Je ne comprends pas The City of Lost Children, d’accord

There were two big events in my childhood/teenhood that caused me to stay home from school for several days and recover in bed or on the living room couch with lots of tea, buttered white toast, and TV sitcom marathons. Also videogames on the television, all on my SNES or PlayStation 1 with the kewl PSM lid cover, but I did eat up nearly an entire run of Gilligan’s Island at some point too though perhaps that was just a highly visual fever dream. My favorite character is Mary Ann, by the way, and the episode most firmly cemented in my brain revolved around a method actor visiting the island and pretending to be a Tarzan-like jungle lord. Shrugs.

Right, back to the stay-at-home events. One had to do with me getting my wisdom teeth removed, and the other was related to an injury to my left knee that required surgery, pain killers crushed up in applesauce, and physical therapy. Both were not fun and had me in various states of wooziness, and I don’t remember exactly which event it was, but for one of them, my mother let me rent a bunch of games for the PlayStation to keep me entertained. Me thinks it was for the wisdom teeth removal, since I knew when that was happening and wanted some guaranteed pleasures during the downtime.

Well, I selected three PlayStation 1 games from our local store that rented games (not a Blockbuster, sorry), all on their box art alone–Destruction Derby, The City of Lost Children, and Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror. I mean, look at how cool these covers are:

Er, maybe not. Well, I thought they were killer then.

Of these, I remember enjoying Destruction Derby a lot, not understanding how a point-and-click adventure game worked in Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror, especially using a controller, and being completed dumbfounded by The City of Lost Children, which, if you didn’t already know, is an adaptation of the 1995 movie of the same name by French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Also, if you’re not familiar with the film, you have no chance of understanding what’s going on in this game–trust me on this. The introductory cutscene doesn’t really explain anything, not even introducing you to the character you will be playing as for the entire game. Thankfully, the manual offers a brief summary of the plot, but even that is not much to work from.

I’ll do my best here. The City of Lost Children takes place in a nameless, steampunk-inspired city by the seaside. A less-than-good scientist, most likely evil, has his henchmen kidnap children in order to steal their dreams to prevent the process of his premature aging. Y’know, normal kidnapping reasons. Anyways, the opening cutscene shows one of these children getting kidnapped, and that’s really all the information the game gives you before giving you control over 12-year-old Miette, which means “crumb” in French. You start inside a classroom, with a pair of Siamese sisters at the front telling you to go steal money from some hut because they said so.

Little to my teenage knowledge, this was an adventure game. Not exactly a point and click one, but still one where you walked around, gathered items, and made progress by using those items on people or other items to make things happen. Like a Metroidvania, but with less action involved. Considering it would still be many, many years before I would fall in love with the genre, I probably went into The City of Lost Children thinking it was in the same vein as things like Resident Evil or Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. Boy was I not at all right. Not one teeny tiny bit. I’d later come to have fun with Blazing Dragons and Discworld II: Mortality Bytes!, so this being an adventure game alone had nothing to do with my terrible time with it. That is a result of it being exceedingly obtuse and poorly designed.

A strong memory that stands out: Miette, saying “I can’t do anything” or “I can’t manage it,” every time you interact on something she can’t do anything with. Which was on a lot of items in that early portion of the game I banged my head against. Compound this with the sluggish, tank-like controls and sometimes odd camera angles that made it hard to see where something lead to another screen, and my rented time with the game was spent wandering around the first few areas aimlessly until I decided enough was enough and at least knew what to do with my vehicle in Destruction Derby–crash it. Which is a shame, because I thought The City of Lost Children looked stunning at the time, and, while the polygons are not as sharp as today’s standards, there’s still a strong, off-kilter aesthetic here from Psygnosis, the British developer that gave us gems like Colony Wars, G-Police, and, uh, Hexx: Heresy of the Wizard, that makes this one of the more unique-looking games from the generation.

Anyways, I’m sure someone has paid it forward and done a recorded playthrough of The City of Lost Children and put it up for free on the Internet for everyone to watch. Maybe one day I’ll even search it out. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this random trip down my memory lane.

