The Hitchhiker's Guide Game

I find myself endlessly inspired by this game which I realize is horribly frustrating and not actually fun in any way. That dog/cheese sandwich puzzle still makes me rage. But even though the puzzles are supremely complicated and many involve a time-delayed instant death, where an action (or lack thereof) in the early game ends up killing you later on, I have a hard time saying that they're unfair. Unlike, say, a Sierra game, all the information you need is somewhere in the game, you might have to examine a lot of stuff or consult the Guide a bunch, but the information is there. I also have this thing where the things I find interesting I also find very unfun, but a game being "interesting" in a way that actively makes it sound like a nightmare to play is something that I value. So I guess my new thing is doing stuff in list form. Here are the things that are interesting about H2G2:

-Footnotes. Just brilliant.
-The way that the game takes on the Murphy's Law quality present in Douglas Adams's work. For example, at one point you will have to use one and only one of the tools you had been painstakingly gathering, chosen at random. If you don't have all the tools, the one you need is always one you're missing. And no, you can't go back at this point.
-The way the game converses with you. This is actually the inspiration for a project I'm working on.
-The unreliable parser.

As a kid I managed to get as far as the time and space jaunting part using only my wits and the built-in hints. I think I may have beaten it in adulthood. Back then I had the ability to spend months on a game demo alone, which is something I thought I had lost but seem to have regained recently in The Binding of Isaac. I might see if I can't figure this out without cheating using my memory, also smartness.

Deadly Premonition: First Impressions

There are times when I latch onto a trivial entry in the vast body of human art and achievement and over-analyze the stuffing out of it. Like when I say that Maniac Mansion is the origin of all that is good or interesting in video games or that the meaning of life can be found in Beetlejuice. These things just speak to me in a way that Wuthering Heights or Battlestar Galactica just don't.

Deadly Premonition is one of those magical things. I intend to give it a "proper" review at some point, but there is a lot I have to say about it and I haven't even begun to scratch the surface. No spoilers in terms of plot, but if you don't want to know about "the pickles" in glistening, agonizing detail then I suggest you go do something else, like reading a fine June 2009 article about Spy Groove or play an exciting game demo.

If you are not aware, Deadly Premonition is the incredibly Twin Peakes-esque story of an FBI agent, Francis York Morgan, investigating the murder of a beloved local girl in a small town. Only he's totally crazy and always talks to his imaginary friend, Zach, and also is menaced by spooky creatures. The first thing that struck me is that the player character is not the main character. You think that you're playing as York, but you're Zach, the guy he's talking to. This is a space that I for one love to see explored, but not enough to play more than a couple hours of Contact for the DS. Think about it really for a minute: this guy has been receiving otherworldly commands from someone with outside information about his situation who wants to accomplish certain goals but with a callous disregard for his safety. Of course York is crazy, but he's making do as best he can. It's like that movie I totally didn't see where that guy hears his own life being narrated. On car trips, in lieu of a radio, you can actually have York go on for quite some time about 80s movies and his fetish for women turning into cats. True story.

It's like a deconstruction of the medium. There are things in normal games that are bizarre since they're abstracted gameplay elements from real life, and since you realize that's what they are you just kind of ignore them, unless you're the author of a crappy comic about video games groping for the day's lame joke. For example, the Pay 'n' Sprays in the Grand Theft Auto series. You drive in, they paint your car in a matter of seconds, fixing any damage and erasing your wanted level, no matter how many military guys see you drive into the garage. This is absolutely absurd but not a problem for anyone. DP has a similar mechanic where you get a car wash, either by the sexy lady attendant or the gross dude, for about $15 that repairs your car. Thing is, absolutely everything that happens in the game is abstract or surreal or just off somehow, which makes "normal" sort of weird game things like this stand out as being wrong. You're actually thinking about how strange it is that the game does something like fixing your flaming squad car with just a damp rag for less than half of what you just paid for a pack of crackers. This is DP's triumph, that it calls into question the way normal games are done.

It's this close to being an actually, legitimately good game. Sure, the production values are super low and the least appropriate music is playing at all times, but it's still totally playable. I don't find the investigation and the shooty bits an obstacle to get through so I can see the next hilarious cutscene. I'm actually into it. The horror elements are genuinely creepy. But, as my boyfriend pointed out, every frame of animation looks weird like those Half-Life comics people make using Garry's Mod.

Oh yeah, "the pickles." They come in a can. Labeled "the pickles." And I know where you can get an infinite supply of them. Also, I picked up a turkey sandwich trading card and thought, aww yeah, I'm going to eat this sandwich only to be bitterly disappointed.

I think you need visuals to understand what I'm talking about here. This is the cutscene that convinced me that this game was something I needed in my life:



And this is the one that made me go down to the store and buy it:

Better Ed Then Dead

I am so tired of writing about underwear perverts! You'll get to know what else I ended up with at the con, plus a backlog of back issues bought for their silly covers when I'm good and ready. For now, we're going to talk about video games or hactual books with hactual words. Or that theramin I'm gonna build when I get some cash in.

