Ross's Game Dungeon: Martian Gothic - Unification

[@TheMaabusAdmiral]

Ross, you're killing me man. How am I supposed to spend time with my family!

[@planescaped]

They'll be dead soon anyway, focus on the mission!

[@JimboMarsh]

I’m sorry Admiral. We just got notice that the robot drone failed to contain the threat on the island. Soon the entire world will be destroyed. Go, spend time with your family while you can.

[@rezaka116]

Ahh yes, the Admiral lost his sh*t, now things are starting to make sense. More later.

[@TV-jn4dh]

@@JimboMarsh Don't say that! You're a great admiral.

[@ursulbekbakiev2618]

Could you please, please elabirate more on that?

[@cybermadness2503]

THREE game dungeons in a ROW!? *AWESOME!!!*

[@planescaped]

That's Ross's -game- Halloween Dungeon for ya.

[@BillHallProductions]

It's like getting a king sized kit kat bar throw in your bag from the guy who hasn't mowed his law in 3 months.

[@TheOneHoddToward]

LESSGO

[@dubbleawesome3982]

Christmas came early this year!

[@BarackLesnar]

I hardly got to rest between them

[@RDPendleton]

I love it when Ross forces a game to work, so then the game finds new and inventive ways to defy him.

[@notinspectorgadget]

It's as if the games _know_ they aren't worth playing, yet Ross belligerentally marches onward.

[@Lucifronz]

@@notinspectorgadget Almost like, yeah, but sadly a lot of older games just refuse to cooperate no matter how good they are. The Overlord games are steadily getting more and more broken for me. Overlord 2 has a loop in one of the missions so I can't complete it or it'll start all over again and Overlord 1 has audio issues and eventual crashes when you reach its DLC, being unable to even view the final cutscene at all in-game. Bizarrely, I was expecting one older game to not cooperate with me, Divinity 2: Director's Cut, but it actually had absolutely no issues whatsoever. Well, that's not true, it did crash/close out on me once or twice, but it had a quicksave button and I used it regularly so that was rarely more than a 5 minute inconvenience.

[@ltraltier6009]

I blame windows 10

[@cormoran2303]

Start of review: "Oh sweet, I remember buying this game!" End of review: "And now I remember why I never finished it."

[@brokebackfountain]

It’s not a Game Dungeon without antialiasing issues being solved with reverse-engineered ingenuity.

[@T1Slam]

I LOLED RIGHT HERE!! AT THIS EXACT COMMENT!!!

[@Demidar665]

oh you mean playing an old game on a newer pc ?

[@sircolt8184]

Z-buffer is also a fan favorite.

[@ProffessorYellow]

Best Comment, literally every video lol

[@MitsyWuzHere]

Or Ross failing to achieve it like in The Black Mirror lol

[@SkillZgetKillZ]

I love that his Armed and Delirious review's mark is felt years later with the recurring prison rating

[@mikedrop4421]

It's like Civvie11's sewer counter

[@holidayfish]

@@mikedrop4421 i believe the sewer counter is simply a count of how many sewers civvie 11 was forced to navigate, where as the prison rating is a metric on how esoteric the internal logic of the developers was. (im not happy with my use of the word esoteric, im sure theres a more suited word, feel free to chime in with a better one if you can :) )

[@throatwobblermangrove7508]

@@holidayfish cryptic or if you feel a lil posh today - recondite

[@Eluxor]

I think Armed and Delirious is the game that death setence inmates will have to play. That game is inbeatable, it makes no sense at all. You need a thousand of years of trying to beat it. This one, if it didnt have bugs, its beatable in a few weeks or months.

[@planescaped]

Judge: I hereby sentence you to Armed & Delirious... and may god have mercy on your soul...

[@blamecanada8525]

This was a roller coaster, it started out with a game that actually looked good, started to get annoying and tedious, then got unfair to borderline impossible, then the game itself starting literally falling apart and became unplayable, 10/10

[@Ricekrispy10]

This brief review was a roller coaster

[@lifeincolour09]

And I blame Canada!

[@zigfaust]

@Lassi Kinnunen 81 Even The Evil Within on the hardest modes allows you to perma-kill stuff with fire or matches. This game is just plain sadistic.

[@dhruvdatta1055]

It really makes you feel lime a delirious old grandma

[@GuileOhio]

Yup. I went from "well huh, this looks interesting AND it's on the PS1, think I'll skip the video and play it!" to "no, no, never mind, yikes" very fast.

[@MrDorkbot]

"Stabs me for good luck and decides Z-buffers are for losers" What a chad crab.

[@drachenpanzer5622]

The virgin headcrab Vs. The chad martian gothic crab

[@salottin]

@@drachenpanzer5622 Hell yeah!

[@zigfaust]

Even the way their AI works is like they don't really give a fuck about you but you are annoying them.

[@revolutionstudios5052]

@@drachenpanzer5622 The Virgin Headcrab: - Dies in one to three crowbar hits - Moves as fast as an radish plant - Needs a host to do anything worth mentioning - Comes from a stupid ballsack crab - Many different varieties, all just as annoying The Chad Martian Gothic Crab - Survives gunshots - Runs around at the speed of sound - Doesn't need a host - Phases out of reality by abusing the Z-buffer - absolute gangsta

[@Koboldfunnywow]

Hello Ross! I realize you don't read comments very much because KZbin actively makes them horrible but, I am here to say that I played through this game a lot when it was new on release for both PC and the Play Station. I hope I can sure up some of your questions at the end and shed some light on things you missed because of fan patches. “What is the significance of the Antarctica Meteor Crash” It is indeed what set these events in motion and helped motivate the building of Vita base as it was determined the source of the Meteor was from Mars. “Why was the corpse floating?” Yes it was telekinesis from the Queen but the real answer is it was an interesting set piece the developers wanted to put in to draw interest for the slow opening of the game. It was a plot hook basically. “Why did the kitchen guy float?” You are correct, the Telekinesis from the queen. When he says the Kurakarak are everywhere it is referring to the fact the bacteria is airborne and the bacteria IS the Kurakarak encoded into said bacteria. More will be answered about this in the question “why didn't we merge with the kitchen guy?” “How does two people joining kill the third if they're isolated?” As mentioned earlier the Kurakarak are a race of telepathic beings and they can used telekinesis, this is very important when answering this question. There are three strains of bacteria that join together to form a rod, oval, and spiral which combine. Now then, when two people with a different bacteria come close to each other it forms a bimorph, when in this state they know exactly where the nearest host is that contains the third strain of bacteria (again through telepathic instincts). They seek them out relentlessly and if somehow the third person avoids them long enough in about 24h the bacteria will kill them. Also, when a strain of this bacteria enters a host it normally results in only mild disconfort within the first 12 hours, then death after 24 if they cannot form together into a Trimorph. Everyone who is a “zombie” on the station was a result of people either dying to Trimorphs or isolating themselves and dying to the bacteria. “Why didn't we merge with the kitchen guy?” This is not a plot hole at all, that guy's name is Dr. John Farr, he was working on a vaccine for the bacteria to harmlessly create an artificial joining of 'fake' bacteria so you would both not die from the infection and also not clump together and form a trimorph. Due to many factors such as limited time, himself dying of the Bacteria, and the entire base going to hell he had to basically do a rush job and only managed to get about halfway with the cure. This imperfect cure caused him to form a partial telepathic link to the “sovereign” aka the Kurakarak Queen, which played havoc with his mind as even a minimal connection to the hive mind basically overloaded his brain and nearly fried it. “What was the other warning the lady on the radio was going to say?” Not a solid answer but, based off one of the many long text logs you find in her computer it is suggested that yes, do not let the bacteria escape mars. “What are the goals of the alien lifeforms besides propagation?” This is the only question I don't have a solid answer for. Throughout the game in various computers with locked pass-worded files (most of which you get passwords from MOOD or it's the password on your character's watches) you can learn so much about the Kurakarak but never their ultimate goal. I am guessing the developers just didn't have the time to make a full answer. Now for some bonus info from myself: When I played through this game when it first came out there was (I think) a bug where if you died to the screaming pillar room, you know the one where you have to cut those seemingly useless rocks into shapes to fill it or it kills your characters overtime? That one? If you died to it, your save would delete, at least on the PC version. I have not played this game recently so I am not sure if this was patched out by the fan patches and it was indeed a bug or if it was intended and fan patches removed this feature because it was horrible. I am actually quite surprised you glossed over this room so much in your video, this puzzle is a prime example of one of the hardest and worst put together puzzles in the entire game. You start it by finding what appears to be useless rocks throughout the game that your characters care very little about, only to realize they're extremely important in the worst possible way, not to mention you need to find a very obscure hint about the tuning fork that doesn't directly tell you exactly why you need it for the rock, and on top of this you would have to find that note with the scribbled down coordinate for the martin rover so you could find it without dying to trying to find it by guessing. So let's frame this in my context, playing this game back when it was new: this is a puzzle that may intentionally or via bug unintentionally delete your save. You spend hours and hours going through the game, over half way through the entire game before you get to this room and have to solve this puzzle, throughout the entire game you are finding 'useless' rocks, and you need to find two obscure notes mentioning a tuning fork and a coordinate that isn't even part of the main message and you just have to know to put this all together and have this one character ready with all of these parts before you enter this room. Needlessly to say, I did not have this prepared the first, second, and even a third time before I got to this room and had to replay tons of the game over and over.

