Just finished the first one. What am I in for?
A really comfy game
H.R. Giger was a hero of mine, I wish he was still around, I had always wanted to meet him
A game that's long as shit for all the wrong reasons and just not enjoyable. Get ready to exhaust hours figuring out who to talk to and what dialogue choice you need to make in order to have something happen so you can get some dumb item to do shit and/or have other dialogue options to exhaust on dumb characters.
Pretty much a shame considering the story is interesting, but thanks to shitty execution, bad production values, bad voice acting and just crappiness, it ends up being rather shit and with the ending poorly executed (Thinking about it, the ending would have worked, but of course thanks to shitty execution, it just feels like an insult for spending hours on a pretty bad adventure game), not to mention just about any game around the mid-90s did pretty similar stories with a much better execution (Phantasmagoria 2 being a good example as it is essentially psych horror with the "My friends and acquaintances are suddenly murdered, people think it's me, was it really me? I don't remember, but can I trust myself?" story). Darkseed 2 really is a game that should have been done well or just not done at all honestly, and obviously it got done, and it wasn't done well, so it's existence isn't really justified out of laughably bad scenes.
>>4258536
I guess some of the normal world parts are alright looking though, but really, you might as well just look at screenshots or watch the damn game on youtube, it would do you a favor.
>>4258546
Did you kept this whole review in the clipboard waiting for someone to make a DS2 thread?
>>4258550
No, I just end up saying similar shit whenever I come across a Darkseed 2 thread where the question usually is "What went wrong?". I actually did play through the entire game and it ended up being a rather painful couple of hours, and most of those hours in the game was spent just walking around the world, clicking on shit, exhausting every possibility in dialogue multiple times just to see if one would make the story actually progress. Like I said in my previous post, it's long for all the wrong reasons and it just doesn't have that much meat to it as a lot of your time is spent exhausting options and searching the world for options to exhaust, it just doesn't have anything to make that time interesting like most other games have, not even any real puzzle besides the damn maze. The game would have been much more enjoyable if it were more focused, concentrated and had better production values, but what we ended up getting was a game that could have had a lot of potential, but thanks to crappy design, it feels like a slow mess.
tl;dr: Darkseed 2 had the potential to be good, but it's a slow and painful mess. Don't believe me, look up that one video where some idiot played that in one sitting for 8 hours.
the retsupurae is more enjoyable to watch than to play this game
i liked the first one but this is much better. Not only just the visuals but the writing, the puzzles are less obtuse, and it's a bit more accessible (except for the fucking maze puzzle at the end) but otherwise this is an good above average adventure game, especially if you like H R Geiger
>>4258505
A head explosion and an ending/epilogue that's cut short due to time/money.
It's pretty good. People are a little too hard on it. It's a lot better than the first one
Retsupurae memes.
>>4258746
>>4258767
>People like it over the first game
Why? The first game was actually pretty okay, even if it had some questionable design choices, it worked and stood out enough from other similar games with nice high res graphics and time limit. Story I can sorta understand as the first game had a much simpler and basic plot and the second one had a complex plot that got ruined by bad execution, but...
>Graphics are better
Yeah, bullshit, the graphics in Darkseed 2 might be higher res, but the fact is that most of the Normal world stuff is mid tier 3D art, and the dark world is pretty much a dumb photoshop mess of Giger art. At least the first game had nice atmosphere even if some environments were literally just digitized giger arts, for the second it's like they just gave up and slapped shit around.
>>4258972Hey, you missed, Pal.
>>4258720
Slowbeef and betus are pretty pretentious, so you might as well just play some playthrough that doesn't have commentary in a video synch thing and watch it with others. You really aren't missing anything other than flavor text, and as it's been explained to death, playing the game is painful and boring, you might as well just watch the damn thing on youtube.
Is Dark Seed 1 worth playing on Saturn/PSX? This thread has got me interested but I don't know if I want to take the effort to download and configure Dosbox just for the one game. I'd like to pick up and play as easily as possible, less time for me to get frustrated
>>4258878
The first game has no plot and is practically impossible to get through without a guide. At least the second game has an actual story and no dead-ends.
>>4259057
IIRC the Saturn/PSX version was a japan only release and entirely in moon runes.
