[Review] NTTS...

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

What the hell did you think the dog was barking at, you fucking simpleton? Maybe it was some guy in the room who can't even control his own franchise.

Here's my review of YOU:

ZERO STARS!!!

Face it, you need everything explained to you and presented upon a silver platter. God forbid I (and Mike) put together something you could ponder for 0.00000024 seconds after you were done giving it a shitty score. GOD FORBID.

[Worm]

I must have played through this game a couple years back and done totally fine. I guess Pinner is just acting like a retard (or drunk) for laffs. Seriously, when was the last time you PLAYED a text adventure game? I mean the keywords aren't bolded, but they might as well be.

[pinback]

Well, perhaps you'd all prefer it if I just left this website, and never came back. Is that what you want? Cuz believe me, I can make that happen.

[pinback]

I must have played through this game a couple years back and done totally fine. I guess Pinner is just acting like a retard (or drunk) for laffs. Seriously, when was the last time you PLAYED a text adventure game? I mean the keywords aren't bolded, but they might as well be.

But, little boy, don't you understand? The reason I never found the ball was because there was no reason to find the ball! It was not made a crucial element to the story, and the game moves swiftly on even without finding it, so why the hell would I bother finding it?

It's like the authors said, "Eh, we'll put a little story in here, but it'll be up to the player to figure out what it is, if he wants to." Some might call that "groundbreaking". I call it "annoying".

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

But, little boy, don't you understand? The reason I never found the ball was because there was no reason to find the ball!

And yet, people found the ball. It really is just a little thing, more as a sort of reward for being all good at looking at stuff and so on and so forth.

Christ, you need everything wrapped up in a nice little package, don't you?

It was not made a crucial element to the story, and the game moves swiftly on even without finding it, so why the hell would I bother finding it?

Goodness. It was there if you went looking for it. If you didn't find it, it did not detract from the story. You're just mad that other people found it and that you didn't.

What the hell is wrong with the following:

"Hmm, wonder how that window broke? I'll go back to the game and look around a little more. Surely, two guys like Mike and Robb at the top of their craft would give me a little something here."

And! We did.

That's also the reason why the whole (R)estart thing can be done -- we had made something like ten games between us at that time and were reasonably good at our craft. It wasn't Anonyo-Loser #5152 putting out a comp game under a bad pseudonym and then you later find out that his name was "Freddie Nobody" and you wonder why the hell he bothered to use an alias in the first place. We were very up front with who we were and deserving of some faith.

But MAN, Pinner, do you take it poorly when every last detail isn't laid out in front of you. Even though you're all for that sort of thing in movies.

It's like the authors said, "Eh, we'll put a little story in here, but it'll be up to the player to figure out what it is, if he wants to." Some might call that "groundbreaking". I call it "annoying".

Well, you're in luck as every other game Mike and I have done has been completely revealed to the player by the time you get to the end of it. NTTS was a nice game to make for me, personally, in so much as it was not a buddy trickster ware like so many of my others. But you're telling me to get back into the goddamn trickster kitchen. That's you.

[Pittman]

Well, who broke the window? Let's start there.

What do you mean who broke the window?

WHO BREAKS THE FUCKING WINDOW???

Oh, who broke the fucking window? Don't you know? Did you follow any of the clues?

I have no idea. The game gives no clues as to who does it.

Really? There are no clues?

Well, I didn't see no ball. Let me just fire that badboy up again and see how I missed that...

Ah, there we go. Anybody see a fucking ball anywhere in this transcript?

---

>w
Living Room
You enter your living room and automatically take a whiff of the room's scent -- the smell of your new leather couch isn't so new that you don't notice it yet. It cost you almost the entire commission you made when you got Artero Gueterrez a six-month minor league contract with the Toledo Mud Hens, but both you and Charlise had earmarked this one for years. (Good kid, that Artero, but couldn't hit a curveball in an airless vacuum.)

The room is laid out with the couch in front of your television and stereo speakers. A couple of Charlise's frescos hang from the walls, and you've started to add stucco to the ceiling. A couple of your golfing trophies adorn the shelves near the phone, and a signed Garciaparra bat is also hanging up, encased in a plastic preservation shell.

Watson's over in front of the couch, sniffing and snorting at something.
Your main front window has a long crack running through it.

The auxiliary window to the right of that one is completely shattered. Glass from it has sprayed out onto your floor, definitely smashed from something or somebody on the outside.


Your beagle is here, puttering around near the couch.

>

You're right, it doesn't mention the ball. Fuck.

Know what? Fuck this shit.

ZERO STARS

Thank god you didn't take the wrong sweater out of the dryer and then wear it! We might have seen a negative star rating.

[pinback]

No, I liked the first, non-Alice half quite a bit. Like I said, I thought that was your best work.

Do more like that.

Do NOT do more like the last half.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

No, I liked the first, non-Alice half quite a bit. Like I said, I thought that was your best work.

Do more like that.

Do NOT do more like the last half.

I was not "Pittman."

[Sousa]

This is the most attention NTTS has ever received. Thanks guys!

[Worm]

But, little boy, don't you understand? The reason I never found the ball was because there was no reason to find the ball!

No reason to play Sam & Max with the volume on, I'm sure you can setup the subtitles. Though that would make the game a substantially lower rating. I don't care that this example isn't good, because it sounds good. Especially, because some maggot is in my journal comparing self respect to water and shit.

