Game 39: Earthrise - Final Rating

Earthrise: A Guild Investigation was much better than I expected it to be. The screenshots I'd seen prior to playing suggested a very low quality game that would likely be buggy and simplistic. That didn't turn out to be the case at all, and overall I'd have to say that I enjoyed the experience quite a bit. Despite all this positivity, there's no doubt the game is flawed, and the PISSED rating system will undoubtedly punish it accordingly. Let's see how much...

Puzzles and Solvability
For the most part, the puzzles in Earthrise were of a decent, if perhaps a bit easy, standard. While I solved little in the first couple of hours of play, I uncovered a vast amount of obstacles that I knew I would need to pass at some point. Usually that meant finding the right item in another location within the base, but I certainly had to put a lot of thought into the game to gain access to the many sections within the base. I was required to read notes very carefully, figure out how to keep Eric the bee alive, and more importantly, to keep myself from dying in a very dangerous environment. While I was worried that there would be, there was never an item that I couldn’t either easily see on screen or locate through general room descriptions, which is a big tick in a game like this one. Sadly, there was one puzzle that completely screwed me towards the end of the game. Looking back at it, it wasn’t so much what the puzzle required me to do (although that was a bit difficult), but more the parser responses and general narration suggestions that made it next to impossible. Even when I knew what I was supposed to do, I still really struggled to get my character to do it, which isn’t really acceptable. The parser is about to take a beating in the next category, so I won’t be too harsh here.
Rating: 4

Oh OK. Well at least now I know that I'm absolutely, positively not supposed to fire my laser through this door! Right?

Interface and Inventory
Right, this is where the game will have to be punished. I normally focus on two distinct aspects for the interface, being movement and parser. Neither was great in Earthrise, but before I talk about those, I should mention that I faced a couple of bugs while playing, including getting stuck behind furniture and finding ways to increase my score infinitely. Ignoring these, I guess movement was handled adequately in the game, but there's no way to avoid using the word clunky. Using ladders was challenging and walking through doors was more of a precise science than it should have been, but I generally made it from A to B and back again with little trouble. Fortunately, the creators were wise enough not to create any time-limited sequences or action scenes, as I really don’t think the engine would have coped. Oh yeah, and I had to be standing in exactly the right spot to be able to look at most items, which was annoying to say the least. The shitty parser is probably the biggest criticism I have with Earthrise though. I was put off trying correct actions by badly worded or misleading stock answers. I stopped trusting the parser pretty early on, which is just as well, as often asking a question a different way would get an opposite answer to the one I originally received. The huge difficulties I had destroying the control panel in the inner security office was by far the worst example, but by no means the only one. Finally there’s the inventory, which was really just a basic list. I wasn’t able to select anything in it, so looking at and using items was conducted purely through the parser.
Rating: 3

Pretty much every time I tried to get onto the ladder I accidentally moved to the screen below.

Story and Setting
There has already been, and will likely continue to be, quite a bit of negativity in this post. So why did I still really enjoy playing Earthrise? There was something quite compelling about it, and I think the story and setting played a huge role in that. In a way the story follows similar lines to those found in the System Shock series, with the player entering an environment in space where some sort of destructive event has taken place. The rest of the game is spent figuring out what has occurred and trying to set things right. System Shock (and in particular the sequel) did it much, much better of course, but it works pretty well in Earthrise too. I was really excited to find out what was waiting for me in each section of the base, and trying to piece together what had occurred on Solus was genuinely captivating. I really would have liked to find out more about the missing scientists, particularly as I discovered they were hidden away the whole time I was there! The few notes I read in the Research Laboratory were there for specific reasons, but I would have preferred to find other documents around the base to really flesh out events. At the end of the day, it was probably the setting that I liked more than the story itself, which really involved nothing more than scouring the base trying to find everything I needed to get the engine up and running.
Rating: 5

I guess it would have been nice to be given the backstory in-game too, but that's perhaps unfair for a game of this time.

Sound and Graphics
There was very little sound in Earthrise, limited to an awful opening tune and minimal beeps throughout. It was pretty disappointing for a game released in 1990, and while the visuals were of a higher standard, they too were well below the expected for the time. That being said, the creators clearly knew what they wanted in their environments, and the details are at times quite impressive. For example, when the pod leaves Solus and makes its way back to the shuttle, the player can clearly see the variations in thrust required to accelerate, decelerate, change direction, descend, slow the descent etc. Unfortunately, this “realism” was almost completely negated by the poor quality visuals. The colour selection was painful to look at, the creature drawings laughable, and the animation resembled anything but accurate motion. It’s a shame really, and I found myself wondering often how much better the game would be with more impressive technology. The truth is, with the right visuals, sound and interface, Earthrise might have been a classic, since it got a lot else right. Probably the only aspect that I feel wasn’t affected by the crappy graphics were the death scenes, which remained fun and humorous despite their goriness. I’m not sure that would have been the case had the visuals not had such a cartoonish style.
Rating: 3

The graphics guy perhaps misinterpreted the instruction to draw a "horrible monster"!