[@spartan117ce]

if this screaming puzzle was so godawful, then i struggle to understand why Ross didn't bring it up. Maybe the walkthrough he had mentioned this and guided him so well that it was a non-issue?

[@RakieemF]

This explains a lot thanks duder.

[@Koboldfunnywow]

@@RakieemF No problem!

[@facadeESEA]

Great read, thanks for sharing!

[@foxman105]

Wow you really went deep into the lore. This is good material. There could be a very good game built around this if anybody would take it up and remaster it. Or even an adaptation for a book or movie miniseries.

[@KingKool2099]

It's only been about a week, but I've watched the scene at 32:55 dozens of times now. "Hey, Jerry!" "BLUuUuUuUgh!" "BLUuUuUuUgh!" Every time, it gets me.

[@Typheus]

That scene lives rent free in my head.

[@Jake_Eyes]

Happy 300K, Ross!

[@Jake_Eyes]

@@sedme0 I know, right?

[@zer0celcius0111]

@@sedme0 seriously, my favorite youtuber by far and his videos are so well made.

[@acouragefann]

the algorithm favors repetitive, regularly intervalled output that is around 10 minutes in length and appeals to the lowest common denominator. This isn't me being cynical, it's just how it works - Ross makes great content, but it's just not the content KZbin is likely to put in anyone's feed.

[@caferockgarito3310]

Yes, incredibily underrated

[@ThisIsTheEskimo]

I remember when Freeman's Mind was the only reason I followed Machinima, now I'm just waiting for his channel passing their sub count someday.

[@Kallisti3]

A prisoner-controlled penal colony on Mars with three distinct factions that was established to mine a material crucial to the Earth government's battle against Space Orcs(TM), but which was built on top of an ancient evil that could only be defeated by a snarky, nameless protagonist would actually be a sweet game. I want that Martian Gothic.

[@bioticninja2170]

You have discount Terrans (discount because they don’t have Jim Raynor), a genestealer cult without the genestealer bit (maybe), and… I don’t know, smugglers? Every space game needs smugglers after all.

[@judeironheart7252]

that literally sounds like the Gothic storyline, but in Mars.

[@Rauser142]

@@judeironheart7252 You don't say.

[@icebrakertrotsky97]

I seem to remember a game like that from my childhood, just got into comments to ask about that one.

[@Bacxaber]

Sounds like Mass Effect if Eden Prime was one of Elon Musk's slave colonies.

[@loafman1832]

Hey Ross, I just wanted you to know how much you’ve helped me out man. I’ve been going through a rough time lately, and I often rewatch your videos to cheer me up. I just want to thank you for all that you do.

[@Accursed_Farms]

If I talked you out of going to Mars, then it wasn't a wasted effort.

[@loafman1832]

@@Accursed_Farms I certainly wont be going there anytime soon! Thank you so much for your amazing content man, I really don’t think I’d be the same person without it!

[@thetruegoldenknight]

@@Accursed_Farms LOL! I think we first need to relentlessly pelt Mars with so many giant meteors that its general mass starts to scale more closely with Earth's and THEN we go to Mars. Besides, the raining rocks might kill (or awaken) any slumbering monsters there...so that the probes would've been sacrificed before any humans ever get off of Earth. Point is, better the probes and rocks than human bodies.

[@chuckwood3426]

@@rb-oo5mz There is barely an athmosphere and in probably cant ever be terraformed. The problem is really the core of the planet. It is solid and dead. This means that it does not produce a magnetic field that protects the planet from solar winds. This in turn means that the solar winds strips the planet of its atmosphere. Without an atmosphere we can get enough greenhouse effect to make the planet warm. We also cant breath. Thats kinda important. It probably had an atmosphere as some point but lost it. Also probably had flowing water at some point. You could still go there for resources, but in that case the moon would be much better. Or the moons of Mars. Because they have a much weaker gravity well so that you can easily get off in to space again.

[@NinjaSushi2]

@@Accursed_Farms heat hear

[@twofacetoo75]

At 58:58 - that actually happens in the first 'Metal Gear Solid' game. In the fist-fight against Liquid Snake, he announces you have three minutes, but the timer starts during a cutscene, and it's not until you have 2 minutes 30 remaining that you can start fighting. If you die, you get a 'Game Over', then reload from a checkpoint, and skip the cutscene, starting with a full 3 minutes instead. Not sure if it technically counts since you can't skip the cutscene with Liquid, but I think it's interesting to note anyway.

[@ToastyMozart]

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door does it too, just with the order swapped. At one point a villain activates a time bomb and you have to get to the entrance of the zone, at which point a cutscenes plays and the villain uses a remote to disarm it. But the dialog is all player-advanced text boxes and the timer is always counting down. So if you take too long A-pressing your way through the dialog you blow up and take the bad guy with you.

[@mahazkei7709]

Ross killed me with the Seinfeld joke after trying to get the characters to meet. That clip is getting saved in the "funny out of context clips" playlist.

[@Okamatan]

Y'know I never thought you'd cover Martian Gothic, but it was a big excite to see this Edit: AND LIKE A MAD MAN YOU RAN THE PC VERSION

[@Shamino1]

My grandmother handed me this game as a kid and said "I think you'll really like it." I've hated airlocks ever since. Thanks for covering another one of my childhood horror gems, Ross.

[@Kijinn]

I'd like some backstory on this. Why did your granny think you'd like it? Did she play it? Was your granny a gamer? Did you have conversations about video games with her? Did you ever play games with her? Why didn't the rest of us have grandparents like that?

[@Shamino1]

@@Kijinn First game I ever played was Prince of Persia- the original PoP- and it was on her computer up at the farm back in '93 I think. She eventually got out of computers and such years later, only really plays mobile games now. But she introduced me to PoP, Fields of Glory, Civilization II, and many other great games.

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

@@Kijinn I'll just assume that granny knew he's into horror movies and videogames, and she thought this could be something he would enjoy, and that would be a pretty cool gesture by granny. Didn't pan out that way, but hey, the devs weren't satisfied with the game either.

[@Kijinn]

@@Shamino1 As I was trying to say, great granny! Would have loved to have grandparents with whom I could talk about video games.

[@zigfaust]

@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine I don't know, my grandad loved boardgames as a kid and just kept playing newer games including video games. And was the first person I knew with a game boy color and we used to trade pokemon. Dude was the sole reason I got into Castlevania as he had an OG arcade cabinet of it. Taught me being a gamer has no age limit.

[@EvilDoresh]

Yeah, the Bug Queen's not doing it for me. When the chef talked about "the body of a god" I was hoping for some Dead-Space-like scenario where _all_ the Martians had merged into a single monstrosity.

[@EvilDoresh]

@Zoomer Waffen Nope

[@MrDevious88]

Hell Parasite Eve would have fit the bill better than what we got.

[@ParasiteEvel]

@Zoomer Waffen idk how Siren is anything like dead space or similar to a plot where aliens/Martians merge consciousness enough to compare them but ok

[@swirekster]

@Zoomer Waffen oi being irish isn't that bad :V

[@vangoghsseveredear]

@Zoomer Waffen he never played Siren either, evidently

[@NuclearCherries]

Watching this really made me appreciate just how good Resident Evil really was.

[@z-beeblebrox]

Interesting. A game where the game design itself is a form of cosmic horror

[@viscountrainbows6452]

It's borderline experimental!

[@visassess8607]

I think this is what the kids called meta

[@HiGlowie]

Tank controls are more horrifying than any jump scare

[@MahDryBread]

This is one of those games where I heard about it forever ago and thought it sounded awesome, got an hour into it and was enjoying it, and then put it down and never came back to it. I have absolutely no idea why, considering I still get curious about it every time I think about it. Nice to get to see what it's all about! EDIT Oh, now I see why I put it down

[@bowmin1]

I've never done that with a game, but I do that with plenty of KZbin videos as well as documentaries. Something takes me away from it and I never go back to watching it after I finish whatever I needed to do, despite enjoying whatever I was watching a lot.

