3DO Interactive Multiplayer

...and why didn't they do it sooner? This is the worst bit, so, I have decided to open with a song. Oh yes.

Americaaaaaa Lasssser Gaaaaames!
Americaaaaaa Lasssser Gaaaaames!
How shooting is alwaaaayssss the sammmmeeees!

(How is this for you?)

Amusing, well, I was laughing at it, introductions over. Now on to the game.

From the people that bought you Mad Dog, Space Pirates and Crime Patrol comes "Who shot Johnny Rock?" for more of the same.

It is a little more involved than previous outings, solving this based in the 1920's crime but it amounts to the same thing. You are armed with gun and you must shoot the bad guys before they shoot you.

Built with the usual American Games high production values: Nice sets, good costumers and moderately impressive special effects you can't complain about the quality.

If, on the other hand you feel like having a bit of a moan about the acting then go ahead but mention innovation while whinging on and I'll be forced to take you to task.

Why? Because it's not exactly the same as all previous games. For starters the six-shooter is gone. Replaced with a Machine Gun with 400 rounds of ammunition. If you do run out of bullets you have to buy more. OK - it's not an earth shattering deviation from previous light gun games by this development house - but at least it is a deviation!

As usual, I'm sure it is fun with a light gun.

3DO Kid.

I just had Sex on my 3DO. Good job it’s an FZ-1 and not an FZ-10, I could have fallen off haw-haw-haw!

OK – It’s not funny.

Another Vivid Interactive presentation. I’m beginning to wonder… No! What am I saying “wonder”? I know for a fact Vivid Interactive were simply cashing in. It really is amazing how boring these presentations are – I mean really boring. Is watching paint dry boring? Of cause it is. …but this is more boring than that. Really – it is!

This, I thought again, was going to be one of those ‘educational’ CDs. Edutainment. You know – like the ‘Joy of Sex’ or some other thinly veiled attempted to peddle soft porn to grubby minded twenty-something year olds who want to entice their equally grubby minded girlfriends into watching some thinly veiled soft porn with them. It wasn’t.

…it was just some grubby porn.

Lots of earnest looking women pulling their shirts, pants, bras, pretty much everything off and then leaning slowly and purposefully against innocent household furniture, careful not to show too much below the waistline if you follow my drift.

I reckon there is a check list for a Vivid Presentation.

- Plotless. Check.

- Annoying audio. Check.

- Grainy Visuals. Check.

- Painfully boring. Check.

- People in video must move slowly enough to be psychologically disturbing. Check

And so on.

One for collectors only, oh and grubby perverts – avoid at all costs.

3DO Kid.

Insert disc. Watch introduction. A yellow taxi arrives. Your avatar, Carnaby, gets out of the car and goes through the gate. There is a man laid out on the floor. He stands up, he’s holding a machine gun. He starts shooting at you. If you are lucky you get the chance to punch him to death. Once dead you pick up his gun, his bullet clip and his flask of health improving liquid. You now walk down the path towards a large house. On your right is a stone pillar. Immediately in front of you are two more guys with guns. If one doesn’t kill you – the other will. Now repeat that two dozen times.

Oh man. Oh man.

What went wrong?

I’ve seen this before. Just call me Dr 3DO Kid. A little like Dr Sigmund Freud, only more to the point and no beard. It is therefore in my professional opinion that some developers and publishers you see, suffer from Penis envy. They look over at another game and think to themselves, why doesn’t mine look like that? Or why haven’t I got one of those? Digital- penile – covetousness. It’s very tragic.

Need for Speed suffered from it. Before the 3DO classic NFS appeared on the Saturn and PSX, EA tried to make it look and play a bit more like Ridge and Daytona. The result? A catastrophe of world ending proportions.

Alone in the dark also suffered from this and sadly never recovered. They, the developers, looked at Doom and thought “Hmmm – what we need is more shooting” so that’s what they added. Lots of shooting. Not such a bad idea if executed well – sadly it wasn’t executed well.

Simply put: In Alone in the dark 2 – you can’t aim the gun – it is impossible. This renders all the guns pointless. Bit of an oversight methinks. Yes? Since the game relies so heavily on shooting, unlike Alone in the dark 1 that relied on kicking zombies in the nether regions, the game instantly becomes unplayable. They took a good game and made it bad. Why? I don’t know - it’s beyond me.

The charm, the vision, the execution that made the original so great was swept asunder in a single poorly thought out sequel. Which is a shame.

Some have said that with a little more thought it is possible not to shoot as much as it appears necessary. Having tried this approach, flight as opposed fight you might say, I found myself even more annoyed. The game was even more infuriating.

The storyline is even weaker than the original Lovecraft inspired one. So it appears, no matter how you cut it, AITD 2 is inferior to AITD 1.

Essentially there is a definite need for haste and shooting in this game and the controls simply don't make the grade.

The graphics are a little better than the original - but in my opinion they too have lost there charm of the original that had a hint of French style to them and ultimately AITD2 graphics are much inferior to the Dr Hauzer game graphics. See my coverage of that game for details.

There isn’t even a cheat. Not on Gamefaqs, not on the Internet in general, not in 3DO game guru – I even tried hacking the save file myself using Game Guru all to no avail. Never mind. Lets all wait for the PS3/360 Alone in the dark to see if things get any better!

Not rare either!

3DO Kid.

Contrary to what you may believe about me – I don’t care about the environment.

700 years ago the Chinese circumnavigated an ice-free North pole, the British had vine yards and Greenland was, well, green. Why? Because it was warmer – a lot warmer. Warmer than what the global warming doom mongers are predicting. The world, the ice-caps, the polar bears and East Anglia all survived. Of cause the governments pick the graphs that don’t show this skew in the data – but then that wouldn’t be helpful would it?

Those of my generation – dig out you medieval history books from the 1980s – it's all there.

When I find that the government is charging big cars more because they produce more Carbon Dioxide, when I see recycled toilet paper 3x more expensive than the premium brand, when I have to sift through my own rubbish just so a squirrel can feel cosy – I have to ask myself – is it all a scam?  

You know what?  I think it is. It is when you find out that nature and power plants are the biggest polluters and my car isn't. Not even close.

Why the rant? Mary Shelleys, It’s a birds life, is one of those hippy, tree hugging, lets talk about rain forests half baked brain wash my kids a-thon that fills me dread.

I thought this was going to be educational. I thought it was going to contain lost of information on birds and real footage of birds and facts about parrots and birds – but no. It’s an Interactive ego trip for Mary Shelley. Shellys house. Shellys Dan. Shellys Car. Shellys Los Angeles. You get the picture. In a word “Disappointing”.

Not fun. Not even for little kids and not a picture of a real bird or tree or car in sight. Typical!