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vgerprobe's Nethack (PC)
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| [April 24, 2009 10:52:56 PM]
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Background:
Nethack is an old school hack and slash style ASCII based game played from a terminal window. I found this game very nostalgic. It reminded me very much of the old text/ASCII art based Star Trek and fantasy RPG games I used to play on my old Tandy Sensation. However, Nethack even out dates them by roughly 6 years. First developed in 1987, Nethack is one of the oldest computer games that is still in active development. In Nethack you can somewhat customize your character by selecting from a list of character types, races, and allegiances. Each combination has unique characteristics that can help or hinder your progress through the dungeons of the game. Your goal in the game is journey through a series of dungeons and reclaim the Amulet of Yendor and escape back through the dungeons from whence you came, or so I have been told. I actually have no empirical evidence that this is how the game goes as I was never able to actually finish it. This game is friggin' hard!!!
Interaction:
Player interactions are handled exclusively through the keyboard. However, if you're playing on a laptop or mini-keyboard, you're out of luck. Nearly every key on a standard keyboard is mapped to some function. The numeric key pad (which most smaller keyboards lack) is mapped to your movement functions. Its actually technically possible to control your movements with the number row of keys, but its incredibly difficult as the location of the keys do not reasonably map to the spacial direction you intend to move. Also, there really aren't any multipurpose action keys. Every conceivable action is mapped to a key or combination of keys. This interaction style did somewhat limit the enjoyability of this game for me. I thought that playing this game reminded me of using an editor like vi or emacs, which requires you to use sequences of long (often counter-intuitive) key combinations to achieve your desired results.
Level Design:
The levels in Nethack are are series of dungeons that contain all sorts of odd creatures and places to investigate. Each level is designed to fit inside of a single standard terminal window. The levels are essentially an over-world type map that gradually reveals itself as you move through it. They are usually filled with open rooms, tunnels, boulders, statues, monsters, and hidden passages, all of which are represented by an ASCII character (sometimes the same character as one of the other elements). You being each level with only your current room visible. Aided only by your cat, dog, or saddle pony, you wonder through the maze hacking, slashing, and often kicking through various obstacles.
Playability:
This game is very, very difficult to just pick up and learn to play. Its probably not incredibly inaccurate to say that its almost impossible to crank up nethack and successfully finish it the very first time you play it. I spent _hours_ upon _hours_ reading Nethack play guides while trying to muddle my way through the dungeons. After this extensive effort, I did manage to become a master --- a master of every conceivable way to die in this game. For those of you brave enough to embark on the adventure of being a Nethack noob, you can look forward to interesting ways to die that include being eaten by sewer rats, bitten to death by newts, eating poisonous zombie flesh, zapped by bugs, blown to bits by magical missiles, shivved by hobbits, and many other even more fascinating ways to experience digital mortality. While on the topic of mortality, when you die in Nethack you're simply dead. No save states, no re-spawning, nothing... You are only allowed to save and exit so that you can walk away just to come back and die later. Without having spent much, much time researching and memorizing the interaction techniques and tactic guides, you're pretty much as good as dead. This is just a straight up difficult game.
Re-playability:
The only way that I can possibly imagine someone replaying this game is if they got hooked on the idea of beating it simply because it is incredibly difficult. Otherwise, there isn't really a lot of incentive. Fortunately, I don't suffer from a masochistic enough personality to get sucked into that vortex. However, there must be a lot of folks who are caught in this whirl pool of despair since this game has remained a cult classic for well over 20 years now. I'm really just joking about all of this though. Its really not a bad game, its just far too difficult and time consuming for someone like myself. I should probably just stick to playing first-person-shooters.
In closing, I'd like to say that there were many aspects of Nethack that I adored. Honestly, I'm a terminal junky. If I am required to use a GUI to interact with something, I loose a little bit of interest it. I work almost exclusively from terminals and really thought it was quite awesome that Nethack is a terminal based game (though GUI mods do exist). Even thought I griped a lot about the style of keyboard interaction, this is the same reason that I love using emacs. Everything you want to do has a key combination associated with it. This, of course, has a steep learning curve, but once you've mastered them you can very quickly perform complicated tasks with little effort. I'm sure some folks out there love interacting with Nethack as much as I love using emacs (yes, I really do).
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vgerprobe's Nethack (PC)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Friday 24 April, 2009
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