[@barretprivateer8768]

Wait MDB watches Ross? A man of culture I see.

[@SimonClarkstone]

It's a standard Game Dungeon game: interesting and awesome in places but full of horrible flaws: game-breaking bugs, moon logic puzzles, frusration all over, doesn't run properly on modern hardware/OSes. All it's lacking are bad writing and acting.

[@TheodoreIchabod]

@@SimonClarkstone *Mars logic puzzles

[@Astrothunder_]

I’ve done that for over 18 years with games. Most recently The Outer Worlds. Loved the 5 hours I put into it and haven’t touched it since.

[@Graknorke]

"I could see a CEO not understanding that [Mars couldn't really be terraformed] and scientists happy to take the funding" haha yeah wouldn't it be crazy if that happened in real life

[@phoebeaurum7113]

In real life you hype going to space and just pocket the money.

[@Roggor]

Just manufacture proof of oil on Mars and we'll be there in a decade.

[@Gogglesofkrome]

Terraforming mars is possible, it's just that there's no magnetosphere to keep it from being stripped away by solar winds. The reality is that life on mars will be totally manufactured, which isnt necessarily so bad. Probably better off just forgetting about a green Mars and just embrace something resembling city life, but underground

[@ariloulei814]

I swear Graknorke is referring to Elon Musk here as I'm pretty sure he's a billionaire CEO funding space exploration with a dream of terraforming Mars. I could be wrong though as I try not to follow news on people I don't like and I could be remembering things wrong.

[@planescaped]

@@Gogglesofkrome I for one would love to live in a subterranean Mars colony! Life's always exciting when any day could lead to you Total Recall'ing! But yeah, actual terraforming of Mars is a pipe dream. That said it doesn't mean there aren't other ways of colonizing these planets.

[@LookBackGaming]

I played this earlier this year. I'm surprised Ross didn't talk about how it was originally supposed to be a point and click adventure game. It only became an RE clone because RE came out and they wanted to capitalize on the popularity of the game. The combat and stuff was tacked on and obviously that results in a poor experience, putting it mildly. Definitely a bastard game for most people without a walkthrough in any case.

[@Lemon_Inspector]

You know, with modern technology, it probably wouldn't be that hard for a fan project to turn the game back into a point-and-click adventure, since most (all?) the puzzles seem to be of the "pick up item, use item on thing" kind. I'm not sure how you'd keep the zombie-related horror aspect of the game, though.

[@rickpgriffin]

I am not at all surprised to hear the RE mechanics were tacked on. The devs clearly did not grasp why regenerating enemies and limited saves works in RE, and also didnt include any of the subtleties that makes combat in RE interesting despite the oppressiveness of it (like being able to perform headshots, and how consistent damage is in the game)

[@ParasiteEvel]

@@rickpgriffin there wasnt any regenerating enemies in the ps1 resident evil. There was the persistent threat enemies like Tyrant or Nemesis, but there was plently of work arounds for them. The limited ammo and saves worked because there was a limited amount of enemies as well as more space (in most scenarios) to dodge enemies and avoid combat. When there are respawning enemies, or enemies that cant be killed at all, that really complicates things unless probably implemented.

[@rickpgriffin]

@@ParasiteEvel I was p sure in RE1 if you didn't actually headshot or burn zombies, they'll get back up after like... 30 minutes. Which is significantly longer than what MG does.

[@DatCameraMON]

@@rickpgriffin That is a remake specific feature that was put in to spice up the original's formula a bit when they did the remake.

[@WatasyWahyo]

The game itself, it's literally impossible without looking at a walkthrough, but i think the story itself it's very good and interesting. I wish someone could remake it with a proper gameplay and puzzles

[@joe--cool]

I used an infinite ammo cheat in addition to the infinite saves cheat. I Should have done that from the start. I have no idea how this is playable without either going insane or using savestates. It still wasn't easy but I enjoyed it. I think none of the bugs happened to me on Windows XP with an ATI graphics card. Too bad because the game is pretty interesting were it not for the save system and the constantly respawning enemies.

[@666slateran666]

This and every other adventure game from the 90s

[@cpt.straginski]

actually, the best candidate for a remake or even just remastered version

[@mitchmcginn4250]

With how amazing the Dead Space Remaster came out I'd love to play a remaster of this from the same devs!

[@Amoth_oth_ras_shash]

question be , 'should' it be a 'pure blood' of one strain aka.. 1. pure puzzles etc no time limits or threats while consuming lore or info and 'monsters' limited to 'you fkd the puzzle!' a more 'interactive novel' style ? 2. or..as door keys etc is more in the 'doom' or classic pure real time rpg version more about finding them then figuring out their circuitry so its just 'plug em and use em!' for the ''you want to open the locked doors ? careful ,they are locked for a reason'' better ensure characters your not controlling directly at least got a blunt object for weapon and is in a flat or other place where if the doors manually locked you 'only' have to worry about something small smelling them and crawling in through the went. 3. or try keep it a hybrid of both ? a bit of third person real time combat and threats , but the sporadic puzzle or riddle sprinkled about in areas where there's no active threats ? hmm , think i would prefer the second version myself as that allow you to give the AI a lill action freedom and the potnetional to involve optional 'gota eat' mechanics to make players balance hoarding plot items etc with 'practical' stuff , though nothing silly like some games with '10 min passed find your char a grilled ham or they die of starvation! XD'' just if you play 2 houers or characters get wounded a lot or the plot declares days gone by to and allow the story to be told more at a players desire , aka if they just want to 'win' blast through ignore anything not leading to the labs & ceo suite... or care about the story they can take their time scavange gear maby even dismantle a sentry gun to stick on a apc in the garage bay , ensure the guy hiding in technician x flat got a decent weapon etc to be safe while you send stuff back and forth to unlock computers personal logs or lab reports and use the third one to read something and add another puzzle piece to figure out wtf happened on the base ,and more importantly if one wishes to be a bit 'hard core' tie in of active game mechanics & reason to make the base have a bit more impact then just 'look around for food & ammo ,once they/ you puzzled together what happened and produced that counter strain for the hive like bacteria. is it possible to salvage it to a semi operational status ? and not just combat the bacteria strain , but the physical threat capable macro growth it causes when ever biomass saturated with it above a critical mass gets in close proximity , efficiently now that your group is at least in the short term safe from infestation danger , since if either is a no. then your number is up regardless , even the most greedy corp should have enough self preservation specially with the kind of united nations military oversight it oughta have to know , hmm.. sure ouer brave 'hey go cheek wtf happened over there last transmision sounded like if it was from a horror movie' guys got the escape pod working but ..umm... even if they got a vaccination for that locust hive like bacteria with them ,theres no way we be able to start produce and inject it into the whole eco system faster then that bacteria grow and saturate hosts.. so they either die in orbit as we configure the space station to handle the bio hazzard they come with.. or get incinerated with extreme prejudice if trying a re-entry since if even a single of those bacteria's survives = death of the entire planet bio sphere and all bio material part of it converted into things that will actively hunt anyone vaccinated

[@vahlok2568]

My favorite quote from Dunkey is “The Cameraman is working for the zombies.” When talking about the original RE. Im glad to see that joke applies to this game too.

[@zigfaust]

I'm gonna have to remember that for a survival horror I"m working on. Always keep the view where it's dangerous to the player and advantageous not only to the enemies but to their own paranoia.

[@ThePumpkinRot]

@@zigfaust be careful you don't make it obnoxious.

[@lucascoval828]

@@ThePumpkinRot No.

[@Yusuke_Denton]

@@lucascoval828 Yes.

[@pangoprime8674]

@@Yusuke_Denton maybe

[@Sheevlord]

Actually, Mars has enough gravity to sustain an atmosphere. What it lacks is a decent magnetosphere, without which solar wind will blow off most of the atmosphere over time (we're talking millions of years).

[@tba113]

One of the things I liked about the X-Com-like game UFO Afterlight was that they addressed this point. It takes place on mars, and one of your long-term goals is to terraform the planet, since your base is stuffed with hundreds of thousands of colonists in stasis. Of course, they also invented a technobabble superscience mechanism to get the planet's core churning to generate a magnetosphere. The whole project did have an in-game impact, but it was mostly just a research sink to move the plot along (not to mention the endings were absolute garbage). Still, at least they didn't just ignore it. Actually, in the early game before you get the magnetosphere going, solar conditions are impossible to ignore: since your team's first-gen space suits aren't hulking lead-plated dreadnaughts, an especially sunny day will have your team (and the suits themselves) taking damage the whole time, so you either have to wait for better conditions on the ground or develop more heaviily-shielded suits. Or both.

[@USSMariner]

Hey sheev

@@tba113 Oh boy, that game was also such a wasted potential. I liked the art deco martians though.

