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#William Shatner’s TekWar is the technological way forward for crap

William Shatner’s TekWar is the technological way forward for crap

Being an avid fan of two.5D ray casting engines, I’ve a powerful fascination with Ken Silverman’s Construct Engine, which was the inspiration upon which Duke Nukem 3D was constructed. That in some way led me to William Shatner’s TekWar.

Regardless of Duke Nukem 3D being what made the Construct Engine well-known, it wasn’t the primary recreation launched on it. There have been a couple of that got here earlier than it, and Capstone was answerable for multiple of them.

Capstone Software program is a kusoge matter in itself, as a lot of their catalog is both crap or sub-crap. Whereas researching DOS video games to cowl on this column, lots of their video games rose to the highest due to the preservation efforts of SNEG. Nonetheless, a superb lots of Capstone’s worst video games had been primarily based on horrible licenses, so they’re now not accessible. Considered one of these unavailable titles is 1995’s William Shatner’s TekWar which, for a large number of causes, I’m pushing for having it re-released. Come on, Nightdive.

William Shatner's TekWar Conglomo building
Screenshot by Destructoid

William Shatner’s TekWar is predicated on a 1989 novel known as William Shatner’s TekWar by William Shatner (ghost-written by Ron Goulart). Within the early ‘90s, William Shatner’s TekWar was picked up for comedian books, a TV sequence, and this recreation as a strategy to show that William Shatner’s face was an efficient advertising instrument to promote rubbish.

It was poorly obtained, however individuals are nonetheless making an attempt.

Should you don’t know who William Shatner is, he performed a small position in a distinct segment Nineteen Sixties TV sequence known as Star Trek. Since then, he’s coasted on that success and recognition, largely within the aforementioned effort of promoting rubbish. At this time, you would possibly know him from exhibits like Bizarre or What and The UnXplained the place he tells you that, whereas it’s only a principle, Alien Nazis positively constructed the pyramids. Aliens simply love piles of stone and use them to refuel their invisible spaceships. His whole existence now appears to be thrashing towards the forces of irrelevancy, and he’ll let you know something you need to hear should you’ll simply make him really feel necessary.

Unsurprisingly, William Shatner’s TekWar begins with an advert for the TV present, William Shatner, elaborate logos, dangerous CGI, and William Shatner. 

William Shatner's TekWar combat
Screenshot by Destructoid

You’re an ex-police officer who’s awoken from cryosleep imprisonment by William Shatner. It’s possibly the 2043, and there’s a brand new drug in the marketplace known as Tek. It’s an addictive expertise that places its customers in a blissful simulated surroundings the place they will briefly really feel happiness till the drug kills them.

Which will have sounded nefarious in 1989, however today, it seems like the subsequent product that Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg would take credit score for.

Sooner or later, the treatment for a drug drawback is homicide. William Shatner forces you to make use of your police abilities of assassination to take down seven drug lords and cease their plan to unfold addictive happiness by means of the web. You’re choose, jury, and executioner multi function, and quite than attempt to get to the societal root of habit, you’re simply going to kill the individuals supplying the demand. Regulation and order 101, child.

You’re given the selection of seven “TekLords” to take down, and I don’t know why. Judging by William Shatner’s lectures and the environmental storytelling, there’s a chronological order by which you’re purported to sort out the degrees. Nothing fancy, simply left to proper, however I’m undecided why they bothered giving the choice.

William Shatner's TekWar woman in strange pose.
Screenshot by Destructoid

Not that it issues. You completely can sort out the degrees in any order. Other than William Shatner making an attempt to inform William Shatner’s TekWar in a linear trend, there’s no actual problem curve. Every stage begins you off on a subway platform along with your pockets emptied all the way down to the naked necessities. Each time you enter a stage, it’s important to rebuild your arsenal. Solely keys carry between areas, they usually get taken away whenever you go after a brand new TekLord, anyway.

I don’t even know the way I might quantify problem in William Shatner’s TekWar. Each stage has you coming into a metropolis space. You’re purported to keep away from inflicting an excessive amount of commotion, and should you preserve your weapon holstered, rent-a-cops will ignore you. Nonetheless, it gained’t take lengthy earlier than somebody who doesn’t like your face simply begins blasting at it from some unseen nook of the map.

Among the best elements of the Construct Engine is its dealing with of map sectors that enable stage designers to create the phantasm of verticality with out true room-over-room. This enabled the creation of ranges that resemble real-world environments, which was one thing that video games had been pushing for in these days. So, William Shatner’s TekWar options areas that, in superficial methods, really feel like city environments. Nonetheless, Capstone fell into the pitfall of these early video games, which is that the degrees are designed to really feel like actual locations first, and the way they operate because the setting for gameplay is a distant second.

As such, lots of the rooms and areas you enter are solely pointless. A lot of William Shatner’s TekWar is pointless.

William Shatner's TekWar high ground.
Screenshot by Destructoid

You’ll undoubtedly end up circling areas making an attempt to find the chosen TekLord with out success. That’s as a result of, whereas every TekLord drops you in what appears to be the identical subway platform, the degrees are sometimes damaged into completely different stops. So, one TekLord would possibly require you to disembark at one spot, scour the extent, after which, when you end up caught, return to the subway to maneuver to a different platform and repeat the method.

