I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

Here is a snippet of experience. Within the first ten minutes of playing the game, I was stumped on a puzzle that required me to steal an item from an old man's residence. Seems simple enough. The problem? The solution requires the old man leaving for a short while, and the player is given no actions to control this. Entering and exiting his residence several times, fiddling around with items in other areas, and finally taking an in-game nap were all suggestions I read IN DIFFERENT GUIDES. Let me be clear here: there is no solution. It is completely arbitrary. The game doesn't bother attempting to hint at the fact that the old man even has the capability to leave, and since we are all very used to the idea of completely immobile NPC's in even modern games, it wouldn't be far-fetched to think that the solution would never occur to you. And so you wait, you fiddle, you revisit every other screen numerous times, try this object with that verb, all in a tiresome and fruitless manner so typical of adventure games until you happen upon the solution and think to yourself, "SERIOUSLY?" Oh, the endless disappointment. If I sound jaded and frustrated, I am both. Games like this have led me to feel this way. There is a mature and interesting narrative underneath the puzzle mechanics, yes. But the aforementioned example is just the *first* in a long line of time-wasting, illogical design choices you will suffer through. My advice: read the short story, skip the game.

This happened to my buddy eric

A point and click adventure game from a era that had the best of the breed chugging away on 486dx88's, I spent hours tweaking the config.sys to get it to run, and an hour later I was a couple blocks away buying weed to bring my thoughts close to the disturbing wavelength that permeates this game. Some scenes are quite hard, I got clues from posts on a dial up BBS (DAWN PATROL:the best bbs, first wolfenstein download, first online monopoly tourney for money, first munch with 20+ participants), this saved several breakable objects. The ending(s) are satisfying, well, mostly, and it is a good way to spend a day eating pizza pops, consuming licit and illicit psychoactives (you dont stand a chance otherwise) and finally finishing at 3 am, hope the husband/wife doesnt wake up when you crawl in to bed. The dreams will fade, mostly...

It's a bizarre little game that is definitely worth playing once if you're a fan of games that are just different. I do hate the point and click adventure format though, and I am pretty much glad it's not in vogue any more. I didn't precisely have fun playing it, but I applaud the thought. That really is the whole thing here, because the short story is (despite the internet's claims otherwise) not one of Ellison's best works. But it's the thought that's so alluring, and the character of AM who is so full of unbridled, inorganic hate; expressed in sadism and dead laughter. Interesting thoughts and feelings evoked..... boring and kind of annoying game to play.

but I liked it.