a minor epiphany about this game.  This isn't a romping action-platformer.  It sure looks like one, because it has a lot of the right features, but no.  This game requires patience and nuance.  You can't go blazing through this like it's Ducktales or Demon Sword.  You have to take your time in the platforming areas.  You have to treat each battle, even against a simple hallway rat, as it's own thing.  If you take this on like you're playing Commando, you are doomed.  That isn't how this game works.  You have to take your time.  At least in hour 1, that seems to be the way to handle the combat.
Sadly, that epiphany doesn't make the platform jumping any less aggravating.  If we describe the combat system as "finicky," we can only describe the jumping as absurdly precision based.  There are jumps the warp zones I've been in that require you to be pixel perfect in your positioning in order to clear the gap and land on the next platform.  If you miss, it's a drop and a tedious trek back to the ladder or blocks that get you back up to try the jump again.  I've tried the "take your time" approach with the jumps and it does help, but not every jumping situation in this game gives you time to center your Chi.  Sometimes 3 falling skulls, 2 bats, and 2 winged skeletons are bearing down on you and if you don't make the jump, at least one of them will knock you down to the lower level so you can do it all over again.  I'm still struggling with the jumping.

These things, however, do not indicate that I'm not having fun.  So far I have managed to locate about 6 warp zones and I've learned that I am totally not ready for 5 of them.  I've explored about 80% of the visible house (apparently there is a basement I have not seen yet...).  I've found a place to acquire all of the weapon types.  And I've even defeated a second boss (a little caterpillar looking fellow) and acquired the helmet that lets you breathe underwater.  I feel like I've gotten a lot done for the first hour.
Apart from the tedious platforming and combat, the biggest downfall of the game play thus far is having to totally restock your weapon supply every time you die.  While it doesn't take overlong to do this, it does get repetitive.  And since you die a lot, you can expect to restock a lot.  And never, ever, go into a warp zone without a healthy stockpile of weapons.  Bosses aren't absurdly hard if you have the right weapon and the right strategy, but don't go in to a warp zone without a stockpile.
Overall, the exploration is going well and is a lot of fun.  Looking forward to Hour 2.

Here's the first code for the end of Hour 1, if you want to play along.

Hour 2:

More progress!  Part of the learning curve of this game is just figuring out how to navigate the house. There are lots of secret passages accessible only by punching the walls and those hits need to be pretty precise.  I kept missing one hole because I was only hitting the direct middle and far sides of the wall.  The hole I was looking for was somewhere in between.  Also, if you are looking to punch you way into the attic, you'll need to punch high on the wall to uncover the ladder.  So with that being said, I was able to access the attic and find more warp zones.  In those warp zones I was able to recover two extra health containers!!  This is exciting as I was beginning to worry about having a 99HP cap on my health.  The warp zones are getting tougher and the bosses likewise.  99HP was starting to be insufficient to the task, so finding 2 more health containers and tripling my HP limit was very exciting!!!  I was also able to liberate the high jump boots, which will greatly increase my access to previously inaccessible warp zones.  One very important thing I have learned in this hour is that fish are brutally annoying enemies.  As previously stated about the combat system in this game, when battling the fish, the persnickety nature is particularly obvious.  Shooting fish?  No problem, but you don't want to waste all of your precious ammo on low level common enemies, when you are sure to need it for the bigger baddies and likely the boss.  So that leaves the knife, an honorable weapon no doubt, and the bane of rats and bats alike, but agains the fish, well...  Let's just say that the fish are quick and can evade the knife in close quarters far better than the rat.  You really need to strike at the fish before it comes into range and let it run into the blade.  If you wait and try to strike when the fish is close enough, it's already too close and you are hit.  What's worse, because you are in the water, you float and likely bump into another fish, or back into the same fish, over and over.  So stock up on bullets and prepare to blast your way through, or brush up on your knife skills.  Fish are the aggravation catch of the day!
I'm strongly considering making a map.  Even though the house isn't huge, there are 11 warp zones to find and once found it would be nice to be able to get back to them with ease.  Luckily for me I happen to own a map of the house already.  For those of you who didn't grow up with Nintendo Power kind of money, you may recall a little, barely licensed, monthly strategy guide called the Player's Strategy Guide to Nintendo Games.  This publication was much like something your shady Uncle Terry might have published out of his garage from games he had access to from his job at the Video Vender.  But, for those of us with discount childhoods, these mags were as good as gold.  Why am I going on about this?  Because in a issue of the Player's Guide I owned as a kid, they have a map of the Dr. Chaos house!  Their tips and secrets are of the most superficial and miserable kind (thanks of the "in depth" map of the first warp zone, which is the easiest and is just a straight line), but the map itself is just fine for what I need.  So I'll likely be working on that going forward, just to keep from going in circles as I get closer to the end.

