Night Breed: The Interactive Movie is seriously pissing me off.

[MethodGit]

So, anyone got a complete solution for this particular game?

[Fred the Fop]

I don't even get that far, Marz..when the game first strats, on that map, i don't know where to go...actually, I can't even DO anything...can you help me, mate?

[CodyJarrett]

I think you have to go to the cemetery or something and avoid the road blocks...

[MethodGit]

@fredtgreat:
You mean how to move the car? You don't click on the destinations, you have to click on each joint in the roads in order to move your car one road at a time. If you still get stuck, come back here and tell me, okay?

@CodyJarrett:

I did go to the cemetry, but all three options got me nowhere frankly. If I go to the graveyard I get attacked by a demon and then have to repeatedly hit the button in order to escape, but it's way too hard to get past this bit and so basically I end up getting eaten. If I choose to look around I bump into the psychiatrist from the first scene and some cops. He reveals himself to be the murderer, and gets the cops to puncture me with several dozen bullets, leaving me quite dead . And finally if I choose to go the Midian like the man in the asylum suggested, I just get ripped to pieces by the Berserkers, just like that.

Soooo, is there another place I was meant to go to, or am I meant to avoid the road blocks in order to get past the psychiatrist and cops? Do I have to try and get past the demon in the graveyard? Do I have to go to the asylum again? What? Please help me.

[Peanutuk]

Frankly I think you'ev played all that the game has to offer. If my mind serves me right there were three versions of this game planned. The arcade version (which was a multi-format release) the arcade-adventure verison which you are playing and a purely adventure verson.
The arcade version wasn't much cop and teh adventure version never appeared, I think that the whole project was rushed or very late and they released what they had when it came to the arcade-adventure version. I got it when I bought first AMiga 500 (early 1990's - incidently where did you get yours if it is an original - did you buy it on its own when it was released?) and played it for quite some time. what ever happened you rjust seem to go round in endless circles as the game gets increasingly harder and you enventually die / captured ect. I wouldn't be surprised if this is all the game has to offer!

[CodyJarrett]

I recently played Night Breed: The Interactive Movie a little further:

http://hol.abime.net/970/screenshot

After the annoying run-away sub-game in the graveyard there's an annoying knife-avoiding sub-game and then an annoying maze that needs to be mapped with more annoying sub-games. I gave up when I got to a jumping onto ledges bit.

[MethodGit]

Well well well, I finally resorted to going back to this game tonight to see if I could do any better this time round. With a handy utilisation of the autofire feature (at a rate of 1 frame, go me), I was able to get past the stupid-and-annoying run-away-from-the-demon subgame that blighted me the last time round. It appears afterwards the encounter with the psychiatrist-and-the-police occurs automatically, and so I'm supposed to be shot to pieces at some point then. I escape from the morgue and decide to go into Midian this time, assuming I'd be safe now. Indeed, I don't get killed off straight away, but this time I get the rather confusing scene attached below.

Immediately afterwards, I'm suddenly back into the arms of the mental hospital, where I do my stupid-and-annoying "manic laugh" routine, and this time I'm technically dead as the words "The End" come up at that point.


So pardon me if I sound rather manic myself here, but....... WHAT THE COCKING HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THEN AFTER I'VE GOT BITTEN AND SHOT UP TO BUGGERY????

[Dizzy]

Originally Posted by MethodGit

So pardon me if I sound rather manic myself here, but....... WHAT THE COCKING HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THEN AFTER I'VE GOT BITTEN AND SHOT UP TO BUGGERY????

Delete the adf/whdload or smash the disks

[musashi5150]

You have to do something else when you get to Midian. Either "Look around" or "Enter Graveyard". You don't want to run into the Sons of the Free just yet... you need to meet up with Decker (the murderer) and play a "dodging the knives" game

After that you will be able to enter the mazes of Midian and play other sub-games there. Eventually getting through to the ledges part that Cody mentions above...

[Sensi]

It´s Michael!!!

