The "Mean IF Reviews" blog is closing

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Ice Cream Jonsey
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The "Mean IF Reviews" blog is closing

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

The guy who has the occasionally-updated "Mean IF Reviews" Blog has stated that he has stopped the blog.

I am going to copy the post he made on the intro to Cryptozookeeper in 2010. He gets a lot of stuff wrong, but we've all seen blogs get pulled with a lot less warning.
IntroComp 2010 - Cryptozookeeper - Robb Sherwin
Konnichiha! IF no toki desu yo! Kono IF ga Robb Sherwin no Cryptozookeeper desu. Hajimemashita! Rabu ando piisu!

...or something. I don't speak japanese.
Time for Cryptozookeeper no Robb Sherwin, I mean BY Robb Sherwin.

Another exe-file, but this time at least it's adhering to some kind of interpreter standard (Hugo).

Hugo Engine
Filename to run:

Eh, what?
How should I know??? There's 4-5 files here, all named weirdly.
Oh, it only allows .hex-files, okay.

Nice title picture. ...and there's actually MUSIC playing. Once again I'll have to wonder if this is really allowed in text adventures.
I take it we'll be doing some "cryptozoology" in a graveyard during midnight. Consulting Wikipedia, we learn that it's the study of "hidden animals", such as Bigfoot and other mythological creatures, so I guess we'll be tending to some zombies or something. No, wait! I found the Loch Ness monster in the lake!
...which just seems wrong in this setting, but all right.

CRYPTOZOOKEEPER
A TEXT GAME BY ROBB SHERWIN

Click!
Okay, looks like SOMEONE has done some photoshopping here.
So is this a CLICK menu? Why, YES IT IS!
Sure, there's TEXT in the menus, but so far no TEXT adventure.

Okay, the options just lets me set the color of the text. I kinda like green myself.

Okay, at a first glance, if this sort of picture GUI is even allowed, it makes the other ones LOOK like crap. Hopefully the actual TEXT adventure lives up to the pretty pictures.

Type "ABOUT" for game info and conversation conventions

Uhm, sure, but just on the off-chance that the introduction will be irrevokably sucked away to be replaced by yet another GUI, let's wait until after we've actually read it.

So let's establish where we are.

Marrow is delicious

Delicious? Ah, NOW the graveyard makes sense: We're a ghoul, or some kind of a flesheating undead. That counts as a cryptid. Okay, now for the second sentence...

You're supposed to pick up a single jar of alien bone jelly

See, THIS is how you establish something. You don't go: "Jelly is kinda on your mind as you head toward the bright spot in the distance of your mind, the issues with your mother taking up most of it. Somewhere a horse is slowly dying." You go "You! Dude! Find the Macguffin!" and I go "Yes, Sir! >t macguffin".

and you've got other fur-bearing fish to fry

That pun was laaame.

Okay, we've just eaten a steak, so unless you're calling your latest victim a steak, we can rule out "vampire" from the list.

The only blight is the building before you: a grime-smeared shack with barred windows, a swatch of tar for a roof and a lawn that pretends to be a rock garden xeriscape,

Xeriscape? Checking Wikipedia, that word is so obscure that is barely avoids being trademarked. ...by Denver Water, as a matter of fact. I was just one capitalization away from handling stolen goods and having the FBI on my tail.

This shanty has a single reinforced door with a peeper slit at eye level.

A what-now?
Searching for "peeper slit", we only get four hits, of the same ad for some kind of "skirt suit" that has nothing to do with doors. ...on the whole internet.
You see, I know what he means, but as neither the north americans, nor the english, has yet understood what this mysterious device (that has been around since medieval times) is, there is no word for it in the english language. (It's a special kind of peephole, that features a narrow and rectangular slit for the eyes, usually fitted with a sliding door.)

The air tonight is quite dry and whisks away some of your anxious sweat...

Do ghouls sweat? At least he's a living kind of undead, like a werewolf or a Stephenie Meyer vampire. That WOULD be a horror story: Finding out in the end that you sparkle in the sunlight and go "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!".

A few feet from the house is Igor Cytserz's mailbox.

Yes, "Cytserz". If you look at your keyboard, and notice how close the letters are to eachother, you can figure out how he came up with that name. Amazing what you can come up with just by hammering your keyboard.

