[Inspiration Thread] Dark Conspiracy Computer Games

[Marcus Bone]

Hi All,

To go along with the music and film threads, I thought I'd pop one up for computer Games that have that DC feeling.

I'll start with Homefront: The Revolution. While it seems as if the game itself was flawed, the setting - an alternate 2029 is pretty cool...

Just been watching a play through and the first 10/20 minutes feels really DC (if you replace the North Korean threat with general Corp flunkies!)

[ReHerakhte]

I think Lee will agree with me that the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trio fit right in.
For those who don't know about the series: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

[Simonson]

Great call. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games fit in like a glove imo. Love that series.

[Linden]

I thought the first couple of XCOM games, UFO and Terror From the Deep, had a Dark Conspiracy feel to them - gradual alien invasion with the potential for unreliable governments to throw in their lot with the ETs, different types of xenos, plus lots of hardware and Dark-Tek you could research and use for yourself!

[ReHerakhte]

The third XCOM game Apocalypse even more so, it featured corporations rather than the nations of the previous two games plus if I remember correctly, there was some alien worshipping cult that would cause trouble for you.

[Linden]

The third XCOM game Apocalypse even more so, it featured corporations rather than the nations of the previous two games plus if I remember correctly, there was some alien worshipping cult that would cause trouble for you.

Yes all true - and I think the aliens came from a different (proto)dimension? It looked a great setup on paper but I could never really get to grips with it as a game. Found it a bit fiddly and slow paced - scientific breakthroughs seemed to take far too long compared to the amount of fighting you had to do.

[ReHerakhte]

You know, I had the same sort of problems. I always felt I could never advance technology fast enough to keep pace with the aliens and they would usually kick all kinds of hell out of me and I'd lose the game (or lose patience with it).
It was only through sheer bloody-mindedness that I persisted with it and ended up getting to their base on Mars (I think it was Mars?).
Overall: loved the idea, wasn't so keen on the execution.

[Linden]

In the first XCOM game UFO the alien base was definitely on Mars. In Apocalypse I think it was in another dimension but don't quote me. Never got far enough to find out for sure! I recall a lot of the alien tech had an organic look e.g. the saucers - good visual imagery for DC again.

[Phulish]

The PA game "Metro 2033" has some elements for a sewer/ tunnel campaigns.

[Linden]

As I recall Syndicate had that gloomy urban near-future back drop. Plus heavily armed trench coat wearing cyborg types running about doing black ops stuff for their corporate masters.

As with Xcom: Apocalypse, one of those games I wanted to like more than I did. Again, just couldn't get to grips with how to play it.

[ReHerakhte]

This post is much a bump to keep interest in this thread as much as it to make mention of some of the Cthulhu video games that have come and gone in the the last decade or so. There are quite a few, as well as a goodly number that appear to be inspired by or influenced by the Cthulhu mythos. The two most interesting ones for me are: -

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Being a first person shooter style game, it probably has far more in common with the gameplay of Dark Conspiracy than it does Call of Cthulhu. Never played it myself but I'd happily lift the entire plot for a DC adventure!

Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land
Again, another game that features plenty of gunplay so again, more in the style of DC than CoC and again, one that I never played. I probably would not lift the plot wholesale from this one as it is close enough to the Ray Stevenson movie Outpost from 2008 that I'd be inclined to mix and match elements from the two plots to get an adventure.

Time for one I do own but have yet to play (space on the hard-drive was a little crowded, I've only recently freed up some space so I hope to play this one very soon).
Conarium
In contrast to the first two, this is a first person exploration game and has been described as a 'walking sim' - so less gunplay and more run in terror! Much more like a CoC adventure and in fact, inspired by and made as a follow on from, At The Mountains of Madness.
If you want more information on the plot then clues can be gleaned from some of the reviews but it's influenced by At The Mountains of Madness so if you've been exposed to that, then you already have a good idea.
The most relevant (to me) criticism I have seen of this game is that it doesn't last quite long enough, around 4-5 hours of total game time if you push through it - I'm only just getting warmed up after 5-6 hours into a game!

During my research for the first two games, I found the following webpage that has a long list of games inspired/influenced by the mythos.
https://lovecraftzine.com/lovecraftian-video-games/

[ReHerakhte]

And another bump...

I've recently been playing Generation Zero, a game set in Sweden during the 1980s where you take on the role of a young survivor of a robot apocalypse.
This is the blurb from the Steam page: -
Welcome to 1980’s Sweden. The local population has gone missing, and machines of unknown origin roam the streets. Explore this vast open world to unravel the mystery of the invaders, perfect your fighting strategies and prepare to strike back. In Generation Zero, living is winning.
Take on missions and challenges throughout the open world to unravel more of the mystery, while scavenging for weapons and supplies to help you stay alive.

The game has a few modes that let you play less or more combat but even the less combat mode features a lot of combat if you blindly thrash about in the game world. Being a quiet little mouse serves you well but even then, you still need to kill some robots to advance the story.

How does it relate to Dark Conspiracy? Aside from killer robots stalking the countryside and plenty of 1980s clothes, hairstyles and fashion & lifestyle accessories (boombox/ghetto-blasters, cassette tapes, walkmans - retro tech all the way!), the mystery of why they're there in the first place is a central part of the game. Your character is essentially an investigator but with big guns. Along with the "why", you're also trying to find out the "who", it seems a covert group of uncertain nationality/politics/goals is responsible for releasing the robots (I haven't played enough yet to find out more).

The game also has elements of horror with the player wandering through a landscape devoid of other humans and then stumbling across massacres of people, some of them being people the player was hoping to link up with. Then there's the terror of being cornered in a house with several killer robots outside waiting to shoot you, blast you, gas you or burn you, just for being a human. Then there's the giant robots, almost as tall as a two storey house, when they walk the ground shakes and you can hear them stomping around from hundreds of metres away.

The game does have some problems, people still experience bugs that were supposedly fixed and sometimes robots glitch through the walls of a building you're cowering in - which I don't actually mind so much as it adds to the fear factor haha!
Plus, although denied by the creators of Generation Zero, the games appears to be derived from the same ideas as the Tales From The Loop RPG, so much so that the artist responsible for the inspiration & creation of Tales From The Loop commented about the similarities.

[Marcus Bone]

Love this game!

[ReHerakhte]

I'm really enjoying it, more so than I expected. Even playing it for a few hours for the last four days straight has not diminished the appeal (or the thrill of being pursued through the forest by Hunter robots or the fear of being trapped in a house with a Harvester and a Tank stomping around outside along with a handful of Runners). It's one of the few games that gets my pulse racing.
The M/46 Kpist submachine gun has become my new best friend for those times when I'm suddenly surprised by an enemy, now that I've found bucket-loads of ammo for it.

My only complaint is that getting a multi-player game started isn't particularly well explained. There doesn't appear to be any sort of lobby system so although I'd like to try multi-player, I can't find anyone to team up with. I'm basically left with the option to run a public multi-player session and hope someone joins. However every time I have, there's been no takers and the session has timed out after 10 or so minutes.
Some of the multi-player footage on youtube looks pretty damned crazy, and exciting because of it!

[ReHerakhte]

And you know Murphy's Rules right...
Just after I finished typing out my reply above, I tried multi-player for GenZero again and got into a game with someone from Queensland withing five minutes. Played the session for about three hours or more before I lost connection to her game.
So, to somewhat modify what I said above, yes it works but I still think multi-player needs refining. I tried to re-establish connection to the session I was in but I got put into somebody else's game. The selection for multi- is, unfortunately, very much hit & miss.