GAMES I REGRET PARTING WITH: G-Police

When I think of Colony Wars, I think of G-Police. Conversely, when I think of G-Police, I also think of Colony Wars. Which I’ve already covered via this blog post tag, sadly. Though I do have a retail copy of Colony Wars: Vengeance somewhere among my small collection of PlayStation 1 games, though I don’t know if it better than the original. I hope to try it out…one day. Anyways, the two simulation shooters for the PlayStation 1 share the same space in my brain, and that space is the zone designated to sci-fi games where you pilot a futuristic spaceship of sorts. I have to imagine that I traded both in at the same time, forever marking one of the darkest days in the history of me.

G-Police takes place in 2097, when most of Earth’s resources are depleted. Because of this, humanity is beginning to form colonies on other worlds. So, basically, our future future. You are a man named Slater, a member of the futuristic government taskforce known as the G-Police. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that stands for governmental-police. Or maybe grassfed. His role is to maintain order on Callisto, one of Jupiter’s moons, as well as discover the truth behind his sister’s mysterious death. Because there has to be something else driving him forward besides him driving forward his g-copcar after criminals. I honestly don’t remember much of this murder mystery plot, as I was more strangely focused on doing cop-like things, such as escorting people to safety and…uh, other tasks.

Speaking of Slater’s g-copcar, it’s actually a vertical take-off and landing aircraft called the Havoc. You end up piloting this VTOL piece during the game’s various missions. Some missions require the gun-ship to drop bombs on enemies below while others are straightforward dogfighting sessions. Other mission objectives include escorting ally ground units, preventing smuggling, bomb disposal, and scanning for suspect vehicles. Sounds like there were 35 missions in total, as well as a bonus training mode, but I definitely never beat G-Police, just like how I never beat the original Colony Wars. I did, however, play their early levels over and over again because I enjoyed them that much. Also, the difficulty ramps up quickly.

I do remember the Havoc being a pain to control though. Every button on the PlayStation 1 controller was used to maneuver the heavy-as-heavy-gets thing. You could thrust forwards, backwards, up, and down, as expected, and you could also hold your altitude by holding the upward and downward thrusts. This was ultimately tricky on the original PS1 controller, but vital for making it through the missions in one healthy, whole piece. Unfortunately, and this was just kind of before its time, you were not able to move left or right without turning, what we now know as strafing. I have this really strong memory of lowering the Havoc to street level and watching citizens and vehicles going about their way.

That said, the Havoc had weapons. The selection was robust and expanded as you progressed through the missions. Missiles were your main mode of enforcing the law, with a good balance between strength and tracking enemies on the map. Locking on to objects also scanned them, with some missions requiring you to look for contraband cargo and the like. I enjoyed these, and this is one of the earlier signs that I preferred less violent gameplay means when possible, which is why I’d always lean towards stealth over guns blazing in the years to come. Certain missions also outfitted you with special items, ranging from bombs that can perform an EMP blast to shut down fleeing vehicles or a flare launcher to mark a location for SWAT teams on the ground to move in on. Y’know, cop stuff.

G-Police was heavily inspired by Blade Runner, but I didn’t know that at the time I bought it. Why? Well, I didn’t end up seeing Blade Runner until only a handful of years ago. I know, I know–my bad. There’s plenty of futuristic city stuff to eat up, like advertising blimps, hovercars, and neon lights. Lots of green and orange-red in your HUD, which is pretty close to what it is like in Descent, though I’m only now making that connection. You could also pull the camera out and play from a different perspective, but I mainly stuck to the first-person, inside-the-Havoc view. Graphically, G-Police was not a stunner, with a dark, oppressive environment and pop-up around every corner, but the thwumping techno-driven soundtrack helped alleviate some of these limitations.

However, in the end, G-Police was another take on the Colony Wars experience, and that was enough for me to hand over my hard-earned cash from washing cars and watering lawns and procure a copy. Alas, I never got to see it all the way through before giving it up for in-store credit, but I still remember its earliness fondly. I should find a full YouTube playthrough of it for my next marathon drawing session.

