Jedadiah Leland’s Horrific Adventures in The Internet Archive #6: The Dark Half (1992, Capstone Software)

Posted on October 8, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

For my latest trip into the most horrific section of the Internet Archive, I played The Dark Half (1992, Capstone Software).

The Dark Half was released as a tie-in with the movie version of Stephen King’s novel of the same name. I have read that some people consider The Dark Half to be one of the worst games of all time. If I can ever figure out how to get out of the cemetery, I will tell you if they are right.

You play writer Thad Beaumont, who used to write under the pen name of George Stark. As a publicity stunt, Thad and his wife hold a mock funeral for George Stark in the local cemetery. When the game starts, Thad has just discovered that someone has dug up George’s grave.

The game uses a standard point-and-click interface, the type that was once very popular but which seems clunky by today’s standards. By clicking on right side of the screen, you can walk over the groundskeeper and have a conversation with him.

The groundskeeper does not have much to say about “them Yankees” but he will unlock the shed for you. Going into the shed, you can get tools that I think will help you later in the game. The problem is that they do not help you get out of the cemetery which is where I’m running into trouble.

As soon as you leave the shed, this happens:

At first, I thought that was George Stark killing Thad but, according to a walk-through that I found, that is actually George killing the reporter who was sent to cover his “burial.”

This scene is followed by this:

That is a blank screen. Creepy music plays in the background while you get to stare at the blank screen and it just keeps on playing. I have literally counted the minutes that I have spent staring at the screen and listening to the music before getting annoyed and ending the game. The longest that I’ve gone is 8 minutes. There is no text nor pictures, just the most droning and repetitive music imaginable. Is this a glitch that only effects the Archive version of the game or did The Dark Half really come with an 8 minute-plus musical interlude? I’m hoping that someone reading this post can tell me. I would like to play the game but there’s only so much time that I can devote to staring at a blank screen.

Jedadiah Leland’s Horrific Adventures In The Internet Archive #5: Baal (1989, Psygnosis Limited)

Posted on October 6, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

For my next adventure in the horror section of the Internet Archive, I played Baal (1989, Psygnosis Limited).

In Baal, you are a leader of something called The Time Warriors. A demon named Baal has stolen a super weapon and it is up to you to infiltrate Baal’s underground lair, kill Baal’s warriors, get the weapon, and destroy Baal. It sounds simple but this game is biased against people like me who aren’t any good at games like this.

The game starts with you materializing in Baal’s lair. I think the blue contraption is a transporter.

Yes, there are ladders and multiple levels. The controls are simple. Use the arrow keys to move. Press the space bar to fire our weapon. If you want jump, press the space bar and an arrow key at the same time.

That serpent is one of Baal’s minions. You can destroy the serpent by shooting it several times but don’t make my mistake and get too close. Touching the serpent kills you.

After it kills you, the serpent flies away. That was cool.

After getting killed by the serpent, I was given a second chance. This time, instead of running forward, I ran up the ladder. I discovered that, much like the serpents, you do not want to touch that blue force field. I also discovered what happens when you fall off a level.

Eventually, I figured out how to jump and I also managed to kill the serpent before it killed me. This is what I discovered at the other end of the cave.

Another force field! I decided to test my theory that running into the force field would cause me to die.

It did.

That was it for me. Baal can have the super weapon. Hopefully, Baal’s next opponent will be better at games like this than I am.

Jedadiah Leland’s Horrific Adventures In The Internet Archive #4: The Horror of Rylvania (1993, Adventions)

Posted on October 4, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

For today’s adventure in the Internet Archive, I played The Horror of Rylvania (1993, Adventions).

The Horror of Rylvania is a text-only adventure. You and your best friend from college, Carolyn, are backpacking across Europe. When the two of you cross into the backwards country of Rylvania, you are both attacked by wolves. Carolyn is gravely injured and you have no choice but to leave her behind and go to a nearby village for help.

The Horror of Rylvania was written by D.A. Leary, who provides concise and vivid descriptions of each location in the game. Go to the Inn and you can listen to villagers talk about wolves and vampires. Find the doctor’s office and you can lead him back to Carolyn. You can even stop and pray, with different results for different locations.