[Sensi]

Originally Posted by Dizzy

Delete the adf/whdload or smash the disks

F**k the dog, kill it, f**k it again, eat it. Dialogue windows appears. Answer YES, YES, NO. Save the position. Puke the dog out, f**k it, eat it. CONGRATULATIONS!

[MethodGit]

So ladies and gentlemen, I finally spent more time on this game yesterday than I should've, just to try and solve some mystery behind it. But more and more I realised how this thing could easily inspire people to commit rage-induced murder, what with it being one of my most hated gaming opuses of all time, never mind Amiga. Brace yourselves, this is going to be a pretty long rant....

Originally Posted by musashi5150

You have to do something else when you get to Midian. Either "Look around" or "Enter Graveyard". You don't want to run into the Sons of the Free just yet... you need to meet up with Decker (the murderer) and play a "dodging the knives" game

After that you will be able to enter the mazes of Midian and play other sub-games there. Eventually getting through to the ledges part that Cody mentions above...

And of course, you are right there. Except when I tried to do this with the WHDLoad version, it kept crashing out everytime I "looked around" at this point in the game. No setting I used would convince it to be kind to me and just let me bloody well progress into the game. So I resorted to using floppies instead (on 800% speed, natch). Just as well really, since I soon discovered how often I needed to rely on WinUAE's state-saving function. Believe me, a hell of a lot.

The knife subgame wasn't too much of a frustration, but mouse is really the only way to go during this part, and even then you can't move your mouse around too fast as it just causes the movement to jerk about violently, and quite often, when you're panicly trying to dodge that fast-moving blade coming your way. Nevertheless, I got through in the end. (Oh btw, you encounter Mask again at a later point, more specifically in a later level of Midian. Level Four, I believe. So more knife-throwing commences.)

So onto Midian it was then. I was greeted by the bearded bloke you see in my previous screenshot above - now what made my previous situation so confusing is that exact same picture is used regardless of whether I dealt with Decker or not in the graveyard. So while it looks like Boone is greeting Ol'Beardy, Lori somehow got fucked up elsewhere. How exactly did Boone know this straight away if he was already on his way down into the catacombs? And speaking of Boone, did this game have about a million and one different artists attached to it, or something? Because he freakishly looks totally different in every scene he appears in. You so cannot compare "Strait-Jacket" Boone to "start-at-the-beginning-with-despair" Boone, for example. They're like two totally different people. Talk about consistency, eh readers?

But anyway.

First time I tried to tackle Midian, I didn't really know about its proper maze-i-ness, so naturally I got hopelessly lost and drifting about, encountering flying manta rays and cops and such like. Let's just speak about each obstacle you encounter in this area:

Flying Manta Ray - Originally, I assumed it was just bad luck to bump into these things and that they'd bite you straight away. Except upon reading the manual (which I eventually found somewhere on the web after a spot of bother), I actually have control during this section, in the form of me pressing up or down to dodge mantas flying high and low (the game seems to decide on-the-spot which height level these things fly at you, so don't believe for one second that they're all at a fixed pattern and that you can map the amount of times you press up and down accordingly). They seem to fly at random speeds, and often you'll find yourself pressing the wrong direction. Screw up, and they bite into you, but nevertheless you can progress on afterwards. Oh, except you're allowed to be bitten a maximum of three times before you lose unconciousness and the cops (or the Sons Of The Free as they like to be known) find you and drag your ass back to the mental hospital (you don't get The End this time though, so you can continue afterwards). So get ready to quick-save often.

