999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, 9 Doors (DS)

Finally, got my hand on the first game in the series

So I finished of the trilogy, just like in the series ending at the beginning. This one I had to import since it was never released in Europe, but thank god for the region free DS and a American copy. As with the other games you start trapped in a room and have to escape and from there you learn that a bomb is within in you and you have 9 hours to find the 9th door that will let you escape. Together on this adventure is nine other people, June, your former classmate/girlfriend. Ace, the cool collected old man. Snake, the blind know it all. Santa, the white haired pretty boy. Clover, the sister of Snake and the girl from the second game. Seven, the amnesiac African-American (I think). Lotus, the walking fan-service and the ninth man... who gets blown up the moment he appears pretty much. You yourself is Jumpei, the only character that have appeared in all three games. And June is Akane that he kept looking for in the sequel and then tried to propose to at the end of the third game. And since playing these out of order I know she was the one responsible for the whole game. I didn't know why until this game though.

So basically it began 9 years prior when Akane, Santa (her brother named Aoi) and Snake had been kidnapped by a pharmaceutical company for illegal experiment in order to find those that could transmorph information between people. Seven was a detective that was able to track them down and trying to save them while Ace was the CEO of the company together with the 9th man who created the experiment. Akane was captured again and by communicating with Jumpei across time and space was able to escape so Aoi and Akane recreated the experiment to get revenge as well as save Akane. Besides these people two other is on the ship as well. Ace right-hand man and the companies financier. Both who met gruesome ends. 

Now, had I gone in blind and went from game to game I might have enjoyed it much more since they really perfected the gameplay. I felt it at times unplayable. You can't jump between scenes, you have to go from the start to the end (you can of course restart any time, but you have to redo the puzzles nevertheless). You can't write down codes or such in game and not a single document is saved in playthroughs. In the end I sat with a walkthrough to redo the rooms I've done the quickest possible way. At least there isn' any game breaking bugs like in the second game. The story works though, although it confuses me a bit in things they hinted in this game and completely dropped in later instalment. For example Alice (the character from the second game) appears here first as hinted to be a mummified woman locked in ice that de-thaws and releases her. And then as stated an important character in the second game and then she is dropped, even though she was a huge deal for two games. And I don't get Lotus character. She really doesn't have any important story element to her and she is the only one that isn't connected or know the other people in the game. I can't help but feel she's there for eye candy.

Looks good for a 40 year old

Apparently she was a mother to two daughters and they were used in the episode 9 years ago. I don't recall the game mentioning that? And she is also born in 1987... that hurts since every other character describe her as an old lady, but she is the same age as I will be when the game takes place in 2027. Well, at least that gives her a connection to the rest of the characters. Another thing that bothers me is that the abilities seems to shift in the other games. In those games the ability you possess enables you to jump between alternate timelines, but it seems more focused on shared information in this game. Certain characters store information in some kind of all-encompassing life force that other people can tap into anywhere and use it to their advantage or being mislead by the people send the information. It could be hinted that the ending with Jumpei saving Akane in the past hints on the larger scope, but it feels like the idea was evolving a bit. And now that is over. Now I got a real itch for a fourth game.

Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma

Great, 9 new characters to second guess during all the game

I just had to get more of the Zero Escape-series after Virtue's Last Reward and since there was no release for the original game I had to go for the sequel. And they went full 3D so the gore is amplified as well as more explicit than the other game. The music is the same and still creeps me out and beckons my interest in the mystery. Pretty much the same premise, 9 people trapped in an underground facility with bracelets on their wrists. The difference being that they are already assigned teams, Carlos, Akane and Junpei in C-team, Q, Mira and Eric in Q-team and Diane, Phi and Sigma in D-team. They have signed up for some Travel to Mars-excercice and after 5 days being locked up by someone wearing a plaugemask offering them a coin toss option. Guess right and they are free to go or get it wrong and play the Decision games with Zero II. I guess red and... wins the coin toss. Everyones put to sleep and let out and credits roll. That was easy.