What you cannot do, at least on the Internet Archive, is solve the Horror of Rylvania. The version on the Internet Archive is just a demo. Once you have done everything that you can do in the village, there is a cliffhanger and a suggestion that, if you enjoyed the demo, you should send $20.00 to a post office box in Maryland to get the full version. Since the message was written in 1993, I am going to guess it would not do me any good to mail the money.

If this was 1993, I would gladly send the twenty and I would probably add another ten just to make sure that the game arrived on time. That is how good the demo was. Instead, I guess I will just have to make up my own ending to The Horror of Rylvania.

Jedadiah Leland’s Horrific Adventures In The Internet Archive #3: Hugo’s House of Horrors (1990, Gray Designs Associates)

Posted on October 3, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

During today’s exploration of the horrific corners of the Internet Archive, I played Hugo’s House of Horrors (1990, Gray Designs Associates.)

In Hugo’s House of Horrors, you control Hugo. Hugo’s girlfriend went to a haunted house to babysit and never returned. When the game starts, you have just arrived at the house to try to find her.

First impression: I’m really digging the graphics. That house sure does look haunted. The spooky music that playing in the background is also pretty cool.

I guess it’s time for Hugo to enter the house. This turned out to be more difficult then I was expecting.

Why not? That’s a great idea!

Locked? But look at all those eyes watching Hugo. Maybe someone inside the house can help.

Hello?

Son of a bitch! Maybe there’s something I’m missing.

I just tried that!

OPEN THIS DOOR!

OPEN UP!

OPEN THE DOOR, I SEE YOU STARING AT ME!

Eventually, I noticed the pumpkin at Hugo’s feet. The key was hidden in the pumpkin so Hugo was finally able to open the door and enter the house.

Nice house. I especially like the painting of the bat. I sent Hugo went upstairs and had him go through that open doorway at the end of the hall.

Get in the box? Why not?

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

Oh, this is bullsh–

After the professor left, I realized that Hugo was now much smaller. After the professor left, I decided that Hugo should leave the room too. I don’t trust Igor.

The lesson here is don’t get into strange boxes.

This is as far as I have gotten on Hugo’s House of Horrors. Hugo may be in trouble because it doesn’t seem that I’m very good at this game. Maybe he will have better luck with you controlling his actions than me.

Jedadiah Leland’s Horrific Adventures In The Internet Archive #2: Knightmare (1992, Konami)

Posted on October 2, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

For my second day of exploring the horror section of the Internet Archive, I played Knightmare (1992, Konami).

Knightmare is basically a top-down shooter. You are a knight and your girlfriend has been kidnapped by an evil sorcerer. To rescue her, you must make your way across the grounds of his castle, while avoiding the monsters and guards.

That’s you, in the white armor. The bat and the gray balloons may look harmless but if they touch you, you explode. Fortunately, you have an unlimited supply of arrows that you can shoot at them. You can also use the arrows to destroy obstacles, like those boxes with the question marks. If you shoot an arrow into a black circle and then retrieve it, you get a weapons upgrade.

You will need that weapons upgrade because eventually, these people show up:

The blue knights are considerably faster than the bats and the balloons. It takes more than one arrow to kill them and they have arrows of their own.

It took me a while to get the hang of it.

At the end of each level, there is a boss who must be destroyed. At the end of stage 1, the boss appears to be Medusa.

I have not had much luck against Medusa.

I liked Knightmare. Like all of the best shooters, it is simple but also challenging and extremely addictive. It is a game that you can go back and play again and again, which is what I am going to go down right now.

Jedadiah Leland’s Horrific Adventures In The Internet Archive #1: Richard and Alan’s Escape From Hell (1990, Entertainment Arts)

Posted on October 1, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

For October, I have decided to return to the Internet Archive and further explore their collection of old MS-DOS games. I started things off by playing Richard and Alan’s Escape From Hell (1990, Electronic Arts).

Though the Archive only includes the game (no manual, no instructions of any kind), I was able to find Escape From Hell‘s front and back cover art at the Let’s Play Archive. Almost everything that needs to be known about this game’s tone and sensibility can be deduced simply by looking at these illustrations:

As for the game itself, it is a role-playing game. You are Richard. Largely as a result of your own stupidity, you and your best friend and your girlfriend have all accidentally be sent to Hell.

(Good work on including the Guns and Roses poster in the background.)

