Let's Play Sierra Games - Codename: Iceman

[Tawmis]

So I finished this dastardly game again for my channel. The game play is 7 hours and some change.

Which, no joke, there's about an hour or so of just the dice game....

And then the code thing - man, I have no idea what I was doing wrong but a few times when I "decoded" the messages - it'd come back incorrect. Could be that I was tired, most of the time when I play these games, it's at like 1 or 2am, after the wife is asleep and I have free time while she's knocked out.

The battle... one of them (second one, I think), was atrocious also. lol Lots of save/restore until I hit all three times.

Third one, I forgot the command to bring down my weapons in the sub... that one was on me, but eventually remembered.

And then the tape on the fridge... I knew something was on the fridge (you can see it)... but man, it took awhile to figure that out....

And then there's where you free the ambassador... I kept trying to hit down after untying him and having him change clothes...

Took a few tries before I just typed "exit" or "leave" - and he goes, "Let's get out of here."

Anyway, video is rendering now...

[notbobsmith]

Which, no joke, there's about an hour or so of just the dice game....

For some reason, the dice game didn't give me that much trouble.

And then the tape on the fridge... I knew something was on the fridge (you can see it)... but man, it took awhile to figure that out....

This is what finally broke me on my first playthrough. I even tried "look refrigerator" and it wouldn't say the tape was there.

[Tawmis]

Which, no joke, there's about an hour or so of just the dice game....

For some reason, the dice game didn't give me that much trouble.

To get the bottle AND the device? (I mean the device is easy, because at that point it's just one more win).

And then the tape on the fridge... I knew something was on the fridge (you can see it)... but man, it took awhile to figure that out....

This is what finally broke me on my first playthrough. I even tried "look refrigerator" and it wouldn't say the tape was there.

Yeah - I knew you had to restrain the guy - but for the life of me, I couldn't remember how I did it. And I could see what appears to be a grey bowl on the fridge.
And every time you "look at fridge" - "It's a Freeze Queen Icebox" (or whatever it was called).
I think I even did "look on icebox" and it did the "You've left me speechless"

The correct phrase I discovered was...

[notbobsmith]

And then the tape on the fridge... I knew something was on the fridge (you can see it)... but man, it took awhile to figure that out....

This is what finally broke me on my first playthrough. I even tried "look refrigerator" and it wouldn't say the tape was there.

Yeah - I knew you had to restrain the guy - but for the life of me, I couldn't remember how I did it. And I could see what appears to be a grey bowl on the fridge.
And every time you "look at fridge" - "It's a Freeze Queen Icebox" (or whatever it was called).
I think I even did "look on icebox" and it did the "You've left me speechless"

The correct phrase I discovered was...

There are a bunch of examples of this in the game. Another one is the briefcase which clearly had some papers in it, but you had to use the right word for it to find it.

Since "look refrigerator" didn't give a useful response, I assumed that gray thing on top of the refrigerator was part of it. Like how some old refrigerators had the compressors on top.

[Tawmis]

There are a bunch of examples of this in the game. Another one is the briefcase which clearly had some papers in it, but you had to use the right word for it to find it.
Since "look refrigerator" didn't give a useful response, I assumed that gray thing on top of the refrigerator was part of it. Like how some old refrigerators had the compressors on top.

Yeah - I think I got snagged up on the papers too.


Here's the play through - when I scanned through it - after it had uploaded, I realized - the second time you make contact with the female agent - I'd died (guard caught me with no papers) - and I walked off to get a soda... But left the game recording.

[Tawmis]

I am missing quite a bit of points (266 out of 300).

Which is better than the first time I beat it, and got 247 out of 300.