Of course to really get it you have to explore all possibilities so lose that coin toss. The three teams are relocated to separate wards and after 90 minutes put to sleep by the bracelets as well as administrated a drug that erase their memory. Meaning you don't play the game linear as before, but jumps between fragments that appears if everything leading up to them are fulfilled. You all remember the first decision game since you are forced to vote for the two other teams and the team that gets two votes are executed. In the last minute you find that the dog from the training centre can go between wards and carries a container that you can send messages with so C-team who gets it first sends out instructions how to spread the votes. Your first choice is to follow the instructions or chose the other team more or less betraying them. And then you are put to sleep and depending on the decision of your current group and the other groups you get 4 separate outcomes. One of the three teams gets executed or the plan works and you are taken to a decontamination chamber where you again have to decide to either press a button that forces the other teams being showered with some acid that turns them to sludge that disappears in the drains. If no one presses it you end up with a [Force Quit Box] where you need passwords you can't access in that timeline so it's time to jump around.

So who are all these people? Carlos is a firefighter that entered the program to get $ 500 000 to cure his sister. Akane is the old woman from the last game that infiltrated the program with Phi and Sigma to stop the outbreak of Radical-6. A younger Junpei from the last game had tracked down Akane and followed her into the program. Diane is a nurse that tried to escape her abusive ex-husband and Mira and Eric are a couple... with problems one might say. Eric is prone to snapping and be very abusive which probably has to do with his abusive alcoholic father that entered some depression after his wife died and Mira... is a serial killer that rips peoples heart outs while they are still beating. And Q is some child with a huge helmet over his head he can't get off. And this is the simple story elements. In actuality Diane is the person Sigma modelled Luna from the last game after and is pretty much his lover. In this game it's also revealed that Sigma and Diane is Phi's parents that sent her back in time through an alien teleporter that was discovered in Germany in 1888. I see they went and threw away all of Knox commandments when doing this game. And she apparently have a twin brother named Delta. Phi is also patient Zero in the Radical-6 outbreak in the timeline following Virtue's Last Reward, but how that works I don't know since she must have been cured or maybe they didn't give her the disease like with everyone else since she was already infected and the reason she volunteered?  Akane is psychotic and bash Carlos to death at one point for killing Junpei in an AB-game. And Junpei doesn't get it better as he is carved up in different pieces and his head is put on a display in a freezer. And the boy Q is a robot without any head behind the helmet that Zero put there and get's the most tearjerking endings in the game, the first when he stays behind with the chained up dog Gab since he couldn't leave him in the shelter and then when he sends his conscious into a virtual reality where he gets to play out the life of the real boy he was modelled after, Sean who died from some incurable disease. And he gets to live in a happy family, go to school and have friends... oh boy, how can I feel so much for a robot AI within a game?

So you might be thinking, who's the mastermind behind this? Obviously it's Delta, but he is not 20 years old like Phi since both travelled through time to the year 1908, but Phi was teleported to 2008 after that so Delta is 124 years old. And he can read peoples minds and for a short while take control of a persons body. He calls it mind hacking. Apparently he was with Q-team all the time if I guess right, but he sits in a wheelchair and is supposed to be both deaf and blind. His reason is to force them to jump between alternative histories so he assure his and Phi's birth with their powers (Phi's being able to SHIFT timelines) and then making them all regain their memories and take the place of those winning the coin toss in order to fight for a better future since the Radical-6 plan was to stop a religious cultist engaging in a nuclear war killing all 8 billion people by leaving 2 billion people alive after the virus take care of the others. I assume they hint that yet another game where you have to take care of that person. Also Alice and Clover tried to get back to their time and K apparently shifted back in time and changed conscious with someone, but we don't know who. Now I really want to play the first game and I wonder if there will be a forth one.

So story is all over the place, but there is some problems with how the game plays. They made it worse. In the last game I could have the notes on the top screen so I didn't have to switch back and forth when writing passwords or such, but now I gotta switch. That annoys me to no end. Same with files so I can read the instructions while trying out a puzzle. Now I must read the files, jump out and open the notes and write them in. It's almost forcing me to pick up pen and paper like in the olden days. The big downside I gotta say. Otherwise a fun game.

Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

And yet another image that reminds me of Resident Evil: Revelation

I wasn't gonna get this game since I waited on the game Ever Oasis that at the point just had released on the 3DS and awaited my Amazon copy... but it for some reason ended up at my parents house instead of having to pick it up at the pick-up zone. Damn customer service, and I spent 2 weeks talking about how bad the Swedish postal service had become (helped by the news bringing up several other problems at the time). Anyway, I got this game instead as a quick point- and click puzzle game. And it was interesting, best described as a Saw game, but with characters I actually care about, except Dio.

Not that Dio

Story is that you, Sigma, gets kidnapped on Christmas Day 2028 and wake up in some underground facility together with 8 other people, Phi, Luna, K, Clover, Alice, Quark, Tenmouijo (?) and Dio. An AI rabbit explains that you have to participate  in the Nonary games thanks to Zero, the person behind the kidnappings. To pursued you to cooperate you all have a bracelet on your left hand showing a colour, a number, time and if you are pair or solo. It also contains two needles, one with a anaesthetic that triggers first and 9 minutes later injects you with a muscle relaxant that stops your heart and lungs and kills you. It will activate if you break the rules or the number on the bracelet goes to zero or below. The colour and pair/solo tells which group you are forced to play with and the time counts down to when the next door opens. In pair of threes you need to enter a room, solve a puzzle to get out and find a card key to enter the AB-rooms where you play Ally or Betray. It works like the prisoners dilemma and you play against the others in the group you entered the puzzle room with. So depending on which group you choose to enter the rooms with and if you vote ally or betray the story changes.

Do you trust any of them?

So the overall question is why are we here? Where are we? When are we? And then they add who is the old lady that was found dead in one of the AB-rooms. Who is K as he have amnesia and is draped in armour that won't get off? Who is Zero? And who starts to kill people in certain story parts? There's gonna be spoilers here. So Alice and Clover was kidnapped around Christmas 2028, put into sleep and transported to the moon on one of the moon bases there together with Phi. It's the year 2074 to be exact. Ten... and Quark arrived later in search of the old woman and K is a clone of you, Sigma who have aged 40 years and is the Zero behind it all... except it's your future consciousness that have switched place with your younger one in order to go back to 2029 in order to stop a virus infection called Radical-6 that causes suicide and blew all of the worlds annihilator reactors that have decimated the human population. Ten is the older version of the protagonist from the game prior, 999 where Clover also was part in. Clover now works with Alice as a terrorist counter agency in search of the Myrmidons where Dio is a clone of the sects leader's brother. Dio is also the one behind the murder of the old woman, which you can save by jumping back in time (with your conscious) and stop it from happening. The whole project have been to train Sigma and Phi to get stronger and being sent back in time to stop this. Phi is a volunteer from the people behind Zero. Also the current Sigma have lost both his arms and one eye failing stoping it before, but hope they will succeed this other time. Luna is a golem robot Zero built.

So a complete mindscrew. The biggest twist for me was that we were 40 years into the future and on the moon (I thought one moment we were on Mars since it's mentioned in story) followed by that Sigma is in his 60's. Mostly contributed by "a false narrator". He believed he was 20 something so I believed him. Which proves that the Knox ten commandment of a murder mystery doesn't apply here. Was rather obvious when we start bring in telekinetic people and sending consciouses back and forth through time. Overall I liked the story and game. The puzzles just about right difficulty for me and the story kept me constantly guessing what the deal was. Problems I have with it is that parts of the game is broken. It isn't recommended to save in the puzzle rooms since there is a chance that the save could lock-up and since there is only one save, you have to play the game all over again. Especially in the PEC room. I got there after 8 hour and did the save and had to play the game all over again. The PEC room is very prone to shutting down the game and/or console for some reason. It took me 4 tries to get past that room. Apparently that have made a HD remake for PS4 or something like that, but the 3DS double screen really helped with the puzzle's, especially with the note taking. Wish they could port over the original game to the 3DS.