[quote="Vitriola"]Or you could do what I did.[/quote]

Jones' box of Drift discs are currently taking out a (platonic!) Craig's List ad for any single video games who would like to hang out with their (sizeable) group.

Activies for this fun-loving phalanx of bodies include filming crowd scenes for local student films, starting a marching band (with oboe) (and second seat oboe), forming an independent political party and each hooking up individiually with everyone in Cuba.

Or you could do what I did.

Oh no! Is it too late to get a copy? Ha ahaha.

Note to anyone living in Colorado -- if you meet a grizzled, cherubic Yankee transplant who looks like he bought stock in Bad Idea Jeans and has about fifty of them stagnating in a box underneath his grunder drawer, be sure to answer every third morose wail-pandling with a bright "Hmm!!" in order to get your free game. Tell 'im Souffle sent you.

So, two and a half stars, then?

Oh, no, I absolutely agree that life is sometimes cruel and sad and so forth, and I'm not complaining about it being a bad outcome, I think that often times games with bad outcomes make some of the best games. My issue is that this is a game with a bad ending that could have easily been prevented if the main character had any sense, and it's not good to play a game where the player has more sense than the main character does because it will irritate him. Especially with the inclusion of the spectre puzzle, people are going to think that saving Casey will affect Audrey's oppinion of Duffie enough to let her stay on--although, arguably, that might not be a bettter thing for either of them in the long run. See, I think that could work well.

As for me, I thought the whole point of [i]being[/i] the character was to jack up the velocity of the emotional impact. By that standard, 'unwinnable' is all the more compelling.

I mean. Life isn't always good, and as much as I hate to drop the a-bomb, art should reflect that.

Although I [b]do[/b] agree with Lysander in that the lack of an alternate ending is like preaching to the converted.

Yeah, sorry about that. I have this chronic trouble of never looking at what I type. I should do something about that, shouldn't I? Right. I'll get right on that.

If Robb had a kid it would explain MONKEY MONKEY.

Hey.....This game is based on a true story, aint it...


It rings a little...too closely to be all made up.




THE
ROBb DA VINCI CODE
AARDVARK

Seriously man, I hold no grudge with you; but, you've got to start typing up your posts better. They are really near unreadable.

[quote="Worm"]I think Lysander means it's not a traditional story and ultimately not being able to affect the end of if sort of fucks up the interactive part.[/quote] Yeah, basically.

[quote="Worm"]I really liked the ending, but I don't see how multiple ones would have worked.[/quote] I liked the ending, too, from an aesthetic standpoint, and if it were from a book or a movie or something it would be beautiful. The thing is, when you've played an IF game--especially one so focused on character study like this one is--the player would like to think that he has accomplished something major. And in this case he hasn't. I mean, he's turned his life around, granted, but it's almost too little too late. ANd it's not that major a thing, because the player, if he was not limmited by the choices put into the game, would have been able to save it in the first few scenes. Okay, because i've just come down from a Smith-movie extravaganza, I'll speak in those terms. This game is Mallrats. The PC is the guy who gets dumped because a relative of his girlfriend accidentally kills herself after taking one of his suggestions and all he cares about is the fact that she won't go to Florida with him. Pang is the other dude who is always playing his Sega. Criswell is the creepy pseudo-rapist guy and Gibs is either Jay or the brutally honest guy from Clerks. At the end of hte movie they all go through a catharsas and get their girls back. Okay. Fine. No problem. I expected this was how it would be from the very beginning and was not too impressed at first, but the movie managed to still entertain the pants off me regardless. But the entertainment factor--other than watching Silent Bob use jedi mind powers--is watching these two schmucks go through a self-observation process to finally realize what complete schmucks they've been. That's okay. When you're watching that happen, it's fine. But in IF, you're supposed to *be* that guy. So you're the observer and the active participant. So you as a player can see exactly what's happening, and when the expected outcome occurs at the end the reaction of the player is going to be "No shit, fuckin' *finally*." But on the other hand, as an observer, you are forced to watch the events unfold, like an unavoidable car crash--but, again, you're not only forced to watch it happen, but you're forced to make it happen--and for no other reason than your character's stubborn cluelessness. It's almost like Shade, for God's sake. Robb, buddy, trust me on this, you do not want people comparing the scenario of a clueless guy losing his girlfriend to the unwinable sort of hell that is Andrew Plotkin's shade. Okay? You just don't.

I think Lysander means it's not a traditional story and ultimately not being able to affect the end of if sort of fucks up the interactive part. I really liked the ending, but I don't see how multiple ones would have worked.

Thanks, Robb; hooray for games worth reviewing.

[quote="Lysander"]But this is not a story. This is IF.[/quote]
Um. You see the 'F' bit of 'IF'. That would make it fiction. In other words: a story.