Today, in honor of LucasArts being less dicks (I'm going to reserve "deciding to stop being dicks" until I see the pricing) and releasing their classic adventure games on Steam, which means that the rerelease won't go out of print and be just as big a pain to get my hands on, we're going to go on delightful romp through childhood memories of Maniac Mansion. That was a pretty serious sentence back there. For this article, I'm going to call the statue of limitations on spoilers, because this game is twenty years old at this point.

Maniac Mansion is what I tell people is my favorite game ever. Yeah, it's not exactly the most polished, or sophisticated, or even what I would call the best game, but it occupies a very special place in my heart. In lieu of having cable my parents would let us rent a game or a movie. Now this was back in the day, and I didn't get any game magazines for reviews. So when you were in the store you could either go with a known good game or take a chance on being stuck with a crappy game all weekend, and all you had to go on was the box art. I'd end up renting Maniac Mansion on a fairly regular basis, and I remember owning it at some point--maybe we bought it from the video store when they were paring down their stock at some point. The point is, I logged way more hours on this game then were strictly necessary to beat it. The puzzles were fairly difficult for me, and I only ever managed to get Bernard's Meteor Police ending. The thing is though, I was content to just wander around the mansion, trying to unlock its secrets all on my own. Now all I seem to care about is making progress; I still like to explore but unless each session has a noticeable accomplishment I seem to break out the walkthroughs on the internet. I'm actually kind of bothered by that change in behavior, and even though it means a lot of games ultimately end up unfinished I'm trying not to be such a cheater these days.

At the beginning of the game, if you go into the kitchen immediately Nurse Edna is in there, looking through the fridge, and as soon as she comes into view she sees you, shuts the door and comes chasing after you. That's the first time I can remember something in a game responding to my actions, and not just following their own patterns. I mean, yeah, there was interaction but it was more you reacting to them. And it was terrifying. As a kid I would check the other rooms first and wait to go in the kitchen, afraid that I hadn't let enough time pass. To this day I have this primal fear response to going in there, even if I do it purposefully to get caught and sent to the dungeon. Later on, you can ring the doorbell with one kid to get Weird Ed to come down from his room and have another kid root through his stuff, which was another panic moment for young me. Am I going to have enough time to get the card key and the change? Is he going to come back up and catch me with his precious hamster?

There's more to this game then just nostalgia. It came out in 1987, and it made a ridiculous number of innovations. It was one of the first games to use cut scenes to advance the plot; the manual actually spends a page explaining what a cut scene is. I mean, at this point even having a plot in the game and not just as color in the manual was a pretty big thing. You got a pool of characters with different abilities, and to some extent personalities, to choose from at the beginning, and switched between kids on the fly, which created a teamwork style of gameplay that is rare to see even today.

It has this great genuine horror/humor vibe and, especially given technical limitations, great writing and characterization, from the green tentacle who wants to be a rock star to the evil meteor, whose ambition was to rule the world...one teenager at a time! The meteor turns out to be a big softie if you get his novel published, though. Oh yeah, MULTIPLE ENDINGS. I told you this game was amazingly ahead of its time.

You could be a punk rock chick (or really new wave dude) and microwave a hamster. What's not to love?

Ok, this one's a rambling mess, so I'll let you go here. I'll most likely be picking up Loom and The Dig tomorrow, and even if you're not big on video games normally, but for some reason have read this entire post, I'd advise checking out some LucasArts adventures, but only if you like joy.

Bonus: Howard and Nester go to Maniac Mansion.

How Stealing Cars Makes Me Feel, or Like Thirty Minutes With GTA4

So, Grand Theft Auto 4 has been out for quite a while, but Superlemons cares not for being the first to report, but rather the being most touchy-feely about video games and their greater role in the collective consciousness and as art pieces, or whatever. Having finally gotten access to a PS3, I've had the opportunity to check this game out.

To preface this entry, I've had a long battle between being able to express femininity vs. being a vacuous ninny. I recently got excited about and then spent way too much money on shoes, and I enigmatically suck at Metal Gear Solid now. So I thought I'd do something manly to balance the books. Remember the simple joy of taking a helicopter out to the beach and chopping up unsuspecting holidaymakers in the blades in GTA: Vice City?

Well.

To sum it up, GTA4 is the single girliest game I have ever played in my life. I am not even kidding. The opening is surprisingly emotional; a man leaving his war-torn homeland for a better life, only to realize that his cousin lied to him about how the streets are paved with gold in the land of opportunity.

I mean, we could definitely go somewhere with a set up like this, right? And I'm not saying the game doesn't. But the first few missions are about shopping, and going on a date, and texting your peeps, and maintaining social connections. You get assigned a mission where you actually have to drive to a clothing store and pick out a fierce new outfit because girlfriend, you are in serious need of a makeover. Your cousin constantly calls you up to hang out. And get this, I had to wait in line and pay a toll on a bridge. What happened to the mayhem, the senseless carnage? Do they all start out like that, or am I just spoiled by my end-of-the-game save files in GTA3 and Vice City?

Other notes: all the cars drive like aircraft carriers. I mean, I get that they're going for the inner city thing and you don't get the good cars until you get to the nice areas, but even poor people (yours truly) have really old sports cars sometimes. I also found the controls a bit of a hurdle since they're such a departure from the traditional scheme, and the trigger buttons on the PS3 controllers feel really weird.