Apocalypse! You can’t beat a bit of it.
It’s everywhere, from the unconvincing CGI monster-infested streets of New York in I Am Legend to doom-laden “what if” TV programmes like Channel 4’s passable Life After People or ITV’s ridiculous Flood. But before we were quite so worried about being wiped out by weird contagions or being forced to mutate into Kevin Costner by global warming, the purveyors of television drama had a much more immediate threat to frighten us silly with: mutual assured destruction.
I’m sure the certainty that anyone lobbing a nuclear warhead halfway around the world would unleash a retaliatory hail of atomic death before the missile had even left their home territory was much more likely to keep you awake at night than the vague notion that, at some undetermined point in the future, the polar ice caps might melt a bit.
Happy to feed the nightmares of their viewers, television companies stepped forward in the early 80s with two made-for-TV movies within a year of one another: Threads from the BBC in the UK, and The Day After from the US.
Everything Connects
While both of these films are still powerful enough to be scary, even after over twenty years, they each have a very different take on the post-apocalyptic landscape. In a sense, the films reflect differences in national character more than anything else: while Threads shows the population of Sheffield wallowing in medieval poverty even fifteen years after the Russian improvements to the city centre, the merry townsfolk of The Day After are seen banding together and preparing to reconstruct Uncle Sam via hard agricultural toil practically, well, the day after their own hammering.
In both cases, the films evoke the aftermath of a nuclear exchange in ways which don’t quite ring true, from opposite ends of the spectrum. The world of Threads is unrelentingly bleak, filled with deformed, mentally retarded children and adults too shell-shocked to function even a decade after the blast. The immediate aftermath of the nuclear blast causes mass panic and food shortages, which the ineffectual interim government can only curtail by taking drastic measures.
By contrast, The Day After’s rosier outlook gives us a provincial university hospital where dedicated staff remain at their posts for days, struggling to treat people who are happy to wait patiently in line despite half their faces hanging off and their entire family dying quietly by their side.
I’m sure the American TV audience would like to think it would pan out like that, but I think Threads barely has the edge on realism.
Woven together in a fabric
In both dramas, the countdown to doomsday is, if anything, more effective than the post-nuclear struggle itself. Both ramp up the tension in the early stages by staging a minor ground scuffle in the Middle East, encroaching into our characters’ lives via the background chatter of TV and radio reports. As things become more serious and those pesky Ruskies bust their way into West Berlin, the tension mounts.
Threads has its characters stockpiling food and following the advice of the creepy Protect and Survive television broadcasts; The Day After shows our heroes piling earth against their cellar windows, constructing an impromptu fallout shelter in which they can cower until the great American nation rises again (after perhaps a fortnight).
The Day After wins over Threads in one important respect: the beginning of the fateful day itself. This is almost by necessity. The United Kingdom would never have got much of a look-in during a nuclear exchange between the USA and the USSR, neither as a target (Threads has it receiving a mere smattering of the total firepower exchanged) nor as an aggressor, with our nuclear deterrent being both relatively small and lurking aboard submarines somewhere in the world’s oceans. The first nuclear strike in Threads comes with minimal warning, in the early morning when old Reagan would be snoozing. Despite causing pandemonium on the streets, it’s fair to say that the good people of Sheffield don’t stand much of a chance to do anything beyond being typecast, and melting.
The Day After has the luxury of being set in Kansas, home to some of the USA’s nuclear arsenal. The Russians are good enough to make the dubious decision to strike during American daylight hours, giving our characters the opportunity to see their own nuclear warheads heading off to do their duty – and the unpleasant knowledge that, no matter who started it, some Russian missiles will be along to return the favour.
If you’re a fan of post-apocalyptic material, both films are essential, if somewhat crusty viewing. If you have views on the nuclear deterrent or fancy acquiring some, so much the better.
For those who enjoy their gaming to be an undemanding yet unpredictable affair, life has never been so good. Anyone who yearns to whack a ball around a colourful environment in a merely vaguely controllable way doesn’t have far to look: from the frankly terrible Pinball 3D that comes with Windows XP, you can progress up to the likes of Marble Blast, a game so addictive it managed to hook me in from its secret base on someone else’s iMac.
