Diary Entry #6: In Your Face SpongeBob Point-And-Click Coverage

                My expectations were high while installing SpongeBob SquarePants: Employee of the Month. The adventure genre is the primo cartoon to game format, allowing plenty of story-driven interaction that really brings the show to life. Beavis and Butthead: Virtual Stupidity captures the essence of its subject matter. Duckman, the Harvey Birdman game, Stupid Invaders, Scooby-Doo Classic Creep Capers for GBC, and Scooby-Doo Mystery for Genesis are other great examples, but they're honestly few and far between.

                Scooby-Doo seems like a great candidate for an adventure game, offering up mysteries laden with clues, goofy traps, and vengeful janitors who dress as ghouls. Instead, most Scooby-Doo games are just goofy platformers starring a hippie and a talking dog. And that's really what most cartoon licensed games amount to: a stupid platform game for the kiddies. That's what kept me from continuing SpongeBob SquarePants: SuperSponge, with its dull design and non-existent challenge. Some aren't made for the kiddies but remain equally dull, such as the Beavis and Butthead, Ahh! Real Monsters!, and Rocko's Modern Life games for the SNES.

                Of course, a lot of adventure games are also plagued with dull design and non-existent challenge. Rather than a stupid platform game for the kiddies, you've got a stupid adventure game for the kiddies. Tiny Toon Adventures: The Great Beanstalk embodies this approach to game development, playing more like a hidden object game than anything else. Speaking of hidden object games, I bet the Three Stooges ones are the best.

Based on the screenshot, it looks like they're playing
rock, paper, scissors, punch to the face.

                With all of this in mind, I began my journey into SpongeBob SquarePants: Employee of the Month. Mr. Krabs feels obliged to give SpongeBob a gift since he's been Employee of the Month for the past year. Having just received two free tickets in the mail for Neptune's Paradise, a local theme park that no one seems to care for, Mr. Krabs gives them to SpongeBob. The cutscenes are fully 3D, if a little ugly.

                I start the game outside the Krusty Krab, where a customer offers to tell me how to get to Neptune's Paradise IF I feed him a hamburger, setting my first objective in the game. Check out the fun hand-drawn backgrounds.

                

                Right away, I can dig the script. Just like in all the old LucasArts adventure games, the dialogue's humorous and well-written throughout. The voice actors from the show reprise all their roles if you're into that sort of thing. As a non-SpongeBob fan, I still appreciate the effort.

                

SpongeBob reiterates the plot for those
gamers who have no attention span.

               You pick up stuff and use it on other stuff, too, making it a classic point-and-click adventure. For the first puzzle, I have to combine the Plain Patty with the Fixin's to create a Krabby Patty. After that, I need to wash a dirty plate and throw the burger on it. Not exactly the most difficult puzzle in the universe. It sort of reminds me of Humongous Entertainment adventures like Freddy Fish and Pajama Sam, which feature tons of no-brainer puzzles that young people can solve with little frustration.

                The customer then tells me a bus stop downtown goes straight to Neptune's Paradise. A new area opens on the map that I can visit. This becomes a recurring feature in the game: someone mentions a location and it opens up on the map. 

                Unfortunately, Patrick and I have no bus tokens or money to buy them. Patrick tells me to go to a beach and look for hidden treasure.

                In the parking lot, there's a random beach ball I can kick into a soccer net. This seems to have no significance other than being a diversion from random conversations with people.

                This conversational entity says the treasure is somewhere on the beach. The umbrella she holds becomes an important item later on.

                If there's any object sitting around, you know you're going to need it. This muscular dude says SpongeBob wears panties, but SpongeBob's too concerned about getting that toy shovel and bucket to listen. Muscular lobster guy mentions he has a sweet tooth for Grandma's homemade pie.

                Grandma's house opens and she tells me to go buy her some Sea Urchin chips, which opens up a grocery store area. I head over there, but having no money, the clerk says I need to wash his car if I hope to get my grubby hands on any chips. When I wash the car, the mouse turns into a SpongeBob icon that I have to wiggle all over the van. I get the Sea Urchin chips and mix them with one of Grandma's pies.

