IF Comp '08 Review - Jim Aikin's April in Paris!
I have heard that April is a good time to be in Paris. It makes me wonder what horrible things start happening in Paris the first week of May.
[let us begin the spoilers]
Jim Aikin sure does like them big ol’ words. Let’s see, we’ve got a “fathomed,” an “antediluvian,” a “quintessentially,” an - oooh, a “momentarily!” I can never remember how that one’s supposed to be used. Riff, what was it George Carlin said about “momentarily?”
“I will arrive presently, and, pausing momentarily, I will kick you in the balls.”
Thanks, Riff! Thanks, George Carlin!
Gosh, the subtitle of this game is “An Exasperating Social Difficulty.” I rather like that. Honestly, I think I’m going to like this game. The writing is a little - not trying too hard, exactly, not self-conscious per se either, more - look, if I said I got the sense Jim Aikin listens to NPR and knows a really funny joke about a gerund that walked into a bar, would that get my point across? Not saying that’s a bad thing; it is what it is. C’est la vie. La plus ca change, ou sont mis pantalons. Hello, Paris.
COMFORT WOMAN and INTRODUCE MYSELF both work. That is a very good sign.
DISTRACT HOSTESS is good times, although you’d think that even if she doesn’t know what “samurai” or “machete” means, “butchering people in the restroom” would be clear enough on its own.
I am having problems moving this plate. I suppose I can LOOK UNDER it, but this game’s been so good about that in general that it is disappointing whenever it isn’t.
The map in this game is somewhat confusing. I am in the north end of the indoor area, the dog has gone “to the group of tables near the north end of the interior area,” and he is apparently too far away for me to examine him.
C’est une tournevise! C’est pour viser la vis! Well, actually, it’s a corkscrew, but Mme. Crazy Bitch didn’t spend ten minutes teaching me how to say “a corkscrew is for screwing a cork,” so we’ll all have to take what we can get.
From the hints:
Do you have anything he might like in exchange [for the corkscrew]?
No, not the bottle of wine. That would be a “Gift of the Magi” situation.
Nice.
Awww, poor waiter.
Well, that was a charming little game. I was hoping April would tell me something interesting after I’d managed to get us lunch, but nope, my reward was getting to have lunch. As a potential love interest, I didn’t much care for April. She’s very American in the way that English novelists used to write Americans back in the fifties. (“Gosh! Ain’t you a nice fella!”) She’s also not very interesting. I’m going to give this an eight. Jim Aikin’s next game I will gladly give a nine or a ten, if he puts more - y’know, I hate to say this game didn’t have a lot of story, because for a game about a waiter that won’t serve you lunch, it had story coming out its yin-yang, but -
Okay, you know how in figure skating, you score higher for pulling off more difficult moves than you would for easier ones? This game absolutely nailed everything it attempted, and then some. It’s just that I would have liked to see it attempt more.
1 year ago