- Crysis (PC)
- Octodad (PC)
- Crysis Warhead (PC)
- Tomb Raider: Anniversary (PC)
- The Evil Within (PC)
- Torchlight (PC)
- Mass Effect (PC)
- The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (PC)
- Tomb Raider: Underworld (PC)
- Monument Valley (Android)
- Impossible Mission (Commodore 64)
I've finally gotten hold of a bread bin model C64, which unlike the later models will play those digital sounds that impressed so much back in the day. Another visitor! Stay a while! Stay forever! Unfortunately, this particular vintage that I got has one of the more aggressive and distorted audio filters in it, so not everything sounds great, and some of Hubbard's later work sounds decidedly terrible.
I still have a little CRT TV (long may it live), so no ugly pixelation, ghosting, jerkiness or control lag. It is not commonly known, but the C64 does s-video output, so with the right cables you don't get any of the awful color distortion present in the C64's composite and RF signals. I bought a new old stock Wico Command Control joystick that someone put on ebay a while ago, and it's just about the best joystick ever made. And of course I have my 1541 Ultimate-II, so I can play anything I want from a Micro SD card. All I could possibly wish for is a way to play games designed for NTSC at their proper speed. Maybe someone will think of something. Some day.
But enough about me. We're here to play...
IMPOSSIBLE MISSIONProfessor Elvin Atombender is working to break the launch codes of key military installations of every major world power and trigger a missile attack that will destroy the world.
You are Special Agent 4125. You must make your way through a set of randomly placed rooms, dodging cute but deadly robots, and search all the furniture you find for keycard pieces, 36 in total. You must combine these pieces into 9 keycards by solving visual puzzles on your pocket computer as the remaining seconds tick away in the corner of the screen. These puzzles really do seem impossible at first, but you click and you arrange, you mirror and combine, and suddenly you get something right and things start to make sense. When you have all 9 keycards and thus the password that will grant you access to Elvin's hideout, you race back through all the rooms trying to remember where you saw that locked doorway.
Oh those cute but deadly robots! Each robot is randomly programmed at beginning of the game, but they
are programmed, and they stick to their programs. Some robots change their behavior when they spot you, but they still follow a program. So for each robot you need to figure out what makes it tick, so to speak, then create a strategy for it that takes into account the topography of the room and the behavior of the other robots. Then you need to actually carry it out, through some fairly demanding platform action. Or you can decide that it is indeed impossible and spend one of those precious passwords that will temporarily disable robots in this room. If you run out of passwords, you can spend some of your valuable time in one of two special memory puzzle rooms to earn more.
You have 6 hours to complete the mission, which sounds like a lot, but every time you die you lose 10 minutes, and death lurks around every corner. In reality, the game takes less than an hour to complete, which is fortunate, since you can't save your progress. I think this is only the second time I've managed to beat it, and it was with something like 25 minutes left on the clock. It gets tense.
Gorgeous graphics. Sensational sound. Perfect game design. Great controls. One of the best games on the Commodore 64.