Overall very good. The one complaint I have is that when you reach at story ending, at least for me and maybe it was my setup, it did not make it clear the the story had ended.
It just arced back to a previous place (usually with him waking up in his bed). Made me think that the playback messed up. I had to get on here to understand that the story had ended.
I also don’t understand that why in some iterations the game is found to be great, in some average, and in some terrible. It was the same game in every choice.
No, it wasn’t. It was specifically called out as incomplete, rushed, or halfassed (all different forms of bad) in several of the bad reviews, some versions were created after either a complete psychotic break, or complete understanding of the universe (which would result in a very different game) and one version involved completely stripping the element of choice, just keeping the illusion (this is a standard technique in game design, and can be either good or bad).
[Spoiler]In one scenario, he wakes up and believes he is being controlled. He asks “Who are you?” and (if you choose it) “Netflix” is controlling him. His father takes him to the doctor and then comes the fight scene (no matter what you pick) and his father then drags him out of the doctor’s office with him screaming at the viewer (or, if you have him try to jump out the window, he is an actor on set).
At least on mine, it then loops back to him waking up in his bed and doing the same “Who are you?” routine. If you keep picking Netflix the movie will last for all eternity.[/spoiler]
Heh. Nice link. To be absolutely fair, occasionally you’d get a BASIC program on cassette in one of those bargain basement software bins. (I remember some crap collections of games, like five games on tape or something, for like $5. Mostly awful stuff, but occasionally some of the early text adventures would be written in BASIC. Like I’m pretty sure at least the early Scott Adams [not the Dilbert guy] Adventure series was written in BASIC. Wikipedia says it Adventureland was written in 1978 for the TRS-80 in BASIC and was the first text adventure for the home computer market. Not sure if any of the follow-ups were or not.)
I took it pulykamell’s way as well. It made me feel part of the story and Stefan had already resisted doing one of my commands earlier. I told him to pull his ear and he didn’t. I told my wife at that point, “Ah, he feels us choosing for him.” So when Netflix came up, we loved it and told him.
I remember getting a kids’ magazine in the very early '90s where a regular installment would be a body of BASIC code that you could put into your computer to make a rudimentary text game, FWIW.
Are you just assuming that, or did you actually pick Netflix a bunch of times? Because the system is more complicated than that. It’s got state. If you loop back and choose the same path, you don’t get exactly the same results. Stuff you did on previous loops matters.
One tiny bit I really enjoyed: when he watches the documentary about the author who went insane, the first second and a half of the tape is a taped-over commercial for breakfast cereal. It’s the same cereal you picked at the first choice point.
I loved it. I agree it’s a love song to choose your own adventure books. I love that it’s mass entertainment that we all have a slightly different experience of. I love the recursiveness of watching/playing a choose-your-own adventure movie about a guy going insane while writing a choose-your-own adventure video game because someone is controlling his actions, adapting a choose-your-own adventure book written by someone who went insane because he thought someone was controlling his actions.
The attempt to describe Netflix to someone in the 1980s was hilarious. “Streaming entertainment platform” is a borderline nonsense phrase. It may have helped that the first time I had that choice, Netflix wasn’t one of the options, so the second time through I laughed out loud. It’s like Netflix is playing a game with you just as you are playing a game with Stephan.
I think the better ratings came as a result of the amount of madness the creator endured while making it. The crazier Stephan got, the better the game turned out. I don’t think it was the same end product in all iterations.
I don’t play games such as “Call of Duty,” “Red Dead Redemption,” and whatnot, but I have sat through trailers and advertisements for that kind of game, and I notice that a lot of them have a CGI person, kind of like an NPC, who interacts with and makes conversational-type remarks to the player.
Am I the only one who has noticed this about these trailers? Also, am I the only one who thought Colin was reminiscent of this type of character? If that was an intentional choice, it was brilliantly executed.
I thought they explained fairly well that it was not the same game.
When he chooses to work at Tuckersoft, he’s given a staff and the game is rushed into production and released, resulting in a too-short game that gets zero stars.
When he works at home, makes progress, but later agrees to take the pills, which stifle his creativity, resulting in a game that starts out strong but fades due to the drugs, 2.5 stars.
When he buries his Dad’s body, gets caught before he can finish it, they release the game unfinished, 2.5 stars
When he chops up the body, takes his time finishing the game, it gets 5 stars, but then the body is discovered, the game is pulled from shelves.