Imagine rubbing your body all over a car.

                Inside, Mr. Krabs is moonlighting as a guy who sells anything for cheap. He evidently sold his clothes to somebody, which explains the tactfully placed cans. He lets me take some cooking oil, which I give to somebody on the beach in exchange for suntan lotion. Why I need suntan lotion is unclear, but that's the adventure genre for yah.

                I start looking for buried treasure. I eventually find a treasure chest filled with tokens. The bus driver says we can go if I give him an umbrella, which I get from the aforepictured lady in exchange for my suntan lotion.

                Another 3D FMV cutscene later...

...and I'm trapped in a weird deep sea area. The driver refuses to take us back unless the weather conditions clear up, and with no obvious way to do this, I have to wander around aimlessly.  After hitting on a random eyeball creature, she tells me to buy her a candy bar. Accomplishing this task, I'm told to go to a TV station.

                This is where the handmade backgrounds really shine. It makes the game look a thousand times better than 2000s adventure games like Syberia or Runaway. Unfortunately, the exchange stuff for more stuff gameplay is starting to wear thin. I could go on and on telling you about these formulaic trades, but do you really care?

                If you do care, you're in luck. A tool man behind the TV station tells me to get him a can of Cola, which I need to get at the bar. A picture of Patrick and some guy burping is on the wall. Unfortunately, I can only get Diet Cola, so I need to steal an empty can from some guy back near the bus stop and fill that with the diet sludge. The tool guy takes the Cola and gives me his tools in exchange. 

                With the toolbox, this lady lets me into the studio...

               ...where Plankton tells the world that the Chum Bucket isn't nearly as bad as people claim. Some guy tells me I need to find Marlin the Wizard because he locked the door to the weather control room.

                At Marlin's cave, I play a slot machine...

                ...that eventually gives me directions through these catacombs.

                Marlin talks to me and releases his seal on the weather control machine, allowing me to fix the weather so the bus driver will take off again.

                The bus driver determines that he doesn't like SpongeBob, so he dumps me back off where I started instead of going to Neptune's Paradise. 

                I wind up at a diner. There's a dartboard here, but it's not fun or purposeful in any way. I got a high score anyway, as you can plainly see. The waitress, like any good diner employee, let's me take somebody else's carry out as long as I promise to deliver it promptly.

                I find the Jellyfish Fields, where Sandy takes the lunch and promises to drive me to Neptune's Paradise if I get my water helmet. The screenshot suggests that SpongeBob will get killed if stung, but he sort of just has a seizure and then continues on his merry way.

                I eventually find a video that details the making of the game. It's a really nice touch that shows quite a bit of love went into the development.

                This hippie tells me to come get some glasses that allow me to enter people's dreams. The location he's in has little of interest aside from the glasses...

...but when I use the glasses on Squidward...

...I enter this dreamworld where I turn into SpongeBob and Squidward's lovechild.

                In the dream, I find Squidward, take his clarinet, use it to charm the seasnake out of my water helmet, use that to enter Sandy's house where I need to find an air tank that's meticulously hidden behind an upturned picnic table. Sandy gets her rocket ship going and we're on our way to Neptune's Paradise! Another FMV sequence later...

SpongeBob and Patrick look like
they're tired of being in this game.

...we crash. Sandy tells me to get some oxygen...

...but the oxygen place requires that I wear a jacket. 

                Returning to Sandy, she tells me to seek out Walter, a man who may or may not own a jacket. There's a pressure plate in front of Walter's gated community, so I have to fill myself with water from this fountain to gain weight and get in. 

                Walter says I can have his golden coconut if I find a suitable paperweight to replace it. A normal coconut from the screenshot above suffices.

                I give the golden coconut to Walter's neighbor, who then gives me a quarter which I use to call Sublime Seafoods. They give me directions to their location, which I then quickly go to. Evidently, they give out free jackets if you come into the restaurant without one. A silly puzzle ensues where I need to get tickets to enter the restaurant, but it's so mundane that I won't bother describing it.