"No way" door?  That's just a door you can't go through.  Not a huge help.

Finally a PRO TIP that it took me two hours to discover:  Pressing up while in a room will cause you to turn around.  Up to this point, I've been turning circles by pressing right or left and cycling through the four cardinal directions, but thanks to this fabulous discovery, I can now turn around and leave a room the way I came in just by pressing up.  Seems minor, but I promise it's a big help!
So two hours down, 5 warp zones cleared and I'm enjoying this game more and more!

Hour 3:

I really hope I am able to beat this game within the 5 hours I have devoted to it.  If not, I will most likely finish it regardless based on the amount of fun I am having now that I am passed the learning curve for getting into it.
More progress this hour!  I've found ways to access every part of the house, I think.  I can get to all rooms in the attic and basement now and have found 3 more warp zones.  I managed to beat a buzzy beetle looking boss to gain the vest (which cuts down dramatically on HP loss) and I got my butt handed to me by a flaming lion boss and a boss that is just a skull surrounded by a ball of bones.  This game is not lacking in the creative boss design category.  I am getting better at hallway combat, but the winged bone monsters in the warp zones are plaguing me something terrible.  Their movements are just too erratic and they always seem to dodge my shots.  House exploration, one of the initial hurdles in the learning curve, is now a snap.  Room layouts and access are all totally logical and that makes it easy to figure out how to access areas like the basement and the attic.  If an attic room is directly above a room on the second floor, chances are very good that punching the north wall in that room will reveal a ladder.  Likewise, if you want to try to access a room next to the one your are in, punched on a western or eastern wall generally grants passage.  The only big drawback remains the need to reload your weapon and health supply upon death, but that is only a minor annoyance at this point.  I did pick up a green health vial in the boss room with the bone boss, but I am not sure what it does.   I've got 6 pieces of the super weapon and have explored the entire house.  I think that puts me roughly half way to the end.  We'll find out more next hour!

Super Cool Boss Gallery! 

Hour 4:

The success continues!  I managed to take out a few more bosses this time around including the bone boss. The green vial (of which I picked up another in a different boss room) restores all health and is probably very helpful in some of these tougher boss battles.  It is likely a mistake that I rush into the room and grab it right away, but you live, you learn.  My map is pretty complete at this point and I find that apart from pinpointing the location of the warp zones, I don't need it too much.  It is helpful in remembering which rooms grant access to the attic or basement, but apart from that, house navigation has become very easy.  Basement or attic access is always found by punching on the North screen.  Access to other rooms is always on an East or West screen as mentioned in Hour 3.  South screens are pretty much just how you get back to the hallway.  I took out a trilobite boss and got another health vial brining me up to what I assume is the maximum 4 health containers.  And I discovered a new, and deadly boss that looks a lot like the White Dragons from Castlevania.  However with this menace, if you miss the head and hit the body, he breaks apart and spawns a second head, and now you have two white dragons flying around.  Not fun.  This boss will take some strategy.  I am also convinced the flaming lion head boss is the final boss.  The only weapon that hurts him is the knife and once you stab him with it he begins shooting fireballs out of his mouth effectively preventing you from stabbing him again.  Taking this guy out must be the use of the super weapon, but I guess we will see.  As it stands, I only have one piece of the weapon yet to acquire and I assume the White Dragon boss has it.  So next hour,  I'll have to stock up, strategize and take him down, then see if my hunch is right about that flaming lion...

