I don’t understand the positive reviews. This game is just a display of sexism (with the usual excuse that it is « just jokes » of course) and oppressive humor in general. Rufus, the main character, is just a misogynist asshole, never evolves, and although he is supposed to be laughed at too, he is never really proven wrong by the game environment (where almost everyone is misogynist as well it seems). We’re supposed to laugh *with* him as well, to laugh at his misogynist jokes and actions, because you know, it’s funny to mock women and treat them like animals, right ? Literally : at some point in a future game, he just jokes about how he doesn’t hate wombats. « They are very useful animals… like women. » Hilarious. The game also features transphobia, with a trans woman (Lotti) that is a receptionist at the town hall, but is supposed to be laughed at, because you know, it’s just a « man in robes », and she is so masculine and tries to keep her voice high pitched and feminine, but each time she gets angry her voice gets all masculine again. That’s supposed to be funny. All the game is like that and based on this kind of « humor ». I stopped playing after two hours, when I discovered the amount of shit in this game and understood that it wasn’t just the beginning, but I looked for reviews of the series, and apparently it gets even worse later. The joke about women and animals are from a later title, but there are also blatantly racist jokes (one black characters dressed as a *monkey*, and you need to *sell* him a black woman to join him, as a slave), or jokes about homeless people, or jokes about mental health issues and suicide, or pedophilia (apparently you need to bring children to a pedophile to advance at some point, and there are many awful jokes about that as well…). Because it’s so funny to laugh at the weak and oppressed, right ? I could go on but at this point I think it’s unnecessary. This game is sickening.
Magic Carpet and its sequel Magic Carpet 2 are great games, if you can overcome the unusual controls. However, they are also notoriously buggy, both games being released buggy and unfinished. This was already scandalous by the time of their release, but 25+ years later, this is unacceptable. Both games contain actual game-breaking bugs, which prevent you from finishing them. For example, in MC1, there are levels where infinite townsfolk or other enemies appear, exhausting the objects limit of the game after a few minutes of playing… at which point you cannot cast any more spells (as it is impossible to create a new object in the game, and a spell like a fireball, lightning bolt, etc. is an object), so basically your spells stop working, and you cannot destroy anything anymore… making the level impossible to finish ! There are many other bugs and crashes here and there. Now, the version GoG sells you is the original, buggy one, including all those game-breaking bugs ! In other words, GoG sells you a 25+ years old game that contains still-unfixed 25+ years old game-breaking bugs, for $6 ! Save your money, do not buy this.