Environment and Atmosphere
The environment on Solus at first appeared quite limited, with a sparsely populated surface area. It quickly expanded beneath the surface to the point where I was quite stunned by just how big it was! I mapped out the whole asteroid in Excel, and I have to say it all fit together in a very satisfying way. It shows how much effort was put into planning for the game, even if the result rarely reached that level of professionalism. I know it’s purely science fiction, but the various locations were in line with what one might expect to see on a real base of this type. Living Quarters, Engine Room, Recreation Room, Research Laboratory etc. The atmosphere created by this environment and the reasons for being there were really very strong, but I do think it failed to make the most of it by falling short in the visual and audio departments. If I’d heard background sounds that hinted at potential danger nearby, and then ran into convincing and truly threatening creatures within the sections and adjoining tunnels, the experience might have been an incredible one. As it was, the silence offered nothing and the visuals were often cartoonish (particularly the creatures). On the plus side, the humor was surprisingly effective, with some very memorable death scenes that were both shocking and hilarious.
Rating: 6

There were no shortage of environmental surprises in store for me too!

Dialogue and Acting
There were no NPCs in Earthrise if I exclude the various alien creatures found both on the surface of Solus and stalking the tunnels within the base. I had no conversations with anyone, so traditional dialogue played little role (there were a few notes left in the base that were written by scientists but that’s about it). There was however a lot of descriptive text, and while it served its purpose well enough, it wasn’t really given any distinctive character. At times it was mocking (clearly inspired by Space Quest), and there were smatterings of humour included for those special moments where death came swiftly and violently, but otherwise the narrative was purposefully yet unobtrusively descriptive. I noticed a few grammatical issues, but it wasn’t much worse than the run of the mill Sierra adventure games of preceding years. I did find it humorous that the writer regularly excused himself from producing convincing scientific explanations by blaming the character’s intellectual abilities. Comments like “you start to wish you had paid more attention in your biochem classes at the academy” and “you begin to feel like you’re a little out of your league” popped up whenever things started to get technical. Was it lazy or clever...maybe both?!
Rating: 4

The descriptions were not particularly pleasant to read, but they achieved what they set out to do.

Well that's 4 + 3 + 5 + 3 + 6 + 4 which equals 25, divided by 60 = 41.66666, which is 42 when rounded up. That leaves Earthrise tied with Black Cauldron and one behind Neuromancer. I definitely enjoyed Earthrise more than both of those games, so I'm going to use my discretionary point to raise it to a 43. That's certainly higher than I expected prior to playing, but I feel it's justified.

Did anyone predict 43? No, but Ilmari predicted the "actual" score of 42! Ilmari played the game before making that prediction, so I'm happy that he too was able to look past the obvious flaws to find a decent and entertaining game beneath. Well done Ilmari, you've won the King's Quest Collection from Steam. I have a feeling you might already have the games included, but I'll leave it up to you as to what you want to do with it if that's the case.

130 CAPs for Lars-Erik

• Sponsor Award - 20 CAPs - For sponsoring the blog with free games

• Treasure Hunter Award – 20 CAPs – For finding and sending me the game manual!

• Request for Assistance Award – 20 CAPs – For giving me the hints and spoiler I needed to progress

• D-Fend Reloaded Award – 10 CAPs – For telling me the latest version fixes my loading issue

• Bee Oxygen Consumption Award – 10 CAPs – For overanalysing the death of poor Eric

• Greedo Caption Contest – 10 CAPs – For proving that Han shot first

• Missing Points Award – 10 CAPs – For figuring out what I missed

• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing an adventure game sale on GOG

• Eric Half-A-Bee Award – 5 CAPs – For figuring out what the creators were referencing with Eric

• Conspiracy Award – 5 CAPs – For conspiring in the malevolent torture of Tricky

• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on GOG

• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing an adventure game sale on GOG

• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on GOG

70 CAPs for Ilmari

• Freddy Pharkas Award – 30 CAPs – For solving my Freddy Pharkas riddle

• True Companion Award – 20 CAPs – For playing the game with me and completing it

• Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – For predicting the score I would give the game

• Minor Request for Assistance Award – 10 CAPs – For giving me additional hints and spoiler

51 CAPs for Canageek

• Bee Oxygen Consumption Award – 10 CAPs – For overanalysing the death of poor Eric

• Porno Caption Contest Award – 10 CAPs – Bow chika wow wow

• Alien Muppet Award – 5 CAPs – For deciphering my Ridley Scott / Jim Henson crossover reference

• THX-1138 Award – 5 CAPs – OK, it might have been obvious, but he got it

• Tears in Rain Award – 5 CAPs – For recognizing my Blade Runner reference

• Man Formerly Known as Prince Award – 5 CAPs – For picking my Purple Rain reference

• Conspiracy Award – 5 CAPs – For conspiring in the malevolent torture of Tricky

• Tool Time Award – 5 CAPs – For picking my Home Improvement reference

• Captain Obvious Award – 1 CAP – For finding my ridiculously obvious Star Trek reference

25 CAPs for Zenic Reverie

• True Companion Award – 20 CAPs – For playing the game with me and completing it

• Conspiracy Award – 5 CAPs – For conspiring in the malevolent torture of Tricky

20 CAPs for Cush1978

• Treasure Hunter Award – 10 CAPs – For finding a boxed version of the game for sale with the manual

• Roger Wilco Caption Contest – 10 CAPs – For a very nice Roger Wilco reference

10 CAPs for Charles

• Poltergeist Award – 5 CAPs – For figuring out my Poltergeist reference

• Wanton Destruction Award – 5 CAPs – For figuring out my Sam & Max reference

10 CAPs for TBD

• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing an adventure game sale on GOG

• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing an adventure game sale on GOG

10 CAPs for Rowan Lipkovits

• CompuServe Award – 10 CAPs – For explaining the strange code that appeared in the game

5 CAPs for Kenny McCormick

• Conspiracy Award – 5 CAPs – For conspiring in the malevolent torture of Tricky