- Joined
- Jun 27, 2014
In life, there are some things that no amount of preparation can properly steel one for. This could be a bullet to the back of your head, an apocalyptic earthquake, or it just might be Hackers vs Banksters. So suffice to say, when @c-no sent me this fucking thing, accompanied by a titter-giggle one might normally reserve for shoving a friend into the women's locker room at school, I was immediately on-guard.
This game transcends ineptitude. It may go down in history as being the worst thing I've played in over a decade, eclipsing both That Really Hot Chick and Devil's Forge. Not even the horrors of Revolution 60 can hold a candle to this title, because at least something fucking happened in it.
So.... Yes. This is another narrative-based text adventure game made using a visual novel engine.
Let's challenge.
That's a hell of a start.
The game opens up with some dude named "Tankboy" asking his purple-haired love-interest for dinner. I will point out that - yes - this *is* the actual art in the game, and yes, it makes Chris look like a fucking god of artistic integrity. I'm less than four seconds in, and you are already privy to what this game is going to be making us endure. Whereas That Really Hot Chick was delightfully inane, this game is strictly business.
The business of making me pine for the days of Jay Geis and Myth of the Legendary Warrior, that is.
"Tankboy" asks for dinner, and suggests Steak, and the purple-haired character "Crowgirl" suggests she can do so. The worst cut-away shot in the history of video games happens, at which point Crowgirl says there's no steak.
This is an actual transition.
This is followed by an absence of macaroni and cheese and ramen, at which point it's clear that all the pair has is a loaf of bread covered in mold. The pair want to go to the market but have no money - not in cash, debit accounts, or on their credit.
I'm left wondering why they can afford computers larger than they are whilst having no money for food, but that's just my uppity working-class sensibilities getting in the way. After some mild cursing, Crowgirl elaborates that their information security clients never pay them on time. At this point the two idiots elect to "get revenge," because "Toronto District" "stole" $70,000 because of an accountant fucking up their taxes.
Suddenly it becomes apparent that this game is about as divorced from reality as a Sonichu comic, and a hell of a lot less amusing, because this takes place in a world where neither lawsuits nor audits exist.
We then learn that Tankboy and Crowgirl are a pair of elite hackers, and plan to take revenge.
At this point, the game openly breaks the fourth wall and asks the player to decide what to do. "Sell your overpriced computer hardware" is not an option, nor is "sue the motherfucker who gouged you such a ludicrous sum," so I'm given the choice of deploying malware to their data center, frame their board of directors to get them in trouble, or spoof a bank executive.
Electing to try this idiocy out, I choose choice #2, only for the game to fucking end.
Apparently, the game's other choices are programmed to end the game entirely unless you choose the first one.
Don't you fucking mock me, tranny.
Anyway, choosing the only option that I can, the game progresses. So the pair get ready to deploy Malware to the datacentre, breaking the law in the process. They argue that even though this will be essentially a mild inconvenience, it will somehow cost them a billion dollars through a process not entirely described involving lost productivity.
They talk pseudoscience for a bit about how their cryptography should take a supercomputing cluster "over a year to crack," and suddenly I'm getting flashbacks of Laurelai's amazing hacker skills and how she failed to dox CatParty. The two elect to employ "Flat Top Jones, a master Cryptographer. They then say they'll grab credit card info in the attack and give some to Jones to pay him. And it's here I have to stop this game a moment.
I'm going to ignore for a moment that these tardmonkeys are advocating theft since the firm in question has legitimate customers who these poorly-drawn speds aren't giving a shit about. Instead, I'm gonna lock onto the fact that Credit Card numbers are hilariously easy to acquire. You can go straight to websites right now and get the numbers of hundreds of legit cards for about $20. It's blatantly illegal and pretty-closely-watched by both banks and the fed, but it happens so fucking often that it's been done to death.
So Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber want to talk to him but avoid the phone because it's "too dangerous," and go on a walk.
They then call him anyway. You guys loving all the random normal people amidst our legless abomination protagonists?
After telling him they need to discuss it in person ("OpSec!"), the Cryptographer agrees to meet with them and buy them lunch, and you realize that the entire narrative has collapsed in upon itself, since the initial problem (no food) has been resolved.