Yeah, that'd be a good one.
Course, if oyu had asked me, I would've said the exact same thing. And then you wouldn't be having this problem. Although, arguably, you'd have people bitching "Paying mony for a 38-MB download! And an IF game! 0/5 WORST GEAME EVVAR!111!" or some similar retarded bitching. So, eh.

I was hoping for a sale or something to merge with the betatest packages. But!! It's been rough out there. My advice to Kent was to not make the same exact game perfectly free as a download from your website to help out with this "selling" thing.

Oh, so in other words you're so appreciative of our efforts that you're saving our complamentary packages until last? Yeah, I really dig that, RobB. Yeesh. (Kidding, natch.)

And again, sorry for not sending those ND packages out yet. There really is no excuse. I have some labels done, but will do ALL of them tonight.

For what it's worth I have a Gothic Auction I haven't paid on yet either, so it's not just you guys.

[quote="Debaser"]I saved "the character" the first time through, but only because I had an obsessive need to do [i]something[/i] with every monster before I left the mall. I don't know how long I dicked around with the Revenant trying to get him to do something useful for me besides commit honorable seppuku.[/quote]

Hahah, yeah, he blew up nicely, didn't he?

I think he was an alternate solution to the vampire, wasn't he? But you had to meet the vampire before that dialogue option came up. I think I just wanted there to be another way to go if the garlic was chewed on, but then that ended up not defeating the vampire but just keeping her at bay.


[quote]Aside from whatever else I get out of this place, it's kind of interesting in a Lit 101 sort of way to "know" you, Robb, before/after playing these things. Like when I was reading [i]Formerly...[/i], within three panels of BG and BB's first scene together I was immediately thinking of Avenger and Hollywood... or Avandre and Keegan... or, you know, whoever and whoever.[/quote]

True. I hadn't wanted Gibs to be a sidekick character, especially since he is mightier and more in shape than Duffy. Duffy should be his sidekick, perhaps! But then, not. The sidekick is useful in the first person game to have someone to talk to, but the game I am trying to deliver to Mike Sousa currently isn't in the first person, so that sort of solves that for now. Maybe his sidekick will be the moon or something, and he can bray at it, as a werewolf ex-marine rogue cop with a machinegun for a hand. Who can tell, who can tell.


[quote]So it's always cool to read these little behind the scenes snippets. This one and CDJ always kind of struck me as the two most personal games you've written.[/quote]

That would be fair.

(The least personal was the Hammurabi port, probably.)


[quote]It occurs to me now on what will seem like a completely unrelated note that you should stuff Planescape: Torment as high on your "Ways to Waste Time" queue as you can manage. I get that you don't play video games quite as much as you used and that it's kind of a hefty time investment for a guy who's developed friends and a life and a consuming hobby since 1997 but, what was previously just a General Good Game Recommendation is now a Personal Recommendation. If you get a chance, at all, load it up.[/quote]

I "have" a "copy" of it "somewhere" if you're digging my ditch here, and I think you "are." I only haven't ever played it because so much of my time was spent on Baldur's Gate II, one of the finest and longest and did I mention longest games ever made, which sort of sapped my will to dork about with that system again. But I get the sense that it's something I'd like.

How about this, my current gaming queue includes Doom III and your WIP. After that... it's Torment!!! (But if I sap back on the couch and console it up, don't hold it against me.)

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]Yeah. But this is the thing, my friend -- just recall as you get older that you do have choices, and you [i]will[/i] have choices, and while there won't be a cacophony of undead hanging around you physically if you make every bad choice you can make, it's at least been my experience that you have a mental graveyard of Things That Won't Die if you fuck up as badly and as often towards people as I did in that age which is just as tough to escape. If that sort of thing got through at all in that little video game, then I think I did what was aiming for. [/quote]

So it's not a Survival Horror game, it's The Horror Of Survival as a game?

I second the recommendation to play Planescape:Torment. Hell, <i>I</i> just played it all the way through again.

And I want to know what your answer is, when you get to the right point in the game. Mine, to no one's surprise, is "regret."

Bruce

...Robb, when's the last time you've ever put an easter egg into one of your games?

That's what I thought.

The player, when seing that puzzle, is not going t o think 'easter egg! Truly, I am a master among Sherwinian text players!' he will think 'Damn, *that* was indirect.' I mean, it's a "main" character dying. That's the sort of thing that most people expect *can* be solved, so they will be looking for a way to solve it; hindsight is 20-20, and what I'm seing on the newsgroup is a lot of people not getting it at all. I mean, whenn I was *betatesting* the thing I couldn't figure it out for the life of me--I probably wouldn't have thought to look in the coffin was i not, as I say, beta testing. I mean, if it's an easter egg, fine, but it's not *handled* like an easter egg.