[Subtitles by danielsangeo] [music] Welcome to the second episode of
Ross's Game Dungeon. If you're hearing this, that
means I'm still alive. Last time, I talked about a good game. Today, I'm talking about...
an interesting game. LucasArts-style sparkle... Nyet III: Revenge of the Mutant Stones. Now, despite the word "Nyet" being
Russian, this is actually a German game. This is a Tetris game, but like the
title implies, this game is a mutant. This game does a lot of things
no other Tetris game does. If you think you're a Tetris master and
just charge in, you're going to die. More on that later. Now, you might be wondering why
I'm starting on Nyet III and not Nyet I or II. Well, sometimes in games, the third one
in a series can take a big departure-- Duke Nukem 3D, Grand Theft Auto 3, Doom 3-- these are all games that had
BIG jumps in technology that made them radically different
from their predecessors. Well, Nyet III is one of those games, so
I'll leave it to your imagination for now what Nyet I and II look like. Oh, and hey, what do you
think of this intro? I like the jury-rigged
projector stand in particular. Okay, I promised nudity in the
last episode and I meant it. Now, this isn't full-frontal nudity so I know some of you are feeling
cheated right now, but what can I say? All the other Tetris games with
more nudity or hardcore sex scenes have already been discussed to death. There's nothing I can add to them
that hasn't already been said. Besides, you get to watch a Peeping Tom's
vacation photos mixed in with your credits. I'd say that's off to a pretty good start
for a Tetris game--at least for 1993. This is a long intro, though. It actually reminds me of how modern-day
games will sometimes have ten movie clips before you can get to the actual menu. Sometimes they make them unskippable
unless you hack the startup files. That happens because some producer worth
millions who may not even play games wants to make sure his company's
name is plastered in everyone's face forever. I don't think that's the case for the
seven people involved here, though. Okay, I'm going to skip ahead here. Here's the game. The way this game works is you have
many levels that you can choose from, where each one is its own
special Tetris challenge. I'm at the first stage here but once I beat
all the levels you see on the screen, I'll progress to the next stage, which has another full screen of
levels for me to tackle. Rumor has it that there are seven stages in
all, so that's 126 levels plus the bonuses. The music and graphics are generally
pleasing and very cheerful. The beginning levels are very easy; it's all to make the game very
accessible and friendly, and try to get people to start playing. After you beat a level, you earn a small
amount of money which you can use later at the store to give you special powerups. You also get a score, but who cares? Now, what really sets this game apart is almost all the levels are
sort of like mini-puzzles that the game gives you hints
on at the beginning. Like, look at this level, "New friends
are appearing." What does that mean? Let's find out! Half the game is filled with these
fortune cookie-style hints to guide you. Okay, so far so good, just regular Tetris. Ah, see, there.
Those are your "new friends". That's the tricky thing about
this game: every stage is different and there's some catch to all of them. Sometimes you can figure it out from the
description, other times you have no idea. "May I introduce: The electric barrier!"
What the hell does THAT mean? Okay, again, normal Tetris. Whoa, okay, now you see what the catch is. Every level is like this; it
keeps you on your toes. There's all kinds of tricks in this game: you have some with only right angles,
some with indestructible blocks, some that switch which block
you're going to get, the list goes on. The original Tetris, despite being fun,
is still, at its core, just a death march where the pace gets faster and
faster, so this is a great contrast. Mini-challenges that you can
beat and progress through. You earn money from the challenges that
you can use to make the levels easier. Wow, this sounds great, right? Yeah, ha... yeah...
It's insidious, is what it is! Between the upbeat music, bright
graphics, easy challenges, fun riddles, you're going to miss the fact
that this game wants to kill you. Now, you're probably saying, "Well, of course you can die,
Ross. It's a video game." You don't understand because
you're probably thinking there are lots of harder games
out there where you can die a lot and that are really unfair-- "Ghouls and Ghosts", "Battletoads",
"I Wanna Be The Guy", and so on. This is much more quietly
sinister than those. This game doesn't want to just kill you. It wants to watch you
squirm and suffer first. Then, when it finally does kill you,
it doesn't want to kill your player, it wants to kill YOU! Some of you are probably confused.