[Tawmis]

Codename: Iceman Commentary. A hair over an hour. (Or so)

[notbobsmith]

Just watched your commentary playthrough. There really isn't too much to add, but just a few comments:

14:00 - The country is Tunisia, which is a real country.
27:22 - One thing that was frustrating with submarine combat was that you got very little feedback as to whether or not you were doing something right. I did try diving under the inversion layer, and I'm not sure if it helped. I was still getting hit by torpedoes, but I guess it may have been less frequently. I thought I did everything I was supposed to to "run silent" but it was never clear to me.
39:30 - The first time I played, I did not get my ID card back and I was able to finish the game. I forgot what it is you miss, but I don't think it was too important.
1:00:36 - The hand on the hand rail is a nice touch with the animation. There were a bunch of nice little details in the game like this. Like having the character turn in the direction of an item when you look at it. The beach also has characters that continue from one screen to another instead of just vanishing when the character changes screen.
1:09:30 - "Bagdad[sic] Fast Foods" Baghdad is a long way from Tunisia. But Arabic speaking countries are all the same, so what difference does it make, right?

[Tawmis]

Just watched your commentary playthrough. There really isn't too much to add, but just a few comments:
14:00 - The country is Tunisia, which is a real country.

Yeah, as I talked through it - I figured it was (I don't script my commentary, clearly).
I thought it was a pretty bold move, as I realized it was probably a real country; to show only terrorists of that country (since the only other person you run into in the area that appears to be a "native" is the CIA agent).

27:22 - One thing that was frustrating with submarine combat was that you got very little feedback as to whether or not you were doing something right. I did try diving under the inversion layer, and I'm not sure if it helped. I was still getting hit by torpedoes, but I guess it may have been less frequently. I thought I did everything I was supposed to to "run silent" but it was never clear to me.

Yeah, I think the big thing was moving your sub up and down too - once you're under.
One thing (I mentioned in the video) I did was dive to the bottom till I wrecked - so I knew the maximum depth - and I'd just move up and down between the safe depths.

39:30 - The first time I played, I did not get my ID card back and I was able to finish the game. I forgot what it is you miss, but I don't think it was too important.

Good thing the driver remembers who you are (unlike other people) - because he requires your ID when you first arrive.

1:00:36 - The hand on the hand rail is a nice touch with the animation. There were a bunch of nice little details in the game like this. Like having the character turn in the direction of an item when you look at it. The beach also has characters that continue from one screen to another instead of just vanishing when the character changes screen.

Yeah, I thought that was a nice touch.

1:09:30 - "Bagdad[sic] Fast Foods" Baghdad is a long way from Tunisia. But Arabic speaking countries are all the same, so what difference does it make, right?

Yeah, and as far as I could find, it didn't have any other meaning like "Heavenly" or whatever that it might have translated to.

[DeadPoolX]

Codename: Iceman's submarine sections would drive me nuts nowadays. I've played tons of submarine simulators (still do, actually) and in some ways being accustomed to that extreme level of control over my submarine in sims would make it more difficult for me to adjust to the limited controls in Codename: Iceman.

Despite the game taking place in 2004 it was released in 1989, so that means the USS Blackhawk would've either been a fictional submarine class or a Los Angeles-class since that model was getting built up until 1996. I couldn't find any reference to the SSN's class in the manual, so I bet they were avoiding that detail.

1:09:30 - "Bagdad[sic] Fast Foods" Baghdad is a long way from Tunisia. But Arabic speaking countries are all the same, so what difference does it make, right?

To be fair... some restaurants or fast food places are named after locations that are nowhere near the area they're actually serving. For instance, there's a pizza place called Boston Pizza that first started in Edmonton in 1964.

Edmonton is in Alberta, Canada, which is nowhere near Boston, MA, USA. In fact, Google Maps says the two cities are about 2617 miles (4212 kilometers) apart, plus they're in separate countries.

So why the name? Who knows? The point is that despite being called "Boston Pizza," it has nothing to do with the city of Boston itself. Knowing this, it's conceivable that a placed called "Baghdad Fast Foods" might exist in Tunisia. Sure, chances are the name came from generalizations and a lack of research, but it's not completely impossible that this is a similar scenario to Boston Pizza in western Canada.

[notbobsmith]

Codename: Iceman's submarine sections would drive me nuts nowadays. I've played tons of submarine simulators (still do, actually) and in some ways being accustomed to that extreme level of control over my submarine in sims would make it more difficult for me to adjust to the limited controls in Codename: Iceman.

Despite the game taking place in 2004 it was released in 1989, so that means the USS Blackhawk would've either been a fictional submarine class or a Los Angeles-class since that model was getting built up until 1996. I couldn't find any reference to the SSN's class in the manual, so I bet they were avoiding that detail.

