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Rune Review
2000-11-03 Erik Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5
Here's another thing I don't like anymore: architectural stupidity.  Let me put this in terms of Art Frahm.   Art Frahm was a painter whose favorite subject was women whose panties had - against all laws of physics and common sense - mysteriously fallen around their ankles.  After you look at enough of these paintings, the absurdity eventually starts to kind of make sense.   Likewise, games have lots of ingrained Art Frahm-isms that we now accept as immutable forces of design.  Here's an example:

Art Frahm

"Oops, my panties fell off!"
 

Rune
 


"oops, my impregnable castle of evil has an unlocked side-entrance!"

Next time you're hunched over your Bubblegum Crisis mousepad designing a level, think to yourself: what would Art Frahm do?  If the answer is, make the only entrance to the boss of the sewer's office - the one the boss himself would have to use - through a long hall filled with giant pointless rotating gears that crush things on contact, don't do it!  It's idiotic and Art Frahm already did it better than you.  Under the harsh light of logical deconstruction, he proved that it's okay for the the emperor to have no clothes - if the emperor is a hot chick.  All you're going to prove is that the naked emperor of the gloomy cave is an imbecile.   Hit the "undo" button and think harder.  That's also a trick question, because you're not supposed to be making a sewer level anyway.  Back to the drawing board, jackass.
  
 
Even one more thing I don't like about Rune is this character from The Norseman:

I feel just as bad about the way blacks have been treated as anyone.  If there was I a way I could make reparations - say by annexing Quebec and giving every African American family three French Canadian slaves - I'd do it.  I firmly believe that both Jesus and Jennifer Lopez are black.  But for God's sake, the one place where I think all of us can get behind a strict whites-only policy is the casts of Viking movies.

Here's another shot of Ke-Shawn Porvaldr. This is an outrage to whites  and blacks alike.  I'm gonna play the odds here and say it probably upsets feminists too.

Hi folks, Lee Majors again.  That's a picture of me and the colored fella to the right there.  When we were filming The Norseman, sometimes on my way home to see my wife Farrah Fawcett Majors, I'd stop at a bar.  Mind you, this was in the days before she left me. Before you might pull up to find her squattin' over your front lawn takin' a crap.   Anyway, I'd ask the bartender if he could make me a Black Viking.  He'd ask, well what's in that.  I'd say, well ya take two parts vermouth, one part soda and mix it all up in a unicorn horn.  He'd say, Lee, there's no such thing as a unicorn.  I'd tell him, well that's okay cause there ain't no such damn thing as a black viking.  The Norseman didn't do so good.
 

 


Is this dark picture of steam and a giant rotating gear from:

a) Rune
b) FAKK 2
c) Quake 2
d) Every Game Ever Made

Answer: Who Cares

 
All I'm saying is that it's time to start thinking outside the crate here or gleaming the cube or whatever the fuck if takes to insure that the next time fifteen smart people spend a million dollars and three years of their lives making a game, it doesn't take place in a gray sewer.  C'mon U.S. game developers, you can do it!   At this rate, the sun will burn
out or Max Payne will be released before any of you gets off your lazy butts and makes a game where you face off against a dancing monkey armed only with a pair of maracas.  By the way, don't actually do that, because the Japanese already did it for you.   The Japs are kicking your ass for chrissake.  Even the French managed to make Rayman 2.  The French!



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