Developer: Zombie Cow Studios
Buy: Zombie Cow Studios
It is widely appreciated amongst a certain breed of gamer that LucasArts (along with a couple of notable others such as Sierra) used to make some of the best games around: games filled with humour, irony, wit and most of all….love. These were true interactive fables, point-and-click artistic masterpieces of escapism and a joy to play through. Unfortunately after Big George went and ruined Star Wars by making some prequels those natty folk at LucasArts figured they’d stop making decent games and mainly just flog the whimpering, half-dead husk of a horse that is the legacy of Skywalker and Son, churning out tie-in after flaccid tie-in, or half-arsed crapfests like Fracture. Thankfully the chaps at Zombie Cow remember the golden age of the original Monkey Island games and Grim Fandango like it was yesterday, and hate money so much that they decided to give away their first foray into adventure games – the hilarious Ben There, Dan That! - absolutely free and live in squalor for artistic benefit. In fact if you haven’t already clicked on that link and remain unconvinced then stop reading right now, check out my review of BTDT here before you do anything else and just play through it. You don’t need to necessarily, it’s not integral to the experience of Time Gentlemen, Please!, but it’s a really good game so do it anyway.
Krusty was only doing the Simpsons to fund his real passion
Time Gentlemen, Please! is a direct sequel to BTDT, and just in case you didn’t play the first game (or did and then bumped your head, forgetting everything Bourne style) its events are briefly summed up within the first twenty seconds or so of the game. After romping through space and time it would seem that Ben and Dan (the heroic alter-egos of the game’s creators) have succeeded in wiping out all of humanity by way of a coathanger and a strange predilection for Tom Selleck . Needless to say, our heroes decided that they don’t really want the blood of all humanity on their pixellated mits and so they pledge to make one last time jump to prevent the invention of the coathanger and therefore undo all the mischief they made in the first game. Sound slightly nuts to you? Yep? Well it’s about to get even more bizarre. I don’t want to spoil too much for you but the gruesome twosome wind up bumping into a horde of Nazi dinosaurs, getting a bunch of prehistoric nerds laid and turning a dead transvestite mouse into a sex doll. Oh yeah….and Hitler.
Dan really didn't want to play happy slaps with the comatose dino
Being a sequel, much of the game boasts a striking similarity to its predecessor: it’s still a classic point-and-click affair, with the right mouse button cycling through the available commands, and the left button executing your puppet mastery over Ben and Dan. But there are some notable differences, although most of them are simply cases of polishing stuff from the BTDT. The first is the presentation, although the endearing cartoonish nature remains unchanged, TGP is a much tidier game. It’s shinier, the facial expressions are more frequent and more varied, and their are some nice flash effects thrown in there for good measure. The animations are smoother and the menus and inventory appear more streamlined. There’s music pretty much all the way through, ranging from background ditties you’d find in a hotel lounge to funky bass and flute riffs lifted almost perfectly from Mission: Impossible and The Man from UNCLE. There’s not quite so much item combining in this game, which is perhaps a bit of a shame, but this is combatted through some clever temporal engineering. Everything, it would seem, has had double the effort poured into it. The speech responses for item combinations are nearly all unique, and again you’ll find yourself trying to combine everything with everything else just to trigger the witty, potty-mouthed remonstrations of Ben and Dan. One example of this found me stood in front of a Sex-Education Stall in the game, manned by a clown of all things, clicking happily away for ten minutes and laughing so hard at all of the different pamphlet names that came up that I inhaled orange juice and then sneezed it out all over my monitor.
Ben had a good understanding of his own limitations
Time Gentlemen, Please! doesn’t do too much radically different in terms of gameplay than its predecessor, but it doesn’t need to. The new plot is longer and more thought out than before, twisting and turning with playful glee; the puzzles are more elaborate, and the learning curve to the this game is slightly steeper, but more rewarding. The humour is even more referential than before, although more subtly perhaps than previously: there are so many hidden quips and homages to other games and movies that spotting them almost becomes a game in itself. There are geeky in-jokes for fans who absorbed all of the first game and wanted more, the largest of which is Dan getting up to some adventuring himself. The jokes are a big part of the game and, as with BTDT, this is NOT a game for kids: no game whose options menu comes with a ‘Racism’ slider is suitable for children, but that’s fine and the refreshingly adult humour is as funny as it is filthy. Dan and Ben seem to have traded slightly on the violence of the first game for a new subject that pretty much fills the air every time the duo open their mouths: sex. Or rather genitals. There are time rips ‘that look like a vagina’, numerous dildo references (anyone with a G1 Megatron should probably beware), and enough smutty language to make Casanova blush deep red and take a vow of chastity. There’s also what I like to call a Casino Royale leg-crossing, wincing moment, but I’ll leave you to find that for yourselves.
School discos hadn't changed much in minus 2 million years
There are a couple of things that might get in the way of the casual gamer who is uncertain in adventuring territory: the first is that it is a very text-heavy game. But you can adjust the speed and click your way through it at your own pace if you wish, and the jokes keep the tempo up. Furthermore, unlike BTDT this game isn’t freeware, but it costs less than a pint in a London pub and lasts a lot longer, and is well worth it. It won’t work on Macs, but then considering it’s a game and not a miraculous new navel-staring device, that’s absolutely fine. Time Gentlemen, Please! isn’t a game for everybody, but it doesn’t need to be and trades on a simple humour staple that I find hard to disagree with: dick and fart jokes are damn funny. Even when they’re intelligent. Especially when they’re intelligent. And when wrapped in an engine that’s bright and intuitive as this with a story so barmy and ridiculous that you can’t help but laugh and wonder if drugs were involved (goosestepping Nazi robot dinosaurs?!), it’s hard not to do one of to things: 1. Sneer in distate like a populist wanker, or 2. Embrace the colourful carnage. It’s as if Withnail and Marwood got genetically spliced with Guybrush Threepwood and all of the guys who worked on Superbad. Imagine the Brit wit of early Red Dwarf mixed with Kevin Smith’s Clerks and sprinkled with essence of Monty Python. You get the idea. If you don’t then download Ben There, Dan That! or the demo of TGP, but I seriously suggest investing in this game. British indie developers are rarer than an uncooked beefburger and the good ones are often lost in amongst the sea of crap and mediocrity that is the internet. Dan and Ben deserve a pint or two for their efforts, but seeing as stalking them across London might be a little bit weird, I’d just buy their frankly excellent game. It’s cheaper and more satisfying.
The Short Version: Ben and Dan return for some more epic 4-dimensional adventuring. Bigger, better and more badass than its predecessor, TGP ticks all of the right boxes. Rude, crude and lewd, it also happens to be very, very good. Forget last orders, this is happy hour.
Temperature: HOT!
No comments:
Post a Comment