Reply to Re: Crazy Old Tim Plays all the DMODs of 2004
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203: Cloud Castle 2: Scarab Authors: James & Neil Troughton (SabreTrout & Arik) Release Date: September 25, 2004
"I should probably try to avoid doing anything stupid"
REPUTATION NOTE: This DMOD is one of the select group with a score of 9.0 or better (9.6) on The Dink Network.
This DMOD is recommended in Dink Smallwood HD.
*Waves to everybody who scrolled down here from the top without reading anything else*
Right now, I'm actually wondering why more title screens don't use in-game graphics. It works well here.
I was a little apprehensive about getting to this one. What if I didn't like it?
I didn't know what to expect after all the hype I'd seen. To live up to it, a DMOD would have to feel like more than just a DMOD. "Scarab" doesn't, which is fine. Actually, I loved the DMOD; it's just that a thing's reputation can get bigger than the thing itself. "Cloud Castle 2" is almost exactly ten years old; it's hard for a new thing (which this DMOD is to me) to live up to a memory. It's easy to say, "Ah, DMODs will never be as good as CC2 again." This happens in every medium.
There's an interesting readme file included with the DMOD that addresses this issue right from the start, actually.
SabreTrout says, "It's far too over-hyped, so I'm very sorry about that. Hopefully you will enjoy it though, as I feel it does have some pretty cool stuff involved."
Arik says, "Scarab is essentially a very simple d-mod that has had a lot of stuff pumped into it, and it's hard to tell whether it has remained fun along the way. But I enjoy parts of it. I hope you enjoy parts of it too."
These statements are right on the money. "Scarab" feels very much like a regular sort of DMOD with a lot of cool stuff pumped into it. It definitely remained fun along the way, which is an achievement worth celebrating.
*sigh* This is awfully familiar...
"Scarab" begins exactly how I remember "Cloud Castle" ending: with Dink getting his ass handed to him by Monkeynuts the Fairy. Seriously, that series of bosses was ridiculous.
Damn you, Monkeynuts. The biggest disappointment of the DMOD is that I don't get the chance to get my revenge on the stupid fairy.
The DMOD is set in a prison desert called Salamak, using Simon Kleabe's sweet desert graphics as usual. The game refers to it as a "desert prison," but that really implies a prison compound of some sort in a desert; Salamak is a pretty good chunk of magically-sealed desert made to keep in an evil Ancient or two and a bunch of poor sods whose psychic abilities power the enchantment somehow. The inmates have formed a small town that serves at the base of operations for the adventure. Dink goes out, undertakes some leg of the quest, and returns to regroup. This is a different structure from most large DMODs, which tend to move from location to location with only occasional, if any, backtracking. It's a nice change of pace, and it helps to emphasize the feeling of being trapped and to get the player very familiar with the little town and its immediate surroundings. By the end, I knew quite well where everything was. Still, the world is big enough that a map would have been nice. (EDIT: And there is one, I just never found it. Whoops.)
Wow. Disappointment Town could take lessons from this place on despondent signage.
Dink is accompanied at the start by a woman named Alessa, whom he met in the Cloud Castle. There are three different party members you may have accompany you. The game goes quite far with this. Not only can you "pull them out of your inventory" and have a conversation with them, but your partner will also join in on any conversation you have with an NPC. Since you can choose which character you'd like to have accompany you at some points, this means that there is alternate dialogue and even alternate versions of some cutscenes. You can even learn things when talking to one party member that trigger a dialogue choice when talking to another, and so on. It definitely adds depth for Dink to not always be alone on his adventures, and the amount of care put into this detail impressed me.
Partners can also heal you once per outing, which is awfully handy in a pinch.
I also have to give high marks to "Scarab" for getting quite a few good laughs out of me. Most of them were connected to the villains known as "Scarab Club 7," a group of troublemakers who keep getting in Dink's way for most of the adventure. These guys are an absurd bunch of bumblers with names like "Pencilhead" and "Lord Duckington," but they're also a credible threat and make for some tough boss fights. Pencilhead was my second-favorite of the team, with his lab full of notes on various crazy inventions.
To be fair, Dink can be a bit of a bumbler himself.
My favorite member of the Scarab Club was the seventh member, young Dink Smallwood. The team travels to the past and manages to recruit Dink from around the end of the original game to their cause. The game deals with the various vexing continuity problems this presents by resolutely ignoring them and pretending they don't exist. I'm OK with this.
