Kronolog - More Games About Buildings and Food (Request for Assistance)

Written by Morpheus Kitami

Last time, I stopped just after the Proconsul's secretary told me I had something to pick up in his office. It's another elevator down, and as I go down to floor F, I get told that today's thought is "remember the Zeppelin". Some interesting stuff here, cuttings from the now defunct Black Forest, and in this world, everyone's a big fan of Ministry's hit song "Everyday is Flag Day". Well, in Germany everyday is Flag Day, anyway. I wonder if the door I can't enter is a trap or not, or in fact, where I'm actually supposed to go. Oh, looking tells me. I appreciate that a lot.

Sweet digs, but I can't help but notice that the secretary isn't here. On the right we have some classy stuff, pay no attention, it's just there for flavor, you can't even open the cabinets. The game calls the painting on the right a mediocre example of German naturalist, but it still looks better than most modern art I've seen. The one in the back looks about right.

I go behind the desk and the scene changes. Somewhat unnecessary, because as soon as I look at the desk, other actions are invalid...

 

...We get to see the top of it. Despite the usefulness of these items, we can't take them, because the secretary would miss them. We get a pretty snazzy lever opener, a pen, and despite that multi-color object seeming useful, a USB stick maybe? It isn't actually related to anything, instead I can see a flyer under it. Instead, I just take the CD here. Guess Hoffmann won that after all.

As I leave, a fax arrives, which despite what it would seem, I have to look at the desk again. It's an order to terminate Philip, my character's son. I take it and then the secretary pops up. It seems she didn't spot me, because she goes on like I was just waiting here. She tells me that the Proconsul was called into an emergyency session with Dr. Melchior Grossman of Los Alamos. Hoffmann knows him, despite the secretary stating they are at odds, he needed our help with a toxic waste problem and a cockroach infestation. The secretary doesn't care about that, because this building is crawling with them. Let's check that other room I can enter, since I suspect the blocked off door will result in my death. (Later, I found out I was right)

It's the bathroom. With another locked off door, a janitor's closet I suspect. This, I suspect, is a puzzle. If I use that water fountain there, cockroaches enter the men's restroom, on the right. (It has the politically correct sign of a man in uniform) As they're carded, I can't waltz into the women's bathroom.

The men's room is mostly occupied. Guess their regular rations are coming out like bricks. I can do the old jiggle the handle trick or try to talk to them, but they just get mildly annoyed. One of them has crushed some cockroaches, which produces the pretty great line of "You can't reach the squashed cockroach from here. (Hopefully, you're not too disappointed)" Unfortunately, despite some hints that I could pick up the cockroach or the squashed cockroaches, all three very tiny objects, including one in the urinal there, I can't. Not with the rag or the gloves I just picked up on the side. There's also a condom machine, which I question why the strict Nazis would have. Can't pay for it either way, no coins.

I go back to the lobby, fearing I missed something important but without a way to justify doing it. Dr. Grossman is here. He's here to take a bio-chamber to Los Alamos, and he asks Hoffmann about his new strain of bacteria. Apparently Hoffmann's last contribution ended badly? He asks for a barrel to take to Los Alamos, and after Hoffmann agrees, Grossman tells him to keep an eye on his boy. He's done some questionable activities down in New Mexico. Apparently he's been downplaying what anti-regime actions he's taken, though considering what we know if he has it hasn't been that helpful. As he leaves I notice something on the benches. Hey, it's a coin. Damn it, I better restart. Like this game is going to let me go back down into the office.

Right, coin, put in the machine, and now I have a condom. I don't know why I need it, perhaps it's a red herring. I won't know until later in the game. As I leave, music plays again, I forget I had my sound on, considering it's dead silence outside of the intro and voice tracks. Perhaps this is how the game did it on floppies. We get narration about how Hoffmann is confused and angry, heading back to Hoffmann Envirotek, to form a plan to rescue Phillip.

We get an exterior shot, ride up the elevator, only to get a message on our intercom for someone named Ian.

