ALF

(Welcome back, television audience.) This week on Renegade Ego, the King experiments with everything under the sink. However, he learns an important lesson, as he is teleported to a terrifying realm where logic is not welcome and excitement and joy are brutally oppressed. This realm is known as an Abomination Lacking Fun; to humans, it is ALF.

It all starts with an unfunny TV show about ET and Snuffleupagus birthing a bastard child that loves nothing more than eating pussy and ends with a game about the same. But more important than any of that is how the game makes absolutely no sense. I guess with a premise like that, it's par for the course, but it doesn't exactly bode well for a game based entirely around puzzle-solving. For instance, how do you get through the basement without those pesky bats bothering you? By swinging salami at them, of course! Because that's a sane answer anybody would think of. Throw in a lack of direction, some unclear controls, and naturally, this should be a hard game, right?

Well, not really. There are two things to mention about this: first, this is a really short game. Really short, you guys. This means there aren't a lot of options you have at any given time, limiting both your choices and any semblance of challenge. Second, death. Surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly, given your levels of cynicism), killing this turd-puppet-monster is the best part of the game. Should....OK, when you kill Alf, you're simply returned to the beginning of the current area, losing absolutely no progress whatsoever. It's not a good sign for your game when players not only want to kill the playable character, but benefit from it.

Then again, there's nothing good about this game in the first place. Now I know that sounds redundant, but it's my way of transitioning into the non-puzzling elements about the game. Yes, all three of them. Surprisingly, they all have three things in common. First, the controls. They're all terrible, choosing to delay your actions so you'll have a chance to reflect on all the poor decisions you've made that resulted in you playing ALF. Then again, this might be due to the bad frame-rate on a Master System game. That ought to explain why I chose not to use a screenshot of the actual gameplay for this blog. And finally, commonality number three is a theme that runs through the entirety of this game (and likely this blog). Do you know what it is, kids at home? They're all horrible.

Review Synopsis

• It's pretty much every bad Flash game you've ever played.

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Home Improvement The Adventures of Gilligan's Island

(We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for something that's actually possible.) On today's episode of Renegade Ego, the King's friend...let's say @ArbitraryWater...convinces the King to experiment with everything under the sink. He should have learned to stay away from all those chemicals...but he hasn't. This time, things are different. Yes, the King trips out on cleaning chemicals, but is now transported to an isolated hell where every day is the same torturous routine. It is ruled by the seven deadly sins, but among them, one tyrant reigns supreme: that tyrant is Gilligan, and this is his island.

It all starts with a group of shit-eating grins getting stranded on an island, and....no, that's pretty much all there is to it. Yet despite that, it's surprising how much effort the developers put into making this feel like the show itself. You play episodes instead of levels, and each one begins with a setup that could have been lifted from the TV show. Reluctantly, I have to congratulate the developers on nailing the feel of the TV show. Why reluctantly? Well, look at the choice of show. Really? Gilligan's Island? You chose that show? Granted, I haven't watched the show, but this game certainly doesn't make me want to change that, what with the corny jokes, repetitive dialogue, and crap plots built around these two things. So to sum things up: Bandai wanted to make a game feel like a 25 year old TV show, and unfortunately, that's exactly what they did.

After reading the first two paragraphs of this, do you get the feeling that things are repetitive for no real reason? Well, that's The Adventures of Gilligan's Island for you. All the episodes (yes, all four of them), are exactly the same, and what's there isn't exactly exciting. First, you wander around a bit in search of a goal, because nobody ever thinks to set that up in the cutscenes before each episode. Once your goal, you bounce from castaway to castaway, doing their bidding because apparently shelter or escape aren't as important as a fucking golf ball in a tree. (That reminds me: tree climbing occurs in EVERY episode, for some reason.) At some point, the game gets fed up with this and hands you a club to beat something to death with. Now I know this might sound like something resembling fun, but that's only until you actually hit something. All the fights boil down to mashing the B button until something bleeds to death. Hopefully, it's your thumb; otherwise, you move onto the next episode. It only gets worse as the game goes on, culminating in a final level where you bounce back and forth between two NPCs like some game of human Pong. Wow, my Hell analogy from before looks very fitting, in retrospect.

Which reminds me: Gilligan. He's a feature in this game, by which I mean he occupies space on the screen. That's all he does, yet somehow, he gets far more importance in this game than he deserves. You don't even play as him; you're forced to drag the poor bastard around and wait for him to catch up every three seconds. If you decline, the game pesters you about the missing Gilligan until you get him back and can move on with the game. Sounds like fun, right? Why don't more games force you to bring along a useless companion who slows down the game immensely and pretends to be a legitimate gameplay feature? Maybe we'll find out next week on Renegade Ego.

Review Synopsis

• If you've ever wanted to play through an episode of Gilligan's Island, then you're probably too implausible to exist.
• Speaking of non-existent, the gameplay!
• Oh, and Gilligan's useless.