Game 172: Hard Nova (1990)

The other day, I downloaded Hard Nova, fired it up just to get a sense of it, and had an immediate visceral reaction. Specifically, I said, "Oh, hell no." With mounting suspicion, I did a search for the game's title in my past blog comments, and my heart sank when I saw that most of them were attached to Sentinel Worlds: Future Magic. That game sticks out in my memory as one of the dumbest games I've ever played. I just checked out my final rating from May 2012, and sure enough, I wrote it has "a dumb plot, a dumb interface, a dumb approach to combat, dumb dialogue, dumb exposition, and a final 'battle' so dumb it beggars description."

I'm not saying it didn't have some interesting elements. My final rating of 36 was, after all, slightly in my "recommended" range. The game has its fans. The interface was reasonably good, character development was okay, and it was one of the few games in its year to offer actual NPC dialogue. But every time that Sentinel Worlds had to do anything with plot and dialogue, it suddenly seemed it was created by a sixth-grader. Let's all recall the game's moment of victory, seconds after the player has defeated the dumbly-named "Malcolm Trandle" in the bizarrely stupid final combat:

Slightly better would have been, "You destroyed me?! I am beat."

Hard Nova is recognizably from the same team as Sentinel Worlds. Both were published by EA, and Karl Buiter was the designer of both. Seeing all this, I did not approach Hard Nova with a lot of promise. My fears turn out to be partly founded. The manual and in-game descriptive text are well-written, but the in-game dialogue is absolutely cringe-worthy (as we'll see below). The lame combat system hasn't been improved, and the interface is confusing as hell. It relies a lot on the function keys, which aren't the easiest set of keys to get right without looking at the keyboard.

On the other hand, there are some improvements, primarily in graphics and sound. The back story is pretty good (then again, so was Sentinel Worlds', before it devolved into idiocy). There are more descriptions of individuals, objects, and areas; in fact, you get a D&D module-style paragraph upon entering each room.

The pre-room and in-room descriptions add some flavor to the visuals.

The back story casts the player in the role of a ship captain who lost his or her ship and crew in an errant meteor strike. Escaping in a pod with one crewmember--a "Bremar" named A'kri Janr--the player gets picked up by the Starkiller Mercenary Group and has no choice but to join. As the game begins, the player chooses whether this captain is "Nova," a female who specializes in guns, or "Stark," a male who specializes in hand-to-hand combat. As with Sentinel Worlds, both portraits look vaguely like people I've seen before, but I can't quite place.

Neither, incidentally, looks anything like the character on the box cover, who to me looks like a young Kate Mulgrew. Voyager wouldn't be on for five years, but perhaps Buiter was a fan of Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.

In any event, it's not like the game is called Hard Stark, and since the manual uses "Nova" as the main character in its back story, I decided to go with her.

A map of the game world, courtesy of replacementdocs.com. The game starts in the system in the upper-left.

            
The game takes place in an area of space called the Four Systems, a group of mining and trading colonies established for commercial exploitation. Conflict has recently broken out between the systems, which has both enriched the mercenary companies and pitted them against each other. Meanwhile, far away from the Four Systems, the sun of a planet called Typhon is dying, and the Typhonese battle fleet is seeking a new home "beyond the tunnel in space." The ominous suggestion is that the tunnel's exit is somewhere near the four systems.

Nova starts on a base called Mastass, at which her ship is docked. She is accompanied by an NPC companion named A'kri Janr, her alien navigator from the backstory and the only survivor from the meteor strike. The first quest seems to be to assemble a new crew.

The small base has a store, a "robomaze," and a casino. The "robomaze" requires a $300 entry fee and offers a televised match in which Nova fights robots and can collect bronze flags to sell for $60 each at the store. It's an easy way to learn the combat system, gain some experience, and make a little money. I'll have more to say on combat in a later post, of course.
 

Fighting in the robomaze.

The casino offers the ability to play roulette (using Vegas-ish rules, so no real PC advantage) and talk to a few NPCs. Dialogue is something like Sentinel Worlds, offering a couple of full-sentence options for each stage of the conversation. Also, like Sentinel Worlds, the writing is awful. Sometimes the dialogue options don't make a lot of sense, as in this case, where the only choices are to insult the NPC or lie to him.

Or in this case, where you're just obnoxious whatever you choose:

The casino included an aristocratic "business woman" who didn't want to talk with me no matter what I chose, a merc from the "Zero-L" company, a space merchant who ran a test using a crystal to see if we were "compatible" and got scared at the result, a Lanta (lizard species) preacher who called me an "abomination," a young alien who was entranced by my status as a mercenary and wanted to join me (I said no, since he didn't have any skills), and a more competent NPC named Ace Elcator who did join me. I'll relate the entire dialogue with Ace so you can get a sense of it:

ACE: That seat's taken, merc.

NOVA: What makes you think I'm a mercenary?

ACE: Either you're a merc or a plastic surgeon's test dummy. Your clothes are torn and smell like smoke and fusionite. And you also had the eggs to talk to me. What do you want.

NOVA: I'm looking for some people.

ACE: People? What kind of people?

NOVA: (striking a noble pose). People who want adventure, fast living, and the threat of death at every turn.

ACE: What are you, a recruitment poster? Is this your first time looking for a crew?

NOVA: Well, yes, it's my first time. But don't worry--I've got experience.

ACE: That's a load of crap. If you're not going to be honest with me, we can stop talking right now.

NOVA: Okay (shrug), so I've done this a lot. I just didn't want you asking questions about my last crew.