Those who truly believe that life has no meaning without a computer game to occupy their every waking moment can become chemically dependent on Peggle, the gaming equivalent of being hooked on sherbet: you’d dearly love to try that proper gear you paid good money for (Half Life 2: Episode Two in this analogy), but can’t get past the sweet, sweet allure of the cheap and easy stuff.
Despite the wide availability of this gaming crack, one game that’s stood the test of time is the excellent Pinball Dreams for the Amiga. Now well over a decade old, I still find myself going back to it on a regular basis with the help of emulation via WinUAE.
The really odd thing: I’m still terrible at it. While I’m sure there are people in existence who’ve managed to master it, I’m not one of them. But still, it’s a game that’s done so well - providing the player with just the right balance between whacking a ball around quasi-randomly and giving you real, rewarding targets to aim for - that it’s difficult not to return to its pixellated beauty.
Seriously, it’s beautiful. Observe.
Half-decent adventure games are terribly thin on the ground nowadays, as anyone who’s been scrabbling in the gaming dirt looking for a latter-day Monkey Island will attest. For me, it’s reached the stage where I have to admit that gaming has moved on to such an extent that it’s probably impossible to recreate those heady days, where pointing a cursor at a virtual world and watching a pixellated character wander around saying “That doesn’t seem to work” was the pinnacle of gaming. But still, I try the genre’s latest offerings in forlorn hope, making extreme allowances for the budget that hasn’t been lavished on them, the increasingly hardcore fanatics the game has been designed to pander to, and the fact that the developers’ native language is a special brand of double Dutch. So far, this approach hasn’t proven to be fruitful.
So, it was with some trepidation that I approached the demo of Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, the most unwieldy title I’ve seen since The Bill: Frontline: Shockwave spunked itself onto my TV a couple of weeks ago. While this isn’t a pure point-and-click adventure – what is nowadays? – its origins in comic-strip land and the involvement of the great Ronzo himself were enough to spark my interest.
The demo kicks off with a stylish intro cutscene, introducing you to the cartoonily-noirish New Arcadia, replete with lashings of rain and ominous forks of lightning. The intro sequence is great, hanging together really nicely – there’s certainly no need to make the standard nice-try allowances so far.
Sadly, once you get into the actual game, things begin to unravel a little. The transition from animated 2D comic panels to a fully rendered 3D world is more jarring than I’d have hoped, with the walk cycle of your character looking particularly sub-par. Considering it’s the one animation you see constantly while playing a game, it’s always disheartening to see it look so unconvincing. It’s a classic mistake made by those low-budget adventures I’ve been whining about.
But hey, once you get used to seeing a walk cycle, you forget about it, right? You’re far more likely to care about the gameplay itself. One of the first things to happen is a turn-based battle in an RPG stylee. It’s not so bad; quite enjoyable in fact. Unfortunately, once you take a few paces down the street, it happens again. Then you pick up an extra team member for your ‘party’. And it happens again. And then you pick up Gabe and Tycho in a sequence where, disappointingly, the dialogue somehow fails to capture the essence of Penny Arcade. And have another turn-based fight. And, finally, another one – all against basically the same baddies.
And then you’ve finished the demo.
I’m not the best person to judge, because I loath turn-based Japanese RPGs with all my soul, but what are these battles for other than to waste your time? Perhaps with a bit of banter between your new chums Gabe and Tycho, they would have been a welcome opportunity to indulge in some Penny Arcade style laughs before cracking on with the game proper. As it was, the battles seemed to serve one purpose only: to prevent you from completing the demo in three minutes flat.
I suppose the big question is, will I bother spending the $20 required to unlock the full game? The grudging answer is, yes, I will – the quality of the cutscenes and the pedigree of its writers is enough to make it worth the gamble – but judging by my demo experience, the game is dangerously close to being loaded with tedious battles to the exclusion of the writing and the dialogue which people will be expecting. I hope I’m wrong - and no doubt I’ll report back from beyond the precipice.
Man! When I promised a half-OOUR review of the Al Emmo demo, even I didn’t expect over a year to pass before I got around to doing it.
Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman’s Mine is an adventure game released in 2006 by teeny-tiny developer Himalaya Studios, also responsible for those Kings Quest remakes people loved.
As ever, the rules of the half-OOUR review are simple: a game has half a f***ing HOUR to make an impression upon me, and the time it takes to install doesn’t count.