[@KairuHakubi]

It doesn't have enough gravity to sustain an atmosphere we can actually _use._ and without a decent magnetosphere we'll just die in millions of seconds.

[@KairuHakubi]

@@tba113 That I like. always wanted to see someone do that, just figure out how to get the core to become iron and spin. But even so, a better candidate would be Venus, surely. Right gravity, lots of useful materials and gases to convert using plants and such.. plenty of sun.. too much of course, but we could do something about that more easily than we could make mars livable.

[@Kyrkby]

I read about this game in a PCGamer magazine back in the day, and I think they gave it like 55-ish/100 and I could never understand why since the game looked great from the pictures alone. Seeing you play through this monstrosity however makes me understand their reasoning.

[@DaniArkadia]

Oh GOD I remember playing this thinking, "Oh, just another resident evil clone it'll be fun." I was pretty angry when I got instakilled about an hour and a half into my playthrough and I hadn't saved. xD

[@DaniArkadia]

@KuroNetwork Oh god now you're giving me Vietvermire flashbacks xD

[@GruppeSechs]

I watched Super Best Friends play this years ago. Apparently in the PS1 version, it has loading screen dors like the Resident Evil games instead of making your character physically walk through them, so no wonder Ross is getting bitten over and over just trying to leave a room.

[@wystikus]

"We're gonna be in deep shoepolish!" Nothing like keeping language PG during a Martian Zombie-apocalypse.

[@pt8306]

I think that was part of the radio play, which is supposed to be silly 50's style dialog

[@MacAndSheeeeesh]

Why yes, I will enjoy the hour-long Ross special when I should be studying.

[@Дми́трийВикторович-о3с]

Believe me it's better to sdudy and enjoy specials later. Or get kicked out of university and pursue your dream of getting a job.

[@1manorgy]

@@Дми́трийВикторович-о3с One of you under every video.

[@julianfacundocalabrese1176]

You are technically studying anti-aliasing with ross, it didn't took him 5 minutes to start his mandatory AA class

[@Sewblon]

Me but replace "studying" with "working."

[@Absolutely_Nobody]

Thank you for all the Halloween content this year, Ross!

[@Maioly]

This game is sadly the epitome of wasted potential it does a LOT of cool shit and has cool elements... but poorly implemented core gameplay and being blatantly unfinished all because the producers in charge decided to switch it from a horror themed adventure game into a survival horror at the last second, forcing the devs to rush to work shit out in time for launch.

[@thatrealycoolguy]

Publishers/producers often don’t understand what they’re asking. They think when they go “Hey survival horror is super in right now. Make it survival horror” that the devs just add the word survival somewhere and add some green herbs

[@Maioly]

@@thatrealycoolguy An almost universal truth, regardless of medium. Countless are the tales of producers in movies ruining shit because they want to meddle with things they got no knowledge about, or distribution companies making demands. (specific example: The Tank Girl movie, which got absolutely butchered by producers; A lot of the movies talked about in the youtube channel/series good bad movies are also examples) You cant talk about comics without hearing people be mad and pissed off about editorial mandates screwing shit over, among other corporate blocks and interruptions to planned plots and execution. (example: look at any of the big two... and you will find an endless torrent of examples) Even the likes of books can suffer from this. And yet, every tiny once in a while, along comes an example of producers/editors/etc actually doing their job and stopping shit from going out of control, or examples of how something went completely out of control because there were no producers/etc around to to put a limit to things.

[@MD-yd8lh]

Dead Space ahead of time?

[@whoknows8264]

@@thatrealycoolguy forget publishers, I think developers don't know what their doing at times.

[@peppermillers8361]

@@whoknows8264 to be fair, the devs weren't super proud of this product, and some of the lines for Ben Gunn were lost in the process and with that a lot of the hints for the puzzles were gone. This game's all over the place in terms of how things went.

[@LaverniusTucker2410]

"The headcrab stabs me on the way out for good luck" is a sentence only Ross would come up with, and make perfect sense after

[@L44tsmasher735]

Don't forget ''and then decided z-buffers are for losers''

[@Novous]

I just gotta tell you Ross, I really do appreciate the amount of pain you go through to play these games. There's so many "bad' games that may have some great or novel features or scenes we normally never see because we get frustrated and give up on games with serious flaws. But you fight through those flaws and show us! Thank you1

[@OrdinaryDemon]

Wow, this is the first time a Game Dungeon covered a game I know, specificly a childhood game. I was amazed, when i saw this in my subsciption box. Your assessment of the game is really spot-on. This game was originally meant to be a puzzle adventure before they decided to make it a survival horror game, which explains the weird state of the game. The puzzles are neat and the atmosphere is great, but the gameplay is atrocious. Compare that to RE1, which came out like 4 years prior and is rough in its own ways, but is easily superior in its gameplay. I think the fact, that in Martian Gothic zombies are practicly undodgeable, tend to be bullet sponges, weapons are unsatisfying and of course that enemies are unkillable/respawning, stems from the inexperience of the developer team, as this is their first survival horror game. The fusion of the classic puzzle and horror survival genre is also fatal. Your expected on one hand to do typical adventure game puzzles for which you need lots of trial and error, and one the other hand you need to be extremely good at ressource management and planning, which you cant do, because you dont know what puzzles are to be done next. Contrast that with RE1 rather simple and clear puzzles. Especially the difficulty is ridiciolous, with the low ressources the game gives you and the sheer number of enemies it throws at you. Heck, even with infinite health and ammo it often feels like trudging through quicksand. I get the feeling the developers didnt have much time to playtest and instead guessed enemy strength/numbers/time till they revive, but completely overshot it, resulting in crowds of bullet sponge enemies, that often times instantly revive, which leads to parts were you have to shoot into zombie crowds for a minute to merely pass by them. They probably thought, that unkillable enemies, that even are in save rooms and storages would make for a cool horror mechanic, but then didnt get time to test and see how it actually pans out. In general I suspect, that they were running out of time with how buggy the endgame is and how rushed some scenes feel. Its a real shame, because like you said the atmosphere and the mystery are really good, but the gameplay is awful. If you could permanently kill zombies and headcrabs, while also reducing enemy health, the game would become so much better because you could clean out important areas to focus on puzzles or to move around more freely on often traveled paths. I strongly recommend playing with cheats and giving yourself one unlimited ressource like health or ammo to actually make it fair, though dealing with enemies remains a grind. Ross Inifinite Saves werent enough. I also had a similiar moment like you, reaching the other side of the vent, because I got stuck at the parts with the various Trimorph puzzles. I only got the full game experience later after finding a lets play of the game. Regarding Kenzo's deadpan voice: The games director wanted the character roles to be filled by people of the same ethnicity. For Karne they couldnt get a black guy, but for Kenzo they found an asian, who got the voice role. But his performance was very weird and deadpan. The developers also aimed to create the feeling of a haunted mansion, leaning on Gothic horror, but placed it on Mars, thus the name Martian Gothic. There are some interviews with a dev of the game, where I got some of these facts from. One I cant find anymore, but I found a newer one, where the dev explains, that Ben Gunn is responsible for setting up some of the puzzles and strewing items across the base. Regarding your questions: 1. The meteor is pretty much your guess. 2&3. Yeah, no real explanations is given, why some people are floating, I guess its just showing off some psychic phenomena. 4. A dialogue option with MOOD appears about "Biomorphs", which are supposed to be a partial state of Trimorph. They happen when two people morph together, and will seek out a third person to complete the transformation. I think this explanation though, was just coupled together by the developers to explain the plothole. 5. As for you not morphing together with Ben Gunn, the explanation is that he is already infected with all three different bacteria strands, which makes him Pseudo-Trimorph. Because of that there is no room, for another bacteria strand, and so no morphing process happens. I think he is also sorta immortal like the other enemies and can revive because of that, which happens when you attach his head to the Frankenstein body. 6. I swear there was full version of her message, but I cant find it anymore, maybe Im misremembering something and it doesnt exist. 7. Yeah its kept a complete mystery, I kinda get a Deadspace-Necromorph-vibe from them, so maybe its something similiar to that. -Theres also a bunch of password locked text files, that give further lore, but I dont know if you got them. -What infects them are not the zombie bites, but the decontamination chambers on the airlocks. They each get one of the three bacteria strains. -On your point of them infecting earth, is suspect the idea was that the vaccine completly removed the infection so that they dont have to worry about that, but I dont know if it makes sense for an infection to work like that. -There is also no explanation for why the flare gun kills the Trimorphs and doesnt work on other enemies. I suspect again, that they didnt have time to explain and smartly implement it. Anyway thanks for the episode Ross, Happy Halloween!