Anyway, this unusual choice of villain highlights the differences between Dink as he was originally created and the character he's become, partly by necessity in order to have ongoing adventures, in the world of DMODs. In a very funny scene, young Dink confronts old Dink about what he's become.
Young Dink: You, however, can't even remember a simple spell for more than a couple of days at a time!
Dink: Uhh, that's not true
Young Dink: Damn right it's true! I know all about you, imposter
You never own a house for more than a week at a time!
All of your equipment gets stolen once a fortnight!
EVERY girl you rescue runs off sooner or later, and don't you deny it!
Dink the younger then goes on to belittle Dink's famed adventures:
Young Dink: You went on a gruelling quest... to heal a pimple on your nose!
You started hearing some freaky 'Green Voice' in your head!
A tree ordered you to kill a duck once... and you failed!
I even heard you once went on a Quest for Cheese!
Dink: Hey, that was really important. That was a good quest!
Young Dink: A. Quest. For. CHEESE!
It wasn't supposed to be like that! I was going to be a hero!
I was going to slay fearsome beasts, and find vast treasure troves
Everyone would revere my name, and I'd get to have SEX with GIRLS!
This scene is easily my favorite thing about the entire DMOD. Not only is it the cleverest riff I've seen on the constant continuity resets that plague Dink's existence, it also convincingly shows how Dink, for all his accomplishments, could look like a pretty big loser to his immature younger self if the wrong person was doing the explaining. The reference to "Valley of the Talking Trees" just about killed me, especially because Young Dink's line is an accurate summary of that DMOD's plot. A tree orders Dink to kill a duck... and he fails. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
Of course, Dink has also gotten to do plenty of those things his younger self dreams about, although his obsession with sex is a little bit sad. You know, I do wonder exactly how often Dink has really gotten laid. Sure, he has some (rather perfunctory, for the most part) sexual encounters in SimonK's mods, and I'm sure Dorinthia (that poor, oversexed girl) put out at some point, but the majority of Dink's wild sexual conquests are things we're just told about in various intros. For the most part, they sound rather unlikely tales of several women at once (or more, to ludicrous proportions), and I'm not sure it isn't just a bunch of empty bragging. I know that a lot of those statements are made to the empty air, but do you think that Dink is above lying about such things to himself just to make himself feel better? I'm not sure I do.
Or maybe DMOD developers have largely been a bunch of horny teenage males. Nah. Forget I said anything.
"Whatever, Smallwood." You know, it must be no fun when a girl can emasculate you just by calling you by name.
Oh, right, we were talking about some DMOD. "A Knight's Tale Part Cinco: Sweet Sir Jarvis's Badassss Song," or something. "Cloud Castle 2?" Close enough.
The bosses are pretty sweet. There's a lot of imagination and scripting wizardry put into making each of them a distinct experience. There's a fight against two opponents where one buffs and heals the other. There's a room full of cloning machines where you can only win by destroying the machines first. There's a guy who you can only hit with projectiles at first, and there are poles that will fling projectiles at him if you strike them, but doing so summons more enemies. Most of these fights are tough as nails. It was a real stretch for me to beat some of them. I wish I'd spent my extra gold on steelskin and healing potions when I had the chance.
There is a lot going on in some of these boss fights.
The dungeons feature some interesting traps and puzzles, especially the big, purportedly optional 'Temple of the Ancients,' which features spear, flame and arrow traps and a segment where Dink gets turned into a duck. The boss fight with Jameil really throws everything at you - enemies, flame traps, moving walls, rocks dropping on your head - but it feels curiously easy. The dungeon is supposed to be a super hard optional challenge, but I was completely unable to beat the regular final dungeon until I went back and did the "optional" one, after which reaching the ending was a piece of cake. The temple actually was a fun and slightly sadistic challenge, but the Big Bad was a bit of a letdown.
Jameil takes the form of the Room of Doom. That is a name that I made up, and I like it very much.