                At this point, I was so tired of the find object A to get object B formula that I stopped taking screenshots and almost stopped playing entirely. I felt like all the puzzles were so rudimentary and the decent production values were wasted on a crappy shell of a game. Thankfully, the conclusion was coming on fast. SpongeBob gets the jacket, but he can't leave with it, so he gets thrown out by asking for a Krabby Patty and makes off with the clothing. SpongeBob gets some air after finding Patrick his pants, and the game ends with another FMV that I didn't take a screenshot of. If you want to see it, play the damn game.

                Employee of the Month is obviously targeted towards children, but it's a far more competent game than anybody would expect. The cel-shaded cutscenes are a little ugly, but in game, the drawn and painted backgrounds mesh well with the 3D characters, although there's not a whole lot to most locales other than the NPCs and inventory items. The music, writing, and voice-acting feel like they're culled right from the show, and the puzzles are enough to keep you occupied for two hours.

                The question is, rent or buy this PC game? Buy it. I'm not a SpongeBob fan at all, but as an adventure gamer, any well-made two hour quickie is a definite must. Just keep in mind there's absolutely no challenge factor and you're good to go.

                In the process of trying to find more fun point-and-click adventure games based on cartoons, I discovered two games I need to play. Tiny Toon Adventure's: Buster's Bad Dream is a game by Treasure that looks almost exactly like their Astro Boy game for the Game Boy Advance. The other is Animaniacs: A Gigantic Adventure, a PC platformer that borrows the Jazz Jackrabbit 2 engine. Most action games based on Tiny Toons and Animaniacs have been great, but these look better than all of those combined.

                Also, I hate Choplifter games, but Super Army War for GBA and it's sequel Glory Days 2 for the Nintendo DS look amazing. I just got my new copy of Beyond: Two Souls though, so we'll see how that goes!

Screenshot courtesy of GameZone.
I'm not a big Choplifter fan, but
look at all that stuff blow up!

                

Diary Entry #5: Plastic Guitars and Spongebob Games

                Quick post before bed. Today, I didn't play enough games. I started Evil Dead: Hail to the King, but it's the hardest game I've played in a long time. This is due more to the fact that the game's poorly designed than anything else. Imagine if Resident Evil had tons of constantly respawning enemies that took a million hits to kill and you've got Hail to the King. Every time I feel like I'm finally getting a handle on the game, it just kicks my ass again.

                I tried playing Spongebob Squarepants: SuperSponge for the PS1. The slick graphics kept me playing, but the game itself consists mostly of walking in a direction until you finish a level. I got to chapter 2 when I said no more monotony. Spongebob Squarepants: Legend of the Lost Spatula for Game Boy Color looks like a much better game, and I might actually have a copy of it somewhere.

                Later, my girlfriend and I broke out Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80s. Sometimes it's fun to just relive the excitement of 2007-9. I always think it's funny that people say the plastic guitar genre died because Guitar Hero over-saturated the market with all sorts of crap. In reality, I think it has a lot more to do with the novelty wearing thin. I'm sure all of the dumb cash-ins made everybody enough money, but how long can you keep people excited about guitar controllers? And what do you do after your competitors have made microphones and full drum sets to match? Nuddin', that's what.

                I didn't realize there were so many Spongebob games! I bet all of the Game Boy Advance ones are awesome (awesome in the sense that they're not a crappy 3D collect-the-stuff game) side-scrollers, and Spongebob Squarepants: Employee of the Month is a point-and-click game. I hope it rivals other great cartoon point-and-click games like Duckman and Beavis and Butthead: Virtual Stupidity.

Diary Entry #4: Some Gaming Notes and "Hollywood Envy"

                Over the past few days, I played through Alone in the Dark: One Eyed Jack's Revenge. I took some notes as I played. I'll list them off and attempt to explain what I was thinking for the weirder ones:

1. Cool taxi in beginning

                One of the nicer features of the Playstation port of Alone in the Dark 2 is the textured polygonal models. It gives the game a polished look that's slightly marred by archaic pixellated backgrounds.

3D Carnby and 3D ghoul.

2. I love the music

                There are about three songs in the game and they seem to play randomly. I love them all, but the best is easily the weird pirate polka.