Prologue
The case of Al Emmo is complicated by two small matters, however. One is that I read a fair amount of commentary about the game when it was first released, which is more than can be said for other Half-OOUR Review candidates - they’re lucky if I’ve even heard of them. This gave me an insight into some of the game’s design decisions which, otherwise, would be frankly incomprehensible.
The second and more significant complication is that I had already had a session on the Al Emmo demo, a few days after I originally promised a review. The truth is, back then, I decided that nothing was worth suffering Al Emmo’s voice acting, particularly not a two-bit excuse for a web site like this one, and quit the game a few minutes in. Looking back, I think I was literally screaming, but sometimes the memory plays tricks.
Still, let bygones be bygones and all that, eh? One of the things I learnt by reading about Al Emmo was that the protagonist’s voice is supposed to make you want to punch your speakers in, and that it becomes less grating as the game progresses as part of his character development. The decision to imbue any main character, let alone the lead, with a voice so awful you never want to hear it again is questionable, but there you go: it’s deliberate.
The Beginning
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. How does the actual game play? I began my oddysey at 1:15am.
I think it’s best not to mention the opening cutscene. The music was pleasant and the direction passable, but beyond that, we’ll just pretend I never saw it, or that it never even existed. Sssh. Straight on to Part One.
The game proper begins with the protagonist, the eponymous Al Emmo (ho ho), stranded in some Godforsaken hellhole in the Wild West. Even to leave the first screen, you have to solve a puzzle. For someone used to the non-linear joys of the classic LucasArts adventures, this is enough to drive you potty in itself, even without the triumvirate of evil conspiring to get there first: rubbish graphics, annoying voices, and horrible dialogue.
To criticise the graphics of Al Emmo seems a little iffy, as its modus operandi - as I discovered by reading up on it - is to ape the style of the classic Sierra adventures. Therefore, it’s no surprise that it looks dated. Unfortunately, it also looks out-and-out rubbish, which is a criticism it’s impossible to level at even 15-year-old adventure games like Monkey Island.
I’ve already mentioned that Al has an annoying voice, but I think it’s important to pinpoint exactly how annoying. To say it’s high-pitched and whiny would be an understatement. It sounds more like Al has got his testicles caught in a threshing machine, then been force-fed helium until his vocal chords became permanently deformed, and finally had his nostrils surgically pinched together to elicit the sort of nasal whine usually heard only from French schoolchildren. It’s a struggle not to quit the game the first time you hear him speak, let me tell you.
Then there’s the narrator, his purpose in the game being to provide “classy and classic commentary” and elevate the game to “the epitome of unparalled adventure”. I quite liked this touch, in a very over-the-top Murray-from-Monkey-Island kind of way - for about five minutes. After that, his overblown wisecracks, many of which aren’t actually funny and definitely a world away from “classy”, are just grating. And then there’s the dialogue itself.
It’s stilted, delivered by uninteresting characters, and there are no dialogue trees in sight. There’s little more annoying in adventure game than having to sit through a conversation about whatever your protagonist feels like, despite the fact you’re supposed to be controlling them.
Brave New World
There are plenty of other flaws I could mention. You spend a lot of time looking at the hourglass cursor. There are lots of characters around, but you can’t actually speak to many of them (at least, not in the demo). And did I mention Al has an annoying voice?
But really, it’s not all bad. There is lots of interaction available with the game, with many on-screen objects having not only descriptions, but “amusing” responses when you try to use them, or speak to them, or pick them up. There are jokes aplenty, even if most of them are duds. But I think Al Emmo has one positive trait that’s missing from the vast majority of games released nowadays, and is certainly missing from modern adventure games: it’s brave.
Allow me to illustrate. Early on in the game is a cutscene in which the supposedly beautiful Rita Peralto - who appears to sport a lazy eye in her cutscenes - get up to sing in the bar. Al stands up to serenade her, in painful, achingly whiny falsetto.
Such a scene should make me cringe. It should make me want to smash my computer. The first time I fired up the Al Emmo demo over a year ago, it did and I quit, vowing never to return; but this time, I saw it as the game’s willingness to take risks shining through. Yes, making the lead character annoying to be around is a strange move, and so is getting him involved in one of the most physically painful cutscenes I’ve ever sat through, but both of these decisions reflect the game’s bravery. Apeing the classic Sierra style, which many people thought sucked even at the time, is another audacious move, and for that I think Al Emmo is worth a look.
