IF Comp '08 Review - probabilityZero's Channel Surfing!
I find it sort of encouraging when the authors of IF games go by Internet handles. Or, rather, I find it discouraging when they insist on calling themselves things like Toddeus R. H. P. Muttonspatler, Crimson Auteur of Ruddlepump-over-Undermoor. No, actually, I’m lying; that would be awesome. What I mean is that I tend to assume, pretty much completely without justification, that people who submit IF games under Internet handles are going to be less pretentious than people who insist on having a middle initial. The one Internet-handle submission I’ve played so far was crap, sadly, but it was not pretentious crap, so my hypothesis still stands.
Let’s collect another data point.
[spoilers start here]
My, what a large television!
I assume this post-it note with the number 16 on it means I should turn the TV to channel 16. Guessing the proper verbs with which to do so is only fun if I’m being sarcastic about whether or not it’s fun.
Okay, CHANGE CHANNEL TO 16 worked. Finally. I submit that so should CHANGE TO CHANNEL 16, at the very least.
I am not sure what I am supposed to be doing in this game show. I have a button that does nothing, there is a box I can’t do anything with, and no one seems to be giving me any input… okay, TALK TO HOST worked. Hi, host.
Generally when someone tells me their hilariously over-the-top or horrible basest-instincts-of-society idea for a TV show, it is something I would watch the fuck out of if it existed. Cat or Dead Cat just sounds really boring, although I think that’s intentional.
If I really wanted to be mean to Steve, instead of this waterfalls and running faucets business, I’d tell him it would help if he relaxed his buttcheeks. (Thanks, Chris!)
I win a taser? Let me get this straight. I am in some sort of experiment. My handlers want to keep me complacent and subdued. They can’t be sure yet that I will cooperate, since I have been asking a lot of questions ever since I realized there were conversation trees, and there is no way I can possibly seem in any way reconciled to my fate - in short, I am the very model of a dangerous free radical, and they are going to give me a friggin’ taser. My handlers are not bright.
“All the world’s a game, and we’re merely the NPCs.”
I built you a fourth wall but I eated it.
All this is just a haphazardly stitched together attempt at entertainment by someone unable to express himself in an understandable way.
Is this probabilityZero being self-deprecating here? I honestly can’t tell.
Do they sell plushy Cthulhu dolls? I still haven’t gotten Riff’s birthday present. Oh, yup, they do. Think I’ll wait for Secret Agent Cthulhu, though.
So, okay, this game. It’s not terrible, despite not being as funny as it wants to be, which always makes me a little sad. The message (American television is really stupid these days) is sort of just thrust at us, to which we say “Uh-huh, it sure is, what’s your point?” To be fair, this is really ambitious subject matter, since television itself is in a constant state of becoming an over-the-top parody of television, and all we mere mortals can do is sort of point at it and go “See that? That’s television. Isn’t it dumb?”
Oh, okay, here’s the bit with the point, the point being “WAKE UP PEOPLE YOU ARE SHEEP.” My handlers want to turn me into a politician with a personality sucked out of the collective unconscious. I suppose if worse comes to worse I can hit them with my bukkit.
[4] I’ll kill you all with my global warming machine.
That got a giggle.
Huh. Okay. I think I’m heading towards the bad ending. Fortunately, I saved my game at the beginning of the press conference, after I told the reporters that if this was a game I would have totally saved just now. (Thanks, broken fourth wall!) We’ll check out the bad ending, then I will tell my fellow Americans how many babies I eat.
Bloated, naked human corpses, eh? Yup, that’d be the bad ending.
…wait a minute, I thought I’d won, but nope, still bloated naked human corpses up in here. I mean, it’s totally realistic that one person being a snarky arseface on television would not stop the taking-over-the-world machine, but hot damn is it depressing.
I don’t know about you, game. You’re confusing me with what you’re trying to say and how you’re trying to say it. I thought for a bit there that the message was to resist, refuse to assimilate, sort of a culture-jammer deal, but as press conference hint number one says, “What you do doesn’t matter.” Humanity was fucked from the moment I started playing this game, I just didn’t know it yet. So, then, resistance is pointless? Roll over and take it, sheeple? And how is this message consistent with the game’s presentation of itself as comedy? Discuss.
It’s a point in the game’s favor that I am stuck on its ideas rather than its implementation, though, and there were a few very insightful moments, and overall the thing wasn’t shit. Let’s call it a six. For the next game I would like to see more cohesiveness, more clarity, and probably you should read something that isn’t Adbusters for a while. That shit will fuck you up almost as badly as television will.
1 year ago