The rewards for beating Jameil kick ASS. A herb-boots-speed sword and spread shot Hellfire. I AM AS UNTO A GOD
If I have a complaint about this DMOD - and it's a minor one - it'd be that I think the gameplay balance could be improved a bit. I spent way too long marooned in dangerous situations without a weapon at the start, and I got into some frustrating situations with regularity. I say it's a minor complaint, though, because unlike some other mods (including this one's predecessor), it was never unreasonably difficult. Beating "Scarab" without cheating is tough - maybe a little too tough at a few points, depending on how you play - but reasonable. That's it, really. I didn't run into any bugs worth talking about. The authors (or maybe just Arik
) have shown impressive dedication in polishing this DMOD. Arik released a patch just a few months ago to fix a few minor, lingering issues. I wonder if it's because he saw me coming? Heh.
Mario would quit in protest if he saw THIS fire wand.
I've gone and gushed like crazy yet again. You might wonder why I wrote that paragraph at the start about hype if I liked this DMOD so much. The thing is that the hype seemed to me, at times, to raise the expectations to levels a DMOD couldn't reach. There's a point at which I feel like saying, "It's just a DMOD." It doesn't attempt to overreach that status as much as some other mods do. I wonder if part of what's holding people back from wanting to make a great big DMOD like the old days is the impossibility of ascending to remembered heights that were never really reached in the first place.
As for the "best DMOD" debate... I don't think it matters that much. It isn't a competition. They have different strengths and weaknesses. The ratings on the site don't mean that much either. Stressing about Simon Klaebe giving this an 8.9 - essentially, a NINE OUT OF TEN - would be totally raving bonkers, but that's what's keeping it slightly below the top. To twist my own arm, though, if I'm objective and discount personal favorites like "FIAT" and "Green Voice" because of their obvious flaws or lack of scale, it's probably a two-way race (from what I've seen so far) between "Scarab" and "Pilgrim's Quest." I've heard that people hate wishy-washy non-answers, so... I'm going with PQ. It's a thin margin, but that DMOD really knocked my socks off. Sorry, SabreTrout.
I don't want to end on an even slightly negative note, though, because I had a great time with this one. For those keeping score (which is nobody, but indulge me) I spent a little over six hours on it and finished at level 12. It continues to amaze me that Dink Smallwood, an old game that few found impressive even when it came out, has inspired people to make projects like "Cloud Castle 2: Scarab" - projects with so much hard work, imagination, thought and heart put into them. When "Prophecy of the Ancients" came out, I thought it was a ridiculously over-the-top example of talent and effort being put toward something like this - surely it'd never be equaled. How little I knew.
Next: Initiation.
"I should probably try to avoid doing anything stupid"
REPUTATION NOTE: This DMOD is one of the select group with a score of 9.0 or better (9.6) on The Dink Network.
This DMOD is recommended in Dink Smallwood HD.
*Waves to everybody who scrolled down here from the top without reading anything else*
Right now, I'm actually wondering why more title screens don't use in-game graphics. It works well here.
I was a little apprehensive about getting to this one. What if I didn't like it?
I didn't know what to expect after all the hype I'd seen. To live up to it, a DMOD would have to feel like more than just a DMOD. "Scarab" doesn't, which is fine. Actually, I loved the DMOD; it's just that a thing's reputation can get bigger than the thing itself. "Cloud Castle 2" is almost exactly ten years old; it's hard for a new thing (which this DMOD is to me) to live up to a memory. It's easy to say, "Ah, DMODs will never be as good as CC2 again." This happens in every medium.
There's an interesting readme file included with the DMOD that addresses this issue right from the start, actually.
SabreTrout says, "It's far too over-hyped, so I'm very sorry about that. Hopefully you will enjoy it though, as I feel it does have some pretty cool stuff involved."
Arik says, "Scarab is essentially a very simple d-mod that has had a lot of stuff pumped into it, and it's hard to tell whether it has remained fun along the way. But I enjoy parts of it. I hope you enjoy parts of it too."
These statements are right on the money. "Scarab" feels very much like a regular sort of DMOD with a lot of cool stuff pumped into it. It definitely remained fun along the way, which is an achievement worth celebrating.
*sigh* This is awfully familiar...
"Scarab" begins exactly how I remember "Cloud Castle" ending: with Dink getting his ass handed to him by Monkeynuts the Fairy. Seriously, that series of bosses was ridiculous.
Damn you, Monkeynuts. The biggest disappointment of the DMOD is that I don't get the chance to get my revenge on the stupid fairy.