There's an inventory screen up above me as well, reading:

William Vest
You are carrying your vest (being worn),

That just HAS to be another lame pun.

your lip ring (being worn),

EWW! That's coming right off as soon as I'm done reading, but first:

>about

[Welcome to adventure!

WOAH!

CRYPTOZOOKEEPER is a commercial graphical text game

Commercial? He's SELLING this game? That explains the GUI, and the text being all "Decepticon" (green and purple) on me.

The conversational model in this game is based on topics. To see a list of currently available topics for a given character, type >think about character.Words will appear in color throughout the game, and these words will appear as valid topics to the characters that said them, and sometimes others.

Wouldn't it be neat if real life worked like that too? "Oh, I see those BIRDS are highlighted. That means that some people are interested in talking about them today. I should note that down." Still, it beats having to spend all day guessing the topic.

It is not possible to get the game in an unwinnable state for any dramatic length of time.

"Just from before the turn you save, to the turn where you die and have to restart." It's good to know I can at least rely on my friend "undo".

"HELP" offers further details on game mechanics and color options.

Notice how we haven't actually DONE anything yet? Maybe this introduction is just leaping between a couple of About and Help screens.

>help

...and there goes the game screen. A good thing I read it all through before it vanished.

Introduction
System Requirements
What is Interactive Fiction?
Game Instructions -- Commands
Hints

Credits
Licence and Copyright Information
About the Hugo Compiler
About the Programmer

AAARGH!

All right, first up: Introduction

You are William Vest, a courier working within a city in New Mexico in an alternative present. A client has called you to transport

"...a jar of alien bone jelly.", yeah you told me this before.

a small vial of marrow,

Well, close enough. At least we now know that it's marrow he's talking about. What a coincidence that we happen to find what we deliver oddly delicious.

You know, looking at the credits list for this game (which is a HUGE two page text dump) is kind of an eyeopener. At most I've seen contributors who has listed at most THREE playtesters. This contribution contains not one, not three, but THIRTEEN of them, along with about THIRTY other people.
When Robb meant it was commercial, he MEANT it. Regardless of the quality of this game, I just HAVE to see if this falls within the boundaries of IntroComp, because if commercial IF companies are allowed to use this amateur competition just to promote themselves (and in the process taking away the (to them small) prize money from everyone else) there's something seriously wrong with the competition itself.

Yup, this is allowed. The only criteria is that it's working, playable and interactive fiction.

Checking out About the Programmer next.
Oh, THAT's why the GUI looked so disturbingly familiar. You see, I've actually played another game by Robb, called Necrotic Drift, infamous for featuring the Worst Ending Ever, and though I probably swore never to play anything by this author ever again after that, here I am.

Aaanyway:

>remove ring

You thought I had forgotten about that one, didn't you?
Nope, it's apparently stuck to us. Drat.

The guard is asking for the password. That's odd: Judging by the picture, that's not a narrow slit at all. That IS a peephole! At least call it a peeper HOLE.

...but before we head inside, let's let curiousity get the better of us:

>open mailbox
You open the mailbox.
Inside the mailbox is a glass bottle.

WHAT??? First the guard, and now even the MAILBOX has its own musical score! Oh, it loops the tracks every time I advance a turn.
Heading inside.

Took an oyster from Igors gigantic CAULDRON that he apparently keeps filled with the stuff. Enough said.

>talk to igor about package
Please enter a topic
>>

Yes, apparently what's a pretty basic command HAS to be split up into two. We're not just supplying a missing topic.

Uhm, apparently there ISN'T going to be a package to deliver.
Yeesh, this game goes on and on about how grouse being fat is, and apparently fat people even stink worse than a whole cauldron of oysters when they move. That's just bad.

>take all
...
Cytserz: Cytsrez probably wouldn't be too big on that idea.
Puzzle: Puzzle probably wouldn't be too big on that idea.

So after Cytserz fails in trying to get up, HE TELLS HIS BODYGUARD TO KILL ME!

I just stand around, looking baffled, but no, his bodyguard Puzzle is really about to kill me, so this is probably the time for me to strike back.

>hit puzzle with bottle
Hurting Puzzle would run contrary to your personal ethics regarding animal abuse.

...and then I get mauled to death the second after.
Apparently I was a real animal-lover. Was that another pun or is this Puzzle some kind of a half-animal?

...so, to recap, what the fuck just happened?
I arrive at my employers house, I talk about the delivery he called me for, and then he has me killed. Knowing Robbs reputation, was this the proper end of the intro?
Let's undo and try Cytserz instead.