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GAMES I REGRET PARTING WITH is a regular feature here at Grinding Down where I reminisce about videogames I either sold or traded in when I was young and dumb. To read up on other games I parted with, follow the tag.

GAMES I REGRET PARTING WITH: Colony Wars

I still can’t believe we haven’t seen a new Colony Wars game in this day and age of impressive technology, big TV screens, and unstoppable imagination. Or, at the very least, a half-hearted remake of the first 1997 space adventure from Psygnosis. Alas, it seems like the Colony Wars series was deeply cornered in the late 1990s, possibly too unique for its time, and never managed to break free from its own genre, and that’s a shame, because this is the series that really taught me what it might be like to fly an aircraft not of this world. Also, not in this world. Yeah, sorry, Decent.

Story stuff. In Colony Wars, the player assumes the role of a nameless colonist involved in the expanding League of Free Worlds resistance movement. As a skilled League fighter pilot, you take orders from the Father in an attempt to overcome the oppressive Earth Empire and its massive naval fleets, which are spread across multiple colonies. I don’t know if it is simply the American Revolution in space, but it’s close enough. What’s really neat is that failing a mission in Colony Wars did not mean “game over,” just a new branch to follow. You can “fail” every mission in the game and still see it end, albeit through dire consequences. This allowed for the story to really feel unique, like your own, and certainly softened that blow when things didn’t go as perfectly as you planned them. Evidently, there are two alternative “good” endings, though I couldn’t tell you if I saw any of them. I definitely witnessed my fair share of “failed” missions though…

Speaking of missions, I remember them being quite many, as well as varied, though they naturally all involve you flying in your spaceship to some capacity. I think there’s about 70 in total, and you have to remember that you’ll only experience maybe a third or so based on your success or failure rates, making multiple playthroughs worth the effort. Let me see what some mission types were: perimeter defense, guarding supply lines, protecting capital fleetships, taking down opposing capital fleetships, dogfighting, infiltrating Imperial territory, and surveillance-style objectives, like obtaining Naval technology.

At the time, the graphics in Colony Wars were capable of being described as light years ahead of other PlayStation titles (pun intended). It did that thing where when your spaceship goes faster, speed lines appear around you in a circular fashion, something I’d probably scene on Star Trek or some other space-themed TV show. And there I was, the one piloting the ship, zooming forward through the emptiness towards that massive hulk in the distance, my target to destroy. It’s also one of the rare games that I enjoyed using the cockpit view more than the third-person camera, as seeing the inside of your ship and HUD really helped immerse yourself in the action, especially when you’d be flipping this way and that, hot on some enemy ship’s trail. Also, a friendly warning that should be heeded by all: do not look directly into the sun.

The game’s soundtrack is not exactly memorable, but upon giving it another go via the YouTubes, I’m finding it thematically appropriate. Dark, brooding, and capable of building to something that feels almost entirely overwhelming–perfect for backing up a contested dogfight out in the middle of no spaceman’s land. A great use of orchestra and electronica, but maybe a bit too unnerving for listening to when writing a blog post. I feel the need now to take down an evil-as-evil-gets ginormous battleship hiding in an asteroid belt singlehandedly; that, or entirely rewatch Battlestar Galactica for like the umpteenth time.

I’ve had a disc copy of Colony Wars: Vengeance in my collection for some time now, untouched, the manual glanced at occasionally, and I guess if I ever do really get that itch to fly through space and shoot some massive vessels I can give it a go. I don’t know much about this sequel to the original, save that it retains the idea of fail-able missions, but also lets your spaceship entire planets’ atmosphere to shake things up. However, it won’t be the same Colony Wars that I remember so fondly from 1997, that opened before my blossoming eyes and stretched out endlessly, that put a dot in the distance and directly me towards it. Let’s leave with a fitting Carl Sagan quote: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

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GAMES I REGRET PARTING WITH is a regular feature here at Grinding Down where I reminisce about videogames I either sold or traded in when I was young and dumb. To read up on other games I parted with, follow the tag.