Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Game Review: Suspect (1984, Infocom)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The time is Halloween, circa 1984.  You are a newspaper reporter who has been invited to the annual Halloween costume party that is being thrown by your old friend, Veronica Ashcroft-Wellman.  You show up, eager to find a story.  You are dressed as a cowboy, complete with a lariat and a gun belt.  Shortly after you arrive, Veronica goes to her office.  Not long afterwards, Veronica is discovered dead.  Around her neck is your lariat.  Lying near her body is a bullet from your gun belt.  You’re not only a suspect.  In the eyes of the police, you’re the only suspect!

Infocom’s third and final murder mystery followed Deadline and The Witness.  Just like those two games, you have a limited amount of time to explore your surroundings, find clues, and talk to the other people at the party.  Run out of time and you’ll once again be approached by the trusted Sgt. Duffy.  This time, though, Duffy is coming to take you to jail.  The stakes have never been higher and the mystery has never been more complex.  Not only is the house bigger than the houses in Deadline and The Witness but there’s also many more suspects, all of whom are in costume and all of whom move around at their own free will.  Clues are not difficult to find but it can be a struggle to not only figure out how they link together but to also the convince the investigative detective that they are important.  This is not an easy game to win.  I played it several times and failed to solve the mystery every time.  Finally, I did what anyone would have done in my situation.

I cheated.

I found a walk-through for the game and, following it step-by-step, I solved the murder and cleared my name.  If I hadn’t used that walk-through, I probably never would have solved the case.  This is not a game for casual text adventurers.  This is for people who want to totally immerse themselves in a world and then spend hours working out a plan of attack.

It’s also an elegantly written game, with its fair share of Easter eggs for experienced gamers.  Just count the number of guests who have come to the party costumed like characters from other Inform games.  This game is tough but rewarding, even if you do end up having to cheat to win.

Suspect can be played at the Internet Archive.

Email of the Damned: Paranoia (1998, directed by Larry Brand)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Interior designer Jana Mercer (Brigitte Bako) is haunted by the night that her entire family was murdered by serial killer, Calvin Hawks (Larry Drake).  Even though Calvin was captured and imprisoned, she still fears that someday he’ll get out.  Calvin, meanwhile, feels that he and Jana have a special bond because he decided to allow her to live.  From his prison cell, he follows her life via the internet.  He even sends her messages, which doesn’t do much for her state of mind.  Finally, a former neighbor of hers invites her to return to her old neighborhood so that she can confront her fears.  However, after serving 20 years in prison, Calvin has been released for good behavior.  As a part of his parole, he is not allowed to go anywhere near Jana or any of the scenes of his crimes.  Soon after getting released, Calvin decides to violate his probation.  A serial killer violating probation?  Who would have guessed?

Paranoia raises a few questions.  What type of prison would allow a serial killer to have a laptop in his cell and access to the internet, let alone send out messages unsupervised?  What type of legal system would sentence a serial killer to only 20 years in prison?  Why wouldn’t the authorities make any effort to let Jana, as the sole survivor of Calvin’s crimes, know that Calvin is about to be released from prison?  Why would Jana, a recluse who says she is incapable of trusting people, be so quick to accept an invitation to go to the country with someone that she barely knows?  It makes no sense but the movie still somehow maintains enough suspense to work.

The best thing about Paranoia are the performances of Brigitte Bako and Larry Drake.  Bako, who was one of the best of the 90s direct-to-video stars, brings some needed sass to the role of Jana while Larry Drake was a B-movie veteran who always made a good villain.  Larry Brand, who also did Overexposed and The Drifter, wrote and directed Paranoia and, just as he did in those two previous films, Brand includes a lot of pop cultural references.  It’s not every day that you see a direct-to-video B-movie that includes an inside joke about The Dick Van Dyke Show.  Brand and his cast bring some unexpected style to the nonsensical story.

Watching Paranoia today, it’s hard not to get nostalgic.  With a plot that hinges on email almost as much as the plot of Sleepless in Seattle, it’s a 90s film, through and through.  They don’t make them like this anymore.

