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Crab's Quest |  |
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By: S Maurkeediss (Lasher Productions) Homepage: None Download: 213 KB Reviewed by: Vegeta007 |
Have you ever had one of those days where the sun is shining, the air is fresh and the UFOs are falling? What? This is just the beginning of Crab Quest. A normal crab witnesses these unidentified falling objects crash into the earth and create an explosion. What else is Crab to do, except tell his friend Piranha about the recent events. After hearing about it on the television, Piranha joins and mentions that he has to meet someone at the item shop. That's okay, so they trundle over to the other brown structure(which has hidden walls and doors, by the way) and meet Flabbit, who proceeds to give Crab and Piranha an Elixir. After that you can wander around a bit or go to the southeast corner where there is a building. Upon entering the building, there is a crab in the way, but you can fight him so you can proceed. Another crab fight is ahead, followed by a great white shark. How a crab and piranha can take down a great white shark by themselfs is quite a feat, however, in the game, it is next to impossible. Your attacks only do one damage point, while the shark heals for around eight and hits you for around fifteen! One shot of Ctrl-F5 in a previous battle can change that, or you could just run away...take your pick. Anyway, going outside will result in Crab talking to what seems to be a cucumber that gives you an item that will always restore your MP. That's fine, but unless you actually KNOW some spells the feather is practically useless.
Moving along to the next area, whose door is hidden in the upper right corner of the map, we can actually have some random encounters! Aside from that, there is one building with some hyperactive fish that gives you a healing item, and two exits. The exit to the north leads to the deceased great white sharks' bigger brother, which spells disaster for you if you didn't Ctrl+F5 your way through the last fight. Even worse, when you defeat him/run away/die, the NPC is still there! Damn immortal sharks! When you return to the previous screen and exit west, there is a semi-decent maze set up in front of you. You can walk around and collect items, but be warned: trying to exit to the east dumps you back at the outside of Piranha's house! I know linking doors is tricky, and should only be done under adult supervision, but it's not freakin' quantam physics. *Sigh*...well, the other exit to the Bay of Wigs leads to a save point and some water that you can walk on. After walking to a certain point, Piranha decides he doesn't want to go ashore and leaves your party.
On the shore, you will see two villages: one straight in front of you and to the south. Going to the south one will result in Crab smacking himself and saying that he needs a "wolakian." Why? What? I have no idea. Thankfully the wolakian village is the other one we neglected, so a jaunt over there would help. In my experience with the wolakians, I discovered that they mostly live outside(because they are City Bums, his words, not mine), are very large, but very slow, so they don't move at all. Talking to their leader, Hydrak, reveals that he found an underground passage. Crab tells him about the crashing UFOs, and Hydrak joins you so they can explore the passage. (Vegeta007 blinks a bit.) Sounds like they were only talking to themselves there...
With the pathetically-weak-level-21-Hydrak in tow(literally, he has no walkabout animation), it's time to explore the other village. Only a few steps in, Hydrak mentions that the buliding in the middle has the secret passage, and all the others were locked. Okay...the inside of the middle building has bookcases along the wall, and Hydrak tells you that the tunnel is behind one of them. There are now random encounters, but, like the rest of the game, are damn impossible without the level up debug code. After following the seemingly endless tunnel, they stumble into the aliens lair. At least the ground looks better in this place. Battles in this place are semi-voluntary, as you will have to go through several alien NPC's(who, by the way, are hard) to reach Mother-bot. After a brief pre-battle conversation, a fight unlike anyother begins. As impossible as it seems, the Mother-bots' right hand can single handly defeat your party EVEN IF YOUR CHARACTERS HAVE USED THE CTRL-F5 ONCE! Other than that, the fight is easy, and the ship and all of the other bots start to blow up! Well...that's what the crab guy tells me, but all the bots you haven't defeated are still there, there is no timer, nothing that indicates that they are even in danger. When you get to the entrance of the base, Crab shouts in elation that they made it out alive. Upon exiting the ship, a voice yells out that you saved the world. Crab thinks it was Hydrak, who denies it up and down. Then the The End screen appears, and a BAM rendition of the X-files theme plays, and we are returned to the title screen.
Graphics - The graphics for Piranha were okay, along with some of the doorways to buildings. Crab was pretty basic, along with all of the other pallete-swapped NPC's. Hydrak and the other wolakians only had one frame facing up and down, and no movement at all. What a bad attempt. Tilemaps had next to no work put into them, which bored me beyond belief, with the exception of the alien base. In battle graphics were blocky, and no shading was used. All enemies and players used the same animation for a basic attack, and the spells were mostly harmless. The backgrounds were either badly done, or ripped. However, the enemy crab graphic was pretty nice, a little bit more detail and it would be pretty good.
Music - None. Nothing. Nada. There was NO MUSIC through this entire game, with the exception of the end. Honest to cheese, anything could have been better than that cold, unadulterated, silence.
Storyline - Crab sees UFOs and journeys to check it out, and ends up destroying the alien race. Average concept, poor execution, and not much stringing together the events that shape this game.
Gameplay - The one thing I must stress in this game is how the maker probably didn't even play their own damn game. The only battles that the player could fairly win were the random encounters against the crabs, which gave too little experience. Every other battle was a slaughter to the party. Wallmaps were poorly placed, and nonexistant in the room with the second Great White Shark. Healing items only healed outside of battle; opposite of where they were really needed. Also, there was next to no plotscripting done in the game. I could get the elixer before I even got Piranha, and the second shark still attacked me even though his little brother was still alive. Plus, if you try to leave the Bay of Wigs through the exit to the right, if warps you to the outside of Piranha's house. Text boxes are so-so.
Scores:
| Graphics: Really need some work on this one. | |
| Music: ONE track throughout the entire game. | |
| Storyline: Eh. Could have used a little bit of plot fillers. | |
| Gameplay: Battles are a nightmare, along with the badly placed doors and scripting. | |
| Overall (Not an average score): These badly done newbie games are going to drive me to drink.... |
Operation: OHR is owned and maintained by Kevin W. (Aethereal)