It was not made a crucial element to the story, and the game moves swiftly on even without finding it, so why the hell would I bother finding it?

I think it only somewhat established the surreality of where you were which was fully established later. So, you wanted it to say "Hold on I better look under that couch" when you tried to leave, shit like that is just lame.

It's like the authors said, "Eh, we'll put a little story in here, but it'll be up to the player to figure out what it is, if he wants to." Some might call that "groundbreaking". I call it "annoying".

Wow, let's slice this one up.

It's like the authors said, "Eh, we'll put a little story in here, but it'll be up to the player to figure out what it is, if he/she wants to."

I'm correcting the sexist language here. Okay, so someone puts something in an interactive fiction game that is in someway similar to life in that it's up to the person to investegate it or not. That's bad. Frankly I didn't give a shit about the dog barking I was too busy trying to get a pickle to eat or something, though I eventually got around to it. Am I recalling this right?

Some might call that "groundbreaking".

No, no they wouldn't.

I call it "annoying".

=(

[bruce]

I don't care that this example isn't good, because it sounds good. Especially, because some maggot is in my journal comparing self respect to water and shit.

I think I speak for pretty much anyone who supports logic and reason when I say, "WTF?"

Bruce

[Vitriola]

I folded the goddamn laundry before I even went into the house. Funnily enough, as I was folding it, it didn't tell me that the house was on the other side of the laundry room, thus prompting me to carry the laundry around the garage a few times and then back into the laundry room before it cued me into the doorway there. I didn't find the ball; I got that something was on the floor somewhere, but I thought the game was counting down moves until my (assumed) wife died in the other room while I was looking for a flat space to put the sweaters on and bemoaning the fact that my dog was so goddamned stupid that I had to PET him, and not PAT him, and thusly I left the floor searching for later, which, obviously, didn't happen.

Leaving my wife sitting on her ass for forty moves didn't save the life. Seriously? If I was pregnant? I wouldn't check that shit out either. Did it save the game? Nope.

I also overthought the chess game, and instead of trying to outrun the hare, I was trying to stay on squares on which the knights could not get me. I figured that one out quick, tho.

I could have sworn the hare was standing to my east in the circle, so it took me like 8 do-overs before I realized that I had to run east to escape. That might have been my assumption, though, that he was to the east.

I liked the second half better, especially because it was eerie and I was playing it at 1:30am, but the Pinner's adjective salad observation was not all wrong. I watch too much anime to let 'surreal' fool me into trying to make sense of anything, though.


So, who broke the window?

****/*****

[Worm]

So, who broke the window?

****/*****

The baby?

[Vitriola]

Problems I had with this game:

Grammatical errors here and there. At one point 'passed' was written where it should have been 'past'. Who does that?

Timing. The guy the nurse was fighting with right before she got called in to help the mother could not have been the same guy on the freeway that the father heard about on the radio on his way home an hour or 2 before he got to the hospital.

The fact that your phone worked right at the beginning; i.e. I called my wife before the game even told me to, but it aside from not letting me call anyone else, it acted like I didn't even have a phone, or a clue.

I really didn't care about the doctor, or the nurse, especially since with the latter it was just a dialogue advance. One of them could have been left out.

None of these things big deals, and I was impressed with more than I wasn't.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I liked the second half better, especially because it was eerie and I was playing it at 1:30am, but the Pinner's adjective salad observation was not all wrong.

May I "Yeah but"? I hate to do that, because then people stop reviewing one's games because one never shuts up. But a quick Yeahbut.

In regard to the bolded part: Yeah, but that's how serial killers write. Well, at least the one we were modeling, anyway. Hee, hee, hee.

[Vitriola]

Exactly, if you're used to that sort of sentiment, you wouldn't be fooled into trying to string the words together to form coherent statements. Just saying, you know, that the observation was not wrong. One is caught between the desire to get as much out of the prose as one can without skipping words and getting a headache from the bombast of contradiction and nonsense.

[Worm]

Problems I had with this game:

Grammatical errors here and there. At one point 'passed' was written where it should have been 'past'. Who does that?

Hey! Homophones are tricky.

So, how far are you through all of Robb's games? My favorite is A Crimson Spring.

[Vitriola]

I still have to finish FoD, which I'll have to start over since my save file is on a computer in another state, and then work backwards from there. I'll need all the practice I can get before I tackle the earlier releases, I've heard...

And oh yeah, why was one window shattered, and the other cracked? Did s/he not throw it hard enough, go up, get the ball, and try again on the other one?

[Yunie]

I'm in the "loved the first half, second half was just OK" camp.

I found the baseball, but I still have absolutely no idea who broke the window or why. I doubt it was one of my golf buddies. The doctor, nurse, and Freddie are all elsewhere at the time. It obviously wasn't my wife and I doubt it was the dog.

That leaves my client and the freeway lunatic. The freeway lunatic doesn't make any sense because we never learn anything else about him. So I guess it's my client and I am totally at sea about what his motive could possibly be. Is he a serial killer and I just don't know it?

There any additional clues I'm missing?

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I don't think you are missing any clues. My personal theory as of 2008 is that it was the hare! Which, of course, is just silly.

I would like to take the opportunity to apologize to Pinback for being a baby back in 2004. Good grief, I was childish and confrontational back then!