The DMOD is set in a prison desert called Salamak, using Simon Kleabe's sweet desert graphics as usual. The game refers to it as a "desert prison," but that really implies a prison compound of some sort in a desert; Salamak is a pretty good chunk of magically-sealed desert made to keep in an evil Ancient or two and a bunch of poor sods whose psychic abilities power the enchantment somehow. The inmates have formed a small town that serves at the base of operations for the adventure. Dink goes out, undertakes some leg of the quest, and returns to regroup. This is a different structure from most large DMODs, which tend to move from location to location with only occasional, if any, backtracking. It's a nice change of pace, and it helps to emphasize the feeling of being trapped and to get the player very familiar with the little town and its immediate surroundings. By the end, I knew quite well where everything was. Still, the world is big enough that a map would have been nice. (EDIT: And there is one, I just never found it. Whoops.)
Wow. Disappointment Town could take lessons from this place on despondent signage.
Dink is accompanied at the start by a woman named Alessa, whom he met in the Cloud Castle. There are three different party members you may have accompany you. The game goes quite far with this. Not only can you "pull them out of your inventory" and have a conversation with them, but your partner will also join in on any conversation you have with an NPC. Since you can choose which character you'd like to have accompany you at some points, this means that there is alternate dialogue and even alternate versions of some cutscenes. You can even learn things when talking to one party member that trigger a dialogue choice when talking to another, and so on. It definitely adds depth for Dink to not always be alone on his adventures, and the amount of care put into this detail impressed me.
Partners can also heal you once per outing, which is awfully handy in a pinch.
I also have to give high marks to "Scarab" for getting quite a few good laughs out of me. Most of them were connected to the villains known as "Scarab Club 7," a group of troublemakers who keep getting in Dink's way for most of the adventure. These guys are an absurd bunch of bumblers with names like "Pencilhead" and "Lord Duckington," but they're also a credible threat and make for some tough boss fights. Pencilhead was my second-favorite of the team, with his lab full of notes on various crazy inventions.
To be fair, Dink can be a bit of a bumbler himself.
My favorite member of the Scarab Club was the seventh member, young Dink Smallwood. The team travels to the past and manages to recruit Dink from around the end of the original game to their cause. The game deals with the various vexing continuity problems this presents by resolutely ignoring them and pretending they don't exist. I'm OK with this.
Anyway, this unusual choice of villain highlights the differences between Dink as he was originally created and the character he's become, partly by necessity in order to have ongoing adventures, in the world of DMODs. In a very funny scene, young Dink confronts old Dink about what he's become.
Young Dink: You, however, can't even remember a simple spell for more than a couple of days at a time!
Dink: Uhh, that's not true
Young Dink: Damn right it's true! I know all about you, imposter
You never own a house for more than a week at a time!
All of your equipment gets stolen once a fortnight!
EVERY girl you rescue runs off sooner or later, and don't you deny it!
Dink the younger then goes on to belittle Dink's famed adventures:
Young Dink: You went on a gruelling quest... to heal a pimple on your nose!
You started hearing some freaky 'Green Voice' in your head!
A tree ordered you to kill a duck once... and you failed!
I even heard you once went on a Quest for Cheese!
Dink: Hey, that was really important. That was a good quest!
Young Dink: A. Quest. For. CHEESE!
It wasn't supposed to be like that! I was going to be a hero!
I was going to slay fearsome beasts, and find vast treasure troves
Everyone would revere my name, and I'd get to have SEX with GIRLS!
This scene is easily my favorite thing about the entire DMOD. Not only is it the cleverest riff I've seen on the constant continuity resets that plague Dink's existence, it also convincingly shows how Dink, for all his accomplishments, could look like a pretty big loser to his immature younger self if the wrong person was doing the explaining. The reference to "Valley of the Talking Trees" just about killed me, especially because Young Dink's line is an accurate summary of that DMOD's plot. A tree orders Dink to kill a duck... and he fails. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
Of course, Dink has also gotten to do plenty of those things his younger self dreams about, although his obsession with sex is a little bit sad. You know, I do wonder exactly how often Dink has really gotten laid. Sure, he has some (rather perfunctory, for the most part) sexual encounters in SimonK's mods, and I'm sure Dorinthia (that poor, oversexed girl) put out at some point, but the majority of Dink's wild sexual conquests are things we're just told about in various intros. For the most part, they sound rather unlikely tales of several women at once (or more, to ludicrous proportions), and I'm not sure it isn't just a bunch of empty bragging. I know that a lot of those statements are made to the empty air, but do you think that Dink is above lying about such things to himself just to make himself feel better? I'm not sure I do.