3. Load times are VERY long.

                This is a problem that plagued much of my experience. Whenever the perspective changes, the game takes seconds to load. Whenever an enemy spots you an star to move, the game takes seconds to load. Sometimes, the game just starts randomly loading for no obvious reason. If you're stuck at a frustrating section that requires many retries, sitting through these loads becomes a tedious time.


4. Cutscenes are cool

                There's only a handful of them, but they're charming to the core. The inital cutscene goes on for ten minutes, though this is mostly due to the aforementioned long load times. Several cutscenes are in game, there are also about four or five very trippy cutscenes. The best of these is when Carnby falls into a pit and winds up in the basement of One Eyed Jack's house. Enemies fly by, pieces of wood are shattered, and blood is splattered everywhere until you hit the hard concrete.

5. Played with sword, touched a card and died.

                In the initial garden section, there's a random set of tiles with card shapes on them: a spade, a diamond, etc. All of them kill you if touched excluding the diamond, which I figured was the right path anyway because of a random diamond-shaped tile found elsewhere. In the cave below the diamond, I found a sword, which I started playing with back outside. When practicing my lunge technique, I landed right on the club tile and died instantly. Who knew.


6. Santa outfit

That eerie figure in the background is none other than
me dressed as Santa Clause. Note the ugly backgrounds.

7. Little midget

                In the scene above, there's a midget chef who calls a bunch of people to kill you unless you're disguised as santa. It's cool.


8. Hitting people with pans

                I found a pan.


9. Cool voice sample, scary pirate pic.

                Halfway through the game, there's a bunch of narrated still images that describe how One Eyed Jack and his crew found the Flying Dutchman. It's got a scary pirate pic, evidently.


10. This little girl carries a ton of stuff.

                At one point, you play as Grace Saunders, a little girl. She acquires a jar of molasses, a freezer, a chicken's foot, keys, a staff, a sandwich, pepper, and probably something else that I can't remember. Where is she putting all of this stuff? I guess it's like that in all of the classic LucasArts adventure game, which lead to the following point...

There's no way a girl that small can carry
a jar of molasses AND a freezer. I'm going
to say that about every little girl I see from now on.

11. Like Grim Fandango, but with action stuff.

...Alone in the Dark and its first two sequels are very similar to Grim Fandango, the supposed classic, groundbreaking 3D LucasArts adventure game. All the developer has to do is take out the wonky action sequences and it's practically the same game. The only difference is that Grim Fandango is funny and more expansive: there are dozens of puzzles, memorable characters, and interesting locales to experience. In Alone in the Dark 2, there are six puzzles and a lot of killing zombie pirates with tommy guns.

12. Puzzles obtuse, cannon sequence is awesome.

                At one point, you have to cut a cannon from the floor, move the cannon, put a small keg of gunpowder in the room across the hallway, then light the cannon in order for it to go off. It blows up an entire room of sleeping zombie pirates. I probably would have just made them wake up and kill them all if I hadn't walked into the cannon room first by chance.

                If I had to to rent or buy Alone in the Dark: One Eyed Jack's Revenge, I would definitely buy it for exactly five dollars and a copy of 1080 Snowboarding. I hope someday to regain a copy of 1080 Snowboarding, but until then, I'm happy with the choice I made.

                Another recent acquisition is Beyond: Two Souls for the PS3. Why I want to play it remains a mystery. The use of famous actors and actresses like William Defoe and Ellen Page is pointless indulgent crap. I don't play games because they have famous actors in them, I watch films for that reason. But why am I complaining? If Quantic Dream's previous games Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain are any indicator, I'm going to be watching Beyond: Two Souls more than I play it.
             
                Back in 1989, Ron Gilbert wrote an article entitled "Why Adventure Games Suck and How We Can Fix Them", which is avaiable here. It decries the notion of adventure games as Interactive Movies, a then-recent trend in the industry, while explaining how it came to be. Gilbert compares the sensations of adventure/story games to those of film, stating that while games have a distinct sense of interactivity, they share film's requirement for suspension of disbelief on part of the audience.