Son Of The Free - this degenerates into a basic fighting section (if you choose to fight that is - you can also choose to run away if you want, but that just seems to result in Boone automatically running a few rooms across in seemingly random directions, and getting you even more hopelessly lost, particularly if you're trying to map the level). The SOTF always has more energy points than you, but only around 9 or 10 as such (I can't remember) compared to Boone's 4. In all honesty, this part doesn't require tactical timing and strategy in the slightest. I was able to get past pretty much every cop by putting on autofire and having Boone kick/punch repeatedly till cop-features crumpled to the floor. Boone is also able to do a pretty-nice flying kick, but you'll never end up using it during important fights, because the Pig will always duck and dodge your foot - every single time - rendering it effectively useless entirely. He doesn't tend to successfully connect a flying kick to your face either. Back to the auto-kick-and-punch tactic then. You should still quick-save before starting a fight though, as sometimes your opponent has a tendency to cheat somewhat and beat all the energy out of you through methods of carefully dodging some of your kicks and punches. Lose, and you get dragged back to the hospital.

Sniper/Laser Sight - The third and final obstacle surely has to be the most annoying of all the "Midian subgames". What happens is that in certain rooms Boone will suddenly notice a laser sight, belonging to an off-screen sniper, intending to plug one into his cranium. So basically you have to spend about what feels like a minute or so playing "Dodge The Moving Laser Sight", by way of moving a rather frozen-looking Boone around the small play window, making sure the laser doesn't even spend half-a-second positioned over his forehead. After some time, the action will without warning freeze while the disk accesses, signifying (rather subliminally) that you've managed to successfully foil the sniper. Failure means the destruction of your brain from the inside, and thus instant death (unlike the other two obstacles). Start again. Oh btw, did I forget to tell you that this game doesn't allow you to save the game at any point whatsoever? Tough luck to those with real Amigas and/or lacking one of those Action Replay thingymajigs. Anyway, this gets progressively tougher the more snipers you encounter, so you really want to bump into these annoying fucks as very rarely as possible.

Thankfully, you'll be glad to hear that NB:TIM doesn't insist on placing these enemies at entirely random points Final-Fantasy-style. A good deal of time spent mapping every level of Midian I encountered (and believe me, mapping helps you out a lot) revealed that they only reside in certain fixed rooms, and that similarly the level itself is a specific fixed layout each time. Additionally, you'll often find that sniper rooms are situated in dead-end areas, meaning it's easy to avoid these completely (although very frustrating to those who think if they've encountered new enemies after a while of traversing round the maze then that must mean they're approaching something important should they defeat them, only to be greeted with a plain dead-end, recognisable by a purely-for-show blue statue at the other end). I'll try and scan my drawings onto here one day so that everyone can benefit from my "I-Have-Way-Too-Much-Spare-Time-On-My-Hands-So-I'll-Use-The-Opportunity-To-Dissect-The-Heck-Out-Of-This-Very-Very-Bad-Excuse-For-An-Enjoyable-Video-Game" idea in the long run.

[Continued in the next post]

[MethodGit]

After a while, you'll encounter a certain room or two on each level that triggers the final main sub-game (at least from my and Cody's experiences so far) - The Chasm of Ledges. You'll start at either the top or bottom of the chasm, depending on the exit you triggered on whatever level you're on. The idea is to get to the other end of the chasm in order to go down or up a catacomb level. Getting down is dead easy, just fall and fall as much as possible (it appears falling long distances will not cause to Boone to, say, break his neck or splatter his brain matter over the walls or floor) until you reach the bottom floor. Getting back up (and believe me, you'll need to do this at some points), however, is a different matter entirely. The idea is to jump onto these ledges on both sides of the walls and climb your way up with them. Now, there are a few problems to this. Firstly, Boone jumps incredibly, inhumanely high. Secondly, the controls for this subgame are appalling to say the least, requiring you to press both Up+Fire to jump (and Up/Left or Up/Right + Fire to jump diagnoally). No fancy two-button configuration here citizens. Thirdly, this subgame basically abuses the whole "Pixel-Perfect" term, requiring you to place Boone at certain pixel-based positions to successfully make that platform above you or else miss by a mere whisker and fall and crunch your way back down again. Although you do not necessarily have to get Boone to land on top of the ledge, if you position yourself carefully enough then jumping to the edge of the ledge at arm level should make Boone automatically grab the platform and hoist himself up. Finally, the ledges always start to disintegrate whenever you're standing on them (only to regenerate the moment you get off them), so you have to jump and move about constantly and not be allowed time to rest and think about your next move, unless it happens to be your first move off of the bottom floor. Boone can handle a lot of wear 'n' tear from constant encounter with walls and rocky crevices, but not infinite amounts. Hurt yourself too much after a while and the game decides (again) that you deserve to lose consciousness and (somehow) get found by the Sons Of The Free and hauled out of Midian and into that familiar padded cell. But never mind, I mean the game should helpfully give you an indication as to how much energy Boone has left before he does knock himself out, right? Oh, wait. (Btw, if you go to a chasm section and you feel you made a mistake and want to go back, tough titties. It's either get to the other end or stay there forever. Quick-save becomes important once again before these parts.)