I suspect most of the similarities with our own world is just because crappy governments are universally terrible.

He's someone important at Envirotek, and more importantly, he thinks Los Alamos is ripping us off somehow. Hoffmann brings up his son, and the person who fingered him as a dissident, Eric Latimore. Ian offers to book a flight for us to New Mexico, but Hoffmann tells him to stay safely out of it. Right...now what do I do here? I have a sneaking suspicion that...

...of course the foreground is a room transition. On the left we have a flashing red light, telling me that I have holo messages. That doesn't activate it, that's the center console, which I need a card for. I check all the books and stuff, there's a joke about Encyclopedia Germanica and some annoying kid in their ads. (Ads, for books? It's been so long I don't remember) There's a joke about the plant being on the shelf so long it's had quite the shelf life. The drawers are a red herring. Oh, and a mysterious package on the table from New Mexico. You have to check the label otherwise you examine the box itself.

Well, I better open it. Even though it has no return address, I have every reason to suspect the Nazi Unabomber is after me, or at the very least the Nazi Party themselves. Inside is a strange device, a large diamond referred to as a crystal, because it's a fake crystal, and another CD. Oh, I get it, it's a weird CD player. The 75th Anniversary CD is just a short video of Reinhardt. Yippee. I'd toss it, but I have a CD I actually care about, and maybe I need to to pull the old switcharoo on someone.

Snazzy college sweatshirt, we sure this guy isn't still in it?

But the other CD is of Hoffmann's son telling us about the time travel device, which is apparently the Salokrys, a sacred artifact of the Lakonas, which the Nazis used in their time travel research. Proconsul Zimmer has the Salokrys, so what I'm supposed to do is substitute the real crystal for the fake one I just got. The Lakonas believe that getting the real thing back will cure a disease that's ravaging their trip, and in a way I suppose it will, because no doubt we have to use it to restore the timeline. Now what?

I go to the next screen over, since I'm not clear on my next step, and undoubtedly something important is here. There's nothing in the lab coat, and I can't pick it up, so that's one crisis averted. We got an Oppenheimer wall calender. (HUH?) A table of the staphylocorus family tree, bacteria. A T-Rex toy on the left, apparently they've cloned dinosaurs. There's also a bunch of lab equipment, can't use it right now. I guess I'll leave now.

The game takes me here as I leave the elevator. It looks like a storage area. I can open and close various gates, but this reveals it's actually a shipping area. In the foreground is a barrel of bacteria with a shipping label on it, which I can take off. To the right is a switch that can send out more barrels, full or empty ones, so I send an empty one out and slap the sticker on it. It's possible that I have to do a more complex action, but I can't see any way of doing that. I move back and forth a couple of times, only to find out that to advance I had to enter the barrel. Okay, I would not have figured that one out.

Now I'm in Nazi HQ, the building I was just in. If I press that button I can go back to the bathrooms, but this is useless since I don't have a card nor can I do anything in the secretary's office, I automatically lose if I walk there. (If I haven't mentioned it, it's nothing special) Reloading, I spot a bungee cord I can remove from the totem pole, which then destroys the barrel I was in. I'm sure this will be useful. Hopefully nobody comes running.

East, behind a very well hidden button, is this electrical room. The thing on the left is the Venus de Milo, maybe, and the thing on the right is a hidden painting. Hoffmann says if it's a 21st century painting, it's sure to be awful. Just like in our timeline. ;) I can't do anything here though, which is great.

To the right is a laser field guarding Zimmer's private collection. Aha, now I can use that trick with the sharpened tube. I just need to find one. Oh, I can't go through that other door in the area. Uhm...well...I knew this was going to happen sooner or later. Can I get away with using one of the CDs I have? No. I guess I better start looking back then.