                Because the story game is the closest simulacra  to film in the industry, developers are filled with what he calls "Hollywood Envy", a secret desire to create films rather than games. Now more than ever, the video game industry is filled with crazy people who make games filled with numerous cutscenes. Metal Gear Solid 4 is probably the worst example of this, burying some very interesting ideas and competent gameplay beneath hour long cinematics. Perhaps the aforementioned Alone in the Dark was a big step in this style of action-adventure storytelling with its narrative-driven style, but damn, individual cutscenes should not be feature length Mr. Metal Gear dude!

                But Beyond: Two Souls takes "Hollywood Envy" to an extreme. As many media sites have stated, David Cage and his company Quantic Dream are well known for their desire to blur the lines between film and games, polarizing critical opinion of their game. Detractors say it isn't even a game. Honestly, I know what I'm getting myself into: I'll occasionally get to play a game that features a lot of quick time events and occasional puzzle-like scenarios. I use the term puzzle-like because there's little lateral thinking required. In one of the scenes I played, you have to control your random external soul to uncover some information hidden in a safe. In order to reach it, I have to distract a security guard so I can freeze his monitor without him noticing, allowing me to open the safe without detection. Of course, when the game decided I was taking too long to solve the puzzle, it immediately started showing cuts of what I was supposed to push. All I'm doing is pushing stuff that the game clearly outlines; no lateral thinking+adventure game-like stuff=puzzle-like scenario.

                Minus puzzles and plus quick time events and cutscenes, the game sounds like it's going to totally suck. Yet as I played Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain, I felt compelled to play onward. Is it because it's unique? Is it because it vaguely reminds me of the adventures games I played as a kid? There's just so many problems going on in Heavy Rain, the foremost being the propagation of game characters as bad Hollywood stereotypes, that it's appeal rationally eludes me. I hate "Hollywood Envy" garbage in other games, so why should Quantic Dream's products interest me at all? With Beyond: Two Souls, I hope to uncover why such a flawed formula can be so fun.

                Oh yeah, but my copy of Beyond: Two Souls is defective, so I have to return it and buy a new one. Onward to Evil Dead: Hail to the King for Dreamcast!

Diary Entry #3: Flipping Off My Dreamcast and Handheld Survival Horror

                Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare stinks on Dreamcast. My second disc kept having problems, dropping back to the Dreamcast menu after five to ten minutes of play. Additionally, I wasn't able to pick up several items, including some rare save items. I've had enough. I'm going to play the real grand-daddy of the New Nightmare ports: the Game Boy Color version.

                How could such a grand 3D game, complete with dynamic flashlight effects, be translated to the Game Boy Color? Well, it looks like this:

The main character sort of looks like ET.
Or like he's from the Planet of the Apes.

This is the first surival horror game
to ever attempt to rationalize why
random ammunition was all over the place.

                Eddie Carnby and Aline are now on an island looking for Edward's friend, Fiske. Everything seems normal enough, communicating between each other with walkie-talkies, just like in the Dreamcast version! Aline assures me that this should be a routine rescue mission.

The irony of it all!

                Unfortunately, Aline couldn't be any more wrong! Almost immediately, I'm attacked by beasts! As I mentioned in my previous posts, these sections recall the battles from Parasite Eve, but they're much more straightforward. All you do is wander around, blasting enemies with little fanfare before they reach you. I do like the way it's done, but it leads to you killing twenty times the enemies you would have in the Dreamcast port.

Desperately trying to escape a spider.

                After walking through several boring path screens, I eventually reach the Manor.

Carnby decides to break the fourth wall
to inform me that one of the Game Boy
Color's two buttons does something.

                I then enter the house itself. It's layout is strikingly similar to the Dreamcast version, featuring many of the same rooms and corridors. The library, the dungeon, and the main floor are all very faithful to the original game. It amounts to very little, as there's ultimately little interactivity with my surroundings, but hey, it's a nice touch. Most of the puzzles, however banal they originally were, are now missing. One example is a panel in which you need to enter a series of numbers to open a secret door. In the Game Boy Color port, all you have to do is simply push B near the panel and voila, the door opens.

                 One of the nice touches in the game are journal entries sprinkled throughout the house,  just like every other survival horror game in existence. There's only four of them, but they're pretty cool.