Because this is a MS-DOS game from 1990, Hell looks like this:

In the screen shot above, you are standing above a river of flame and there is a skeleton blocking your way. One thing that I quickly learned is that you should not try to talk to the skeletons. If you do, this will probably happen:

That did not work out. One of the problems with trying to play Escape From Hell on the Internet Archive is that, especially early on in the game, it is very easy to die and, without the original disk, it is impossible to save your game. Death means that you literally have to start over again, from the very beginning.

It is worth restarting, though. Once you figure out how to avoid running into skeletons, you do get a chance to talk to some of the other inhabitants of Hell. Like this one:

You also come across clues and other messages:

Eventually, I even found the entrance to Hell’s waiting room.

Unfortunately, once I got in the waiting room, I went down the wrong hallway and this happened:

Escape from Hell is not an easy game but it is worth sticking with. If you can manage to go long enough without dying, you will eventually meet some condemned people who are willing to help you out. Most of them are real-life tyrants, like Joseph Stalin and Genghis Khan. It turns out that Stalin is a really good shot with a nail gun. Who would have guessed?

I am still playing my way through Escape From Hell but, from what I have seen, I recommend it for anyone who wants to take a retro trip through the underworld, MS-DOS style.

How to be a fulfilled artist… A Discussion with Tom Abernathy

Posted on September 24, 2016 by casewright

I’m sitting in my office with the speakerphone on and listening to one of my artistic heroes – Tom Abernathy – speak as his creation The Freak from Destroy All Humans! 2. Yes, this really happened and it was …. awesome.

Our discussion covers how Tom started his career, his past achievements, and what more he wants to give us.

When I first started speaking with him, I didn’t understand him. Where was the angst-ridden melancholy that is so familiar in so many artists? Where was the bitterness? I realized that his artistic process was totally different from that of a TV and movie writer who spends their artistic career in a great deal of isolation punctuated by a team of constructive criticism and clearly defined tasks. His job touches all facets of the creative process, allowing him to fully realize his creative voice and vision.

Tom’s video game narrative career influenced or decided the dialogue, direction, and casting of many of our most beloved games. His career began in Los Angeles doing coverage – summarizing and reviewing scripts to determine if they were worth making. He did this job for twenty-five dollars a script. Through a connection, Joseph Donaldson, Tom was able to get a job writing scripts for Activision Studios. It was not like today. Tom said, “The writing [for games] was terrible then.” The video game writing done by the designers and producers who had little need for professional writers at that time. His first game “Dark Reign 2” did not do well and Tom’s future as a professional game writer was uncertain. However, something occurred in 2004 that made him eagerly look for work in TV, Film, or Games – he had a baby on the way.

Once again, Joseph Donaldson pushed Tom’s name forward as the head writer. This was for Destroy All Humans!, a Mars Attacks set in the 1950s where you played the Alien Invader. Tom had a unique take on both the people who inhabited the world and the Hero of the game – Crypto.

Tom brought the satirical humor to DAH! Tom created the premise that “the 50s were Ward and June Clever and Eisenhower exterior, but everything going on in their minds must be depraved and wild.” Since Crypto was able to read minds, as he leveled towns and harvested human brains, we got to read and hear the unspoken, providing both comic relief and clues to completing missions. He wanted Crypto to be “two parts Jack Nicholson and one part Charlton Heston.”

This was revolutionary because unlike the characters in “Doom” and other FPS, Crypto had a personality and a story. Although Crypto would be insulted to read this, he had real humanity. This will shock many fans, but “the original [Crypto voice] had a stilted tone like the 50s saucer movies”. YIKES! Tom wanted Crypto to be a “cowboy walking id, very American individualist.” Therefore, it was “Jack Nicholson for id and Charlton Heston for cowboy.” He continued. “[Crypto] needed the pomposity of Charlton Heston, [he] needed arrogance/confidence with swagger like Soylent Green. TOUGH!”

What was Tom’s role besides being the writer? Were people lording over him? How much freedom did he have? It turns out that he had A LOT of artistic control. Why? “The [game developers] were in Brisbane and [he] only interacted with them by phone and email.” Therefore, the geographic separation allowed Tom to have immense creative influence that would not have been afforded to him otherwise. For example, Tom knew what he wanted Crypto to sound like and Tom was able to do the casting. Yes, creatives – he got to do the casting.

