Video Game Tester Application‎

Description

Written by Aperama

The pyromaniac in me told me that I had to at least trial the plastic explosives...

Countdown is a terrible, awful game that I want to die a horrible, horrible death Countdown is not the fairest game in the world. As though the pain of constantly dying throughout Sanctuary werent enough, I encountered a potentially gamebreaking bug while getting this update up – but more on that later. Last I left, I was really positive about what Countdown had left me. A clear sleuthing pathway, some solid puzzle solving that didnt take too much to get through – I was quite happy with where things were. I was left with three obvious places to go – Lebanon, and Rachel Akure, a Mossad agent. Egypt, and Fontaine, the hitman that took out McBain. And local Turkey, and Masons old sweetheart, Lisa Loomis. Given that time is still looming on my head, the obvious next step is to the local Turkish branch of the CIA – theyre not looking out for me, because Sanctuary cant get any information out, has no transport and is in the middle of nowhere.. and thats where they all think Mason is. So? To Ms. Loomis!

Aww. You really care that Im being hunted for my life! True love!

Lisa Loomis seems to more or less largely be a dead end. She offers everything freely with no need for coercion, and quickly explains lots of stuff that has already been explained. Stormbringer is the CIA mole, they think I killed McBain (and am therefore Stormbringer myself). Shes more or less telling us as gamers that our character is so lacklustre that she cant actually see us as having done half of the stuff that the CIA has accused us of – now if thats not true love, I dont know what else is! Still, the only thing that I seem to be able to get out of her is a name – Earhardt Fleischer, who is apparently Jack Quinns personal advisor and friend, who follows him around like a puppy. Im assuming that the only help in getting this information is knowing a name to avoid if it comes down to it – but there again, its fully possible that hes the mole himself – or that I need to know his name when Quinn ends up being the villain. Im always like this in mystery flicks, too, but arent we all? Still, that point (literally, I earned a point for it) taken, we leave Turkey – losing Lisa as a choice to go to.

Beginning to see why we broke up, dear.

Pre- 9/11 checks really WERE lax. Ive got a fake passport, four doses of plastic explosive and a knife that Im taking with me on the plane to Lebanon..

The next stop is the next most obvious one – we take our Indiana Jones line (which does actually occur, just it wasnt noticeable in the tiny motion taken through Turkey) next down to Beirut, where Mossad agent Rachel Akure greets us with more than a touch of scepticism. Essentially, she tells us that she could care less what we have to say – McBain was helpful to her in the past, and shes fairly confident that were not here to tie her up as a loose end – but the CIA can deal with us as they see fit..

The fact that she has an uzi in her lap is probably not hurting her confidence, either.

After cycling through her talking for a short while, I give her the dossier found in McBains office, and shes suddenly willing to give me a whole heap of information. Unfortunately? Again, much of it is stuff already known. She lets us know that McBain counted us as the only one we could trust (go us!), that Black December has an operation coming up shortly (codenamed Thunderbolt, which gives us another conversation topic.) She mentions to us that she heavily dislikes Jack Quinn, denoting him as a pencil pusher, and when we mention Fontaine, she suggests that she might be able to help us out with him.. for a price. Yup, the Mossad pay her so well that she needs a bribe.

Naturally, I retried everything. The bribery angle goes up in tens – from $500 onwards shell hand over something.

That something, to my surprise, wasnt actually just plain old information – it was something a little more tangible, Im happy to say! Its something to get information from Fontaine – a hypodermic dart. Apparently, it needs to be shot within three feet to get maximum penetration. The hypo is filled with Sodium Thiopental, a highly effective truth serum. It does make no small amount of sense that instead of just trying to kill Fontaine for his attempted murder of us that were actually to get information from him – sorry if I hyped you all up by the thought of taking him out with explosives!

Hi, Joe! My game wants to be your game.. I mean. To Egypt!

Fontaine is in Cairo, Egypt, as the goodly Doctor Hashish told us way back in Sanctuary – he didnt give any more information than that, but I like to think that Mason simply walked around and asked as to where the murderous hitman was. Mason seems like hes that sort. Anyhow, we end up in an alleyway and a description that were in a hot place, and that this could turn out to be unpleasant if Im not careful.. Yeah, he was right.

Back to stealth mode.. yay

Hes not a nice hit man...

