D2
September 24th, 2023
Out of sheer boredom and a desire to spend every waking moment of my life talking about video games, I used this randomizer to pick a random retro game to write a blog post about. This is what happened next...
Remember when they announced that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will release on two discs? And how people thought that was really funny? I imagine that somewhere out there, there's this one guy who's like in his 30s or 40s grumbling to himself about how "back in my day, we played D2 for the Dreamcast on four discs and we liked it!!!"
I tried my absolute best to take a screenshot of the title screen but the logo won't stop fucking SPINNING
D2 is a survival horror action-RPG for the Dreamcast. You play as Laura Parton: a survivor of a plane crash that left her and several other people stranded in the Canadian wilderness. For some reason, most of the passengers have mutated (or "blossomed" as one character puts it) into grotesque, flower-like monsters that bleed green blood. After a lengthy intro cutscene where Laura and the woman who rescued her, Kimberly, are almost killed by one of the monsters, Kimberly explains that a little girl named Jannie who Laura met on the plane has gone missing, and it's up to Laura to explore the snow-covered wastelands in order to find her
Most of the game takes place in a third-person view where you use Resident Evil-style tank controls to move freely around the environment. Your goal here is to locate buildings and other points of interest where you will hopefully find clues to solve the game's puzzles and advance the story, and supplies to help Laura survive. Once inside a building, the game shifts to first-person and you can examine your surroundings to collect any items you might find. In the outside, however, the world is vast and devoid of life, and there is no music when walking around. Only the sound of Laura's footsteps and the howling winds pierce through the silence. The lack of any BGM helps create a tense atmosphere that lasts until...
...the monsters attack!
Occasionally, monsters will emerge from the ground and the game will swap to a first-person view where you must fend them off with the guns you've collected. Enemies do a lot of damage in this game, and sometimes you'll be surrounded by multiple of them at once! However, if an enemy is about to swipe at you, shooting them will stun them and stop the attack. They key to survival in these battles is being able to quickly swap targets when you see an enemy get too close— if you aren't careful, Laura will die in just a couple of hits
Surviving a battle rewards you with experience points, and leveling up will increase Laura's maximum HP and fully heal her as well. I'm mixed on this— the battles were exciting and tense at first, but the harder it is for Laura to die, the less stakes there are in each battle. It doesn't feel very "survival horror" to me. Of course, the enemies do get stronger the further you go, so I could be wrong
If Laura's health is low, you can either use healing items that you find scattered around, or eat meat that you gain by hunting animals. At any point while walking around in the wilderness, you can pull out your rifle and take aim at any animals you see. Of course, the animals aren't just gonna sit still and let you shoot them, so hunting them is easier said than done, but the reward is a good source of healing that isn't finite like the regular healing items are
If you don't know what Canada is, don't worry! D2 has got you covered
I think this game is really cool, and I honestly wished I could've kept playing, but my 1 hour time limit was up and I wasn't entirely sure on where I was supposed to go either. After reading the manual, I learned that you can press Y while inside a building to do a more detailed search and find items that you can't find otherwise, so I think I might've missed an important clue somewhere. The fact that I want to go back to it should tell you something about how engaging D2 is. It's got fun, active gameplay, a story with lots of mystery, excellent sound design, and surprisingly great visuals for a game from 1999! My first impressions of this game were really positive, and I recommend checking it out if you like survival horror