[@thetruegoldenknight]

I like the profoundly thorough answer you've given us. Just one detail: vaccines aren't a cure, they're a preventative measure. And the ending of nuking the base is a good way of purging the disease (unless weird sci-fi plot points would dictate that it's immune to fire or, worse, uses fire to spread).

[@Sequalsgoon]

Thanks for some more backstory and some suggestions on the open-ended questions! You're awesome for writing it all out!

[@shaventalz3092]

@@thetruegoldenknight Since the flare gun kills the all-the-bacteria trimorph, I suspect fire may be the answer. But only once everything's put together, I guess?

[@whoknows8264]

Vaccines don't work like that, and even if they were clean of the bacteria (which considering this is scifi horror and their tech is still 21st century, I'm saying NO) they would absolutely be quarantined, possibly in space, until the microb could be studied.

[@varvarvarvarvarvar]

@@thetruegoldenknight Yeah all they would need is like, penicillin. These are bacteria, right?

[@yacabo111]

About that $1000 per ounce thing. While that is probably a close enough to the truth statistic, that's working backwards. The actual calculation of sending the payload to where it needs to go doesn't have that much precision, and instead there's usually (Soviets be crazy) quite a bit of breathing room with what you can send up once the rocket is designed. It's actually very common today for the ISS crew to take up personal items to the ISS as rocket can send up so-and-so amount of payload up anyway and it's well above the mass of the essentials so might as well let them have some stuff up there.

[@LevattWolfheart]

I'm glad to see an explanation because the $ to ounce seemed too inflexible to be completely true.

[@IONATVS]

and that’s not to mention that all the ACTUAL commercial spaceflight developments we’ve gotten as positive side-effects of the billionaire dick-measuring-contest have been towards lowering the cost to orbit for people and materials. The current market cost to the ISS on a cargo Falcon 9 is about $80/oz. And even that could be drastically reduced by infrastructure we know is possible to build, just requiring vast sums of money and political will, like mass drivers (literal cargo railguns, needing a second stage to do the real hard work of getting up to orbital speed, but hopefully after passing atmo), launch loops (giant ramps enclosed in vaccuum tubes and electromagnetic accelerators to essentially replace the first “stage”), skyhooks (orbiting rods that spin with one end scooping into the atmosphere at regular predicable intervals so a high altitude aerospacecraft could grab on and get flung into orbit), space elevator (a failsafe, passively-supported one can’t be built with currently available materials, but looks like might not be too far off, and an actively-supported, fail-deadly one still could; in either case, would reduce the cost to orbit to purely the cost in electricity to run it, less if you can use regenerative braking on the way down), or an orbital ring (next step up from a space elevator, and would require an entire orbit to be cleared of other satellites permanently and converted into megastructure, but actually mechanically more stable than a space elevator once built, so feasible with modern tech, just literal mountains of it and basically turns a trip from any two points on earth with a connection to the ring into a simple jaunt by the most literal interpretation of “bullet train” possible)

[@rustyshackleford1508]

@@IONATVS fellow isaac arthur enjoyer, though you forgot the last bit where we just strip mine the solar system and turn earth into a birch planet

[@z-beeblebrox]

Yeah, I think part of it is the short story Cold Calculations completely fucking peoples' perception of how much room for error there is in the mass you can send to space.

[@zigfaust]

I'm also almost positive sending it in the future would be far cheaper since calculations would drastically decrease error/insurance costs and labor in general. Sending a package to a space station now is expensive cuz there's a TON of work behind it. In the time this game takes place I'd assume even a 12 year old could learn how to send a package to their dad in space accurately at the local post office.

[@MisterS.]

Wow, Ross's game dungeons are plentiful this season. I really appreciate your hard work to entertain us, Ross! You are probably my favorite KZbinr, each new video of yours is like a little holiday.

[@RennyNanaya]

Some bits and pieces for explanations: >All of the characters have backstory that is accessed using the codes that appear on their watches early on, you just have to find the right computers with the locked files. This fleshes out the whole "conspiracy" and "Rebellion" stories a little bit, like Karn's relationship with Judith Harroway >The "Right colour, right number, won't open" you're supposed to recognize the door is completely drained of colour compared to walkway. >there's a document that mentions "A little piece of EE-lectronic artwork. just use the scarab then speak it's name" (Khepri) for the airlock. he also namedrops "if you want a real wizard, send for Kenzo Uji" >a text document mentions Dr. John Farr/ Ben Gunn having used a prototype of the antidote, which is why he doesn't meld with any of the protagonists. It also sort of explains why he's gone completely mental, as now he has all three strains inside of him instead of just the 1, amplifying their power and effect. this also might be a an explanation for the other floating necromorph. >the other warning is that the decontam is itself contaminated, more or less making any mission a percieved suicide mission since they will be infected upon entry. >a lot of the information about the Karak-arak mentions they sort of "enslave" as their mode of replication, so the "queen" is just the previous host species. the bacteria are the entity, and their abilities are more or less simply "supernatural". the ghosts are at least somewhat explained as being hallucinations made all-too-real by the bacterial infection's effects on the mind.

[@RennyNanaya]

that last bit could also explain the significance of the meteor crash, as now they have an antidote they can take back to earth before anything from the meteor goes full apocalypse.

[@hannibalburgers477]

I am deeply confused

[@blackchibisan8116]

Ross, never change unless it is ascending to robot, zombie, or an outer god. You are deserving of any and all of these fates and you are my favorite KZbinr of all time

[@blackchibisan8116]

A year has passed and I stand by this comment

[@2-d_in_a_bag]

@@blackchibisan8116 I stand by your comment too

[@qwellen7521]

As jank as this game is; I can’t deny the art direction looks amazing.

[@Turtleproof]

It's worth it, though I presume its in the scalping pricing like other obscure horror games like Kuon. Might need to do the, "by whatever means" or spend hours at thrift stores or CD exchange shops.

[@GreedAndSelfishness]

@@Turtleproof Lol fuck that, this game is trash. Rule of rose I adore but even that is just on the edge of worth it because the forced combat sections were awful.

[@innoclarke7435]

@@GreedAndSelfishness I think too much of Rule of Rose is just abysmal, frankly - and that's coming from someone who both (a) likes survival horror games and (b) 100%'d Punchline's other game, Chulip, which was ITSELF oftentimes frustrating... but incredibly loveable. Rule of Rose's problem above all else, though, is simply that it's simply not a completed game. Yeah, it's obviously playable, but in terms of what it should be, it's only 90% there. It desperately needed time to be polished and have certain aspects of design tweaked. There's a saying in game development. The last 10% is 90% of a game, and Rule of Rose is perhaps the finest example to me of that saying in action. On a separate level, distinct from the frustrating gameplay, I think it's just waaaaaay too depressing. When I think, "Damn, this is darker than Silent Hill," I feel like that's my limit. I saw my way through to the bitter end with Rule of Rose. I still don't know why. I guess just because I like Love-de-Lic/Punchline/Vanpool/Onion Games games, but this is so spectacularly off-brand for them. I'm glad you could get more out of it than I could, though. I have probably a higher tolerance for frustration and tedium than most in games, but RoR just wore me down too much for me to walk away from it with anything other than disappointment and frustrated resentment. :/

[@qwellen7521]

@Zoomer Waffen it’s like a mix of Starcraft and bio shock

[@1r0zz]

This is what happens when you have a story (even if told poorly) and an art style, and the competence to portray that art style, but next to none proper gameplay design. They didn't even found a decent balance in imitating resident evil (that said the inventory in this is absolutely better, even if the item management is not...)

[@jacobparker5358]

Ross, you spoil us. I've watched your content for years, and you consistently amaze me with your dedication and skill. We love you!

[@ReynardCalcifius]

I remember watching the super best friends play this game a few years back, now I can live it again vicariously via Ross

[@tba113]

"Have a happy Halloween, and stay tuned for the Apocalypse, I think." That face when you're not sure if Ross is talking about the implications for the future of this game's setting, hinting at the next Game Dungeon, or just offering helpful advice in general.

[@davidabest7195]

Judging by the biden economy I would say he is just offering sound advice in general.

[@LonelySpaceDetective]

I'm betting on the Bruce Willis game.

[@Morec0]

@@davidabest7195 The economy is the least of the problems.