DAH!2 Crypto was pitched as a James Bond/Austin Powers. There was a pause in the discussion and I had to ask about The Freak and if it was true that he was the voice? Yes!!! “The voice director, Doug Carrigan, and I realized that, in all our months-long work to get the important parts cast and recorded, there was one reasonably significant role we had totally forgotten about: The Freak. [We] were out of money and time, we had no choice but for me to hop in the booth and perform The Freak myself in what was probably the final 15 minutes of the entire series of recording sessions. Apologies to Bobcat Goldthwaite; I had zero time to come up with an original take on the character, so I just decided to commit to the idea of Goldthwaite on a really bad acid trip.” Yes, he did the voice for me and it was …. EPIC!!!

I asked him about the DAH!2 side missions. “Leanne Taylor did a ton of work [assigned] late in production.” Leanne Taylor – from me- THANK YOU!!!

I asked him about getting Anthony Stewart Head to play Ponsonby, who would’ve been a get for the time. This was an interesting story because it not only reflected the creative process for a narrative, but also the limits of their power. Tom had directed and recorded another actor to play Poncenby. “I had cast an older man who brought out the humor and after he was recorded, THQ UK Marketing emails – “We want you to cast a ‘name’ actor from the UK so we can sell more units over here.” I was curious as to Tom’s reaction. “Not great. No one ever bought a game because someone voice acted in it because you don’t see the actors!”

What’s Happening Now?

Infinite-Arms.com

“The story is like Matrix meets Fringe. “There are mechs, known as Metamods, that come in both software and hardware version. The hardware versions are actual 3-D printed action figures as much as ten or twelve inches tall, with 200 coats of paint and more than 20 points of articulation.” I didn’t really understand this until I watched the above video. There are toys and a video game component. In other words, this will be really badass. Most importantly, “you don’t have to pour tons of money into the game to be successful! Jumo the company behind the game- wants players to get value with or without investing money.” There are RPG components, platform, and toy components!

Given Tom’s track record of bringing story and humanity to games, this will be a MUST BUY for the holidays!

Cheers!

The Further Adventures of Jedadiah Leland In The Internet Archive

Posted on August 26, 2016 by Jedadiah Leland

Tonight, I returned to the Internet Archive. The last time I was there, I had promised that I would come back and play a game called Sex Olympics. I was not really being serious when I wrote that but, as I have learned over the past few days, when you promise your editor that you are going to review a game called Sex Olympics, she is not going to let you off the hook until you do it.

However, before playing Sex Olympics, I decided to run another scenario through President Elect (1987, Strategic Simulations, Inc.).

The last time I played President Elect, I simulated the current election and the game predicted that Donald Trump would win 535 electoral votes and 56% of the popular vote. (For the record, Hillary did win the District of Columbia.) This time, I decided to see what would have happened if, in 1980, the GOP had not selected Ronald Reagan and instead given their nomination to North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms.

According to the simulation, independent candidate John Anderson would have received a lot more votes than the 5 million he won in the actual election:

(For the record, in the actual election, Ronald Reagan won 50% of the popular vote, Jimmy Carter took 41% and John Anderson received 6.6%.)

But what would the electoral college look like?

In the simulation, John Anderson won the most electoral votes with 233. But it takes 270 electoral votes to win the election.

That’s not good.

There you have it! Jimmy Carter would have come in third but he still would have been elected President. Jesse Helms would have returned to the Senate and John Anderson would have been screwed over.

Once that was settled, I was ready to play Sex Olympics (1990, Free Spirit Software, Inc).

In Sex Olympics, you are legendary porn actor and intergalactic superstud Brad Stallion. You have been recruited to represent Earth in the Sex Olympics. Your goal is to go from planet to planet and do it with as many aliens as possible. But you have to be clever and you have to be quick because your main competition is Dr. Dildo and he appears to be much better at this than you are.

When the game starts, you are here:

You have a blond assistant named Sandie, who you can either ask questions or screw. Since Sandie never had much to say whenever I tried to talk to her, I went with screw.

Yeah, that’s hot.