Hour 5:

Turns out the White Dragon boss isn't so tough if you take your time and try not to hit his body segments.  I managed to split him into 4 parts (instead of 6 or 8 as previously) and just concentrate on one head at a time, and he was down in no time!  Laser cannon assembled!  That only leaves the Fire-breathing Lion.  The final showdown took three tries.  The first to confirm my suspicions.  Turns out when you stab him in the face and activate him, your weapon automatically becomes the Laser Cannon and you just battle it out from there.  It took a second try to work out the pattern of his fireball barrage, and on the third try he was defeated!  Dr. Ginn Chaos was restored and the warp zone peril was ended!

Final Appraisal:
Dr. Chaos is a really great game.  I am sorely disappointed that I didn't take the time to overcome the learning curve years ago, as it is clear I have been missing out on one of the NES's hidden gems.  With diverse gameplay and a moderate difficulty level, this game really hits the sweet spot between challenge and accessibility.  It is obvious the problem all along was me.

Learning Curve:
Based on my experience above maybe 1.5 hours.  It takes a little while to get used to the side-scrolling adventure action and house navigation, but once you understand a few things (pay attention to my pro tips and discoveries above) you should be exploring and having a good time in short order.  Only the recollection of items after your death proves to be annoying, but only minimally so.

Will I Finish It?
I did!  And there is a good chance I'll play it through again in the future.  It's a lot of fun and when you know what you're doing it probably only takes an hour or two to beat.

So there you have it!  The Learning Curve has proven successful in only it's second time out!  Dr. Chaos is a great game and I strongly recommend it!  Don't let the short learning curve keep you from having a great time exploring this underrated NES game!  What to play next...

The Learning Curve: 5 Hours with AD&D: Hillsfar

Not all games are Pac-man: the kind you can just pick up and play, with simple rules and fairly easy to understand parameters and goals.  Many games, sometimes even those that seem straightforward, have a steep learning curve which requires you to spend more than just a few minutes working out the nuances of the game play.  Too often these games get dismissed as “too hard” or “too clunky” and get tossed in to the pile of games that are collected and not played.  And sadly, a lot of really good games get lost in the shuffle due to a lack of pick-up-and-playability.  I’m guilty of doing this and you are too.  This was partly the motivation behind my old “Closer Look” series in which I took a hard look, and many hours of gameplay, exploring games that might not otherwise get a second look from the casual gamer.  Through that experience, I discovered that many games are quietly very good, but due to their steep learning curve, they don’t get the play or recognition they deserve.  Uncanny X-men is a perfect example. The litmus test for a game’s accessibility seems to me to be around 5 hours of game play.  If you play a game for 5 hours and cannot get into what the game is trying to do, then chances are good the game is A.) not very good  B.) just not for you. 

So with that in mind, I have vowed to sift through my NES collection, pull out those games that I have dismissed as “terrible” and give them 5 honest hours of game play to see if I am missing out on rewarding experiences due to an unusually steep learning curve.  I will play each game for 5 hours and then write up my experience, providing an hour-by-hour breakdown of what I discovered through my play.  Then I will weigh in with whether or not I find the game to be secretly great, not very good, or probably good, but just not for me.  I would love to hear feedback from you whether you agree or disagree.  You might even point me in the right direction!

AD&D: Hillsfar

Hillsfar, as it will heretofore be referred, is a traditional Western RPG.  The kind of game where you build your own character and set out on a generally wide-open quest in an immersive world.   That fitting because this game is part of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons world, the primordial soup from which all Western RPGs spring forth, at least as far as I am aware.  I wasn’t big into the AD&D scene back in the day (shocker, I know) so I’m not as familiar with the nuts and bolts of how this game ties into that world, but I shouldn’t have to be in order to enjoy a video game, not if it has been made properly.  Hillsfar is one of two AD&D titles for the NES.  The other, Dragon Strike, is more of an RPG shooter, something you don’t see too much of.  That game has more pick-up-and-play appeal so you’ll want to check that out on your own sometime; it’s pretty good.