[@minoso0435]

Dude, I've been looking for this game for years. My dad and I played it when I was 7 and I saw that guy floating at 7:21. I always remembered the image of the floating part and the walls, but I could never find the game. I'm so glad you found it. It was wracking my brain for at least 15 years. TYYY

[@camdenmars5086]

Oh boy! Okay so it’s been a long while since I’ve looked into this game but I think I can answer some of your checklist. The reason why we don’t morph when in close proximity to Ben Gun is because he was the one who developed the vaccine against the bacteria. That or he had the same bacteria that Karne does. I don’t feel 100% certain on that but my addled perception of this collective reality wants me to believe it to be true. I recall that each character has an independent strain of Martian bacteria and they need all three in one body to be whole or something along those lines. The end result of the fusion is the trimorphs. Also the whole death animation thing is placeholder but I believe the explanation I had went something like the two fuse to become a bimorph or something and then they can essentially sense the last person with the missing strain and proceed to hunt them down to become a trimorph. Again I might have just came up with all this in a state of delirium and can not recall where I got any of this. It’s just there in the ole iron cage.

[@TheSonic497]

Nah, you're correct. Basically, the game explains that the team on the base before it went to shit unearth some ancient alien tomb that released what I think is supposed to be the "spirits" of the ancient alien race, but they're also the bacteria strand. At the start of the game, each character enters a decontamination process that infects each character with one of the 3 bacteria strands. Once 2 of the 3 fuse together, the 3rd one is quickly detected, and sought after from the fused being.

[@N3rv3d4m4g3]

@@TheSonic497 the infection came from the decontamination process? Ironic

[@TheSonic497]

@@N3rv3d4m4g3 Yep, that's why all the 3 characters made some kind of remark that the decontamination process felt wrong.

[@lovis9306]

Whew we're getting episode after episode, this feels more like christmas than halloween!

[@harveybeaver9731]

You'd think that Halloween and Christmas are really two sides of a same coin. Cliche as it sounds, it's no less true.

[@kaykek7174]

I'm consistenly in awe at the lengths Ross goes to finish games, that are... let's just say less than optimal.

[@azmodanpc]

The german adventure game was a tour de force. Commendable af.

[@zigfaust]

He makes me feel like shit for never finishing games like Undying or Ninja Gaiden 2. Dude tries harder at trash tier than I do at A tier games.

[@bl00dy_c4p3]

battler spotted

[@kaykek7174]

@@bl00dy_c4p3 you mean best dude

[@PenguinDT]

Re-watching this reminded me how much I appreciate sci-fi horror titles that try to make the places look pleasant - like Arkane's Prey, or officer suites in the first Dead Space. Don't get me wrong, the industrial brutalism of DOOM and Aliens is my jam, but some times seeing a supposedly cozy place gone to hell is scarier.

[@m.streicher8286]

I have to play prey

[@TalkingVidya]

I love how Ross has to fight against the game's glitches as he does with their archaic game play desitions

[@stefanforrer2573]

"desitions"?

[@whoknows8264]

@@stefanforrer2573 Probably meant decisions, maybe designs

[@mftmss7086]

HE MEANT DEFECATION!!!!

[@amanofnoreputation2164]

Playing the game was a horror story in it's own right.

[@stefanforrer2573]

@@whoknows8264 oooooh, yeah that makes sense.... i'm not a native speaker, so i thought i just didn't know the word and googled it to no avail but was still curious.. thanks 😉

[@BAIGAMING]

47:00 This reminds me of Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy on the PS2. If you go past a door required for in the story and die, then the door will be permanently locked forever unless you deleted your save file and restarted from scratch. It was in the middle of the game I think like 10 or 15 hours in. Save points were an hour to an hour and a half apart and the gameplay was challenging with very hard puzzles, so it was very likely you'd die too. It was horrible, but they offered to let you send in your memory card to fix it because PS2 days they didn't have online patches sadly. I guess we really take online and its easy patches for granted.

[@plasmaoctopus1728]

Yeah as much as I do feel like game companies take patches for granted and tend to rush things out too quick, I also feel like there were a ton of games say roughly during xbox/ps2 generation and all those before it that would've benefited greatly if they had online patching as easily available.

[@LonelySpaceDetective]

It is definitely very nice that if your game has a major issue with it, you no longer have "pray that you can get your copy exchanged with a fixed version" as your sole option before shitty workarounds.

[@FirstRainbow96]

I thought the exact same thing at that moment lol

[@SergioLeRoux]

Wow, I actually owned a legal copy of this game when it came out. I remember finding out the limited saves thing then immediately ragequitting. I didn't get very far, but I found somewhere that you could recycle old save slots by going to your OS and deleting the saves you didn't want anymore.

[@julianfacundocalabrese1176]

10 minutes in, this is looking like resident shock: event horizon attacks, space waffle edition, i love it. Happy halloween Ross!

[@Ashalmawia]

lost vikings also

[@shakajolt1173]

Haven't started the video yet, but game gets crappy near the end. Unending swarm of enemies is no go :|

[@peppermillers8361]

Yeah, I like the System Shocky voice acting, it adds to the charm.

[@KrazyKain]

the sad thing is that there looks like there could be a good game in here, there are a lot of design and technical issues, but if it wasn't for the respawning zombies, limited saves and teleporting zombies (and obviously crashes and game breaking bugs) it would bearable.. .maybe even good?

[@zigfaust]

Respawning zombies isnt the issue. The Evil Within showed it can be done right AS LONG as you include a way to permantly remove them. Just having a limited amount of "purification" items (idk, like little machines you can only carry one of that you can place in a room to prevent the monsters from getting back up while it's there becaue sci-fi reasons and have the ability to pick them back up/recharge them) would have made this game far better. Limited saves work too, as long as you don't have bullshit out of the players hands leading to death. There's good ideas here, they just didnt seem to care about QOL or were short sighted by bad design choices.

[@KrazyKain]

@@zigfaust you aren't wrong but my point is that there could have been a good game in there, we could go on forever about what changes would actually make it good 😅 But I will say, I'm generally not a fan of turning saving into a game mechanic or resource, but that really is just me.

[@lonestarlibrarian1853]

@@zigfaust Personally, I’d say limited saves just don’t work. I’ve never seen a game with them that wouldn’t have been improved by removing the limited save system

[@zigfaust]

@@lonestarlibrarian1853 Every Resident Evil up to RE4 had limited saves. So much would have been lost if they didnt.

[@zigfaust]

@@KrazyKain I play games like Rimworld and Caves of Qud where you DON'T even get to save you just get a single autosave that is constantly overwritten and if you fuck up it's back to the start so I'm used to mechanics like that working well in certain games. Think "Hardcore Mode" in Path of Exile/Diablo

[@flashbackfrank8781]

Chad Z-buffer breaking rage crab is something I never thought I'd witness.

[@poposterous236]

39:24 me, realizing that I have the exact same pc specs as ross: "Damn, Ross needs to upgrade"

[@DonYagamoth]

One of the best things about old games is, that the concept of "good game design" either wasn't invented yet, or not particularly well understood/widespread. This leads to things you would absolutely not expect a game to do, and thus can catch you completely off guard, which can be incredibly refreshing One of the worst things about old games, is that the concept of "good game design" either wasn't invented yet, or not particularly well understood/widespread. This leads to things you would absolutely not expect a game to do, and thus can catch you completely off guard, which can be incredibly frustrating Works both ways

[@Hsaelt]

Nice essay nerd.

[@DonYagamoth]

@@Hsaelt I appreciate it :)

[@DougWIngate]

Most old games have better game design than new ones. I think the term youre looking for is "polish" which is usually just a nice way of saying a game that is flawless in a superficial way. Arkham Asylum is a great example of a game which is actually quite vapid and simple but gets a tonne of praise because it is so well polished. It doesnt do anything obviously wrong, so its immune to criticism

[@magnatcleo2043]

@@DougWIngate The thing is, polish is an element of good game design. In some ways, it's most important one. All the interesting and unique game mechanics in the world won't help a game that is fundamentally dysfunctional. Not having enough polish is how we get games like Sonic Colors Ultimate, which is a port that somehow managed to turn a decently functional Sonic game into a glitch parade that's just a few steps below Sonic 06 in terms of game breaking issues.

[@SioxerNikita]

@@DougWIngate No... Most old games don't have better game design. A lot of old games have very frustrating controls, terrible backtracking and very obtuse solutions, especially in puzzle games. That is not "better game design", and certainly not just lacking "polish". A game can be "vapid" and "simple" and still be good. Not everyone is looking for complicated game number 37, I'd frankly say... very few people do. You could say the same about Half-Life 1... it's vapid and simple... and yet praised to high heavens... because it was a good game, even if it was rough around the edges.

[@Koboldfunnywow]

This game has haunted me for a decade, the amount of bugs this game has and the absolute Ludacris leaps that you have to take to solve some of the puzzles make this game nothing short of impossible without a guide and I played this game back when the internet barely existed.

[@cellarorcs4190]

This is my favorite graphics era. The cutscenes were so dreamlike

[@cbaylor0369]

I love anticipating rosses content, I celebrate every episode and cherish every second. It’s like a celebration to me

[@thenoblepoptart]

Yep, one of the best.