Unfortunately, neither talking to nor screwing Sandie helped me with my main problem. I could not figure out how to get out of the damn room! I clicked on both doors. I clicked on the window. I pushed the “e” key for east and the “n” key for north. I tried to call someone on the phone. No matter what I did, the same thing happened:

Finally, I figured out that you had to click use and then click a very specific place on the door on the west wall if you wanted to go outside. Clicking on go and then the door won’t work. Clicking on use and then clicking on door won’t work. No, you have to click on use and then click exactly on the door knob if you want to go outside.

I bet this crap never happens to Dr. Dildo.

Once I finally managed to get outside, I found the Big Thruster waiting for me.

Inside Big Thruster, I discovered all the planets that I could go to in my effort to defeat Dr. Dildo and prove Earth’s carnal superiority:

Let’s go to the big red one. Why not?

The big red planet turned out to be planet of volcanoes. This did not look promising but at least there was a village in the valley below.

I was heading into the village when suddenly…

That dog looks really mean! Forget this, I’ll just go back to Big Thruster and visit another planet!

This little white planet looks promising. Let’s see what it’s like.

Is that an igloo? Let’s see if anyone’s down there!

This is a lot better than that killer dog on the volcano planet! Let’s heat this igloo up!

“Inge has nothing to say.” That line pretty much sums up the entire game.

Oh, I have to manually tell the game that I want to remove my clothes? Sorry, I just assumed that it was implied.

Is it usually this difficult to have sex with a blue-skinned alien on an ice planet!?

Things got a lot more difficult when I was suddenly told that I had been arrested for indecent exposure and sent back to Earth!

I don’t have time for this! I’m trying to defend the honor of Earth!

Good for Dr. Dildo.

Eventually, I was released from jail and I was sent back to where it all started.

And that’s when I said forget it. This is too much trouble for a planet that is not even willing to support me. Dr. Dildo can have the medal. Brad Stallion is retired!

After being left disappointed by Sex Olympics, I decided to try playing a game called Survival In New York City (Keypunch, 1986).

Survival in New York City is a text adventure game from Keypunch, a company that was notorious for stealing other people’s games and releasing them without any designer credits. That appears to be the case of Survival in New York City.

It’s still not a bad game. You wake up in an alley in New York City with no memory of who you are or how you got there.

Your goal is to not get killed while exploring New York. That is easier said than done.

A piece of advice: Don’t go near the teenagers until you have figured how to get a gun.

I played Survival In New York a few times. I got further every time but I still ended up dying. Sometimes, I was killed by teens. Sometimes, I was killed by Hell’s Angels. It is a game that I will be playing again.

After that grim journey through New York, I decided to finish off my visit by playing a classic, Lemonade Stand (1973, Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium).

Lemonade Stand was the very first business simulation game. You have a lemonade stand. Every day, you decide how much lemonade to make, how many signs to make, and how much to charge per glass. If you do a good job, you make money. If you do a bad job, you go out of business and have to live with the shame of failure for the rest of your life.

For some reason, I decided to open my lemonade stand on a cloudy day.

Because of the bad weather, I did not sell any lemonade on that day or the next. Finally, on the third day, I decided to take a chance and see what would happen if I tried to sell on a cloudy day. It was time to take a risk.

I know that some people would say, “With a 50% chance of rain, why even try?” I’ll tell you why. In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.

Besides, what’s the worse that could happen?

At this point, I did what any gamer would do when the game was not going his way. I quit and started over.

Sunny! Now, this is more like it!

I took a chance. I invested all of my money in making lemonade. Unfortunately, that left me no money for advertising.

I ended up throwing out 70 glasses of lemonade but I still made a profit. That’s the important thing. Now, my fate and the fate of my lemonade business depended on tomorrow’s weather.

Oh yeah, baby! Hot and dry!

I had learned my lesson from yesterday. I made less glasses but I paid for two signs. And I charged a little more because it’s hot and dry. People are suffering out there. They need my lemonade and I need their money.

$4.15 in profit! I am a business genius! Get out of my way, Bill Gates! Look out, Warren Buffett! There’s a new player on the block!

But then I asked myself, “When did this crazy business become all about money?” It was supposed to be about the lemonade. I had made my money and proven my point. Taking my $4.15 with me, I pressed ESC and retired from the lemonade game.

I never looked back.