I'm then given the choice between going to the Hipster Cafe and Kimiko Ikazaya, whatever the hell that is. Not wanting to associate with the sort of rainbow-haired audience this game is probably marketed for, I choose the latter, which apparently is a Japanese Restaurant.
At this point the Narrator introduces themselves and I'm even more annoyed.
The Narrator then tells me that Crowgirl is Anorexic, just like the Narrator is, firmly establishing her as a none-too-subtle author insert, and the narrator, dropping ambiguity, informs me that it's my job, as the player, to manage "Crowgirl's" weight. If she goes too long without food, she'll be hospitalized and the game will end, whereas if I feed her and she goes over 100 pounds and thus her actual supposed-to-have weight, she'll fall into morbid depression and the game will also end.
The game informs me that she won't recover from Anorexia during this game and I'm not a specially-trained eating disorders counsellor, at which point the game also tells me that Tankboy has PTSD, and it becomes clear that I'm essentially playing Tumblr Self-Diagnosis-Disorders: The Video Game.
The game then drops this piece of shit, which I take as a challenge:
Given that I *want* these completely unsympathetic assholes to fail, I'm going to make it my mission to induce a failure state in this piece of shit, but that can wait. For now, I ordered the only basic thing it'd let me and I sat through a boring scene in which these badly-drawn heuristic failures go on about their cunning masterplan to pronk Toronto Distrust. At this point Flat Top makes it abundantly clear that this will solve nothing but Tankboy wants to do it because REVENGE.
You know, game, I'd appreciate you not making my points for me.
Crowgirl is convinced that shutting down the activities of a chartered accountancy firm will cost them "billions" of lost revenue if done for several days. Flat Top rolls his eyes and says he'll help if the group covers their tracks. We then learn that "Crowgirl" is a writer for "InfoSec," and earns "$300 per 2,000 words, and I laugh because if this was applied to the Kiwi Farms, I could buy my own personal Race War Van with any of my investigative pieces.
After dropping all the hard work into Flat-Top's lap, and borrowing money from him for good measure, I'm given the choice between telling Flat-Top I'd really appreciate it, or cold, hard cash. Being a cynical and enterprising shithead, I choose the latter.
The fourth-wall breaks are insanely obnoxious. Someone make them stop.
Moving on, I have a choice of places to go to relax, the Eaton Center or the Reference Library. Knowing that there I'd be able to do some proper man-thinking, I visit the latter, realizing to my horror that I'm in the grim darkness of the far future and there is only Canada.
Tankboy and Crowgirl look at some "Intriguing Text Books" together. I know thinkly-veiled porn when I hear it.
At this point the game tells me that Tankboy has PTSD, and was an army veteran, and that his PTSD stems from him being abused as a child. The game Elaborates on this by saying that Tankboy was never actually deployed to combat. It then informs me that Tankboy has a series of triggers, including large enclosed spaces and child abuse, and that I, the player, need to cater to his needs. At no point is the bolt permanently embedded in his neck ever addressed. If Tankboy is "Triggered" too many times over the course of the game, the game will end because the attack on Toronto Mistrust will fail.
...I've just noticed that they've changed the name of this group about three times since I started playing. First Toronto District, then Toronto Distrust, and now Toronto Mistrust. Tankboy goes to get a snack from the vending machine and we have another cocksucking fourth-wall-break. After trying to convince Crowgirl to eat potato crisps, I get a choice of what book to get and these are equally retarded.
I choose choice A, my resolve tested. Apparently I'm not the only one, however...
An image of a needle appears, and Tankboy is TRIGGERED, despite that having nothing to do with the Triggers list they just fucking mentioned. Day is forced to end because TRIGGERING, and we return to Tankboy's home, which I need say nothing about:
Tankboy confirmed as Homer in 40 years.
After this, Tankboy sends Crowgirl out for food because he apparently is a quantum black hole of food consumption.
Crowgirl sees wine gums, and really likes wine gums, but cannot have wine gums because ANOREXIA and if she eats them she'll eat MORE THAN THREE HUNDRED CALORIES and thus DIE. Because this idiot clearly cannot be trusted to make her own decisions and has no self-control, I smack her with my mouse cursor and she declines the candy.