>hit cytserz
Your attempts at beating up Cytserz have no effect - he's just too large!

Another fat joke. I'm not fat, and I STILL take offense because I have to endure the poor attempts at comedy.

Wow: I can only undo ONE turn, despite of the controls letting on that I could undo several, so I just have one turn to get it right. Let's escape!

>out
There is no normal exit: Cytserz has to let you out.

Wow... That's... That's just bizarre. Apparently the door must have disappeared in this little hut.

>take package
"You will never possess this package, Vest! Never!" screeches Igor. He starts swatting the air so you can't get close to it.

I'm perplexed: There IS a package here, and it probably has alien marrow in it, but he's not letting me have it. Let's restart.

I see: Puzzle is apparently NOT a dog-looking guard, but an actual DOG. Good to know. ...and he's called PUZZLE, because getting rid of him is a PUZZLE. Man, the poor puns never stop with this guy.

Wow. So the solution to this puzzle was to go through my employers mailbox, get a bottle of sauce, and then pour the sauce into the cauldron. The dog won't eat oysters, but just before he kills you, he smells the sauce, and starts eating from the cauldron instead. You can't pour it on anything else, because that would be messy - no, it has to be the cauldron, or else I might just as well get mauled to death.
Of course, I wouldn't KNOW that my employer would turn on me, so why go through his mailbox? Why put a bottle in a mailbox OUTSIDE his house, if not to fuck with us? Robb could have put it inside, next to the cauldron, but he wanted us to DIE first.

I'm talking to Igor right now. Lots of talking, and I have to type "talk to man" every other time, because even if I cut him off in the midst of a sentence, and there is nothing else to do, the game doesn't understand that we're STILL having a conversation the next turn. So annoying. "Talk about ..." would have been such an improvement.

...and suddenly "they" storm the place!

He throws a half dozen salmon-colored poseys onto the ground. Everyone falls down.

...and that's the abrupt end.
Who was the mysterious figure in the doorway?
What was in the mysterious alien package?
Just how deep does this conspiracy go?
What's a "posey"?
Did he just throw six pretentious people on the ground, that fell down?
Don't care.
I'm just glad it's over without us being hung from our own innards similar to that other game.

Wait a minute. What's that he said about the game being IMPOSSIBLE to "get into an unwinnable state for any dramatic length of time"? MOST OF THE GAME CAN BE RENDERED UNWINNABLE IF YOU FORGET TO GO THROUGH IGORS MAILBOX! YOU COULD BE STUCK IN THERE FOR A HUNDRED TURNS before you finally speak to Igor, and after that, what follows is the ONLY "dramatic length of time" IN THE GAME! THIS WHOLE INTRO was a "fix the unwinnable state" puzzle! What if I had SAVED after getting past the guard, without opening the mailbox he distracted me from???


This game gets one point for existing, and one point for its numerous playtesters alone, minus one point for an attempt to rob amateur IF designers of their hard-earned prize with a commercial release, minus one point for it STILL being a horrible game of IF despite of this, minus one points for all the stupid puns I had to endure, minus one point for the fat jokes, minus one point for the tedious conversation system, minus one point for the ending to Necrotic Drift, minus one point for being a "solve the unwinnable state" puzzle, minus ANOTHER point for lying about this, and minus one point for not featuring ANY cryptozoology what-so-ever. (Aliens are not cryptids - they belong to the "astrobiology" field.)


-7/10


...but ultimately, the competition is rated "with one thought in mind, and one alone: 'How much do I want to play more of this entry?'".
Would I like to play a second game made by the guy who brought me the ending to Necrotic Drift? No.
Would I like to PAY MONEY to play a game made by the guy who brought me the ending to Necrotic Drift? HELL no!
the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!

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Flack
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Post by Flack »

That seems like a pretty lame reason to end a blog. There are dozens of free blog-hosting sites around. According to the front page of his site he has 23 posts. I woulcn't even worry about migrating the data elsewhere -- you could cut/paste them into a new blog in less than hour.

I've actually considered converting my installation of Wordpress to Wordpress MU (multiuser) so that I can host multiple blogs and give other people vanity domains (whatever.robohara.com). Actually it would probably work better with a different domain name, but you get the idea.

I think there's a place for that blog in the IF community, especially if done anonymously. There's a lot of garbage out there that could use addressing.
"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."

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