Welcome back my collective of nerd to Day 3 of PC Games of
1997. Journey with me to Westwood
Studios, creators of such games as: Battle
Tech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception, Mars Saga, Dungeons & Dragons:
Warriors of the Eternal Sun, Young Merlin and Monopoly
As these titles captured the imagination they still lacked
graphics punch up or an amazing voice cast all the while still dealing with
popular themes. This time they decided
to tap into one of Ridley Scott’s films but not retell the story but have the
game operate as more of an additional story during same time. So get ready to do some interrogation,
calibrate the Voight-Kampff machine and get ready to make wild gestures. This is Blade Runner.
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| I wish to register a complaint about your Norwegian Blue. |
Clovis: “I was angry
with my spoiler. I told my wrath, my wraith did end. I was angry with my foe. I
told my wraith, my wrath did grow.”
Our game opens with a typical cut scene showing our would be
villains tormenting a pet shop owner claiming all his animals are pure
pedigrees of the highest quality and the suspects felt that butchering these
creatures would teach him a good lesson in being truthful. Enter our hero/protagonist Ray McCoy (Mark
Benninghoffen of The Larry Sanders Show, Chicago Hope, Always Say Goodbey and
Money Talks) Rookie Blade Runner assigned to the case due to all other
Runners are tending more difficult cases.
Ray is happy to be doing something other than paperwork for a change,
his Lieutenant Guzza (Jeff Garlin of Hero, Robocop 3, Curb Your
Enthusiasm and The Goldbergs) a blobby and lazy man whose shirt and tie
looks like a casualty in a catering food fight gives him the heads up that he
is facing Nexus 6 Replicants (bioengineered droids who resemble humans) the
usual watch your ass rookie speech and shoos him away. Ray has never faced a Nexus 6 and is nervous
as hell.
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| My God I can see gravy stains in his neck folds! |
If you were hoping for some Deckard action team-up buddy cop
drama…well you are out of luck kids.
Sadly our Rick Deckard is referred in passing or and there are a few
gags of the same crime scenes duplicated from the film but no glorious
team-up. On the upside several members
of the original cast came in to reprise their roles.
And now a few points to be made about the game play. This is a point and click adventure game so
think the Monkey Island standings. From
solving puzzles, clues and getting people come clean with the info. We even have a few interrogations with the
Voight-Kampff device to gauge emotional reactions that Replicants cannot fully
duplicate. The gathering of evidence is
using your eyes and the mouse for an interactive system known as the Knowledge
Integration Assistant for easy access and allowing you to go over the Crime
Scene photos to look for further clues that may have been missed or hidden away
from you.
The overall look of this game fits the same crowd and
dystrophic environment of Los Angeles 2019 down to the Tyrell building from the
movie to the look of Chinatown and the 3D models is based in an amount of
pixels with width, height and depth rather than a scanned copy of background,
green or blue screen and rougher pixelation.
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| Alright subway rat, spread 'em! |
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