The Huz Experience

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.