Game 480: NATO Commander

I've been putting this one off for a bit, being a Sid Meier game from 1983 that predates two whales that I already covered. I rationalized this by telling myself that NATO Commander isn't really an ancestor to F-15 Strike Eagle or Silent Service. As a wargame, it made way more sense to treat it as an ancestor to Crusade in Europe and put it off for that one. But the truth is, I didn't really want to play it. Abstract wargames aren't really my thing, NATO Commander isn't especially celebrated among Meier's oeuvre, Wargaming Scribe ranked it as among his least loved games (for reference, his AAR+Review), and to me, the game is an unreadable eyesore. And it gets worse in motion.

 

This game is realtime with pause, and the "with pause" aspect becomes critically important, because there's no way you can keep up with the action otherwise. In fact, even attempting to give orders or query units when it isn't paused is futile, not just because of the relentless pace but because the inputs lag whenever anything is going on.

I found myself pausing every few ingame hours or whenever an event caught my attention, and then while paused, re-evaluate the situation and query every single unit to ensure that they are still under sensible orders. Because orders from mere seconds ago can quickly become forgotten or become counterproductive, like logjams of units now trying to cross impassible terrain or into the same spot, or units attacking the empty space where an enemy used to be. But the pause doesn't help at all with the barrage of messages that come and go faster than I can read them.

NATO Commander offers five scenarios, with four difficulties and two operational modes; Divisions and Brigades. The latter is intended to give you finer control over the armies, with smaller, more numerous units, but in reality this completely changes the gameplay dynamic since only one unit can be contained in a hex regardless of size.

 

For this first post, I'll be playing the first scenario with brigades, on the second-hardest difficulty. I've already played a successful round on moderate and found it too easy. Here, the Warsaw Pact has launched a surprise attack on Germany, and your only objective is to inflict maximum casualties as quickly as possible. Or to use the Pentagon's doctrinal language, lethality-maxxing. Territory loss does not matter, and there is no diplomatic penalty for employing chemical weapons, so I will of course be using them exclusively.

 

Day 1 

There's a lot of colors on the map, but all that really matters is that orange units are Warsaw Pact and everyone else is NATO. The Berlin Corps, marked by the cluster of three blue infantry units on the eastern side, are in trouble.

The goal for the day - hastily withdraw the Berlin Corps, mobilize the Netherlands cavalry brigades far out west, and bring everyone else into a defensive column about where the frontmost of my two helicopter companies is. The airforce will be on reconnaissance. Air units do not move in this game, but helicopters can strike anywhere on the map, wings can be assigned recon or support duties, and SAM and airfields provide passive bonuses to your air superiority as long as they are not overrun by ground forces.

Nighttime progress. Contact near Hanover. Berlin took a beating. Minimal engagement otherwise.

 

 

Day 2

 

The column is forming nicely in the north, and just in time - a large East German mechanized infantry division is engaged, and we break to encircle and destroy. Same for the armor further south, who we are already fighting, with full air support including helicopters. The Berlin Corps, hurting bad but disengaged from combat for now, is fleeing west to join up with the rest, and the Dutch cavalry are still slogging through the marshes.

1200: Polish dock workers strike in protest (this is good).

1400: First Berlin Corps surrenders to pursuing armor division.

1500: Routed British mech brigade surrenders.

2100: Soviet armor destroyed near Hanover. Helicopters refocused on partially-encircled East German infantry division, who are soon destroyed after.

EOD: 19,800 NATO casualties, 26,500 WP casualties.

 

Day 3

 

Hanover is taken, and two large mech divisions are in sight, but my defense column is strong and they won't cause too much trouble. What's left of the Berlin corps is part of it, and the Dutch cavalry inch closer to the line, and West German reinforcements have mobilized but are too far away from the action to be all that useful right now.

Air force continues to focus on ground support despite some MiG resistance. Another mech division is destroyed during the day, but shock reinforcements crash against my wall.

The precise order of the day's events were difficult to keep track of, but by midnight, spies were reporting mass desertions in the Czech army.

