IF Comp '08 Review - Clare Parker's Cry Wolf!
My absolutely brilliant (trust me here) and extremely long (here I’m actually not lying) review of this game was eaten by the netherwebs for reasons that, if I felt like it, UK YouTube could take the entirety of the blame for. (Don’t study the prepositions in that last sentence too closely; I haven’t slept.) In any case, my review must be rewritten and UK YouTube is cocks. Thank you.
[spoilers begin here]
Okay, so, hypothetical scenario. You are a veterinarian. One night, during full moon, you are awoken by the howling of an injured dog-thing. You sedate the dog-thing, put a splint on its right front paw, and as you drift off to sleep, you are dimly aware that it has crawled into bed with you. The next morning there is a naked woman in your bed with one of your splints on her right arm. DO YOU THINK SHE MIGHT BE A WEREWOLF? I ask because the protagonist of this game, jilted veterinarian Peter somebody, has to have this explained to him three scenes later, after he has delivered a mastiff bitch of her part-human part-dog puppybabies, and he is just shocked. I wasn’t aware they let such thick bastards be veterinarians.
Also the game is fairly silly in places, as you might expect from a werewolf love story. The old review, may it rest in peace, contained the actual quote of werewolf-lady’s revelation, and is it ever awesome. She’s all “Do you remember that injured wolf whose paw you put a splint on? Peter, I was that wolf. I’m… I’m a werewolf!” and he’s all “ghasp!” and I’m all “seriously? He didn’t know?” and a good time is had by all, is pretty much how I remember that going down.
Something good I can say, though, is that in a competition full of empty underfinished games, this one is lovingly detailed to the point where things actually are examinable and have descriptions oh God have I missed that. Favorite example: there are some magazines in your clinic’s waiting room, not part of a puzzle, just there. They are described as being magazines that you chose because you would want to read them yourself, and in fact, other than an O magazine (the one Oprah puts out*) that you had nothing to do with, most of them have spent time in your own personal living room. If you then type EXAMINE O MAGAZINE you find that it is there, it is examinable, and its description gives you another example of how you and your ex-girlfriend were Wrong For Each Other. This is not some new earthshattering technique here, just a single extra object description, but it makes Cry Wolf seem like a game somebody gave a damn about.
That is the impression I got from the whole thing, actually. This might be a silly werewolf romance, but it is Clare Parker’s silly werewolf romance, and you can tell she absolutely loves the shit out of it, and far be it from me to condemn her for that. Everyone should love their creations this much, except for the people who reanimate necrotic tissue.
(Which reminds me, Cry Wolf skirts the edges of bestiality a little in places. This only got really bizarre for me when Andrew claimed not to have any romantic feelings for Lady the mastiff bitch. “You ever have a dog who’s your best friend?” he asks Peter. Which is all fine and dandy except he’s talking about the mother of his children. Maybe I’m being old-fashioned, or a cat person, or whatever, but I just don’t think people should turn into wolves and impregnate dogs unless they and the dog are in love.)
I popped my walkthrough cherry very early on trying to figure out how many pills to put in the meat (maybe it said on the bottle?), so I’m not sure how figure-outable the surgery that makes up most of the game’s third scene actually was without a degree in veterinary medicine, but I was sort of relieved the entire time to be cheating. It’s possible the entire thing was very well cued, though. I can’t say. I cheated.
Sadly, the game has one huge issue regarding the conversation tree in the fourth act, which is that the conversation tree in the fourth act is friggin’ broken. If you ask Marissa how the puppies are before asking her about her arm, or if you ask how she knows Andrew before asking if they’re dating, the latter option in both cases goes away, and you are left hanging uselessly around your kitchen drinking coffee while she stares at you. I found the unintentional minigame of “which options do I choose in order to not hopelessly fuck the conversation system” sort of fun, once I’d re-cheated my way through Lady’s C-section for the second time, but it’s also sort of fun to pop pimples, y’know?
It says something about the game, though, that I was willing to cheat my way through the surgery again so I could see the ending, because in no way was it a question of finding out what was going to happen. Peter and the werewolf - heh, Peter and the Wolf, wonder if that was intentional - were going to hook up as surely as if they’d hated each other and been trapped in an elevator. Technically, the ending is left up to the player (in another conversation tree, oh God does this game have conversation trees) but come on, people, we all know they’re gonna wind up together, just succumb already! Maybe it’ll make the conversation trees stop coming!
I can’t in good conscience score this game any higher than a six. I give it a seven.
* I often disappoint people who are googling for pornography. If you got here by typing “Oprah puts out,” I am very sorry.