>>4259072
Sometimes simple/mimimal stories are good in the fact that there's less to screw up in the story department, many otherwise great games can pretty much be completely ruined by story. I'd say Darkseed 2's story is pretty good, but the dialogue is pretty cringeworthy, along with the character of Mike Dawson in the second game... and I must repeat the whole "It was badly executed" thing.And Darkseed does actually have a story if you read the manual and text within the game, it's minor but it works for what the game is
>Impossible to get through with a guide
I'll give you that, though I'd imagine after a bit of experimenting with stuff, you'd get the hang with it without guide, and while this might sound absolutely insane, it is probably a better experience than the second game where you pretty much have exhaust a bunch of dumb dialogue options in order to have it's story progress.
>At least the second game has no dead-ends.
I guess technically speaking, it doesn't have unwinnable situations, but there's quite a lot of points where one would say "Okay, what the fuck do I do next? I seemed to have done everything and story isn't moving along" without guide, that and if my memory serves me right,there's that second required visit to the Hall of Death that the game never seems to hint that you need, and unless you resort to a guide, chances are you won't know, thus will instinctively avoid it in order not to get the "All is lost" scene.
>>4259080
Darkseed 1 on Saturn and Playstation has english voices, but moon rune text, Darkseed 2 is the one that had everything turned into Nihongo
>>4259057
I don't understand why people like you think setting up dosbox is some esoteric ritual that requires CSIII and 100 hours of effort. DOSBox's defaults are good for a lot. My current settings, barely tweaked from the originals, run everything I have except Tyrian2k flawlessly and about all I have to remember to do is to mount CDs if the game needs it. Just put forth some effort. It'll reward you, and it doesn't take long at all. There's also lots of front-ends if you're terrified of opening a plain-text file in notepad and manually typing a word, an equal sign, and another word for some reason. Maybe you've got horrible cramps from your lack-luster day job of entering data by hand on an ancient, rickety mainframe, idfk. Either way, you all make way too big a deal out of something painfully trivial. Makes me wonder if you're even old enough to have used a personal computer at the time.
>>4259285
Darkseed 1 can be little hit or miss for people to play in Dosbox since the the game essentially jumps between 2 executables (Start for cutscenes and TOS for all the game stuff).
Also, funfact, all the game's text is stored in TOSTEXT.BIN, so enjoy all the weird text and maybe even modify it (I tried, it actually works)! Also I think the graphics can be opened in Deluxe Paint on Dos, so hopefully some one with DPaint II can rip the graphics out and post them here, and maybe see if there are any unused ones
>>4259120
Simple, minimal stories are the kind I prefer. But in Dark Seed's case there is no character or story - barely even any on an inferential level. Felt like an afterthought to showcase Giger's art.
>>4259487
I thought it worked well for what the game was, and honestly, I think the advantage that Darkseed 1 had over the second was that it was a much smaller project that happened to be blessed by Giger's presence. For what the game was, the story helped move the game along, even if there's a void of unanswered questions of what exactly did happen to the previous owner, and how the ancients kidnapped you in the first place, but I thought it worked pretty nicely in a pretty moderately good but interesting looking sci fi TV movie way.
Darkseed II, the more I think about it, just feels like it could have very well have been unrelated to the first game, yet is a sequel probably because "Giger is more likely to come onto our project that way", and seems to aim a pretty high target it just can't really reach, though you can see the attempts. The story is pretty good and interesting, but for whatever reason, whether it's because they ran into budget limitations, didn't have the right people some deadline, or because of some error of communications between the writer and developers, it comes pretty short. While the story is good, the dialogue and voice acting is just laughable and Mike is pretty much a fucking joke of a protagonist. The game is practically a chore to play, and unlike the first game where you're spending time playing around with items and having various "Ah-ha!" moments, the second is pretty much "Search world find some thing that magically makes story continue", and the ending, oh god the endingDare I say it, the ending with Mike dying and revealing that he was the murderer, but thanks to how shoddy it was done along with the whole game, it just comes off as just confusing and gives off the feeling of "You literally just wasted hours trying to solve a mystery that was pointless". (to be continued because character limit)
>>4259567In a better world, maybe there would have been more hints to Mike being a killer instead of just Sticky seeing Mike beat up Jimmy in the pool hall while Mike could have sworn Jack beat him up, or Mike just having an autistic meltdown at an FBI agent, or killing Paul because he came at him with a knife, maybe there would be more shit that lets us question whether Mike is actually innocent, or whether he actually is a killer, but of course besides the 3 events near the final stretch of the game, the only thing you get is an asshole sheriff thinking you did it because "you were close and jealous". Then of course there's the whole Jimmy and Ramirez subplot that goes no where after Jimmy gets into a coma.