This game just got real.

                 As time goes on, Aline gets attacked by spiders. I guess enormous, hairy spiders are the main enemy of the New Nightmare, not vicious shadow creatures. I find a shotgun lying around.

                 Fiske's ghost starts talking to me through a mirror, a rather trippy plot device that greatly alters the storyline of the game. He tells me I need to go find a mechanism for the broken shotgun I have, which seems like a rather silly concern for a dead dude. Final boss aside, I was killing virtually everything with a pistol the entire game. The pistol shoots much faster than the shotgun, too, making it a much more useful weapon when I'm being swarmed by enemies.

                 After I get the shotgun mechanism, Fiske just starts talking to me any damn time he feels like. He tells me I need to open the door...

Fiske just keeps gabbing my ear off.

...which I manage to do with this random door knob I found in the attic.

                 In the cellar, I get this really awesome game over screen. If you touch one of the tentacles in the sewers below the house, instant death results. It reminds me a little of a death featured in the Blair Witch Project Volume 1: Rustin Parr. Every time you walk near the lake, a giant hand reaches up and snatches you into the water, resulting in an instant game over.

                 Eventually, I reach the swamps, which I have a few screenshots of. At this point in the game, all you really do is walk in a linear path and occasionally get into battles. There's about four puzzles in between, and two of them simply involve using a crowbar on stuff.

                 I'll focus on some highlights. At one point, Morton, the game's main enemy, jumps out and attacks me. Frankly, he's pissed, and yells at me for awhile about how he's going to beat me up. After shooting him a few times however, he runs away crying like a little girl. 

                 Later on, I have to climb some dangerously thorny vines to enter a huge fortress. Thinking I have to cut the thorns off or something, I desperately search my inventory for something that will help me. Imagine my horror when I discovered the real solution: thick gardening gloves. Evidently those gloves your grandma uses while tending her garden can help you scale fortress walls. What really left bothered me about this was that I had this item since the beginning of the game; I got them at the same time I received the crowbar that I needed to break into the mansion. No clever lateral thinking, just use the dumb thing you've randomly been carrying around for half the game. What would have compelled Carnby to pick up those gardening gloves anyway? Unless his plan was to smack his enemies around with a thick glove, there's little rationale behind it. Dumb puzzlery at its lowest.

                 I eventually reach a Giger-inspired series of maze-like corridors. They're a nice change of pace from all the swamps, but things take a turn for the hilarious after I find a sparkly gem. The ground turns into a glossy yellow brick road, giving you yet another linear path to follow. Never did I think that imagery from Aliens and the Wizard of Oz would collide in such spectacular fashion.

                 I reach a giant totem pole with a rather grim demeanor. I decide to blow him up, hoping for a huge explosion with a ton of pizzazz. Instead of any visual representation, Carnby makes a passing comment about how the dynamite blew up. With all of this focus on graphics, you'd think the developer would throw in a crappy explosion, but I guess I'll live without it.

Thanks for sharing.

                 I destroy Morton's precious statue, get teleported back to the house, and get another text from Fiske about how I have to kill Morton. After wandering all the way back to the very beginning of the game, Morton pops out, gets all huffy at me, and attacks me. Shooting him with my recently acquired crossbow makes quick work of his butt.

Sweet pixelated victory!

                 Rent or buy: I'd say that Alone in the Dark: the New Nightmare is definitely worth a good rent or four dollars at a flea market. After one time through, you probably won't need to play it again, but it's fun to see all my favorite survival horror tropes stuffed into one little cartridge. It probably can be completed in about an hour, which is a definite plus if I ever need a quick survival horror fix some day. I like it more than the Dreamcast version because it doesn't drop back to the system menu randomly.

                 The only thing that that could better pacified your handheld horror needs is probably Resident Evil 2 for the Game.com, but I'm the only person I know of that has one. There also is a Resident Evil 1 Game Boy Color port that was cancelled, but two incomplete builds of these have been made available thanks to some online fundraising. 

                 I'm going to start playing Alone in the Dark: One Eyed Jack's Revenge right now. My expectations are high and I can't wait to try out my new PS2 controller extension cable.