Don’t think I’ve gone mental - I certainly won’t be playing through it, though I admit I did overrun my half-OOUR slot and go back for a second look of my own volition - but amongst the dross of modern adventure games, Al Emmo stands out as being… well, different. Different good, or different bad? That’s in the eye of the beholder, but I certainly don’t hold Al Emmo in the same contempt as the subject of my previous Half-OOUR Review, Journey to the Centre of the Earth - poorly-executed cookie-cutter nonsense that it was.
The fact that Al Emmo exists as a commercial release at all, and is arguably more worthwhile than some of the rubbish churned out by big game publishers, says a lot about the tenacity and talent of Himalaya Studios.
Al Emmo? Er… Al-back-from-the-BigWhoop more like.
Loads of people have cupboards, attics, garages and spare rooms filled to bursting with old possessions they no longer need or want. When you get around to having a clearout, there are a few obvious possibilities: you can give things away to a charity shop, you can flog them on Ebay, or you can throw them away like a piece of rubbish. The latter option seems rather pointless - and you never know, you might need that reversible Jason and Kylie duvet cover again some day - so if an item is too big or too pointless to lug down to the post office or the charity shop, it’s tempting just to keep it lying around. That way lies madness, and a garage full of junk.
Luckily, as ever, there is an alternative! Sign up to Freecycle, where you can offer your unwanted clutter free to others in your local area. If someone is willing to take that oversized inflatable snowman off your hands, they’ll come round to pick it up - so aside from the remote possibility of telling an axe murderer the way to your home, it’s a hassle-free way of clearing some space and getting your old stuff into the hands of people who might actually appreciate it.
You can bag some decent stuff on there too. Free, unwanted hi-fis are a relatively common sight. I landed one a couple of months ago - hey, the CD player doesn’t work, but nothing’s perfect.
Now if someone - anyone - would take my old 17″ CRT monitor off my hands, which I freely admit in the ad is “quite blurred” and worst of all, “beige”, I’d be able to recommend Freecycle unreservedly. As it is, give it a go if you’re remotely interested in tree-hugging, saving the planet, and all that. What’s the worst that can happen? You feel a crushing sense of rejection because nobody wants your stuff, even for free. And that’s not all that bad at all.
The only post I made on this blog during 2007 was to announce its closure.
In an era where spewing your guts out on the Internet for your own amusement - and, if you’re lucky enough to have any readers, the amusement of others - has never been more popular, that was a bit of a shame. So I’m back, and I’m badder than ever. I can go left and right.
Some things have changed. Things you’re unlikely to care about, but I’m going to tell you about them regardless. The main thing is that I’ve upgraded to the Wordpress blogging system, so I can update using a swanky user-friendly editor rather than some rubbish I cobbled together myself. I can also take advantage of err, trackbacks and pings and other 21st-century blogging innovations that I frankly don’t quite understand.
Another, more important thing has changed, and that’s the Internet itself. Blogs are now commonplace and even - inexplicably, if you ask me, which of course you didn’t - cool. Imagine that! That means more competition, and vitally for charletans like me, more places from which to siphon ideas. Yes!
There’s also a tendency towards longer, better written and more in-depth blog posts, which suits me just fine. We might have to see about the “better written” part, but the days of trying to limit the word count around these parts are officially over. Get your reading eyes ready because you’ll be needing them.
At least, that’s the plan.
If it doesn’t happen, feel free to come round and shoot me in the face.
Monkey Island 2.
With some other nonsense falling by the wayside at #2. I honestly can’t remember what it was now.
Wait, got it: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Why not Ocarina of Time, you say? Well, it was a close one - almost too close to call - but Wind Waker is simply a more polished product. The music is incredible, the world alive and full of side-quests, and the cel-shading - naysayers be damned - works wonders on the graphical side. Never has a fantasy world been more appropriately portrayed in gaming.
Because, saps who complain that Wind Waker looks like a cartoon for children and babies and that Ocarina of Time was so much more adult and mature: you’re playing a game about an elf child fighting cutesy enemies with magic. Have you noticed?
Roll on Twilight Princess, I say, set as it is to be thrust into my waiting hands by the end of the week. For the Gamecube. Yes, I am a dismal failure.