 

Day 4

 

Some of the Dutch units have arrived, tired from the three day march, and the West German militia are in sight. Five WP armor units and one infantry are engaged as I do my best to encircle and destroy them, and am successful in eliminating two.

Yugoslavia withdraws by the end of the day.

Day 5

For the first time, all of my units are on a single screen.

 

The WP advance is halted, but my air force is starting to lose effectiveness. But it doesn't matter; despite some concentrated attacks on my southern flank, they are running out of steam and they know it.

You have to reboot the computer to play another scenario.

 

This victory was, by the way, significantly more decisive than my first go on moderate difficulty. It goes to show that if you're willing to meet the micromanagement-heavy demands of Brigade mode, you can grind the Soviets into blutwurst. I don't think I'll do that again.

So far, I don't hate this game quite as much as I expected to, but the many UI problems and somewhat poor battle result feedback do make it a tedious experience. I will note that Eastern Front 1941 had similar and arguably even worse even feedback issues, but that game was more or less turn-based and had an extremely elegant UI that enabled complex unit pathing, which is impossible here.

Game 479: Brain Breaker

 

Commenter P-Tux7 recommended this one as an example of a proto-Metroid, a category with some prominence in my 1984 whaling phase but barren in 1985.

 

A Sharp X1 exclusive, Brain Breaker features an animated introduction scene in English, but the rest of the game is in Japanese, mainly in communications from your onboard ship. A translation patch apparently exists, but I couldn't get it to work - I had to use Google to translate.

I used EF1941mapper to splice the scrolling text before uploading it.

A maintenance robot blocks entrance to the city and speaks in an ancient but known and translatable language. "Who goes there? Leave immediately." Which I'd like to do, but if I summon my other lander you'll just shoot it down too.

A laser gun is found near the initial crash site, and taking it brings on a swarm of attack drones.

Ugh... combat is nasty. It wouldn't be too bad if the controls were perfectly responsive, but being an early Japanese computer game that isn't the MSX, they aren't. The game's graphical style isn't helping either; there's clearly some attempt at presenting things in a consistent scale, but this comes at the expense of being able to read the action, not to mention discerning interactive items which present as indistinct clumps of blueish gray pixels. Victory or death seems to be pretty random, but you get multiple lives, and can earn more with consecutive kills.

You can also save your game with the only restriction that it is only possible roughly every two minutes of gameplay. This save does not survive a computer power cycle, but is automatically loaded whenever you die, minus one of your spare lives.

Deeper into the city, inside an apartment complex, I find a cluster of pixels that turns out to be a jetpack, and with it, fly to an elevated park where there's a vending machine. And someone's ID card is stuck inside it.

In the apartment where I found the jetpack (after using it to escape a very large drone strike), the ID card activates a terminal with a very long message:

Good morning Dr. Curnin ...? You are not Dr. Curnin are you. I thought something was strange... but there is no doubt that you are a human. It has been 120 years since a human last came here. Who are you? What is this year?

Why are there no humans? Answer me.

I am a computer named Luis. This is Kanayama Products' weapon technology development city. The person in charge of this department, the doctor, was researching 'Brain Breaker', which destroys only computers. However, 120 years ago, people disappeared from this city. The cause is unknown.

Won't you give me that thing called 'Brain Breaker'?

No, that is forbidden. It is a corporate secret. 

I can destroy computers without a stupid 'Brain Breaker.'

 

Way on the other side of the city, past multiple unfair fights, his card unlocks another building where I find a heat-seeking rocket launcher, and a very tall purple building that it won't unlock.

At this point, I needed a walkthrough. The Brain Breaker, aimed with pixel-thin precision at the maglock above the front door, makes it open, revealing an elevator to a massively armed hovertank which goes down with one shot of the Breaker... and further up to another elevator if you get off on the correct floor, or immediate death if you don't.

Too late.

Moving on, the next elevator leads to a fight against a crazy number of Gundams.

 

Further into this room, a blocked off passageway is seen beneath the floor. To open it? Drop your laser gun over it and then shoot it with the rocket launcher. Another terminal waits at the bottom.

 

It says something here. CTRL+W? What is this?

