| ULTIMA VIII: PAGAN |
 
Ultima VIII: Pagan, was released in 1994, and was the last DOS game in the Ultima series. It was not well recieved and often dubbed hilarious names such as "Super Mario Ultima" or "Super Mario Avatar" because of the fact a jumping and running mechanic was added, which took away from the slow-moving, thought-focused strategy element and turned it more into an action RPG like Zelda. As such, it was the beginning of the end for Ultima as a series, as theh plot itself was a bit dubious.
Basically, after the events of Serpent's Isle, The Guardian - a big red monkeyman in the sky, drops you into the ocean near a small island known as "Pagan". Basically, the lord of the place is beheading people and ruling with an iron fist. On one hand, it sort of started the style that would get popular with Ultima Online, but the new game mechanic turned out to be the achilles heel of the game, it sort of sets back whatever improvements they made. Do you Like Sierra graphical adventures, this might be up your alley because you WILL die a lot. That said, the "Diary" savegame dialog is a nice touch though. Basically, the whole plot is summed up to: Monkeyman drops Avatar in sea, Avatar needs to find a way home, and everyone on this island SUCKS. It's a bit like being marooned in a small redneck republican backwater hick town during COVID-19, just minus the whole masks and social distancing bit, except that "Backwater hick town" is actually an island that looks half-Spencers half-SPirit-Halloween-Store. Ultima VIII was pretty much the end for Ultima, but not totally. See, I don't think it's fair to assume Super mario Avatar alone is the reason for the series demise. The real truth is, this is when the most boring era in gaming history started - the era of the sepia toned FPS - favorite among bros and incels who need to vent their inapropriate energy elsewhere during a no-f*p February.Buckethead goes to Pagan What, you thought I was going to stop with the famous rocker references? C'mon, someone at Origin Systems was using their Album collection for reference photos. They used Rick Wakeman for IV, The Call for V, Whitesnake for VI, 10 Sumner's Tales for VII part 1, Loverboy Keep It Up for Part II of VII, and now Bucketheadland (either that or Where's Waldo) for VIII - Loverboy's guitarist doppleganger served us well in VII, now it's Buckethead's turn, although for lack of KFC, he just took one of Monitor's mop buckets instead (either that or their KFC serves their 11 piece family combo meal deal in a steel bucket) - or maybe there was a detour through the Lower Begonia at some point (remember that Where's Waldo episode? Yeah, I dunno how I remember all this "kids stuff" either....my brain is a nightmarish series of filing cabinets, I swear.). So Monkeydude grabs you by the scruff like a bad little kitten, drops you in the ocean telling you you are now banished to tha land of "Pagan", if this is hell, then it's not THAT bad. Of course, it seems dying in this Ultima is EASY. Walk into water - you're eaten by the Lochness Monster or something as Richard Garriots cat walks on the same six piano keys ominously. I mean, the first sign of life other than that loner fisherman on the shore results in you having halberd being threateningly put to your chest and you being asked "Who are you!" (who who, who who). Meanwhile, you roam around the town while Jeff Bez-er-Behran is having everyone executed. Which thanks to Doug The Eagle I can't get that line out of my head "But what Beren doesn't know is that the Avatar has been deallocated by the heap manager..Beren now administers Justice to segment address 0000:0000...bringing the game to it's inevitable conclusion. But hey now, I can scale people's Bayou abodes on stilts now, instead of needing Hackmover, so that IS an improvement. |