After that, I left the Internet Archive. I was through exploring for the night but I knew that I would come back in the future and simulate another presidential election or attempt to survive in New York City or maybe I would even get back in the lemonade business.

But you can forget about the Sex Olympics.

Dr. Dildo can have that medal.

Jedadiah Leland’s Adventures In The Internet Archive

Posted on August 6, 2016 by Jedadiah Leland

I have just returned from exploring the Internet Archive. The Archive, which is also the home of the Wayback Machine, is a non-profit online library with millions of free books, movies, software, music, and websites. In particular, I have always been interested in their collection of old MS-DOS games and that is what I was looking at tonight. While I could have played Oregon Trail or maybe one of the many Leisure Suit Larry games available, I instead decided to check out four lesser known games.

The first game I played was Hidden Agenda (1988, Trans Fiction Systems, Inc.)

Hidden Agenda is a strategy game. You have just taken over as the president of a South American country and you have to decide how you are going to rule. Are you going to be a corrupt dictator or an idealistic reformer?

I played the game twice. The first time I played, I filled my cabinet with right-wingers, pardoned the leader of the former dictator’s death squad, and sanctioned the murder of a labor leader. The second time I played, I filled my cabinet with communists, jailed the leader of the death squad, and gave into every demand. Both times, my government was overthrown after a year and I was executed in my office.

Hidden Agenda has a learning curve that I have yet to master but it was still an interesting game. Some players will probably find it to be too dry but I appreciated that the game attempted to take a realistic approach to the trials and tribulations of leading a post-revolutionary society.

After getting executed for the second time, I decided to play a safer political simulation, President Elect (1987, Strategic Simulations, Inc.).

A perfect game for political junkies, President Elect allows you to manage a presidential campaign. You can either take part in a historical campaign, like Kennedy vs. Nixon in 1960, or you can create your own candidates by answering questions about their positions and their abilities as a campaigner. You get to decide everything your candidate does, from what states he visits to whether or not he agrees to a debate.

I decided to run a simulation based on the current election. Since the game does not include any candidates beyond 1988, I created versions of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Gary Johnson. I did my best to be fair and unbiased while determining their strengths and weaknesses as campaigners. For instance, I gave Hillary a low public speaking rating while rating her highly for her poise under pressure. I gave Trump a low score for poise under pressure but a high score for his ability to get and hold an audience’s attention. I then entered in the current economic conditions.

For 9 game weeks, I managed Gary Johnson’s campaign and got nowhere. I did not have as much money as Trump or Clinton, which meant I could not afford to campaign as extensively as they could, and I watched as my national support got smaller and smaller with each passing week. On election night, it was clear who was going to win.

I don’t want to panic anyone but here’s the final result of the simulation:

After watching Donald Trump win every state in the union (though he did lose the District of Columbia), I decided to give Kingmaker (1994, TM Games) a try.

Kingmaker opens with none other than William Shakespeare explaining the history behind the War of the Roses.

In Kingmaker, you are one of the claimants battling to become the king of England. After Shakespeare’s introduction, you are given a series of options regarding how difficult you want your game to be. This was my favorite:

Advanced plague? This was going to be fun!

Unfortunately, then the game started:

I spent a few minutes moving the arrow over England and clicking. Nothing happened. I clicked on the boxes at the bottom of the screen. Nothing happened. I clicked on the names over on the right side of the screen. Nothing happened.

I had run into the biggest potential problem with playing the games in the Internet Archive: none of the games come with their original instruction manual. Kingmaker looked like it could have been fun and I usually enjoy strategy games but I got frustrated trying to figure out how it worked. Perhaps if I can find a copy of the game’s manual, I will try to play it again.

Once it became clear that I was never going to figure out how to play Kingmaker, I decided to try Executive Suite (1982, Armonk Corporation).

Executive Suite is a largely text-based game in which you attempt to go from an entry-level job to being president of the Mighty Microcomputer Corporation.

The game starts with the receptionist, Angie, asking if your resume is on file or if you need to go through the interview process. Angie is so helpful! I bet MMC is going to be a great place to work!

Since I did not have a resume on file, I decided to submit to the interview process.

The interview started normally enough.

The interviewer then asked me what part of the country I was from. I selected the northeast.

The questions continued. The interviewer asked me where I went to college. He asked me if I had an advanced degree. He asked me what I majored in. I selected Girls. (That was an option.)