At this point she gets him a salisbury steak dinner, two cans of energy drink, and a pack of cigarettes. Suddenly the source of these idiots' economic woes is becoming more and more obvious. Crowgirl gets carded and is HIGHLY OFFENDED, further proving that she is not a human.
When I was a cashier, every single woman I'd asked for ID on when buying cigs was fucking flattered.
When she gets home, I learn that Tankboy cannot microwave a TV dinner on his own.
I'm not entirely convinced that that image isn't Jon-Nyan during his "Lavender" period." Also gotta love the Google images.
We also learn that Tankboy has a Teddy Bear, named Phredd. I have no beef with people owning stuffed animals, but I swear to GodJesus BearChrist, if I have to change someone's diaper in this game, I'm going to grab @c-no and throttle him until he speaks four languages.
At this point Tankboy calls his friend Taylor, who's a security specialist. Apparently he visits Toronto Mistrust's Bay Street HQ periodically. At this point, Tankboy almost botches the entire plan by talking to Taylor about the security on his work phone. Truly, we're dealing with the sort of masterclass hackers that can only be formed from the crucible of Tumblr's depths.
Taylor then sends Crowgirl out to get coffee, and she goes to totally-not-Starbucks.
I choose the muffin because if I don't get to enjoy myself then neither does this game.
What follows is a giant boring self-referential yawn-fest as Crowgirl writes about boring tech shit and argues with a narrator for about 40 pages. Lines blur together and I find myself ruminating over the fact that I literally could have been spending this segment huffing jhenk and I'd still have the same sense of what's going on.
At this point the pair goes to Bay Street and meets with Taylor, who first surprises me by being a terrible person:
And then follows this up by, to my horror and surprise, appearing to be an un-Tomgirl'd Chris:
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO CHRISTINE CHANDLER?!
Taylor randomly gives them three thousand dollars for no particular reason. I elect to go to the Hipster Cafe and Taylor informs me I chose well. The scene with the poor cashier gets across that Taylor is nonbinary and the entire next five lines is devoted to their personal pronouns.
We then learn that Santos has over $500,000 in savings.
The game then informs me that we have to be careful of what we tell Taylor, or the mission will fail, and offers me a choice:
And it's here I'm taking a break. Stay tuned for part 2, where this shit ends, I pray.
This game transcends ineptitude. It may go down in history as being the worst thing I've played in over a decade, eclipsing both That Really Hot Chick and Devil's Forge. Not even the horrors of Revolution 60 can hold a candle to this title, because at least something fucking happened in it.
So.... Yes. This is another narrative-based text adventure game made using a visual novel engine.
Let's challenge.
That's a hell of a start.
The game opens up with some dude named "Tankboy" asking his purple-haired love-interest for dinner. I will point out that - yes - this *is* the actual art in the game, and yes, it makes Chris look like a fucking god of artistic integrity. I'm less than four seconds in, and you are already privy to what this game is going to be making us endure. Whereas That Really Hot Chick was delightfully inane, this game is strictly business.
The business of making me pine for the days of Jay Geis and Myth of the Legendary Warrior, that is.
"Tankboy" asks for dinner, and suggests Steak, and the purple-haired character "Crowgirl" suggests she can do so. The worst cut-away shot in the history of video games happens, at which point Crowgirl says there's no steak.
This is an actual transition.
This is followed by an absence of macaroni and cheese and ramen, at which point it's clear that all the pair has is a loaf of bread covered in mold. The pair want to go to the market but have no money - not in cash, debit accounts, or on their credit.
I'm left wondering why they can afford computers larger than they are whilst having no money for food, but that's just my uppity working-class sensibilities getting in the way. After some mild cursing, Crowgirl elaborates that their information security clients never pay them on time. At this point the two idiots elect to "get revenge," because "Toronto District" "stole" $70,000 because of an accountant fucking up their taxes.
Suddenly it becomes apparent that this game is about as divorced from reality as a Sonichu comic, and a hell of a lot less amusing, because this takes place in a world where neither lawsuits nor audits exist.
We then learn that Tankboy and Crowgirl are a pair of elite hackers, and plan to take revenge.