However, like I stated, the one gadgets with permanence listed below are the keys. So, you would possibly suppose that you should seek for the keys on earlier platforms to take them to the ultimate space and unlock the door to the boss, however that’s not at all times the case.

There are solely two distinctive keys: purple and blue. When looking for any given TekLord, there are at all times a number of locations these will be discovered, and sometimes there are copies within the space the place stated TekLord is situated. This implies any earlier ranges are pointless. You possibly can’t even use them to load up on munitions as a result of, like I stated, weapons get dumped whenever you transition to new areas.

It’s so distressingly complicated. It feels essential to go looking the sooner subway stops simply in case there isn’t a required key within the final space. I don’t belief that William Shatner’s TekWar gained’t simply reload all of the enemies once more.

William Shatner's TekWar City Street
Screenshot by Destructoid

The baffling mission framework can be dangerous sufficient, however William Shatner’s TekWar isn’t enjoyable to play to start with. As I stated, the degrees are designed extra for seems to be than operate. They’re complicated mazes crammed with areas that will be pointless, even should you had been allowed to take your toys with you.

The enemies are simply left to form of roam the surroundings. Anytime you enter an space, they’ll begin blasting at you indiscriminately. Since they simply fireplace bullets that don’t present as projectiles, your character simply begins taking injury. There’s no strategy to keep away from it. Your display begins blinking purple, and your life bar begins depleting slowly. Very slowly. Within the meantime, you should attempt to seek out all the things within the neighborhood that’s making your display flash.

In every other recreation, taking such fixed, unstoppable aggression would imply you die so much, however I didn’t see the sport over display too usually. That’s as a result of, to be able to steadiness the problem, Capstone simply piled on the well being. Even whereas taking steady injury, your character’s healthbar is very large. Relatively than meticulously place enemies to create a enjoyable and difficult expertise like a online game is supposed to do, Capstone stored tweaking participant well being till you had a preventing probability. That’s, uh, a really distinctive manner of doing it, I suppose. I imply, it feels god-awful to play, nevertheless it’s a manner to make sure the participant can endure their strategy to the end line.

William Shatner's TekWar Matrix section.
Screenshot by Destructoid

Talking of which, every TekLord you kill awards you with a logo. Sooner or later, you’re purported to take these symbols into the Matrix (the digital web, in fact) and put them into slots scattered all through. I wouldn’t advocate doing this till the top, however regardless, it’s one of many worst sequences of gameplay I believe I’ve been subjected to.

To its credit score, William Shatner’s TekWar does an honest job of presenting a digital world inside the Construct Engine. It differentiates itself from the remainder of the sport fairly properly. Sadly, it’s crammed with inescapable traps and obtuse puzzles that take perpetually to unravel. Whereas I used to be trapped on this half, my accomplice requested me what I used to be enjoying. I advised him.

He cringed and requested, “And the way is it?”

“I’m in Hell,” I replied.

It feels virtually merciful after you full the Matrix part and also you’re dropped again into regular gameplay. It’s a brief combat after which William Shatner tells you what a superb job you probably did. Talking of merciful, there was by no means a William Shatner’s Tekwar 2.

William Shatner's TekWar bedroom fight.
Screenshot by Destructoid

I’ve found that enjoying Construct Engine video games as they had been launched is subsequent to inconceivable for me. The shortage of mouselook feels awkward to palms which have been skilled with that management type, and I can by no means discover keybindings that really feel proper. Fortunately, there’s a Construct supply department known as BuildGDX that helps William Shatner’s TekWar, very similar to eDuke32 allows Duke Nukem 3D to run on fashionable setups. I’m undecided how grateful I must be that somebody made William Shatner’s TekWar extra accessible to me, however at the very least I didn’t battle with PGUP and PGDN to maneuver my digital neck.

One of many causes I like enjoying dangerous video games is making an attempt to research the selections that make them so horrible to play. William Shatner’s TekWar, for all its ineptitude, appears to have come from a spot of ambition. 3D environments – even faux ones – had been a brand new frontier in video video games, so the playbook was nonetheless being written. When the path hasn’t been worn, it’s simple to wander away within the fallacious course and be unable to search out your manner again.

If I needed to think about the design doc, I’d say that the preliminary concept was that they’d drop gamers in an surroundings, after which they’d discretely have to search out their strategy to the goal and remove them. The issue there’s that it’s troublesome to then throw obstacles of their manner, and it creates lots of variables that must be deliberate for. Finally, when all of the free ends must be tied collectively, your participant winds up with a towering well being bar.

We get so caught up populating pedestals with video games that set priority that we miss out on the opposite half of the story. However whereas a soufflé that efficiently rises seems to be a lot better, I’m extra within the one which collapsed after the home was shaken by a Buick driving by means of the entrance door. Anybody can succeed, nevertheless it takes expertise to fail as arduous as William Shatner’s TekWar.

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