Then he asked me this:

I am sure that question violated some sort of law but I must have given the right answer because he then told me this:

Finally, I was allowed to apply for a job.

Once I was finally hired, I was presented with my first big decision:

Of course I’m going to go drinking with the boys! What could possibly go wrong?

That worked out well! This Bucky Carter seems to be a great guy. I wonder what other ideas he has.

Another chance to bond with the boys? Forget studying, let’s get down at the local house of ill-repute!

I made a mistake but I’m new here and it was just my first day. Surely, this will not still be held against me after I’ve been with the company for a year.

This doesn’t look good.

An envelope? Maybe I’m getting a promotion!

That’s not good.

It does not look like I am going to be the president of the Mighty Microcomputer Corporation any time soon. I’m not giving up though. I will definitely be playing Executive Suite again!

In fact, there are still many games in the archive that I am going check out. In fact, I just spotted something called Sex Olympics.

I shall return.

Horror Review: Silent Hill 2

Posted on October 13, 2015 by alexandrerothier

Horror and psychology are two things that interest me. I currently major in the latter, and would do so in the former if I could. From that, one might assume (correctly) that I like psychological horror. This is part of the reason why I believe, and will try to convince you of, that Silent Hill 2 is the best game ever made.

Ok, that might have been sudden, but bear with me.

Firstly, context. As the game’s plot goes, you play as James Sunderland, and you have been a widow for two years when suddenly you receive a letter from the late missus, Mary (which is never a good sign), beckoning you to the town of Silent Hill, where you two once visited in a happy vacation. In your confusion about where the letter came from, you follows its instructions (I realize some of you wouldn’t, but imagine you live in a universe where “Silent Hill” isn’t synonymous with “absolutely fucking terrifying”), finding a completely different town from the one you vacationed in with Mary.

Now, fans sometimes disagree about which is the best Silent Hill in the series (though the most self-entitled “hardcore fans” will say that Silent Hill 2 is the gospel). That’s understandable. Generally, Silent Hill games deal with the occult and demonic creatures, while Silent Hill the Second differs from the other ones. It is very abstract where the others are… less abstract. The psychological symbolisms are there in every game if you look for it, but it’s delicious icing in an otherwise already delicious cake. People don’t always stop to appreciate it.

Silent Hill 2 forces you to appreciate it. It doesn’t much care about the pagan lore of its foggy, homonymous town. The subject is barely touched upon, and when it is, you may not even realize it’s relevant to the series as a whole. The lore is there to prove that this is indeed part of the series, but this is a game that stands alone on its own. There is no evil, quasi-satanic clergy trying to foil your attempts of survival and/or rescuing your loved ones.

The standalone structure of Silent Hill 2 makes it great even for the potentially uninitiated to the series, who only knows the games as “that ones with the fog and the monsters”. Silent Hill 2 is almost a spin-off, barely connected to the continuity of the saga and more focused on the characters that compose its plot. This is a straight up story of people who are, on an emotional level, profoundly tormented, and why they are tormented, and how they are tormented. AngelaKnife2

While playing, you will stumble upon aberrations roaming the streets and buildings of the small town. You see, Mary’s illness that led to her death took a toll on James, and this toll becomes material through the town’s power. His feelings from watching Mary’s transformation from a vibrant woman into a miserable terminal patient are shown in the monster’s designs. Anger for not understanding why this had to happen to the woman he loved and for her becoming emotionally abusive from the pain of an undisclosed illness. Sexual frustration from being at her bedside to the very end, unable to be with her, but also unable to leave her. Everything is a reflection of James’ damaged psyche. The game explores some very grey areas of human morality through its development of James’ good and bad personality traits, all of which are too human.

When I said Silent Hill 2 is the best game ever made, of course I acknowledge that as an opinion. It is, instead, a personal favorite of mine. However being the fantastic psychological thriller it is, most people who played it would say that Silent Hill 2 should be featured in the annals of videogame history as a masterpiece, and you’d be hard pressed to convince them otherwise. The only exaggeration would be claiming you won’t find a better game, as that is subjective. Just understand that many of us are still looking for one. It’s such a unique videogame experience, and one you should play yourself to understand the beautifully conceived characters.