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Obi-Wan Kenobi once spoke of Mos Eisley Spaceport with great
infamy, claiming that “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and
villainy,” a claim I would make about the Xbox Live Arcade’s Indie Games. Now I’ve reviewed some indie games in the
past – namely the titan that is Minecraft
(it’s Xbox 360 port, anyway) Ib, and Cthulhu Saves the World, all of which
I’ve enjoyed for one reason or another.
However, with the recent update to Xbox (and seriously, could they find somewhere to place more ads?) I
found a “Recommendations” tab based on games that I’ve played in the past or
have shown interest in.
While most of them were not really my cup of tea, I found
one called “Mystic Forest”, which depicted an anime-style fairy woman with her
eyes lidded and her mouth about half open as she was grasped by what I could
figure from my best guess were tentacles.
…yes, I know you can see where this is going.
I only picked up the demo, however, because it was
free. I didn’t expect it to be able to
learn everything I needed to know about the game in literally five minutes! I’m not sure whether to express my disgust
or give the makers of it a medal.
The game begins at the start up menu with a prompt of “Press
Start”, which then opens up the real
start up menu, and the depiction of two large breasted women clad in a thin
sheet of cloth each standing thigh deep in some green liquid that I hoped to
God was water. I could use this section of my review to go on a tirade about
how this is just cheap pandering in order to bring in what they believe will be
their target demographic. Except this
game doesn’t really have a target
demographic, as I’m sure you’ll quickly realize.
Developed by Team Shuriken (makers of similar games such as Dream Divers and Ninjas and Priestess, all of which seem to have a similar…ahem, aesthetic appeal), the game puts you in
the role of Philippe, a hero who is “no strange to the humdrum life of a farmer
as he plos the field”. Besides the typo
(and several others throughout the game, ever heard of editors, guys?) the text
based intro is literally a list. It’s
stating facts about a character, in this case “Philippe”, much like I’d write
out a grocery list. Of course at that point, I didn’t realize what I was
playing was a text adventure.
I’m not a big fan of text adventures, and this game didn’t
help me see any sort of light. And it’s
not that I’m not fond of reading, I do read (somewhat sporadically, by my own
admission), but this is a game, and last I checked games were supposed to be a
visual medium. One could make the
argument that this is indeed being a visual medium with the pictures it
displays next to the walls of text as you progress, but as your focus is
supposed to be on the text and not on
the image, I call BS. The image is
pretty much there as an ornamentation or titillation (anime-style women
everywhere, at least we can say the box art doesn’t lie) and serves no purpose
beyond that.
But the story picks up with “Philippe”, a peasant farmer -
who somehow talks as though he’s a snarky, ironic twenty something – tending to
his garden of vegetables for his vegan ex-girlfriend……..never expecting to find
a fairy agonizing in his field of salad.
No, that’s almost word for word how it’s written in the
game.
The fairy, Elfia, asks for help because, “I can not find the
way to my village, which is located in the heart of Mystic Forest.”
Is anyone else seeing a problem yet?
But you get the option to either help her or leave her be
with the push of a button. Choosing to
leave her be gets you a smack over the head from the game and a “Try Again”
screen, because apparently you’re lame.
If you accept you get the small map screen, which looks like a D&D
map that is actually pretty well sketched on a napkin, and some options to
travel. This pretty much represent the
entire demo that I played through.
And just to make sure, I actually went and exhausted every
option I was given. And the one thing I
can say about this game is really just that it’s boring. All there is to it is
just walls and walls of text. But I’m
sure even fans of text adventures really wouldn’t find this all that appealing. Even if this were in the era when text
adventure games were a big thing, it has so many problems that drag it
down. The typos throughout, a really
simplistic narration that almost seems like it’s insulting my intelligence, and
just a feeling that I really don’t have any control over what’s going on. With games, that’s a problem.
I suppose that last thing is what it all boils down to for
me, a lack of control. I don’t expect to
be completely in control, that’s no fun, but I expect to have some degree of
control and for some of my actions to hold some weight. Mystic
Forest, however, thinks it would be best for me to just pick from a drop
down menu of options and watch them get played out. I don’t feel invested, I almost feel like I’m
being insulted when things are explained, and the distinctive lack of anything
remotely interactive in what is supposed to be an interactive medium make me
scratch my head and wonder how this thing ever came to be.
…
…and no, by the way, it’s not good porn, either.
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