Windows

A Fork in the Tale

AAAAAAAHHHH! I've been stabbed. Wait, what's this? I'm being operated on. Why am I in the water again? Oh, look at the pretty fishes. Oh no, it's a shark trying to kill me too. Welcome to A Fork in the Tale, the game that, reminiscent of Dragon's Lair, continuously kills you, over and over and over . . . I've never died so many times in my life!

Технология, примененная в этой игрушке, делает первые, еще не уверенные шаги. В Fork in the Tale можно с удовольствием поиграть в гостях, игру можно одолжить на вечерок - на большее она и не претендует. Но вот когда получат достаточное распространение DVD-диски, которые легко уместят гигабайты качественного видео, такие игры, только, разумеется, куда лучшего качества, окончательно порвут с квестовым прошлым (с которым Fork in the Tale, например, связывают лишь редкие пазлы да иногда смешные, но в общем-то ничего для сюжета не значащие реплики персонажей) и составят серьезную конкуренцию трехмерным экшенам. Что, вообще говоря, довольно грустно, потому что той свободой действий и движения, которой обладают лучшие из них, игры с видео не смогут похвастаться никогда.

Although the game deals with some serious subjects, the level of comedy encountered depends a great deal on the player's ongoing choices -- the more speech icons you click on, the more comedy you will hear. The game contains more than 4,000 lines of randomly selected dialog to further the cause of comedy as you work your way through the adventure. Gameplay in A Fork in the Tale is from a first-person perspective and features the voice of comedian Rob Schneider as your onscreen alter ego.

From the first sequence to the last, it's a constant barrage of fast-paced frustration.

In truth, AFitT barely qualifies as an adventure game at all. The vast majority of gameplay is geared toward twitch-clicking on an icon (ANY icon) when it appears rather than toward any thinking. The rapidity with which the icons disappear, their likelihood of appearing absolutely anywhere on the screen, and the fact that many of them are moving while you are trying to click on them will soon have you inhabiting whatever circle of Dante’s hell is reserved for Super Collapse players. The only “puzzling” in the game consists of having to figure out a few “hand gestures” which are used to learn magic spells. These “puzzles” involve moving the cursor around the screen in various directions trying to bring a migraine-inducing pattern of light into focus; kind of an anti-Etch-A-Sketch.

I have to admit that this is the only game review I have ever written without actually finishing the game. I just couldn’t make myself do it. Every time I thought about starting it up again to play a little farther, I suddenly got a ringing in my ears and intense nausea. I gamely plugged away. But after two bottles of Pepto-Bismol and two-thirds of the game, I had to stick a fork in this turkey. I was done.