[@MaxIzrin]

I'm guessing the dev team was small, and QA was handled by members of the team. That's probably why the game needs to you to know things ahead of time, because the devs tested if you can accomplish a given task, not if you have any idea what the task even is.

[@DarthMcDoomington]

Yeah, sort of. Apparently it was meant to be a horror themed adventure game before the execs decided at the last minute to turn it into a survival horror and the devs had to rush everything. So they had a cool setting and story concept they could use but they had to redo the gameplay and puzzles. Hell, even the story probably had to be reworked.

[@gamegod273]

@@DarthMcDoomington That's (probably) why everyone sounds so calm and zen too.

[@Swordsoulreaver]

@@DarthMcDoomington Yeah, it got changed to survival horror specifically because RE came out and they wanted to capitalize on its success.

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

Development was pretty rushed by a small and under budget team, which was then dissolved. The writer said in a 2011 interview that there was a lot that they wanted to do but didn't have the time for, and the game we got wasn't the one they wanted to make.

[@101Crock]

It’s like to rename this game to “Playtesting, What’s That?”

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

With the publisher breathing down your neck, and not a lot of time and money to do the game you want, things get like this.

[@Interference22]

The one genuinely great thing about this game is Mood is voiced by the incomparable Fenella Fielding, an absolutely superb actress who was in everything from The Prisoner (as the Village's PA system), Carry On Screaming, The Avengers, and all kinds of British TV from the 60s and 70s.

[@42draws]

Her appearances on the Morcambe and Wise show were always a delight.

[@loopernoodling]

Yes, I smiled when I saw her name. I've seen her in black and white shows on my old gran's bakelite TV! Like you say, she was a fixture in comedy/drama, and comedy/horror back in the 60s and 70s. Unforgettable lady!

[@HarryZontal]

was definitely looking for a comment like this! Amazing lady! "Mind if I smoke"?

[@Josiahiswatching]

Honestly, I for one can relate to Kento telling bad jokes in the midst of a literal space zombie apocalypse. It’s what I’d be doing.

[@therandomdickhead5744]

Gotta blow off some steam somehow

[@seangambone8534]

"Did they eat each other, or did I miss the rib festival?"

[@2-d_in_a_bag]

"What did the space zombie get when he was late to the party? Spare ribs and the cold shoulder."

[@Mrkabrat]

"Zombies in space? Does it make it Dead Space?"

[@thelasttaarakian]

And then youd be showed the air lock!

[@DerHeuler]

I had a tough day... But the Seinfeld thing made my day! Thanks for that!

[@codydagg2259]

"Please don't answer." His flat, slightly scared tone fucking ended me honestly

[@J0MBi]

I remember reading previews about this game before it came out and getting excited, then it just seemed to disappear. Thanks for going through all this to give us a play through, it's interesting how much of the same themes showed up in future games like Dead Space but they were actually playable. Also makes you appreciate how well designed those original Resident Evil games really were when you see other developers attempt the same kinda formula and it comes out looking like this.

[@fluffyzangoose7091]

Wow, Ross is really pumping out that Halloween content this year. Good job!

[@Sierra026]

Holy shit, that was the hardest I laughed in awhile from the Seinfeld skit. This joke, alone, made the episode for me. Thanks, Ross!

[@barry-allenthe-flash8396]

I am so damn impressed with Ross. Its gotten to the point where, if he plays a game and _DOESN'T_ have to open up a hex editor, or use some kind of mod or user created tool, or check out multiple versions to get around bugs and soft-locks... it just doesn't feel _quite_ right, lol. Luckily, Martian Gothic really put Ross through the paces. I've seen others TRY this game, mock it a bit, give up and walk away, and it honestly seems like something no one would ever normally complete, so.... again, I'm just *incredibly* damn impressed with Ross' unconquerable spirit! You deserve FAR more than 300k subs, man. As far as youtube channels go, Accursed Farms is a gem.

[@thecorbohole3637]

You know, I'd always assumed Ross was familiar with Society, but him actually using a clip of it is some nice confirmation.

[@PenguinDT]

Haven't even gotten started and you have me in stitches with Matlock. Oh dear, this will be a ride!

[@entothechesnautknight1762]

One thing id like to compliment is the accuracy those personal items had to real life for a mission like this; -Despite it being expensive, Fruit is pretty much always sent up with astronaughts so they can have something that's completely unprocessed, so it makes sense they'd have them, especially if they were flash-frozen or something. -Lipstick can be used as a zero G writing tool or a way to write on metallic or glass surfaces, and in the case of a possibly hostility taken over mars base, a silent way to write. -And Silver bullets actually have more puncture power then lead at short ranges, and Space suits are pretty damn thick, so if they need to shoot down someone running around in one, he can. That, and having a little gunpowder is never a bad idea in case you need to start a fire or a reaction, and on a science base like the Mars based would be, that may be important. Also, we 100% *can* terraform Mars, it's just not worth it and especially not profitable. And on having his metals, if the crew was alive, it might calm or intimidate them to have such a high ranking officer come visit the base directly. Remember, they didn't know it was the undead, the best guess would have been a Coo of some kind.

[@seigeengine]

A Coo, huh?

[@Sigismund697]

For years I wondered if this was some unsung hidden gem that the dead space guys ripped off No, this was a game that the dead space guys played, liked the general idea and decided to salvage the story

[@littleNorwegians]

I love this whole episode And appreciate the love given to older works, like this. It's downright admirable what they tried to do. Indies take note, good and bad.

[@NecroBurt]

1 minute 50 seconds in you’ve referenced my favorite golem. Incredible content as always. You never disappoint.

[@HQ_Default]

Ross, Mars actually does have enough gravity to sustain a mostly earth-like atmosphere, but from what I understand it's something to do with the fact that the Mars Core doesn't spin like earth's does, and thus does not have an electro-magnetic field protecting it from the sun. I can't remember why the sun destroys Mars's atmosphere without that, but I do remember that was the reason.

[@matrix3509]

Two things keep Earth's core from cooling. The first is the abundance of heavy radioactive metals in the core giving off tremendous amounts of heat when they undergo radioactive decay. The second is the presence of Earth's moon, which provides plenty of additional heating though tidal flexing. If Mars had a moon of sufficient size, it'd be enough to keep the core partially molten and keep the magnetic field.

[@EGeorgev]

The Sun destroys the atmosphere, because it has strong solar winds, that a planet needs a magnetic field to be shielded from.

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

@@matrix3509 What if we stuck Phobos and Deimos together, with like, a LOT of JB Weld?

[@Darkxanderpresents]

I remember reading a thing saying that if you built a big ass copper magnet attached to a relatively weak nuclear reactor at the Lagrange point between Mars and the Sun you could shield it. Don’t know how we’d afford getting all that shit out there or keep the huge magnet from fucking up the nuclear reactor but I’m fairly optimistic that it will be done within my lifetime (I’ve got a good 60 years ahead of me, assuming the human lifespan doesn’t get changed massively)

[@EGeorgev]

@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine sounds crazy enough to work XD

[@opethheimer]

I remember starting playing this on PS1... but I can't remember why I never finished it. All that I remember is a quote from one of the characters after going through decontamination: "I feel more contaminated than I was before."

[@rainfeller]

Ross, you're a whole mood, man. You crack me up. Feels like you're an old friend I haven't seen in a while. Love ya, buddy, keep it up.

[@MeggaMuffen-jo3rq]

Thank you so much for making this episode of game dungeon. I seen Martian Gothic not that long ago in a video about resident evil clones. I was fascinated by the idea of zombies on mars, but unfortunately there’s not too much content on the game. Probably because of how much of a pain it is to get working. I appreciate being able to see your work arounds and also getting to see the ending. ‘Cause these kinds of games are fascinating to me. Keep up the good work!

[@patryksg]

I know it's Halloween, but to Ross fans,3 Dungeons in a row feels more like Christmas. Thanks, Ross!

[@CybershamanX]

Thank you for sticking with it, Ross! I was worried for a moment near the end that we wouldn't get to see the ending to this wacky game. Your perseverance is god-like. I consider myself fairly stubborn when it comes to hanging in there, but I have to say that I don't think I would have made it to the end. I could really tell that you were stressed out about it, too. So again, thank you for your work. 😃 You know what? I really like the premise of this game! It's just too bad that the game design was so horrible. I'm amazed this thing even got released in the state it was in. That's _before_ any of the fixes/patches! If it was today, I actually wouldn't be surprised, considering how bad game publishers have become in that regard. Anyway, I think if someone remade the game today, the setting and story would be pretty interesting! I know it has elements that are close to other games/story ideas, but I still think this one could be made into something fun to play. 😎 Anyhoo, GREAT JOB! Thanks again! Take care! 🙂

[@stevenyukabacera160]

You know that there's games out there that don't require a summoning circle, a set of talllow candles, and a passage from the Necronomicon to get to run

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

But where's the fun in that? I appreciate the effort Ross goes through to boot up old stuff like this.