Sophisticated, intelligent, witty. Not words you usually hear in relation to computer games, but Grim Fandango has them all covered. I’m listening to the soundtrack as I write, and it’s conjuring up images of the world Grim Fandango so effortlessly evokes.
Because I’d hilariously skipped playing some of the better console games, the Wing Commander series was as close as I’d got to an immersive, cinematic gaming experience. I’d played adventure games before, but they were mostly all about click here, talk to this guy, run over there. They had story, they had a setting, but not enough character. Then Grim Fandango came along and showed us how it was done. The game effortlessly captures the film noir atmosphere it’s aiming for, oozing it out of its every pore - from the music, to the characters, to the cutscenes.
In a way, it’s a shame Grim Fandango was such a pioneer. Restricted by the technology of the time, the game is in a style that’s come to be known as “2.5D” - 3D graphics overlaid on pre-generated 2D backdrops. While the end result is still rather nice, and simply lovely in places - see anywhere with a sea view in Rubacava - you can’t help but feel that a true 3D environment would have boosted its cinematic qualities still further.
I completed Grim Fandango in a week. What a pain in the arse. That’s the curse of the great adventure game: before you know it, it’s over, and there’s no way to forget the game so you can play it afresh. Bah.
I’ve spoken about Frontier, the sequel to the seminal 80s classic Elite, here before. It’s the game solely responsible for my continued pursuit of space trade-’em-ups, a genre which, on paper, sounds like the most boring in history. Fortunately, there are odd exceptions where it all works in practice, and Frontier was my First Encounter. Frontier joke for you there.
Although the initial draw of Frontier is obvious enough - it was one of the earliest ‘open-ended’ games, giving you an entire populated universe to pootle around in - I suppose it’s hard to explain why the game is so far up the list. I admit that Hardwar was a better-formed game in a similar vein; Frontier has no plot to speak of; and, having revisited Frontier repeatedly over the years, its flaws and numerous bugs become more and more glaringly obvious as the years go by.
But that’s just it: the fact I have revisited the game at all. It holds a special place in my heart as a game I poured days of effort into, and although I’d be lying if I said it never got old - the inevitable space battles Frontier throws at you if you venture into unfriendly space are boring and repetitive, especially when you’re stuck in a seemingly unending series of them - I kept coming back. There was something indefinable about the game. It’s hard to explain.
While my recent experience with EVE Online was disappointing, I’ll tell you why. It was because I had loved Frontier, and fantasised about an online version where the other ships plying the space lanes were piloted by real people. Well, here was EVE, and it was a reality. It was boring. Was I disappointed? You bet I was.
So then, Frontier. I can only come up with lame arguments for why, but man, it deserves its place here. And check it out: it’s survived the test of time. Perhaps reason enough in itself.
Beyond Good & Evil was a special game. I knew it within minutes of shoving it in the old Gamecube, and the buzz it generated - not just on this blog, but err, on Remi’s too (those were simpler times) - seemed instantly justified.
Alas, although BG&E received critical acclaim (from real people, not just us Internet hoodlums), it escaped the great idiot public’s attention. People ignored the game in their droves, opting instead for FIFA 2004 or some shit, while BG&E languished unloved in bargain bins. A tragedy.
Like Hardwar (and Psychonauts and Grim Fandango), BG&E suffered from the marketeers’ inability to encapsulate its nuanced brilliance in a single pithy sentence, and indeed the impossibility of doing so. “Photojournalism simulator where your uncle is a pig” just doesn’t quite cut it, nor does “superlative adventure game featuring a young heroine who must uncover an intergalactic conspiracy”. “Wonderful all-round gaming experience featuring a series of enjoyable mini-games and great music” falls similarly flat, while the lure of a well-realised alien world replete with half-human, half-animal denizens and beautiful scenery just can’t compete with the wonder of the 50,000 polygons used to model Wayne Rooney’s face.
I sound bitter, you say? That’s right, I’m bitter. Beyond Good and Evil is a criminally overlooked game, a game which should have been recognised as part of the missing link between old-school adventure games and the modern world. As it stands, the game has taken its place in gaming history alongside similarly tragic cases of mistaken identity - mistaken identity on the part of gamers everywhere, who thought it unworthy of their attention. Man, they were wrong.