Or maybe DMOD developers have largely been a bunch of horny teenage males. Nah. Forget I said anything.
"Whatever, Smallwood." You know, it must be no fun when a girl can emasculate you just by calling you by name.
Oh, right, we were talking about some DMOD. "A Knight's Tale Part Cinco: Sweet Sir Jarvis's Badassss Song," or something. "Cloud Castle 2?" Close enough.
The bosses are pretty sweet. There's a lot of imagination and scripting wizardry put into making each of them a distinct experience. There's a fight against two opponents where one buffs and heals the other. There's a room full of cloning machines where you can only win by destroying the machines first. There's a guy who you can only hit with projectiles at first, and there are poles that will fling projectiles at him if you strike them, but doing so summons more enemies. Most of these fights are tough as nails. It was a real stretch for me to beat some of them. I wish I'd spent my extra gold on steelskin and healing potions when I had the chance.
There is a lot going on in some of these boss fights.
The dungeons feature some interesting traps and puzzles, especially the big, purportedly optional 'Temple of the Ancients,' which features spear, flame and arrow traps and a segment where Dink gets turned into a duck. The boss fight with Jameil really throws everything at you - enemies, flame traps, moving walls, rocks dropping on your head - but it feels curiously easy. The dungeon is supposed to be a super hard optional challenge, but I was completely unable to beat the regular final dungeon until I went back and did the "optional" one, after which reaching the ending was a piece of cake. The temple actually was a fun and slightly sadistic challenge, but the Big Bad was a bit of a letdown.
Jameil takes the form of the Room of Doom. That is a name that I made up, and I like it very much.
The rewards for beating Jameil kick ASS. A herb-boots-speed sword and spread shot Hellfire. I AM AS UNTO A GOD
If I have a complaint about this DMOD - and it's a minor one - it'd be that I think the gameplay balance could be improved a bit. I spent way too long marooned in dangerous situations without a weapon at the start, and I got into some frustrating situations with regularity. I say it's a minor complaint, though, because unlike some other mods (including this one's predecessor), it was never unreasonably difficult. Beating "Scarab" without cheating is tough - maybe a little too tough at a few points, depending on how you play - but reasonable. That's it, really. I didn't run into any bugs worth talking about. The authors (or maybe just Arik
) have shown impressive dedication in polishing this DMOD. Arik released a patch just a few months ago to fix a few minor, lingering issues. I wonder if it's because he saw me coming? Heh.
Mario would quit in protest if he saw THIS fire wand.
I've gone and gushed like crazy yet again. You might wonder why I wrote that paragraph at the start about hype if I liked this DMOD so much. The thing is that the hype seemed to me, at times, to raise the expectations to levels a DMOD couldn't reach. There's a point at which I feel like saying, "It's just a DMOD." It doesn't attempt to overreach that status as much as some other mods do. I wonder if part of what's holding people back from wanting to make a great big DMOD like the old days is the impossibility of ascending to remembered heights that were never really reached in the first place.
As for the "best DMOD" debate... I don't think it matters that much. It isn't a competition. They have different strengths and weaknesses. The ratings on the site don't mean that much either. Stressing about Simon Klaebe giving this an 8.9 - essentially, a NINE OUT OF TEN - would be totally raving bonkers, but that's what's keeping it slightly below the top. To twist my own arm, though, if I'm objective and discount personal favorites like "FIAT" and "Green Voice" because of their obvious flaws or lack of scale, it's probably a two-way race (from what I've seen so far) between "Scarab" and "Pilgrim's Quest." I've heard that people hate wishy-washy non-answers, so... I'm going with PQ. It's a thin margin, but that DMOD really knocked my socks off. Sorry, SabreTrout.
I don't want to end on an even slightly negative note, though, because I had a great time with this one. For those keeping score (which is nobody, but indulge me) I spent a little over six hours on it and finished at level 12. It continues to amaze me that Dink Smallwood, an old game that few found impressive even when it came out, has inspired people to make projects like "Cloud Castle 2: Scarab" - projects with so much hard work, imagination, thought and heart put into them. When "Prophecy of the Ancients" came out, I thought it was a ridiculously over-the-top example of talent and effort being put toward something like this - surely it'd never be equaled. How little I knew.
Next: Initiation.