At this point, the game openly breaks the fourth wall and asks the player to decide what to do. "Sell your overpriced computer hardware" is not an option, nor is "sue the motherfucker who gouged you such a ludicrous sum," so I'm given the choice of deploying malware to their data center, frame their board of directors to get them in trouble, or spoof a bank executive.
Electing to try this idiocy out, I choose choice #2, only for the game to fucking end.
Apparently, the game's other choices are programmed to end the game entirely unless you choose the first one.
Don't you fucking mock me, tranny.
Anyway, choosing the only option that I can, the game progresses. So the pair get ready to deploy Malware to the datacentre, breaking the law in the process. They argue that even though this will be essentially a mild inconvenience, it will somehow cost them a billion dollars through a process not entirely described involving lost productivity.
They talk pseudoscience for a bit about how their cryptography should take a supercomputing cluster "over a year to crack," and suddenly I'm getting flashbacks of Laurelai's amazing hacker skills and how she failed to dox CatParty. The two elect to employ "Flat Top Jones, a master Cryptographer. They then say they'll grab credit card info in the attack and give some to Jones to pay him. And it's here I have to stop this game a moment.
I'm going to ignore for a moment that these tardmonkeys are advocating theft since the firm in question has legitimate customers who these poorly-drawn speds aren't giving a shit about. Instead, I'm gonna lock onto the fact that Credit Card numbers are hilariously easy to acquire. You can go straight to websites right now and get the numbers of hundreds of legit cards for about $20. It's blatantly illegal and pretty-closely-watched by both banks and the fed, but it happens so fucking often that it's been done to death.
So Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber want to talk to him but avoid the phone because it's "too dangerous," and go on a walk.
They then call him anyway. You guys loving all the random normal people amidst our legless abomination protagonists?
After telling him they need to discuss it in person ("OpSec!"), the Cryptographer agrees to meet with them and buy them lunch, and you realize that the entire narrative has collapsed in upon itself, since the initial problem (no food) has been resolved.
I'm then given the choice between going to the Hipster Cafe and Kimiko Ikazaya, whatever the hell that is. Not wanting to associate with the sort of rainbow-haired audience this game is probably marketed for, I choose the latter, which apparently is a Japanese Restaurant.
At this point the Narrator introduces themselves and I'm even more annoyed.
The Narrator then tells me that Crowgirl is Anorexic, just like the Narrator is, firmly establishing her as a none-too-subtle author insert, and the narrator, dropping ambiguity, informs me that it's my job, as the player, to manage "Crowgirl's" weight. If she goes too long without food, she'll be hospitalized and the game will end, whereas if I feed her and she goes over 100 pounds and thus her actual supposed-to-have weight, she'll fall into morbid depression and the game will also end.
The game informs me that she won't recover from Anorexia during this game and I'm not a specially-trained eating disorders counsellor, at which point the game also tells me that Tankboy has PTSD, and it becomes clear that I'm essentially playing Tumblr Self-Diagnosis-Disorders: The Video Game.
The game then drops this piece of shit, which I take as a challenge:
Given that I *want* these completely unsympathetic assholes to fail, I'm going to make it my mission to induce a failure state in this piece of shit, but that can wait. For now, I ordered the only basic thing it'd let me and I sat through a boring scene in which these badly-drawn heuristic failures go on about their cunning masterplan to pronk Toronto Distrust. At this point Flat Top makes it abundantly clear that this will solve nothing but Tankboy wants to do it because REVENGE.
You know, game, I'd appreciate you not making my points for me.
Crowgirl is convinced that shutting down the activities of a chartered accountancy firm will cost them "billions" of lost revenue if done for several days. Flat Top rolls his eyes and says he'll help if the group covers their tracks. We then learn that "Crowgirl" is a writer for "InfoSec," and earns "$300 per 2,000 words, and I laugh because if this was applied to the Kiwi Farms, I could buy my own personal Race War Van with any of my investigative pieces.
After dropping all the hard work into Flat-Top's lap, and borrowing money from him for good measure, I'm given the choice between telling Flat-Top I'd really appreciate it, or cold, hard cash. Being a cynical and enterprising shithead, I choose the latter.
The fourth-wall breaks are insanely obnoxious. Someone make them stop.
