You Live What You've Learned.
I seem to have gone from 'I can't really get engaged with any fiction' to 'I'm trying to play EVERY VIDEOGAME simultaneously'. Zero Time Dilemma was heavily discounted on the PlayStation Store, so I've bought it!
Zero Time Dilemma is the third game in the Zero Escape series, following Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Virtue's Last Reward (the Zero Escape series isn't much better than Kingdom Hearts on the naming front). It's a puzzling series of games about people who are locked up together and get weird lectures on philosophical concepts and then die repeatedly. I've played the first two, but I haven't talked much about them here.
Here are my early notes on Zero Time Dilemma! The game is very weirdly structured in a way that makes it hard to warn about spoilers, but I'm going to spoil the early C-Team scene 'Suspicion'. (It lets you hop between different characters and play assorted scenes out of order, but I've mainly been sticking with C-Team because it's the team I like the most.)
I can’t believe I got an ending ten minutes into the game. The credits took five minutes. That’s fifty percent of the gameplay time it took to reach them. (The very first thing that happened in the game: the villain went, 'I'm going to flip a coin, and if you call it correctly I'll let you go.' I guessed right. He let me go. The end. Roll credits.)
I thought at first that the 'play these scenes in any order' mechanic was just because the characters kept having their memories erased, so, whether you choose the scene right after the last one or the one five hours later, you'll know as much as the characters do. That's part of it, but I've realised now the scenes are also in different timelines. It wouldn't be a Zero Escape game without confusing time shenanigans.
The escape rooms are occasionally pretty dire. The worst offender is the pantry, for two reasons:
- it scattered a load of arms and legs around the room and had Akane and Carlos go 'oh, this is a right arm! this is a left leg!' and then went 'now work out this left-right-up-down button code!' and the limbs had nothing to do with it.
- in looking up the button code for the above reason, I got spoiled for who the limbs belonged to.
On the plus side, the 'they're not fake body parts' reveal was startling enough to startle me even when I experienced it on GameFAQs, rather than in the actual game as intended.
The game asked me 'who killed him?' and I entered the dog's name and got the response 'how would a dog do it?' Look, I'm trying my best! The camera kept lingering significantly on the dog when they were wondering who did it! I'll admit it's perhaps not likely that a small dog could dismember someone and then use their limbs to set up a puzzle, but I was working with what I'd been given.
Carlos and Akane had some pretty cute interactions in the pantry, so I'm sorry there's (as of yet?) no timeline in which they both survive past it.
I'm going to end up shipping Carlos and Akane. I shouldn't. Junpei's right there. But it's going to happen. I can feel it.
I like Carlos a lot, actually! Strong family connections, inclined to friendly teasing, good-hearted, with enough potential darkness under pressure to keep things interesting. At one point he flips out and convinces himself he's murdered someone and tries to decapitate himself with an axe.
I also like that he didn't go 'gasp, no, I'm straight' when Junpei tried to get under his skin. (I have no idea what Carlos's sexuality is, so it's possible this is just because he isn't straight, but I was definitely expecting a no-homo response and was pleased not to get one.)
Carlos: I'd like to know more about you too.
Junpei: What's that, Carlos? Does that mean you're interested in me...?
Carlos: No. My focus is my little sister. Got no time for a love life.
It's a shame this game lacks the 'will the opponent ally or betray?' tension of Virtue's Last Reward (which was basically The Prisoner's Dilemma: The Videogame). The life-or-death decisions don't really have any weight when you know exactly what the other teams are going to do, on account of being the other teams.
Zero Time Dilemma is the third game in the Zero Escape series, following Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Virtue's Last Reward (the Zero Escape series isn't much better than Kingdom Hearts on the naming front). It's a puzzling series of games about people who are locked up together and get weird lectures on philosophical concepts and then die repeatedly. I've played the first two, but I haven't talked much about them here.
Here are my early notes on Zero Time Dilemma! The game is very weirdly structured in a way that makes it hard to warn about spoilers, but I'm going to spoil the early C-Team scene 'Suspicion'. (It lets you hop between different characters and play assorted scenes out of order, but I've mainly been sticking with C-Team because it's the team I like the most.)
I can’t believe I got an ending ten minutes into the game. The credits took five minutes. That’s fifty percent of the gameplay time it took to reach them. (The very first thing that happened in the game: the villain went, 'I'm going to flip a coin, and if you call it correctly I'll let you go.' I guessed right. He let me go. The end. Roll credits.)
I thought at first that the 'play these scenes in any order' mechanic was just because the characters kept having their memories erased, so, whether you choose the scene right after the last one or the one five hours later, you'll know as much as the characters do. That's part of it, but I've realised now the scenes are also in different timelines. It wouldn't be a Zero Escape game without confusing time shenanigans.
The escape rooms are occasionally pretty dire. The worst offender is the pantry, for two reasons:
- it scattered a load of arms and legs around the room and had Akane and Carlos go 'oh, this is a right arm! this is a left leg!' and then went 'now work out this left-right-up-down button code!' and the limbs had nothing to do with it.
- in looking up the button code for the above reason, I got spoiled for who the limbs belonged to.
On the plus side, the 'they're not fake body parts' reveal was startling enough to startle me even when I experienced it on GameFAQs, rather than in the actual game as intended.
The game asked me 'who killed him?' and I entered the dog's name and got the response 'how would a dog do it?' Look, I'm trying my best! The camera kept lingering significantly on the dog when they were wondering who did it! I'll admit it's perhaps not likely that a small dog could dismember someone and then use their limbs to set up a puzzle, but I was working with what I'd been given.
Carlos and Akane had some pretty cute interactions in the pantry, so I'm sorry there's (as of yet?) no timeline in which they both survive past it.
I'm going to end up shipping Carlos and Akane. I shouldn't. Junpei's right there. But it's going to happen. I can feel it.
I like Carlos a lot, actually! Strong family connections, inclined to friendly teasing, good-hearted, with enough potential darkness under pressure to keep things interesting. At one point he flips out and convinces himself he's murdered someone and tries to decapitate himself with an axe.
I also like that he didn't go 'gasp, no, I'm straight' when Junpei tried to get under his skin. (I have no idea what Carlos's sexuality is, so it's possible this is just because he isn't straight, but I was definitely expecting a no-homo response and was pleased not to get one.)
Carlos: I'd like to know more about you too.
Junpei: What's that, Carlos? Does that mean you're interested in me...?
Carlos: No. My focus is my little sister. Got no time for a love life.
It's a shame this game lacks the 'will the opponent ally or betray?' tension of Virtue's Last Reward (which was basically The Prisoner's Dilemma: The Videogame). The life-or-death decisions don't really have any weight when you know exactly what the other teams are going to do, on account of being the other teams.