Then of course there's shit that just bothers my autism
>All the Fortune teller's comments about Hat rack pegs being occupied when you happen to give her stationary
>Sheriff Questions your skill with guns after you obliterate a shooting gallery, thinking that links you to the murders, despite them being related to head decapitation>That dark world portal in Paul's shrine that Mike doesn't even bother going through despite him mentioning it, for some retarded reason
>Mike's mother's head doesn't actually explode, as when that scene happens, you can just go back to the normal world and see that she's okay
>Missed opportunity to imply that Mike has drinking problem, probably would have been neat to imply that Mike occasionally gets drunk and goes into emotional violent rages, instead of just 2 justified uses of violence to defend himself or another and 1 just purely autistic one
>how the fuck did Mike go from pretty sane after the end of the first game, to being checked into psychiatric wards "after having an immediate psychological breakdown after the first adventure" like the manual suggests, to here?
Also fuck I need to post again
>>4259616
>Did this really need to be a sequel to Darkseed? Could basically have names altered, main character design changed, other world modified a bit and remove the rediscovery of the hologram, and it could have been it's own thing, but of course it can't really work without Giger, so of course it's a Darkseed sequel.
Could have went the Phantasmagoria 2 route and focus on another character in same universe who is psychologically damaged due to vague memories of going into the darkworld in his early childhood through the mirror in his closet, and while found ways to get over it, suddenly relapsed to being not only paranoid but also psychologically unstable, but that probably would have taken too much balls.
But really, maybe Darkseed in general was a mistake, maybe the only game that Cyberdreams needed to make was I have no Mouth and I must scream, and then just disappear into the sunset, considering that's the only game of theirs the majority unironically praise without most of the comments being Retsupurae memes.
God, I wrote a lot of fucking bullshit here that probably comes off as glorified autistic rambling, but yeah, Darkseed was a mistake
>>4258505
Anon, did you kill Rita?
>>4259567
>Mike is pretty much a fucking joke of a protagonist
Wasn't that the point? It's about a man-child who returns to his hometown yet things just can't go back to the way he remembered in an eerie way. Some of it is supposed to be darkly comic. This game never aimed to be literature.
>>4259771
It's quite a deviation considering he was a successful advertising guy in the first game who wanted to be a writer. Sure it's said "He suffered a mental break down" but it just feels purely retconned in when the first game ended with the librarian giving him pills and him selling the house with relieving music. Despite this, the manual for the second game pretty much implies that immediately after he foils the ancients' plans, he suffers a mental breakdown in that house.
Yes I actually did bother reading the backstory in the manual for these games
>>4258505
Just watch the retsu.
The plot moves so fast it'll make your head spin.
I like how Darkseed II populated the nightmarish parallel world with a bunch of stock adventure game NPCs and made you solve puzzles by running through their dialogue trees and giving them items. It really enhanced the unique atmosphere established by the first game.
>>4259841
I've always read that the reason for this is the real Mike Dawson, who helped program the first game and lent his image and voice to it, pulled out of the industry straight after and left Cyberdreams holding the bag. Making Mike a hapless loser with a dweeb's voice seems to be a deliberate response.
>>4260526
>Mike Dawson, who helped program
He was producer if I recall
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/dark-seed/credits
>>4260908
You're right, he is a noted programmer though, even teaches game design at a University somewhere I believe.
>>4261002
I wonder if anyone here has taken his classes at UCLA
>>4258543
In his later years he looked pretty much like a typical swiss grandpa, jolly kinda overweight white haired guy with his nice old swiss house with cats and a nice little garden through which he would occasionally run a small rideable electric train made of bones and meat hooks.