Game Review: Aisle (1999, Sam Barlow)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Image by Sam Barlow

Aisle is perhaps the greatest work of Interactive Fiction ever created.

It’s Thursday night.  You’ve had a long day and you’re ready to go home.  You just have to pick up some gnocchi from the grocery store.  You are standing on the correct aisle, with your cart.  There is a woman standing a few feet away from you, with a grocery cart of her own.  What will you do?

Choose your action carefully because this is only a one-move game.  There are hundreds of commands that you can choose from but each command will lead to a different conclusion.

Some commands will lead to happy ending.  Some commands will lead to a sad ending.  Some will trigger old memories.  Sometimes, the memories will be happy and romantic.  Sometimes, they will involve death, insanity, and horror.  Sometimes, you are a good man and sometimes you are a bad man.  Sometimes, you are healthy and sometimes you are sick.  It all depends on which command you chose.

Because each command leads to different details of the story being revealed, Aisle is a game that rewards frequent replays.  Deciding to laugh in one game led to me typing “Remember Clare” in the next game.  Even simply choosing to leave the aisle can lead to a variety of different endings, depending on how you decide to leave.  This game can be a romantic or it can be horrific.  It all depends on which word, out of the hundreds that the game is prompted to respond to, you type in at the prompt.

Aisle can be downloaded from here.

 

Amanda Returns: Scorned 2 (1997, directed by Rodney McDonald)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Released in 1993 as a part of the 90s Skinemax explosion, Scorned was one of the best of the many films to co-star Andrew and Shannon Tweed.  The story of a vengeful widow (Tweed) hellbent on destroying Stevens’s family proved to be so popular that it was inevitable that there would be a sequel.  Four years later, the mayhem continued in Scorned 2.

Tane McClure takes over Shannon Tweed’s role as Amanda, who has amnesia and can’t remember anything about her previous life as a sex-addicted sociopath.  Amanda is now married to psychology professor Mark Foley (Myles O’Brien) but she’s haunted by nightmares (which are made up of scenes lifted from the first Scorned) that provide clues to her former life.  While Amanda seeks help from a hypnotherapist, her frustrated husband ends up falling for one of his students, Cynthia (Wendy Schumacher).  Cynthia already has a boyfriend but she’s willing to screw a professor if it will help her grades.  When Amanda discovers that Mark is cheating on her, she snaps and reverts back to her old ways as she seeks revenge on everyone who she feels has betrayed her.  Further complicating things is that Alex Weston (Andrew Stevens, reprising his role from the first Scorned) has recently arrived on campus and is seeking revenge for the death of his son.

Scorned 2 was made during the dwindling days of Skinemax, long after the heyday of late night cable’s popularity.  It even featured a scene in which Cynthia’s boyfriend explains how computer passwords work, which is not something that anyone had to worry about when the first Scorned or its many imitators were initially released.  Unfortunately, Shannon Tweed did not reprise her role as Amanda.  Tane McClure was not a bad actress and bore a superficial similarity to Tweed but she just didn’t have Tweed’s ability to make even the stupidest dialogue sound natural.  Andrew Stevens did return but his character is largely wasted.  The real star of the film is Wendy Schumacher, for giving a credible performance while showing how far one student will go to keep up her grades.  Considering the cost of college, can you blame her?  Today, as with many of the films of that era, the main appeal of Scorned 2 is one of nostalgia.

Game Review: 9:05 (2000, Adam Cadre)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

(Image by Adam Cadre)

I’m still working on my review of Heavy Rain so, while I do that, why not play Adam Cadre’s 9:05?

9:05 is a text adventures which opens with a scenario that should be familiar to anyone who has previously played an interactive fiction game.  It’s the morning.  The phone is ringing.  The person on the other line says that you have overslept and the boss is asking why you’re not at work.  Now, you have to get out of bed and quickly do what you need to do to be able to leave the house.  It’s a scene that has served as the premise of many IF games but 9:05 adds a macabre twist at the end, one that makes the game worth replaying.