At this point, there are three things I logically need to do. Find a transparent tube, something to sharpen it with, and how to read my holo messages. The first and third should not be hard. I have seen flourescent tubes in Nazi HQ, and Hoffmann's office has a ton of transparent tubes. One of these should be valid. Three sets of cabinets and a half dozen pieces of lab equipment, give me something! The third, come on, how could my holo message not be easy to read? I get a light, but I can't use it, I can't just use my CD machine, and there's a holographic thing in the lab, but it does nothing.

I futz around some more for a while, trying to find something I can interact with. I find a lot of hidden hotspots, but nothing I can actually use. Things like roaches, water fountains, but nothing I can use. Also, I realize I didn't take the gloves in my saves after the bathroom, but this isn't useful yet. I want to point out that Hoffmann moves slowly. Not unreasonably slow in real life, but unreasonably slow in a game.

I then find what I missed. Figuring out an alternative solution to the laser puzzle, I discover that I can open this...uh...object of art. I find the panel, which requires the wrench I randomly picked up at the start, and reveals the Bavarian Health Spa. It needs a code I completely overlooked because I thought the thing was a leaflet next to a USB stick of some nature, but it was actually a keyring with the code on it. (Fortunately, I have a screenshot)

I find this funny, just after a discussion on the topic, that it's Kronolog that actually solves the whole issue in a clever way. In both cases, the color has the first letter there. And it tells you what color you're looking at, which for once is a helpful use of the dumb "It's so-and-so object" complaint. This is a game that seems like it wants to reward observation, as we saw with the coin, but it's also a game with a thousand useless hotspots that don't even add anymore flavor. Nor can it be bothered to tell me that I should give a toss about a random series of colors on something that could look like a number of things. I'd congratulate it if I didn't find not having the code as a separate hotspot awful.

We get a silent sequence of Hoffmann opening it, to reveal nothing, then of Hoffmann entering it...and I'm dead and back to square one. It's a cryopod. This doesn't help me at all! I look around some more. Maybe closing the doors on the other side helps? Well, in the final room it turns it dark, so I don't know. Maybe entering the cyropod is a puzzle I need to solve? Maybe, but I can't figure it out just yet. You wanna know what I found? Push one of the seemingly inconsequential boxes, of which most others are generic useable objects.

This puts it on its side, where I find out its from the "Black Hole Supply Company", inside is a spelunker's helmet. You know the kind, the ones with flashlights on them. You might be thinking that I could take out the blub to use as a tube. No. You might be thinking I could use it in the dark room. No. You might be thinking I'm feeling very frustrated right now. Yes. I don't know what to do, so let's check Red Hell now.

Red Hell

The main lobby is decorated in Kitch-N-Sync mode and there's a bust of Lenin where there was nothing before. I didn't notice these last time. The in-game manual was just a reference to the out-of-game manual, unfortunately. The game is also noticeably jankier in playability and movement. I'm constantly getting pop-ups in during events and dialogs from me clicking through the game. You should still remember the zeppelin.

To our right we have a mediocre example of Ukrainian naturalist art, which is a reference all right. The flag on the left was poorly done, apparently, because it's smaller than the Nazi one. On the desk we have the same letter opener, it's just got a star on it, and it's still a Bavarian Health Spa. That's about it, I'm still stuck in the same place I am in Kronolog, because it's almost exactly the same game except worse in every possible way.

Request for Assistance; I have a fever right now and I don't really feel like going through another look over of everything while barely sure I'm still sentient. I thus ask the following:

Am I missing an item? I have all the required ones, and of missable ones, I have the condom, gloves, rag, wrench, bungie cord and spelunker's helmet. (I feel like this item list would be indistinguishable with an 'Allo 'Allo adventure game)

What exactly am I supposed to be doing now? I know I'm doing something wrong, but the correct path isn't clear. Is it just an item or can I actually solve it now?
What can I toss? Self-explanatory.

20 CAPs for each individual answer. Also, apparently some of you didn't get your assistance CAPs from Veil of Darkness, this will be rectified at the end of this game. (Or whichever game gets finished first)

This Session: 3 hours 30 minutes

Total Time: 4 hours 30 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!