Sunday 16 November 2008

Fun in Area 51

Today, I started playing Area 51. This particular videogame was made free to download, so I figured, 'what the heck'. After spending the quick tutorial making sure I could crouch with C, as should be law, and didn't need to use ctrl, (double-ctrl opens google toolbar for some crappy reason, and if ctrl is melee, and you are being attacked by zombie-mutant-monsters,and you panic and bash ctrl, then the game crashes to desktop so you can use google - that is not good.), I found it to be a good game. It runs well, has a decent story, very cinematic. The teammate AI is a bit simplistic, and they insist on running in your line of fire, but that idiocy reminds me of TF2. I was having fun.

Then this bit pissed me off. You are told to go "SCAN THE COMPUTER" for intel on delta squad, who are missing as delta squads all around the world are want to do. So I go to the computer and use my scanner. YOUR CHARACTER IS THE SCANNER GUY. This is very important, you have a special scanner on your arm, much like Cortez in Timesplitters, but more important. Your role in the team is the scanner-guy. You have a whole tutorial on the scanner. This is not the first time I have been told to scan something. So I go and scan the computer. I doesn't work, it just scans the air, (mostly nitrogen) so I try again. And again. And again. From different angles - I crouch below, jump on top, try from near, try from far, NOTHING WORKS! So I get pissed, and go to gamefaqs. This always makes me feel cheap, using the internet for answers when I am lost. They tell me to run back to the start of the level and explore a room that was on fire, search the body of a dead scientist for a keycard, return to where I was, achieve a crappy jumping puzzle for another keycard, open a double key carded room, get ambused by more zombie-mutant-monsters, fend then off with limited ammo, and get the shotgun. Whoop. I have a shotgun. But that does not help me SCAN THE COMPUTER!

ARGGH!

Turns out, that in this game, USE is not E, it is Tab. Tab to use iten? Huh? And you are not supposed to "scan" the computer, even though this instruction is repeated every 30 seconds in those excact words, you are supposed to USE the computer to get the intel.

I just wasted 30mins on the second level where I was supposed to go over to a PC and press USE.

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