9:05 is a short game and most of the puzzles are deliberately simple to solve.  It should not take any longer than 5 to 10 minutes to play the game for the first time.  If you’ve never played an IF game before, 9:05 is a good one to start with.  If you’re a veteran player, you will enjoy the way that 9:05 plays with and subverts the usual IF conventions.

The game can be downloaded from here.

Wait Until Dark With Shelley Hack: Blind Fear (1989, directed by Tom Berry)

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Three criminals, two men and a woman, go from robbing an armored car to invading a seemingly deserted New England inn.  Led by psycho Ed (Kim Coates, of course), they kill the elderly caretaker (Jan Rubes) and then settle in to wait for the arrival of their contact.  However, when a pizza is delivered, they notice that only half of the pizza has anchovies.  “Not everyone likes anchovies!”  Ed declares.  That means that the pizza was ordered for two and there’s someone else in the Inn!

That other person is Erica (Shelley Hack), who was the inn’s switchboard operator.  She’s now hiding in the inn, desperately trying to figure out how to avoid getting captured by Ed and the gang.  Complicating things for Erica is that she’s blind.  Complicating things for the criminals is that they’re no match for her other heightened senses.  While the gang searched the inn, Erica kills the lights and sets some traps of her own.

The VHS box art for Blind Fear (which I don’t think has ever been released on DVD), says, “She thinks she’s alone,” which is actually the exact opposite of the film’s plot.  (it also features Erica wearing tinted glasses, something that she doesn’t do in the actual film.) Erica never thinks that she’s alone and spend almost the entire film in hiding because she knows that she’s not alone.  Ed and the criminals briefly think that they’re alone but then the pizza arrives and the anchovies give everything away.  I guess “She thinks she’s alone” sounded better than “Shelley Hack spends 90 minutes in the dark.”

Imagine a remake of Wait Until Dark starring the least interesting star of Charlie’s Angels and you have a pretty good idea of what this efficient but forgettable Canadian thriller is like.  As an actress, Shelley Hack never had much screen presence but she’s not really bad in this movie, in which she spends most of the runtime crawling around in the dark while never getting a single blonde curl out of place.  Not surprisingly, the best performance in the film comes from Kim Coates, who has been playing psychos and lowlifes for almost longer than I’ve been alive.  Nobody does it better than Kim Coates!

Game Review: Shadows Out Of Time (2018, Brendon Connelly, Dan Q, Liz McCarthy, and Bodleian Libraries)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

I was going to review Heavy Rain today but it looks like I’m going to need an extra day to work on that review and hopefully figure out an appropriately way to describe Madison Pagie’s role in the game.

Until I do that, how about taking a look at Shadows Out of Time?  Shadows Out Of Time is a text adventure game that begins with you, a student at Oxford, waking up in your favorite chair in the Old Bodleian Upper Reading Room.  In front of you is a copy of Lovecraft’s Shadow Out Of Time, which you were reading before you fell asleep.  Upon waking up, you discover that the library appears to be deserted.  Further searching reveals that the entire town appears to be bereft of human life!  Are you alone or is there something with you?  You’ll have to explore to find out.

Shadows out of Time is a choose your own adventure-style game.  You read the descriptions and then you decide which of two options to go with.  Do you go out to the quad or do you continue to explore the library?  Do you try to reach Rad Cam or do you steal a bike and try to return to your home?  It can be a challenging game but, fortunately, you always have the option to “wake up” if you want try again.  (Or you can “stay asleep forever.”)

It’s an atmospheric game that captures the unique feel of Oxford.  (The game itself was obviously specifically written for students at Oxford.  For any Americans who may want to play, Radcliffe Camera is not a camera shop.)  It’s an entertaining tour through haunted Oxford.  You can play it here.

Halloween Scenes I Love: Spider-Man Goes To ESU’s Halloween Party in PS4’s Spider-Man

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Not all good Halloween scenes have to come from a movie.  Sometimes, they can come from a video game!