Hillsfar looks like the kind of game I can sink my teeth into.  I absolutely loved Wizardry and Wizardry II, and as long time readers know, I have an unnatural attachment to the Might and Magic franchise on the PC.  But for some reason, this game didn’t grab me the few times I’ve popped it into my NES and tried to delve into the adventure.  So let’s spend 5 good hours playing and see if we can find the joy hidden in the city of Hillsfar…

Hour 1:

I spent most of this hour just figuring out what the game was about and how to get started.  I created my character:  I started with a thief because traditionally with these kinds of RPG’s having a thief as your first character is a good way to get access to stuff that other classes cannot.  Thieves can pick locks, sneak into places, and otherwise interact with characters that your average Fighter or Cleric cannot.  Whether or not this was a smart choice is yet to be determined.  You don’t start the game at the city of Hillsfar, you start at your camp right outside, so to get to town you have to engage in a very tedious and mostly annoying horse ride to the city.  This horse ride will link all destinations you travel to and will be a pox upon fun.  The horse is sluggish to control and the obstacles are random and not smartly spaced.  And whatever you do, don’t under any circumstance crash so much that you lose your horse.  More on that in hour 2.  

Once you arrive in town it is best to seek out your guild house and get something to do.  It is very easy to wander around town aimlessly and get into general trouble.  As a thief you can pick any door lock and go into pretty much any building if you have the wherewithal and the talent.  Furthermore, nere-do-wells wander the streets making you bad offers that more often than not send you to the arena (you do not want to go to the arena).  Every class belongs to a guild in Hillsfar and finding the guild house will grant you access to the quests that will give your life, and  hopefully the game, some meaning.  Hillsfar is a very open RPG and does not give you a master quest to complete.  Your destiny is tied to your guild and how you choose to play.  That’s pretty cool, but can be meandering if you don’t find your guild and get to work.

So I made it to the Rogue’s Hideout, home of the Master Thief and immediately asked for something to do.  My first quest was simple: just retrieve an item from the sewers. (well, I had to find the Magic Shop and talk to a guy first, but that was relatively easy)  This moves you along to what seems to be the basic game mechanic in Hillsfar:  enter a building, find the thing you are looking for before time runs out, and escape.  If you take too long the guards show up, take all the gold you found and either toss you out or toss you into the arena.  I got tossed out a lot and sent to the arena a couple of times as well.  In the arena you have to engage in absolutely confounding hand-to-hand combat with a monster opponent and, one way or another, emerge victorious or badly beaten (meaning with 1 HP, and given that recovering HP in this game requires a miracle or lots of gold, you don’t want to lose in the arena)  By sheer luck I escaped both times the victor.

Navigating the interior of buildings is also the province of luck, as the layout is randomly selected from a set number mazes and treasures and traps are scattered throughout.  Most chests are locked and require picking.  Many contain gold, a few are empty, and some give you bizarre items like old clothes, or are helpful by revealing the location of floor traps.  Picking chests proves to be a challenge as there is a time limit and if you choose the wrong pick, it will instantly break, leaving you with a useless set of tools.  This happened to me a lot.  Once your time is up, you get a notice saying the exit can now be found (you can exit immediately upon entering through the main door, but where’s the fun in that?) and that the guards are on their way.  From that point on, it’s a mad dash to find the newly spawned staircase, avoid getting pinned by the guards, and escaping with your plunder.  Since the layouts and stair placements are random this is not an easy task.  I spent much of the first hour breaking all of my picks, getting tossed out of the sewer, and generally getting beat up.  At the end of my first hour I had 9 HP, 3 Gold, and nothing to show for my troubles.  Not the best start.