Moving on, I have a choice of places to go to relax, the Eaton Center or the Reference Library. Knowing that there I'd be able to do some proper man-thinking, I visit the latter, realizing to my horror that I'm in the grim darkness of the far future and there is only Canada.
Tankboy and Crowgirl look at some "Intriguing Text Books" together. I know thinkly-veiled porn when I hear it.
At this point the game tells me that Tankboy has PTSD, and was an army veteran, and that his PTSD stems from him being abused as a child. The game Elaborates on this by saying that Tankboy was never actually deployed to combat. It then informs me that Tankboy has a series of triggers, including large enclosed spaces and child abuse, and that I, the player, need to cater to his needs. At no point is the bolt permanently embedded in his neck ever addressed. If Tankboy is "Triggered" too many times over the course of the game, the game will end because the attack on Toronto Mistrust will fail.
...I've just noticed that they've changed the name of this group about three times since I started playing. First Toronto District, then Toronto Distrust, and now Toronto Mistrust. Tankboy goes to get a snack from the vending machine and we have another cocksucking fourth-wall-break. After trying to convince Crowgirl to eat potato crisps, I get a choice of what book to get and these are equally retarded.
I choose choice A, my resolve tested. Apparently I'm not the only one, however...
An image of a needle appears, and Tankboy is TRIGGERED, despite that having nothing to do with the Triggers list they just fucking mentioned. Day is forced to end because TRIGGERING, and we return to Tankboy's home, which I need say nothing about:
Tankboy confirmed as Homer in 40 years.
After this, Tankboy sends Crowgirl out for food because he apparently is a quantum black hole of food consumption.
Crowgirl sees wine gums, and really likes wine gums, but cannot have wine gums because ANOREXIA and if she eats them she'll eat MORE THAN THREE HUNDRED CALORIES and thus DIE. Because this idiot clearly cannot be trusted to make her own decisions and has no self-control, I smack her with my mouse cursor and she declines the candy.
At this point she gets him a salisbury steak dinner, two cans of energy drink, and a pack of cigarettes. Suddenly the source of these idiots' economic woes is becoming more and more obvious. Crowgirl gets carded and is HIGHLY OFFENDED, further proving that she is not a human.
When I was a cashier, every single woman I'd asked for ID on when buying cigs was fucking flattered.
When she gets home, I learn that Tankboy cannot microwave a TV dinner on his own.
I'm not entirely convinced that that image isn't Jon-Nyan during his "Lavender" period." Also gotta love the Google images.
We also learn that Tankboy has a Teddy Bear, named Phredd. I have no beef with people owning stuffed animals, but I swear to GodJesus BearChrist, if I have to change someone's diaper in this game, I'm going to grab @c-no and throttle him until he speaks four languages.
At this point Tankboy calls his friend Taylor, who's a security specialist. Apparently he visits Toronto Mistrust's Bay Street HQ periodically. At this point, Tankboy almost botches the entire plan by talking to Taylor about the security on his work phone. Truly, we're dealing with the sort of masterclass hackers that can only be formed from the crucible of Tumblr's depths.
Taylor then sends Crowgirl out to get coffee, and she goes to totally-not-Starbucks.
I choose the muffin because if I don't get to enjoy myself then neither does this game.
What follows is a giant boring self-referential yawn-fest as Crowgirl writes about boring tech shit and argues with a narrator for about 40 pages. Lines blur together and I find myself ruminating over the fact that I literally could have been spending this segment huffing jhenk and I'd still have the same sense of what's going on.
At this point the pair goes to Bay Street and meets with Taylor, who first surprises me by being a terrible person:
And then follows this up by, to my horror and surprise, appearing to be an un-Tomgirl'd Chris:
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO CHRISTINE CHANDLER?!
Taylor randomly gives them three thousand dollars for no particular reason. I elect to go to the Hipster Cafe and Taylor informs me I chose well. The scene with the poor cashier gets across that Taylor is nonbinary and the entire next five lines is devoted to their personal pronouns.
We then learn that Santos has over $500,000 in savings.
The game then informs me that we have to be careful of what we tell Taylor, or the mission will fail, and offers me a choice:
And it's here I'm taking a break. Stay tuned for part 2, where this shit ends, I pray.
