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Bladerunner

Screenwriters David Yorkin and David Leary have taken elements of the movie and of Philip Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, upon which the film was based and created a brand new story in which the bladerunner protagonist rookie detective Ray McCoy investigates the killing of animals in a world in which they are extremely rare and valuable. As in any noirish movie, one crime becomes several and Ray finds himself up to his neck in conspiracy and corruption.

There are few traditional adventure-game puzzles in Bladerunner; the few that are there, like the rat on the plank or the bouncer, seem poorly thought out. But Bladerunner has some very cool stuff in place of traditional puzzles. For one thing, there's the replicant test. You know how in the movie a bladerunner will gauge someone's responses to a series of odd questions while he studies their pupil contractions? Well, you get to do that. It's not really a puzzle, the machine tells you the results, but it's really, really cool. I was equally enamored with photo analysis. You know how in movies they'll bring a photograph up on a computer and then say, "could you blow that part up?" and you'll see in sharp detail something that seemed dark and blurry in the original photo? Well, you get to do that. Basically all you're doing is drawing boxes around things and seeing what's there, but it's wonderfully entertaining.

Bladerunner's conceit is that it is in real time, a la The Last Express, but this leads to the question; what the hell time is it, anyway? It's night, I can tell you that much. If you click on the bed in Roy's apartment you go to sleep, but for how long? Your boss is sometimes in his office and sometimes not, is there a schedule of some sort? If a lot of time has passed, why doesn't anyone ever clean up that mess in Chinatown? How much time passes from the beginning to the end of the game? Who knows. In the end, since we're not told we can assume it doesn't matter, but it is somewhat disorienting.

But not as disorienting as the people who populate Bladerunner. The documentation says there are 70 characters in this game, but I'd be hard pressed to tell you who most of them were. You know how sometimes you're watching a movie and a character comes on and you don't know who it is or why they're there and you whisper to your date, "were they in this movie earlier? Who are they? What is this about?" Bladerunner is like that in spades. I didn't know who most of these people were or why I was talking to them. I didn't know how they related to me or to the story. Some were recognizable from the movie, some were total strangers. Names are bandied about like crazy, and I don't think I've been this confused by anything since I saw The Parallax View.

Part of the problem is the pixelly little blobs that pass for people are not distinct enough to be clearly recognizable. The figures are more impressions of people than distinct faces. Some have an identifying characteristic -- a red jacket, a cane -- but that doesn't always help much. Some of the voices are familiar, Sean Young, William Sanderson and Joseph Turkel do the voices for characters they played in the movie, but that doesn't really help either. I would have liked to see people closer up, or have some way of keeping track of who was who.

The pixelly little blobs actually work pretty well in look, if not in recognizability. The movements seem very human, with the glaring exception of Roy, who punctuates his conversation with these outsized arm flings that make it seem as though he's boxing or trying to swat a fly. It's incredibly distracting, and seems a pretty grotesque miscalculation.

Bladerunner claims to be different every time you play it, and this may be true. Which characters are android and which are human changes with each game. You often get only one chance to talk to a character, and they may leave before you've asked all your questions, so you can always replay the game and hear different conversation trees. Characters have their own schedule, and sometimes to find someone you have to keep checking for them until they turn up. Although unlike The Last Express I suspect that when those characters are unfindable that even the programmers couldn't tell you where they are. I had my wife play some of the game and things were somewhat different, although of course you're always going to wind up seeing the same cut scenes (which are mind-blowingly cool) and hitting the same plot twists.

There is also an action component to Bladerunner. Your job is, after all, to kill rogue androids. You can also get killed pretty easily and unexpectedly, so save your game often. There is a lame shooting range to practice at, but it takes forever and is really tedious so I didn't use much of it. Presumably it will improve your shooting to practice here, but on the easy setting you shouldn't have too much trouble in your few shootouts. Towards the end there's a segment where you have to contend with people with guns and others with crowbars, plus rats. But they never follow you from one room to another, so it's pretty easy to get away before they kill you.

The last "puzzle" in the game is a lame pixel-hunting maneuver that seems utterly pointless but doesn't take that long. As I've said, the traditional puzzle elements are thankfully few and poorly done. The story itself plays with identity issues in the way the book did, but while entertaining, the story is pretty simple and sketchily done. But the ambience is so incredible and the world so detailed that I was completely sucked in.

-- Charles Herold -2000