Allow me to demonstrate. Here's some footage from one of
the easier levels where I made a mistake. I had to get one line but I messed up as this compressor was
raising from the ground to crush me to death, like something out of a "Saw" movie. Oh, no, I don't think
I'm going to make it. ["Whaaaaa-haaahaaa..."] Do you see this? What you're looking at now
isn't a mistake in editing. When you die once in this game,
the whole game quits. You don't lose a life. You don't go back to
the Level Select. The whole game quits. I'm sure the programmers
would've taken this a step farther if they thought they could get
away with it without being sued, like force your computer to shut
down or start deleting random data. Or, hey, better yet, find a way to send electric shocks into
your body through your keyboard. ["Whaaaaa-haaahaaa..."] I mean, holy crap! How many
games do something like this? [music] And if you get kicked out of the game,
you get to go through that long intro all over again every single time. You can speed it up some,
but the point is, one death in this game
has big consequences. [sighs] Come on! I'm tapping the buttons right
now. It doesn't matter. There! God... Now, you actually avoid this if
you hit Escape just before you die, then you'll only go back to the
main menu. It makes me feel like a fighter
pilot hitting the emergency eject before my plane crashes into the ground. Even then, you'll be seeing this
animation a lot to load your game. It looks awesome the first time,
not so awesome the fiftieth time. Do you remember seeing earlier
the option to save your game? Well, guess what? You have to PAY to
do that. And you have to pay a lot. I mean, you're lucky to be earning more
than $10 per level in this game. Most of the time, you don't even
get that much. And one save is $80. That's a lot of levels on
average before you can save. And these levels are going to
be trying to kill you. The levels on this first table are a joke! They're just there to give you a
false sense of security, along with all the whole bright
and happy vibe this game exudes. They're designed to lower your
defenses so you build your confidence, then you get trapped, then they
move in so they can murder you. No. No! Oh, no, no! NO! Rrrrrgh! ["Whaaaaa-haaahaaa..."] Did you know that a lot of serial killers
charm their way into their victims' homes? They'll smooth-talk them until
the victims let them in willingly? Well, Nyet III is the
Ted Bundy of Tetris games. And if you think you'll be all right if you
just save your game periodically, think again. Remember earlier how I said
you could buy items at the store to help you out and make
the game easier? Well, I was sort of lying. These
items don't make your game easier. The farther in you get, you literally start
NEEDING them just to beat the levels. They can blow up the metal blocks,
give you a long block when you need it; they are your salvation! But they come at a cost. You don't have nearly enough money
to just buy the powerup you need and pass the level each time. Oh, no. You have to be a miser
and ration out your money, making it stretch as far
as you possibly can. Look at this stage.
I can't see anything and I need to make four lines not knowing
what's below me. That's death. But, if I use a special item, now I can
breeze through it, no problem. But, there is a problem.
The problem is that's $50 I just blew and I'm going to need a lot more
than that if I hope to survive this later on. By spending $50 now, I'm going to run
out of cash and get myself killed later. It feels a little like my
own life, actually... So, I can't play this game casually. Now that I know what I'm up against,
I need to go back and load my game and play this level blind so I can hold on
to that precious $50 for later. Once you get to the third or
fourth stage, you gradually start realizing this isn't so much a fun puzzle
game as it is a survival horror game. In the later levels, there's
always a certain terror entering a level where the hint
is too cryptic to understand. You don't always know what's
coming but it's never good. So, the more you save, the more
you're damning yourself on later levels when you NEED more money and you don't have it because you're
playing this game to have fun. That'll teach you! ["Whaaaaa-haaahaaa..."] So, what this does is create
this feverish mentality where you try to push yourself as far
as you possibly can in between the saves knowing full well that if you
die, you lose EVERYTHING! It makes this game so high-stakes. I do not recommend playing this
game if you have a heart condition. Oh no. Okay... Oh God. Oh God! Oh no, NO, NO! [exhales] Let's talk about the music. The music in here is generally pretty good.
However, they cheat a lot. By that, I mean that the
majority of tracks in this game are just synth remixes of
classical music. If you're a classical music fan, you
might find this game a neat little quiz to see how many pieces you recognize. I recognize this track! ["Funeral March of a Marionette"
by Charles Gounod] I actually only knew this as the
"Alfred Hitchcock Presents" theme, but it's a classical piece--
"Funeral March for a Marionette". That's actually a pretty metal
name for classical music. So, while this game cheats by using
classical music, its picks are pretty good. If I ever hear Yakety Sax one
more time, I'm going to kill somebody. It does have a little bit of
original music, though. The slideshow intro music is great. [music] I encourage anyone inclined to
do a remix of it. I'll listen to it. [music] Okay, so let's address the
elephant in the room. What is the deal with this guy? My first thought was that he was
sort of your guide in all of this, but now that I've explained the
lurking evil contained within this game, I don't know anymore. I mean, look at him. He has this sort of Freudian look
to him, so that's kind of cool, but something is off here. Look at his clothes. He dresses like
a 50-year-old color-blind fat woman. What's going on here? No socks. Is he naked under that coat? Has he killed before? His role here is really unclear. He records your name, he's the middleman