ACE: That's better. (She smiles.) So what happened to your last crew?

NOVA: Hey, it was an accident. We took a meteor hit, and only me and my navigator made it. That what you wanted to hear?

ACE: I'm sorry about your crew, but accidents happen. So you need a gunner, don't you? I know where you can find one.

NOVA: Yeah? Tell me.

ACE: Me. I'm the best gunner you'll ever find.

NOVA: Great! You're hired. When can you leave?

ACE: You're being sarcastic! You don't believe I'm a gunner. Well, watch this! (She gets up and starts to walk away.)

NOVA: Uh...

ACE: (She walks away, over to the front of the bar. She taps the Lanta evangelist on the shoulder and says...) Hey, snot face! I wanna buy a book! (When he turns, she pulls a nasty looking blaster out of her holster and fires one blue bolt of plasma at his chest. The Lanta falls amidst a shower of sparks. The twisted body lies on a scorch mark on the carpet.  You notice three other scorch marks near the new one. The whole bar erupts with applause. The woman bows and she walks back to your table while the bartender quickly drags the body away. The woman sits down next to you and says...) So, where's our first assignment?

NOVA: Welcome aboard. What's your name?

ACE: Alexandra Elcator. But call me Ace. It really pisses me off when people call me Alexandra.

NOVA: No problem. (You smile.) I don't think I want to piss you off. Let's go.

So my first NPC addition is a psychotic murderer, and apparently there are no laws in this universe against shooting someone in a bar just because he's annoying the customers.

The bartender, an ugly guy peddling a drink called "hot mud," was described as Nova's friend. He sympathized as I recounted the events of the backstory but didn't offer much information. I found a case of mud near the bar and sold it in the store for $360.
 

The on-base store.

Each character has a score in 16 abilities, categorized into those that are "land-based" (e.g., agility, firearms, demolitions) and those that are "ship-based" (mechanics, star gunner, electronics). I'm not sure if there's a maximum to the scores, but the maximum that anyone starts with is 21, and the average is around 3-6. Although there's no character creation process, characters start as if they've already "leveled up," giving you the option to put 1-4 points into the various abilities.

Each character starts with a different concentration of actual and possible abilities. Nova herself can learn anything except the Bremer-specific "navigation song," which is the ability that allows navigation through stargates. She comes with a strong selection of land-based abilities and a couple of ship abilities; her highest scores are in stealth, fitness, aptitude, star communication, and programming. The Bremer scout, A'kri Janr, can only learn 7 abilities; he starts extremely high in "navigation song" and moderate in a few ground abilities. Ace Elcator has her highest abilities in both ground and ship weapons.

Ace Elcator's ability selection.

As with combat, I'll have more to say about abilities, experience, and leveling when I understand it better. I assume that the goal is to get a balanced crew. You appear to be able to recruit up to 5 additional NPCs (for a total party size of 6), but only 3 of them (not including Nova) can be assigned to the "ground squad" at any given time, so there's a place for 2 people with space-only abilities. I hope there are more than 5 NPCs in the game because I rejected "Young D-Coro" when he told me he didn't have any skills.

The dialogue options are to take an unqualified crew member or be cruel to him.

There weren't any other encounters or clues as to the main quest in the opening base, so after exploring a bit and talking to everyone, I entered my space ship and blasted off.

You fly your ship in several views depending on the scale. When I first left the base, the screen showed me a close-up view of the planet, across which I could coast and watch the changes in coordinates. I guess I'm in the "hovercraft" at this point.

This view reminds me of an action game from the 1980s where you fly a plane and dodge missiles and obstacles before bombing something at the end of the run. I did some Googling, but I can't find it. Any ideas?

One level above that is a planetary view, where you cover larger territory in a low orbit. I think that at this level, the hovercraft had docked with the ship, as indicated in the little diagram.

And above that is "space" view, where you do a lot of things: travel between planets, fight other ships, repair your ship, assign ship and ground positions for the various party members, and change the "signature" of your ship to deceive others. We'll explore all of this in the future.

Getting my first sort-of quest.

The moment I left the base, I received a message from Starkiller Headquarters that my "r and r" was over and I needed to return to the headquarters on Holbrook (described by the encyclopedia as an airless, lifeless world populated only by mercenaries) for a new assignment. According to the map, it was in the same system, so I flew to the planet, orbited it, and went to the coordinates indicated in the message, where I found some kind of base. As I wrap up this post, I'm trying to figure out how to land in it; moving up and down in the hovercraft doesn't seem to work. Whatever the case, I'm probably going to reload in the original base and master the robomaze first.

This appears to be Starkiller headquarters, and I'm guessing the arrow is where I land. I just can't figure out how.

A few miscellaneous notes:

• While you can move with both the arrow keys and keypad, there's no diagonal movement. I think this is a bit unforgivable in 1990.

• While the sound in general is okay, a horrible disco soundtrack plays when you start the game and when you transition between areas. I don't think there's a way to turn it off independently from the sound effects.

• The game makes an autosave as you enter and exit each area, so it's easy to pick up where you left off. You can separately save and load specific game statuses. I don't remember any game doing this so far in my chronology.

• There's a decent in-game encyclopedia about different planets and races.

The entry for the starting planet.

It took me a long time to get this opening post written, but I mostly think I'm over the hump and can start to enjoy what the game has to offer. Coming from a game in which space combat was completely optional and kind-of lame, I look forward to seeing how it works in Hard Nova.