the green nebula turned out to be lame

Spoilers for Pandora Directive. Be careful reading on.
























































































Ok, so I first played through UAKM and PD as a tween.

Not gonna lie, when I first made it to the roswell complex as an 11 year old i was FREAKED OUT! the green nebula thing was so creepy! I was so creeped out I literally put the game down at that point and didn't nut up and go back until I was like 13.

Them, when I finally went back and beat the game, my heart was beating a trillion times an hour throughtout that entire part.

I beat the game enough to see all the endings, and everytime that part got to me. But you know what? as creeped out as I was, I never died!

everytime I actually mustered up the courage to play it through, it was a piece of cake (obviously, I was using a walkthrough. if you can beat one of these games without one, I bow to your genius).

realizing tonight that I never actually allowed myself to die at this part, I decided to face my fears, test the limits, and just let tex stand there until the nebula ate him.

and found out that you have FOREVER to complete that part. which is nice because now on my current playthough I'll know that it's not that big of deal.

not only is there plenty of time to complete the section and trap and the entity, but when you die, its just a random black screen after a short clip with tex making dieing noises, and it's not that big of deal :P

and I honestly should have assumed it wouldn't be. I don't know why 11 year old me had built it up to be such a big deal.

Which got me to thinking, the contrast between what I was expecting this death scene to be like, and what it really was is just demonstrative of how great a game it was. It put me through this whole psychological test, and the developers probably didn't spend nearly as much time thinking about that particular scene as I put emotion into it.

The gameplay really is immersive, and the narrative just sets you up to be freaked out. These were such great games.

I'm 28 now and I still have to battle down that freaked out feeling a little xD
The alien still freaks me out a bit very time I play and so does the GRS security droid in UAKM. But nothing got to me quite like the Black Arrow Killer.

I just couldn't bring myself to sneak up on him. I was 12 at the time and it terrified me. It took me six months just to get past that part. When I finally did, I saved the game when day four started and took a breather.

Now I'm a bit more careless when I approach him. I don't bother peering over the heating unit, I just run at him and hope I time it right :)
Matthew Buckstein wrote:The alien still freaks me out a bit very time I play and so does the GRS security droid in UAKM. But nothing got to me quite like the Black Arrow Killer.

I just couldn't bring myself to sneak up on him. I was 12 at the time and it terrified me. It took me six months just to get past that part. When I finally did, I saved the game when day four started and took a breather.

Now I'm a bit more careless when I approach him. I don't bother peering over the heating unit, I just run at him and hope I time it right :)
LOL Yes! Those things kind of got me too, but not as bad as the entity.

I just played the scene with the black arrow killer, and was reminiscing over how I had trouble with that, and now I just run at him!

The GRS security droid was a big hangup for me in UAKM too. I actually put the game down there and didn't come back until after Pandora Directive drew me back into the world of tex murphy.