[@thehoxton8688]

At 40:52 why the survivor from the cafeteria interact with K and not end up being a Trimorph like the ones you encountered with is because he isn't infected like the three are. Remember the decontamination chamber from the beginning of the game? The microbes, or rather living cells of some kind were in the spray of the decontamination. So to answer to that is that he knew the conspiracy of what's going on and survived for 10 months only the Alien Queen made him lose sanity by cannibalism... I think. This is the only straight answer I can give you as to why they interact each other up close and nothing happens vs the crew you interact with does happen.

[@stardust-reverie]

“i don’t want drama from my astronauts” me too ross. me too.

[@SuccubiPie]

After seeing sgf's great LP of this, I really appreciate this Game Dungeon.

[@KPx-ke8bg]

I can't believe how great Ross got the game looking with the anti-aliasing and textures. Nice job!

[@DR3ADER1]

2:38: Rupert Degas is in this game, most people know him as the voice of Richard Watterson in The Amazing World of Gumball. According to his IMDB, in this game, he's the voice of Karne. Additionally, this game is British, Creative Reality was a Portsmouth-based developer known for a couple of games in the 80s and 90s, particularly DreamWeb, which was a bit of a mixed-bag Cyberpunk game that had some positive critical reception at the time of its release in 1994. Martian Gothic was their last game. The irony of it all is that David Dew, the co-founder of Creative Reality, would later work at Rockstar Leeds on L.A. Noire, another game published by Take-Two Interactive(mostly on motion capture clean-up, because the game never had a lead animator, he also worked on early builds of GTA V during his time at Rockstar Leeds).

[@DysaniaLP]

I can always come back to any of your videos that ive watched 10 times before. Your content is wonderful.

[@_Phoenyx_]

Just because I unironically adore this game (the story, not so much the gameplay) I'll do my best to answer the questions posed at 1:00:25. They're just about all answered in audio logs but I'll do my best to summarize. #1: Pretty much. #2: Yes. The queen possesses enormous psionic power. She's responsible for animating all the zombies through sheer force of will, combined with fragments of recombinant alien genes from the infection. #3: Kind of, but not to the same degree. I'll explain in #5. #4: The infection consists of three different types of bacteria encoded with Kurakarak genetics. A human can only be infected with one at a time, which was the case with Karne, Matlock, and Kenzo. When together, these bacteria combine to form semi-crystalline structures which possess a strong psionic resonance, tapping into the ancestral power and memories of the Kurakarak. If two infected individuals get too close, the psionic interaction forcibly melds them into a 'bimorph', which is an imperfect combination. Said 'bimorph' will then instinctually seek out the closest individual infected with the missing bacterial link in order to create a proper Trimorph. That individual can count off their remaining moments of life in minutes or even seconds depending on proximity. It's also worth noting that any 'zombies' that didn't die due to mauling or gunfire were ultimately killed from psionic interference due to the incomplete bacterial structures within them. #5: You didn't merge with Gunn because he was previously known as John Farr, the chief medical officer of the base. While the infection was spreading and everyone was dying in droves as a result, he managed to make an incomplete vaccine called the "Triune Serum" that caused the bacterial structures to maintain themselves in a single human body. As a direct result, he's immune to psionic death or Trimorph-merging, but the psionic interactions of the complete structures completely fried his brain. The floating mentioned before is because he is now subject to the Queen's psionic influence, but his experience of it is anomalous at best due to the altered state of the bacterial structures within him. #6: Basically. I don't think you ever hear a complete version of the message. #7: On this, your guess is as good as mine. There are some logs hinting that the Kurakarak may have been able to explore the universe and influence it via astral projection, but I dunno. It's easier to simply confirm that the Trimorphs were meant to act as new bodies for the disembodied spirits of the Kurakarak.

[@CybershamanX]

(41:25) I love the little Lovecraft reference in the graffiti on the left wall. "Pickman is a model to us all". 😉 EDIT: spelling fix

[@adenowirus]

Plus a note addressed to Pickman which mentions that the portions of the base closest to the cemetery are called Arkham and Salem.

[@CybershamanX]

@@adenowirus Good catch! I was having trouble reading some of the words! 😎

[@TehTub]

Thank you Ross, that Seinfeld skit both terrified and caused me to send my drink out my nose laughing.

[@WolfChildRusk]

I always thought the trick with the non-dead in this game was to trick them into dead ends, shoot them there and run away, cause they only come back to life if you get near them.

[@selfshocker6468]

Nice video by the way, watched it with a smile not going off my face) It's still cool in 2023 to see people trying to play Martian Gothic for the first time. My first try was in distant 2004 on PS1 and confusion and sense of uselessness didn't leave me throught the whole walkthrough. It was impossible for my 15-year-old brains to solve all the puzzles the game contained so I had to look them up (not on the Internet, but in the book. Yeah, I mean it, there were printed versions of puzzle-solving books). But now having played this game for several hundred of times I realized that everything is not at all that bad that it seemed when I first played it. Now I've got a world record speedrun and going to improve my results. P.S. One of my favourite survival horror games. And one more thing: weapons are not crutial in this game, zombies can easily be avoided even in the narrowest corridors and you can also get them off yourself using control buttons. So if it were not the Trimorphs that must be killed anyway, I'd manage to finish it without a single bullet shot)

[@daltonwilliams84]

VERY GLAD a professional is taking this on, was planning a feature on my old website on this game but never made it through on PS1.

[@kleptoklept]

For the thing with the 2 panels you need to hit at the same time, my guess is that you needed to shoot first and then hit the button, because there's more of a delay for shooting the panel. Before you reloaded you kept shooting second, and afterwards you shot first.

[@AbcDefg-zt8xy]

Yes, also on the successfull try he somehow did it without screen transition. Most likely both camera and order were important

[@TheHighsea]

YOUR A MAD MAN ROSS - This has been a very stressful month for me and I'm barely holding it together. Thank you for sharing so much with me this halloween to help de-stress.

[@Quakistaw]

Played the PS1 version of Martian Gothic for the first time in 2019 (and laughed at the coincidental year it takes place). I have a love/hate relationship with this game, because it's full of potential with a unique concept set in a fascinatingly eerie environment that revolves around figuring out a massive scale puzzle similar to conquering the Spencer Estate from Resident Evil. As Ross already showcases here, Martian Gothic is bogged down by poor execution, plain and simple. The Nondead revival mechanical by itself however was never my issue, but the terrible way players are forced to deal with them. Even after learning how to shake off an enemy without taking damage to save ammo, it was still tedious to travel since avoiding them isn't a consistent option. If the Nondead behaved like the Zombies from an RE title, where players can bait them and then slip by in tight hallways without being pulled in by a magnetic grab attack (that also happens to re-orientate you), the whole ordeal would have been immensely more pleasant experience to play by this factor alone, even through late game. Too bad about the PC version still having major problems even post patches. Sadly the PS1 version has its own issues in other areas that made an already painful journey more annoying without referencing a guide. From the top of my head: 1) There’s a wall breach beyond the yellow tag door just outside the Mood Chamber. A voice-line explaining why you can't enter even after unlocking the door should play here. On PS1 this dialogue bugs out by only triggering for a half-second barely getting a word in. Now we have no indication what the problem is. 2) Using the toy buggy to grab the spectrometer, the camera angle transition while entering the grate might not trigger properly, so it’s not clear if there's actually anything here in the first place. The camera angle transition makes it obvious there's an item to grab, but without it you're blind, instead listening out for a "clang" to indicate something was grabbed. 3) The Trimorph banging at the pillar on PC is coloured differently to suggest it's not like others and has an animation indicating its action, possibly suggesting it's up to something. On PS1, it looks like any other Trimorph and doesn't animate itself banging the pillar. Well, I guess there's nothing special of note here then... right? Issues like that during a casual first time playthrough makes it especially unclear what we're missing as a player. Why can't I enter the yellow tag door after unlocking it? How was I supposed to know there's an important item behind the grate? That pillar was important this whole time? Had to look up a guide to understand what was going on in these situations in order to progress.

[@RedAce93]

I have never been more excited for a video. I played this weird yet incredibly interesting game as a kid and it has stuck with me for years. Now Ross is talking about it. I'm all in!

[@thisismyshow9697]

NO WAY, I've been waiting for someone decently big to cover this game for years. Had it as a kid, never made it past the first airlock. 10/10