"Here's Delphi X2. Enjoy."

Why did I decide to review Delphi X2?

I mean, look at this. What the fuck! What the fuck, Giel! What the fuck! What the fuckin' fuck! What the fuckin' fuckin' fuck is going on?! Fuck! I don't fuckin' understand. I don't understand. Fuck.

Seriously, though, if an MZX game is supremely bad, it'll just simply reek with nothing redeeming about it whatsoever (~85% of them) or it will be amusing in a Young Authors kind of way (most of the rest). Giel's work, though.... oh, Giel's work... it goes beyond simple youth missteps and into absolute painful hilarity. It's a comedy of errors so magnificent to behold that it's shocking that it may actually be in earnest. Speaking of "in earnest", this game is a complete and uncredited plagiarism of one of Gemini's unfinished games in his first DOA pack!

STAREVAC.MZX - Station Evacuation ---------------------------***-2.51-
TYPE: Standard MZX Game
DESCRIPTION:
My SECOND EVER MZX game... and I almost got it completed too,
but alas, as I began to play through it once more I realized that so
many of the bosses were damned near impossible to fight. Still, most
of the storyline is already there, all you have to do is balance the
game and add about 10 - 15 more board to finish the storyline off.
IF YOU WISH TO CONTINUE MAKING THIS GAME:
Please make sure I am given credit for the original concept.
Because I have a sequel by the same name in the works you MUST change
the name of this game to something else if you are going to complete
it. This will allow me to use the name Station Evacuation in the game
I am making.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This "game" obviously had zero playtesting. Giel can't even decide what tense to refer to the player character, or what his own characters should be called, mostly because he blatantly stole them from another game and didn't finish the job! This is such an issue that he sends labels to the wrong name half of the time, leaving the game forever broken! I had to play this game in the editor full-stop and edit quite a bit to even get to a playable state. How is it possible for a game this simple to have so many glaring bugs and oversights, the vast, vast majority of them not in the original work? Also, when the code doesn't explode, everything else literally explodes. Nearly. Everything. Gemini/Giel: PUT KEY SEEK DOES NOTHING IF IT'S BLOCKED THAT DIR WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST HAVE THE FUCKING ROBOT BECOME THE KEY ...oh, wait, because the robot has to explode, OF COURSE

Assorted bug highlights, all new to the Giel version:

* The reactor room board. Ever heard of nuts.wad for Doom? Load up the board and test it out for yourself, I won't spoil it much further.
* Going to an optional board to collect more "Telarium" is not only pointless, but will also cause the game to be unwinnable, as the game checks for a specific amount of Telarium. In the original, it would be the exact amount acquired after finishing this board.
* AVALANCHE POTION!? SERIOUSLY!?
* The aforementioned label misthrowing happens not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES
* Nice work making a room with a default door leading to it and leaving not enough space for it to open.
* Fleeing from an exploding, burnt town, and then heading back to see it as good as new. There are more unused boards showing a wrecked town, so Giel just probably decided to change the direction of the game but didn't follow through completely. One of the few times he bothers trying to make something even remotely close to original content and he doesn't implement it correctly.
* One cinematic that (guess what!!!) uses explosions can end up damaging the player through it, while another guarantees the player will be raked across fire.
* Since the original game is unfinished, Giel decided to finish it by having a tall, featureless room filled with duplicators and dragons, and a boss fight in a nearby board. The board links are broken, though, and the final boss is both laughably easy and neither correctly coded to start the battle nor to finish the game!

The parts that do work are of little to no merit. Initially, enemies are mindless Robots, but reskinned builtins are most enemies shortly after the first area. Hilariously enough, these are even LESS effective than in the original because the world is now set so that builtins shoot neutral bullets. They end up killing themselves in very short order. Ammo, health and lives are set to ridiculously high levels now, so even in the one notable area in which you might actually lose health is no problem at all.

The plot has been only slightly altered, so things like ancient Gemini's hilariously bad understanding of chemistry intermingle with Giel's bizarre Roto fixation. Why is he cameoing someone from a decade before he was even around? it boggles the mind!

The only even remote sense of comfort I got in playing the game was when the player character FINALLY showed frustration in being in what was probably the 989th starbase. you and me both, brother, let's go get blotto together

The only other additions Giel made were generic sound effects, a few char set edits and music, most ripped from Mega Man X games and Sonic Advance 2.

The parts Giel aren't directly responsible for? Ugly, space-filled boards and painful writing (Example 1: You create cyanide out of toothpaste and antacid, causing the cell bars to disappear. I guess you asphyxiated them to death. Example 2: "You ordered a hidden camera to be placed in there??? What if he meets a girl?" Nice to know invasion of privacy's fine unless someone's getting intimate. Also, in the same conversation, we find out that the ship the player's on carries everything but gold platinum. Must be some huge-ass ship.) are interspersed with some basic gameplay. Most of it is large boards filled with default enemies, but he changes things up a bit with things like a small-viewport maze and extermination of what amounts to slow, ZZT-style slime. Why Giel decided to rip off of a game of such low caliber is a mystery to me.

I'd only played CR2-0 before this one, and trust me, the prospect of those unplayed "Giel" "games" being even _worse_ than Delphi X2 is depressing and a bit horrifying. This is one of the few times I've played an MZX game so bad that it induced actual anger, _Even Before_ I had a hunch that it was a huge ripoff. At least CR2-0 is "original". If I could give this mess zero stars, I would. SQL-MAN, AWAY!!

Again, WHAT WAS I THINKING!?

As with Delphi X1, this game is an edited version of someone else's game. In this case, its Gemini's incomplete Station Evacuation. Also, AVOID THIS GAME TOO.