But heres his truly devastating technique

Im not certain whether its just my copy of this game, or whether its an innate problem of the game that the few people who have played it have kept to themselves – but... the bug that I alluded to. Oh, its horrid. Basically, it seems as though the game struggles to find the gunshot sound effect fired out when you die from anybody who chooses to fire a gun at you, Fontaine included. The first time he shoots, it immediately breaks the game, giving me the above error message. A reload and another attempt later gives the death message, half of the gunshot sound effect, and then crashes DOSBox. Were it not my first game, I think that this would likely be the straw breaking the camels back. The camels back on account of Im in Egypt, see? Right? Yeah, Ill get back to it..

Thankfully, you dont need to let him fire his gun

Fontaine is very much a throwaway character, I feel. Given the truth serum, I suppose, hes quite robotic in his responses, simply telling things as they are. For instance, hes mad at the doctor for letting on who he is and where to find him, and unlike the majority of the other characters in the game, he simply responds with statements of what out and out happened. All of the information he gives is seemingly truthful, and he gives us only a little bit of stuff that we didnt know again. For instance, he attests to the fact that he wasnt the one who shot McBain – that was actually somebody else!

You can literally say anything – apologising for how much the hypo hurt  – and this is all he comes out with!

Athens, Greece.. a lead!

I was tempted to end it here (and just for the record, Fontaine doesnt actually go anywhere – after you dart him, he just stays in the same spot – as you can tell, Mason really is a hardcore secret agent), but after the aggravation that came of the bullet shots, I decided to charge on to another, slightly more interactive scenario. Athens, Greece leads us into an ancient fortress. Or, to put it another way, an ancient torture chamber..

Id kinda like to know how he got INTO the torture chamber..

Peeking around, there are only a couple of interactive objects – the majority of them simply blow you off with no explanation of what theyre actually supposed to do. Theres several old torture devices – an iron maiden, a pillory, a rack – a dungeon gate, and.. a catapult. The catapult is in pieces, with a large stone in one section, an arm in the other – its not too hard to work out what youre going to be using a catapult arm for! Arm and rock? Grabbed. Installed into catapult. My mind stated that wed be breaking down the door with the catapult? But no.. no, that wasnt to be, as the door opened to reveal a white-dressed member of the Ku Klux Klan – er, Black December, that is to say.. well, lets just have the screenshots tell the tale.

The squish sound effect is quite possibly the most cathartic noise Ive heard made in this game

Walking out of the door, I was expecting to take a peek and then know I was ready to wrap things up – but instead, I was greeted with.. you guessed it, another stealth action section. Another guard (by the way, both of these guards were armed with guns, and had the previously explained Fontaine bug every time I took a misstep) was patrolling the corridors, making some extremely fast motions – this one wasnt one that was going to be easily avoided! The layout has us in the bottom left, a small cell with a prisoner inside in the bottom right, and a pair of rooms in the top right. On the wall outside one of those rooms is a monitor, which the guard seems to look at rather religiously.. and immediately, my first plan flashed into mind. After working out his patterns, I quickly darted (meandered as swiftly as the game would allow me, anyhow) to the top right room, used my ESP fingers to set up an explosive on the monitor.. which it allowed me to do! Wait ten seconds..

… no more guard!

In the top right room is a safe, which is impervious to my beloved explosives. So, disappointing though I do find this on a deeply personal level, I instead go to the bottom right room, and talk to the hostage..

Hes another person who is all too willing to help you – but I best liked the hassle option..

It turns out that the man in the chair is Michael Kirkland.. and he doesnt have much to say once more – or at least, nothing that we dont already know. Basically, hes just been sitting in that chair being fed bad food and being largely harassed. He hasnt actually received much information in his time on the ground, but he does at least have a couple of things for us. One, he has the name of the local agent that he believes is due to be in charge of Operation Thunderbolt – the Jackal. More importantly, though, he has a picture of one of the Black December operatives unmasked!

Unlike so many people in this game, he just bolts as soon as you let him go

… Uh oh.

- Coat hanger
- Masons wallet
- Scalpal
- Keys
- Grappling hook
- Flashlight
- Boots
- Bag
- Old wine
- Box (two separate ones)
- Fake passport.
- Cash ($4903 – spent $500 on plane travel twice. And weirdly, lost nothing in bribing Rachel – is this a bug?)
- Three doses of plastic explosives
- The CAD
- A battery
- Pliers
- Wire cutters
- Note with hidden message to Rachel
- Screwdriver (this popped into my inventory since last post, and was clearly in the toolkit, but I have no idea where it came from)
- A photo of who I am rather worried might be Scorpio...