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Reply to Re: Crazy Old Tim Plays all the DMODs of 2001

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March 11th 2014, 08:38 PM
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Cocomonkey
Bard He/Him United States
Please Cindy, say the whole name each time. 
102: The Hunt (WIP) Author: Thom C. Vedder Release Date: June 7, 2001

Oh man, it's this guy! I didn't expect to hear from the author of "Pointless" and "Scar of David 2" again. Actually, I quite liked Pointless. That one's still worth a download.

The readme tells us that this DMOD is an experiment and proclaims, "There is no overused plot, not washed up dialog and no attempt to create a game just because I like to tell really stupid stories. This game is meant to play, and play it you shall."

Well, you've got that right, Thom. Play it I did, but there wasn't a lot of point to doing so.

"The Hunt" is a test for a system wherein Dink receives "credits" each time he kills a monster. This is in addition to the regular experience points. You can use credits to raise your stats or to buy weapons or the fireball spell. It's also possible to trade 1000 gold for 100 exp (what a ripoff!).

I suppose this system could be implemented into a DMOD to give it a different feel where grinding is very important and you have clear targets to grind towards. Here, there's no point at all. There's absolutely nothing to do or accomplish, and I think that in the few words I've written above, I've already given you as good an idea of how the system works as you'd get from playing it (or showing you screenshots). There is no reason to download this at all.

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On June 28, 2001, I finally admitted to myself that I was never going to finish Crossroads, and I made the mistake of emailing the "Crossroads mess" to redink1 rather than leaving the trailer well enough alone. I happen to have some of the text from the email here.

"Oinky II turned out to be a 200 year old pig named Merlin who belonged to a powerful wizard who lives in a dimension where time does not exist. Zink and the dream wizard return for a boss battle."

Wow. Is my pig a wizard? Is my wizard a pig? I don't remember this at all. I think that Malachi the Jerk is clearly a better DMOD than Crossroads was ever going to be, so I guess things worked out OK.

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103: Dink vs Zagor (Demo) Authors: Chris and Jim Arapidis Release Date: June 30, 2001

Dink knows the score. Yes, this is another DMOD. Another DMOD in which Dink is sent on a mission by a King (it's apparently King Daniel's brother, but I'm pretty sure even that or something like it has been done before). Another DMOD featuring an evil wizard. Another DMOD in which Dink must fight goblins. Boy, is this ever another DMOD.

In other words, there isn't a lot to make this one stand out. I will say that, considering that the description calls it a "short, really short demo," it's surprisingly substantial. It took me forty minutes, and I attained the rarely-seen level 6. The maps are decent, even quite good in spots, until you notice the many depth dot errors. It wasn't a bad DMOD, but if you've played DMODs you've seen it all before.

One thing that kind of interested me was the challenge. The early game is filled with enemies you aren't well-equipped to challenge. You've got to be careful while finding powerups and leveling up. It was tough and kind of fun for a little while. I liked how there were lots of powerups to find, but for once, it felt balancing rather than unbalancing.

Some other things held this one back in addition to how "samey" it was, though. The spelling was pretty bad, and many buildings had doors you simply couldn't enter. There's at least one part with an invisible (edge of screen) wall. Overall, it just wasn't that interesting.

And then there's the boss, Trog the goblin. He's so fast, strong and tough that I am convinced he's not supposed to be beaten normally (although if that's the case, locking the player in with screenlock was a bad idea). Even filling my inventory with elixirs didn't help. You can find a throwing axe, but due to Trog's defense, he's invulnerable to that attack. The only shot you have at beating him is if he gets stuck on the edge of the screen, which he's prone to do. I found, however, that you don't have to fight him at all. Thanks to the invisible wall I mentioned earlier, you can glitch right past the hardness blocking off the section after him and move on to the final section of the DMOD.

Really, this one wasn't bad, but it left so little of an impression on me that it's already fading from my mind. At least the core gameplay was solid. You don't encounter a lot of DMODs that put you up against such a stiff challenge without feeling unreasonable.

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If you haven't already checked out my Screenshot LP of Dink Smallwood, give it a look! It's different than you might expect.