You are the one who destroyed Luis. The one that must be destroyed is 'Ares'.

Who (or what) are you?

I am.... ?$?#02 6543210$

I am ARES. The ruler of this planet. Know the true extent of my power.

APB attack sustained. Absorption complete via AAPB field. It appears this computer has been hijacked by a different computer called 'Ares.' That is likely the ADS it is aiming for.

This machine translation seems a bit flaky, but I think the last block of cyan text is informing me that Ares tried to blast me through the computer terminal and my suit absorbed the hit. Which would be the only time that it ever did that. In any event, this blows up a hole in the wall and more Gundams pour in. It leads to another complex, with a central elevator and a clump of pixels that the Zeppelin tells me is a matter disintegrator; now I can blast through walls.

With this, my jetpack, and a bit of luck, I can return to the tank I disabled earlier, and with the Ctrl+W command (Google thought that the developer was trolling me and Ctrl+W would close my window), something cool happens.

 

Now the tank can warp! And fly. And fire barrages of homing missiles. But I need it for a particularly frustrating puzzle.

 

Oh, brother, does this puzzle suck. And I have the benefit of a walkthrough. It would be bad enough if there weren't endlessly respawning Gundams, whose lasers still kill you in one hit, and homing missiles kill the tank in one hit, but you've got to teleport into this secret niche, and you instantly die if you clip into the walls. Then you've got to chip away at the wall, which is only possible from outside the tank, and hope that the blobby idiot floats out the hole you make, all while praying you don't get hit by the enemy's fire or accidentally hit the brain with your own weapons, way too easy to do accidentally using the tank's missiles.

And when it finally gets out, you've got to escort it. And if it dies, whether from enemy fire or your own, then you are softlocked.

Seriously, I'm not sure what I was supposed to do here.

But survive long enough, and eventually, it reaches something up in the sky, the tank blows up, and you're rewarded with P.K. energy, effectively making you a demigod.

 

After what seems like forever descending, I wreck some havoc.

 

Another computer terminal reveals a bit more about what's going on here.

Are you alive? No... where did you come from? Quickly, get away from this star. It is dangerous.

You seem to know something. Tell me, what happened 120 years ago?

It was a psychic storm. A massive storm of psychic power raged like a hurricane, wiping out everything. I wanted to escape to the biological weapons research facility, but the ESP blocker was turned off. That is how I found out about this.

Where is the defense system for this colony?

ARES controls it. ARES manages everything here, except for the research facility.

I see. So it's ARES. That means the entire defense system is controlled by a computer.

The one that caused the psychic storm is definitely that bio-engineered weapon. That was a military psychological warfare weapon. You were saved because you are a latent psychic yourself.

ARES is deep within a purple bunker to the right, but it's nothing my P.K. energy can't blast through.

 

ARES and the ADS destroyed, I can return to the Zeppelin.

Good grief, we had a terrible time this time. But what we gained is huge. From the X-ray holograph of that tank, I've figured out the principle of flight.

Just this information alone must be worth a billion credits. If we figured out how to teleport, there's no telling how much that would be worth.

And this Brain Breaker too. You have powerful P.K. energy. It looks like luck has turned in our favor... there are 180 seconds left until docking.

GAB rating: Bad.

Brain Breaker is an interesting game, and I admire its attempt to blend platforming action with adventure-style narrative, and its somewhat freestyle approach to gameplay where one moment you're obliterating packs of robots on a flying missile platform and the next you're escorting a floating brain so you can earn psychic powers. This is the only thing about it that I admire at all.

Despite being called a Metroidvania by some sources, I don't really see much of a Metroid connection at all; progress is completely linear despite an open game world, and every moment you spend deviating  from the critical path is a moment that you risk getting killed by ARES' many respawning drones and robots. It's a very short game with only about six meaningful items/upgrades; you could probably beat it in 20 minutes with some luck; and what pads its length is some very obtuse puzzles and relentless, unforgiving combat where the controls are your worst enemy.

Without any redeeming gameplay value or apparent influence on the genre to come, I cannot recommend Brain Breaker to anyone.