The name Blackhawk also breaks from the tradition of naming Los Angeles-class subs (generally) after cities.

Here's a question: would a submarine really have a machine shop like we see in the game? Space is at a premium so I wouldn't think they would have room for lathes and drill presses.

One other thing that was kind of neat was at the end. The carrier is the USS Saratoga. The number on the flight deck was 60, and sure enough the hull number for the Saratoga is CV-60. She was decommissioned in 1994, however.

[DeadPoolX]

The name Blackhawk also breaks from the tradition of naming Los Angeles-class subs (generally) after cities.

Yeah, the only Los Angeles-class submarine that isn't named after a city is the USS Hyman G. Rickover (the man who's known as the "Father of the Nuclear Navy" for having directed the development of naval nuclear propulsion).

Here's a question: would a submarine really have a machine shop like we see in the game? Space is at a premium so I wouldn't think they would have room for lathes and drill presses.

Unless we're talking about a Soviet Typhoon-class submarine (which are the largest submarines ever built) there's virtually no chance you'd ever see something like a machine shop on a submarine. Even on a Typhoon-class it'd be unlikely since one of the main goals of a submarine is to remain undetected and sonar — deployed by corvettes, frigates, destroyers, cruisers, other submarines, and various aircraft — could easily pick up that sort of noise.

The reason I bring up the Typhoon-class isn't just because it was absolutely massive for a submarine, but because it also had amenities not normally afforded submariners, such as swimming pools and saunas. If any submarine class would have a machine shop, it would've been the Typhoon-class, although like I said that probably still wouldn't have occurred just due to the noise it'd cause when in use.

[Tawmis]

The name Blackhawk also breaks from the tradition of naming Los Angeles-class subs (generally) after cities.

This made me google US Nuclear Submarines - and from what I see, some are named after random things (Seawolf, Benjamin Franklin, etc) -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_s ... tates_Navy

Also - according to a walk through I found (after beating the game, I always look to see what I missed - especially since I missed 40 points here!) -

It says that whole repair of the missile and stuff isn't mandatory. It's there for points?

Has anyone ever confirmed that?

If so it makes adding that whole drilling area kind of weird.

[DeadPoolX]

This made me google US Nuclear Submarines - and from what I see, some are named after random things (Seawolf, Benjamin Franklin, etc) -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_s ... tates_Navy

NBS and I were talking about LOS ANGELES-CLASS submarines. All of those were named after US cities except for the USS Hyman G. Rickover.

Other classes of submarines (such as the ones your link goes to) had different naming conventions.

For instance, the Virginia-class submarine predominately uses states (i.e. USS Virginia, USS Vermont, USS Colorado, etc) but it has some that aren't states as well, including another USS Hyman G. Rickover (the Los Angeles-class sub of the same name was decommissioned in 2006) and oddly enough, some are named for aquatic sealife.

It's odd to see submarines named after states, especially when you see specific subs such as the USS Texas, USS Arizona, USS Massachusetts, USS Iowa, USS Missouri, and so on. In my mind, those names belong to battleships, but no US battleship has been in active service since the Gulf War (although a couple of Iowa-class BBs are maintained in their 1980s configuration "just in case they're needed"), so while it makes sense from a commissioned versus decommissioned standpoint, it still sounds weird to me.

(NOTE: The reason Reagan re-activated and refit some Iowa-class BBs in the 1980s was due to the presence of the Soviet Kirov-class battlecruiser. There are only two Kirov-class ships still in service by the Russian Navy, one of which is undergoing a refit and the other is attached to the Northern Fleet, a Russian naval detachment assigned to the arctic.)

[notbobsmith]

Also - according to a walk through I found (after beating the game, I always look to see what I missed - especially since I missed 40 points here!) -

It says that whole repair of the missile and stuff isn't mandatory. It's there for points?

Has anyone ever confirmed that?

If so it makes adding that whole drilling area kind of weird.

My first playthrough, I made the repairs, so I can't confirm. It would be cruel and bad game design to make your weapons malfunction later in the game because you failed to do this. In other words, it would be totally possible for Codename: Iceman to do just that.