for buying your lifesaving gear, but then later on, he'll
explicitly make bets against you at some points in the game. Maybe he's just meant to be a tough
coach or trainer to make you a better and more paranoid Tetris player,
but I don't know; I'm just getting this sinister vibe here. If you're a big guy, he'd be
perfect for doing cosplay, but nobody would know who the
hell you are except me. Now, it's worth mentioning I have
not actually beaten this game. Back in the day, I only played
the shareware copy, but now that the full version is free, I better understand where this
heart of darkness of a game is headed. I made it to stage five out of seven. I think I could beat the game
if I stayed at it, but I really hit the enjoyment-threshold
once I hit this stage. Like, if I was in prison and
somehow had access to this game, I would absolutely keep playing it. I mean, what the hell else would I do? Plus, I'm curious how it ends. The problem is that I started to
understand all too well what I was going to have to do
in order to beat this game. These later levels are
less about Tetris and more about intense
resource-management and planning. Plus, having to really maximize
what little money you have as efficiently as possible hit a
little too close to home for me. Anyway, if anyone watching this
wants to continue where I left off, I am including a link
to my saved games along with the link to the game
itself in the description. One thing that is pretty rad about
this is that you try to beat this game, you are headed into uncharted territory. I'm serious. I looked online. I cannot find any mention or playthrough or
whatever for the ending of this game. If anyone has beaten this game,
they're not talking. For all we know, whoever beats this game will be the first person in
history to do so. Now, odds are, somebody has beaten it
before, but this game came out 20 years ago, so, if anyone beat it, they
could be dead by now. For me, that's some of the
beauty of obscure games. You're seeing things few
other people have. I mean, how many modern games can you
say where no one has seen the ending? Hell, nowadays, companies try to stop
people from posting the ending up online before the game is even released. Not here. If you beat this game, you will
be the Indiana Jones of the Tetris world. Now, what the ending will actually
be like is kind of a crapshoot because, honestly, PC games are
notorious for having really lame endings, even in otherwise good games. Tyrian's ending is okay, but for
a game like this, anything could happen. Some of the best game endings I've ever
seen have been from puzzle games. I mean, you all saw that intro. For all we know, the ending is the weird guy
sailing off in a Tetris-shaped yacht full of topless women, while he's showered
in all money you gave him for supplies. We don't know! If anyone DOES beat it, contact me--
maybe I'll have short follow-up episode. Now, for those of you who are
brave enough to try to beat this game, I can tell you exactly
HOW to beat this game, or at least maximize your
chances of doing so. You'll then also understand
why I'm not going to. You might want to get a pen and
paper out off for this part. Okay, deep breath... First off, save your game at the
beginning of every stage. Anything new can kill you and
you should assume it will. Next, go through each level one by one
and write down what the gimmick is-- invisible blocks, snakes, hell, whatever. You're going to die over and
over while doing this. Then, you'll need to reload your
save game one-by-one-by-one. Now, maybe you can maybe buy
some items to exit the levels so you can preview maybe three per life, but you shouldn't save your
games with those in your inventory as you'll need money
for the real threats. While you're writing down what the
gimmick is, also write down how hard the level is. Can you beat the level without items? If not, what are the cheapest items
you need in order to beat this level? You should also have a chart of exactly
how much this level is going to cost you. If it doesn't add up, you'll need to
figure up ways to suck it up and beat more levels without items. For levels that have diamonds, do a cost-benefit analysis of what
items you need to get to the diamonds versus how much you can get back in return. They may not be worth it. Don't accept any bets after the first
three except for the endurance ones, you'll just lose money. After you've figured out which are the
hardest levels, do a few of them FIRST; that way if you screw up, you
don't set yourself back too far. Make a list of exactly what order
you'll attempt the levels in so you maximize your...
chances... of success... God, that is a hard phrase to say fast. ...to each save point. Try and push as many levels forward
as you can before your save. At levels 4 and up, you need to save at
LEAST halfway through the stage, probably even more. If you have a background in accounting
or statistical probability, that will help. So, for anyone who missed that, the short version is you'll probably
need to load your game at least 18 times before you start trying to
actually beat the stage. It's a pure grind, the prep work is
not fun, but the difficulty level so high, this is the only way to do it. And, to anyone who thinks that's
just because I'm not skilled enough, that's like saying you have more
skill at Russian Roulette, like you know just how many
times to spin the gun chamber before pointing it at your head. Oh, jeez, okay... Okay, long block, yes! Okay, get in there! Okay, one more line, I can do this! Okay, oh jeez. Uh... Oh, shhh... hell... Uh, okay, but--long block,
just--NO NOT THERE! ["Whaaaaa-haaahaaa..."] Okay, I'm ready to wrap this up. So, what have we learned here today? That surprise nudity is a good
way to get someone's attention, and that evil is everywhere, apparently. Okay, that's the end, unless
somebody beats this. Thanks for watching, and if
you're sick of squares, stay tuned for the next episode
which will have triangles. ...and drownings. ["Funeral March of a Marionette"
by Charles Gounod] Welcome to the surprise review of Nyet II. Well, to start things off,
I can't read German.