On Level Three (or so I've christened it), you'll enventually come across this random blue guy (not, not the statue), who paints your face and christens you with the name of Cabal. This new found identity seemingly allows you to free these beserker creatures from their jail at the other end of the corridor without immediately getting torn to smithereens by them, in the same manner as when you first tried to enter Midian. Blue Guy also tells you to free some of his Destroyers or whatever, which I signify must mean the random creatures (and two cute-looking girls) situated at certain dead ends on Levels Four and Five. They don't speak at all though, and just have their faces imprinted onto the right-side of the screen, to signify their new-found rescued status. I'm not sure as to the importance of these people somewhat.

So, after all that readers, did I manage to get anywhere near the end-sequence? I can tell you right now: Not A Bit. The fact is, I'm now essentially stuck again, because it appears after exploring every available level, rescuing all these random characters, foiling Mask again, getting christened Cabal, freeing the Berserkers etc... I am given no indication as to what exactly I should do next. Traversing ledge upon ledge to travel between levels doesn't change a thing. I can't even get out of Midian again unless I make myself lose consciousness in any way possible and get dragged back to the human world. But even after doing this and going back to the cemetry, and exploring all the options, I don't get anything new. At this point even, it appears both "Look Around" and "Enter Graveyard" now both do the same thing - invoke the run-away-from-the-demon subgame (previously "Look Around" just got me shot by the police every time, but funnily enough I survived it every time, no matter how many times I intentionally bumped into the police out of interest). Entering Midian again just plonks me back into the maze. I so want to complete this and end my intrigue and pain, but I don't think I can. Maybe I'll just cheat and WRip all the data off the disks and take a peek into them, in the hope I'll find the End Screens somehow.

I can honestly say that is one of the most godawful and migraine-inducing Amiga titles I've ever played in my life. It appears to not understand the meaning of important factors such as Consistency, Sense, Saving, Coherence, Playability, Ease-Of-Use, and most of all, Fun. Lord knows why Ocean thought this was good enough to release in the first place. And I don't even know what the Action Game is like yet....


So, remember this folks, I went through all this pain, so that you don't have to.

[Anubis]

When you finaly complete the game you'll end up in real mental hospital. That seams to be the goal of the game.

[Marcuz]

Originally Posted by Anubis

When you finaly complete the game you'll end up in real mental hospital. That seams to be the goal of the game.

yes but that's a good exemple of what you could fit in your eab/hol/reviews project! nice work marz

[musashi5150]

Yep, great work MethodGit - you've certainly got further than I ever did

[Marcuz]

ditto... i kept hanging around the start or get caught by the police

[Poor Student]

This thread is a great read. Your efforts are appreciated, Method Git. It's a game I would have played when I only started primary school and I could never make it past the graveyard. It sounds as awful in insane difficulty and confusion as Shadow of the Beast II. What were the developers thinking when they made these games?

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by Poor Student

What were the developers thinking when they made these games?

Can we sell at least five copies of this crap?

[terryhan]

It came free, didn't it? I'm pretty sure I have a copy in one of those rubbish clear plastic cases that came with my 'Movie Madness' (or whatever it was called) A500 pack.

I only ever got as far as the knife throwing section, though. Hey, MethodGit - any plans to share that map of the caves you made?