Hour 2:

This hour brought more frustration and futility.  I was able to complete my first quest: finding the rare mushroom in the sewer and getting out without capture, but I had broken 4 of my lockpicks and lost all of my gold.  Needless to say, being a thief with no lockpicks makes you a pretty useless thief, so I spent most of this hour going back into the sewer, running around trying to find unlocked chests full of gold and escaping without being caught.  This was neither easy nor fun.  It might be what passes for grinding in this game.  But eventually I collected enough gold to repair all of my picks and was able to resume questing.  The next quest took me to a Hermit’s Hut to recover another item, a phial of liquid.  After all the sewer diving I had been doing this felt much easier, however getting to the hut and back proved to be a problem.  

To get to the hut I had to go to the Trading Post, a seemingly useless waypoint between Hillsfar and many of the world’s destinations.  At the Trading Post you can buy or trade for a new horse, talk to the guy at the Trading Post, or attempt to walk to Hillsfar if you haven’t a horse or the gold with which to purchase.  That’s about it.  It’s not very helpful, as my experiences soon prove.  

During one of my forays into the Hermit’s Hut, I managed to break two picks, was caught, and tossed out with very little gold to my name.  I decided I needed to return to Hillsfar to regroup and then try another campaign into the Hut.  Whilst riding my horse to Hillsfar, I was thrown off one time too many and my horse got annoyed and left me high and dry.  The game gave me a few options of what to do next, one of which was to look for a new horse, the other was to wait for another passer-by to give me a lift to the Trading Post.  I first looked for a new horse, to no avail.  The I opted to hitch a ride to the Trading Post.  Once there I was given the standard options of buy a new horse or walk to Hillsfar.  New horses cost considerably more than the 3 Gold I was packing, so walking seemed to be the only option.  This was not a good option.  8 times I attempted to walk to Hillsfar and 8 times I was beset by bandits who took my remaining 3 gold, roughed me up and dropped me back at the useless Trading Post.  8 times.  8.  This easily took up 15 infuriating minutes of game time.  Eventually I was able to find a new horse wandering around get back to Hillsfar, but I had lost all desire to ever leave and if I never saw the Trading Post again it would be too soon.

Hour 3:

I had taken several days break from playing Hillsfar after my ill treatment on the road and it proved to hearten me a bit.  I was able to restock my supplies in the city and then liberate the phial of liquid from the Hermit’s Hut with relative ease.  I was getting better with the lockpicks, I wasn’t panicking and breaking them constantly, and I was getting out without getting caught much more successfully.  The really good news:  for recovering the phial I got 1250 gold.  Oh how to spend it?  Well, let’s just say that in Hillsfar, fortune is easy come, easy go.  All it takes is one unlucky trip in a house and you’re back to skid row.  More on that later.  For now, I was riding high with a pocket full of gold and feeling like I was getting the hang of things.  The next quest was to find an amulet.  To do this I would have to prowl about a couple of taverns and the sewer seeking information on the amulet’s whereabouts.  Eventually the search brought me to a Hut located just outside of the city.  After about 6 successful forays into the hut, I began to suspect that the amulet wasn’t there at all.  This is hard to know since the chests all appear at random and you rarely have enough time to search every single nook and cranny of the building before the guards catch you, but after multiple trips coming up empty I began to suspect that something was amiss.  However, I was pleased to see that I was able to make so many trips, pick so many locks, and escape so many times without being caught.  It felt like I was finally starting to get the hang of the basic game play mechanic.  But no amulet.  The one thing I did find repeatedly was a piece of paper encouraging me to pick the cellar door in the taverns back in the city.  So as my third hour wound down I retuned to Hillsfar once again…

Hour 4:

So I picked the cellar door and eventually found the chain the amulet was on, but no amulet.  This meant a trip back to the Rogue’s Hideout to get more information from the master.  Apparently the amulet has been carefully tucked away in the Cleric’s Guild (also known as the Shrine of Tempus).  Getting into the guild house proved to be a bigger challenge than expected.  The lock is impossible to pick as it requires a pick I do not have in my tool set.  I’ve purchased 3 different sets of lock picks and none of them contained the correct pick, so I assume it’s a pick I need to find elsewhere or my luck is just terrible.  But there’s more than one way to pick a lock and a couple of times I was able to get in by physical force. This is a dicey proposition however as the lock is trapped and 75% of the time you will spring it and take 3-5 damage.  This caused several reloads and about 15 minutes of frustration.  Nevertheless I got in several times and explored the guild.  The building layout is static, but the traps and treasures are randomly placed.  This makes definitive exploration nearly impossible.  There simply isn’t time to see all the sights and get out unmolested.  The only upside is the hefty coin pouch I got from all the plundering.  Annoyingly, six trips in and no amulet.  Experience is a great teacher though and I’m no longer taking lumps getting in.  A knock ring purchased for 250 gold got me in nearly every time and with no fuss.  It’s not all good news, though, as this process is a series of diminishing returns with most trips into the Shrine netting an average of 195 gold.  So I’m 45 minutes in and I’m in a downward spiral of losing gold, finding no amulet and sometimes dying due to traps.  I’m back to not having fun.  I feel like I’ve checked every chest and I’ve even started checking walls and dead ends for secret doors or anything that might move the game along.  This doesn't seem like the kind of game prone to such devices, but at this point anything is worth a shot.  Hour 4 wraps with no amulet, a wasted hour of dungeon crawling and me questioning if I can even take an hour 5.

Give me the damned Amulet!

Hour 5: 

25 times I went into the Cleric Guild in search of an amulet.  25 times I emerged with nothing but gold and a few healing potions.  My time with Hillsfar was winding down and I was having decreasing amounts of fun.  So I decided a new tactic was in order:  Start Over.  It might seem a little late in the game for such an idea, but if I was going to salvage anything out of the final hour, this might be the only way to do so.  So I started over, this time as a Cleric.  The thief thing wasn’t panning out so maybe a different character would bring me better luck.  And, maybe due to familiarity with the game, or maybe the Cleric path is just easier, it seemed to be a lot simpler to get going.  I rode into town and checked in at the Shrine of Tempus (they just let me in, a frustrating juxtaposition from my previous experience).  I spent most of the fifth and final hour tooling about town finishing quests with relative ease.  I even had to go to that miserable Trading Post several times to complete quests.  Dungeon diving was much easier as it seems far more chests are just open and ripe for the pilfering than in the Thief track.  I soon accumulated a sizable pile of gold and had quite a few completed quests under my belt when I came upon the Haunted House (bonus points to any RPG with a haunted house).  My next quest required me to enter the Haunted House and find a bandit who had something the guild wanted.  Sadly, upon attempting to pick the lock and enter the haunted house, the only apparent way in, I triggered a trap which exploded and killed me.  The real tragedy: I had failed to save this character at any point during my game.  Thus, my final hour of play, while much more enjoyable, was completely undermined by a failure to save.  The entire hour just wiped away by a single trap.  Frustrating.

Final Appraisal?  AD&D: Hillsfar isn’t a terrible RPG.  It’s clunky and very slow to start, but I think someone determined to sit down and learn its ins and outs will be able to find something here to enjoy.  Some of the game play mechanics are tedious and some are downright incomprehensible.  The bulk of the game is just journey to X find the Y and return with no combat or battle system unless you get tossed into the Arena.  But the world is fairly well constructed and I can see really getting in to it if you are not turned off by the obtuse mechanics.  

Learning Curve:  About 2.5 hours of solid play should get you accustomed to how the game works and what is expected of you.  It probably takes a little longer to get invested in the world of the game, but it is possible.

Will I Finish It?  Unlikely.  Most of my time in Hillsfar was spent being extremely frustrated and the brief moments of accomplishment weren’t enough to help me power through the annoying parts.  I may give Hillsfar another look in a year or so, after I get over the aggravation of this play through, but I’m not inspired to keep the adventure going at this time.