One of my favorite missions in PS4’s Spider-Man is Back To School.  That’s where you, as Spider-Man, have to search the Empire State University Halloween Party for an Oscorp scientist named Dr. Delaney and rescue him from Mister Negative and the Demons.  Because it’s a Halloween party, you should be able to search for Delaney without anyone realizing that you’re the Spider-Man.  The bad news is that, again because it’s a Halloween party, almost every party goer is dressed up like one of your enemies.  And when Mister Negative does attack, it turns out that a drunk college student dressed up like the Rhino can be almost as dangerous as the actual Rhino!

You Have To Pay The Bills Somehow: The Maddening (1995, directed by Danny Huston)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Because her husband’s a dick who spends too much time working and not enough time taking the day off, Cassie (Mia Sara) grabs her five year-old daughter, Samantha (Kayla Buglewicz) and heads off for her sister’s house.  When Cassie stops at a gas station to fill up the car, she’s spotted by seedy Roy Scudder (Burt Reynolds!).  Roy puts down his cigar long enough to tamper with her car.  When it breaks down a few miles down the role, Roy drives up and offers Cassie and Samantha a ride back to his place, where he can fix her car or where she can at least call for hep.  Not realizing that she’s in a direct-to-video horror movie, Cassie accepts.

Big mistake!  Roy’s wife, Georgina (Angie Dickinson!), has not been the same since the mysterious death of her son and Georgina and Roy’s other child, Jill (Candace Huston, daughter of the film’s director and granddaughter of John Huston), needs a playmate.  Roy has decided that Samantha fits the bill.  Cassie is locked in a room while Samantha is turned into Jill’s slave and Roy deals with the angry ghost of his abusive father (William Hickey!).

You have to feel bad for Burt Reynolds.  He made this film at a time when his career was in decline.  His TV show was no longer on the air.  Boogie Nights was still two years away.  The man had bills to pay.  Can you blame Burt for accepting any role that came his way, especially if it meant a chance to co-star with Angie Dickinson and be directed by the son of John Huston?  Reynolds was famous for hating even his good films so you can only imagine what he must have thought about The Maddening.  Fortunately, since Burt was playing a total psycho in The Maddening, he could at least channel his feeling into the role.  Throughout ever minute of The Maddening, Burt is totally and thoroughly unhinged and angry in the way that only the former number one star in America could be upon having to settle for a role in a direct-to-video horror film.  He yells at his ghost father.  He slits throats.  He beats people into unconsciousness.  He does everything that a normal movie psycho does but, when he does it, it’s even more memorable because he’s Burt Reynolds.  Burt and Angie Dickinson playing the type of role that Bette Davis would have played for Robert Aldrich in the 60s are not just the main reasons to watch this movie.  They’re the only reasons.

This was Burt’s only horror film and it’s too bad that it couldn’t have been a better one.  But if it helped Burt keep the lights on during the lean years of the early 90s, good.

Game Review: Dwelling: Insomnia (2014, 0vr)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This piece of interactive fiction is a strange game.  I’m not quite sure how else to describe it.

The premise is a simple one.  Each night, you try to sleep.  Every night, you are awoken by someone or something pounding on your door.  Every.  Single.  Night.  In Choose Your Own Adventure fashion, you are given a set of options.  Do you try to go back to sleep or do you go to the door?  Do you look through the peephole or do you return to bed?  Open the door or hide?  Left or right?  At every step, you’re given the option to explore further or to try to return to safety.  The problem is that if you make the wrong choice, you might make it back to your apartment in one piece but you’re still going to be woken up the following night.  Make the right choice and something bad might still happen to you but at least you’ll no longer be woken up in the middle of the night.

What makes the game so strange is the way that it constantly loops back to the beginning, until you finally make the “right” choices.  The only thing that changes is the number that lets you know how many nights you’ve been woken up by someone pounding at your door.  Is someone really knocking at your door or are you stuck in some sort of time loop or permanent dream state? Having played the game and gotten to the end, I am still not sure.

The game itself is well-written and vivid enough to justify its placement in the horror genre.  It can be played here.