Vigilante

Vigilante
by p0wn3d Games profile

Episode 1 of the Vigilante series
Action
2009

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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

Wait. What?, November 12, 2009

by Ryusui (Out in the middle of a field!)

(Warning: This review might contain spoilers. Click to show the full review.)I'd snark, but I'm genuinely too dumbfounded to do anything of the sort.

I never thought I'd see a game worse than Cortes's(sic) Creed or Apollo 11, but here it is, in all its glory. Both of those games at least showed some strange kind of promise on the part of their authors, but this...it's like an eight-year-old with a taste for violent action movies got his hands on Inform 7, hit the ground running and didn't stop (or even bother to look where he was going) until he ran straight off a cliff.

Basically, the flow of the game is this: kill everything that's in the room with you, figure out which of the unmarked exits leads to the next room (optional: read the minimal room description which may, on rare occasions, actually tell you where to go next), rinse and repeat. That's all there is.

I say "everything" because the game makes no distinction between animate and inanimate objects. You can kill "Motorcycle" and "Glock" just as easily as you can "A Man Named Sniper" or any one of the various cops who, as the game informs you, are trying to kill you for no apparent reason (despite the game over message telling you you're supposed to be a "criminal mastermind"). You can even kill yourself and suffer no ill effects save for an error message. (Since you get ten points per kill, that makes killing yourself repeatedly a splendid way to rack up a high score. If such a thing matters to you.) The only way I've found that you can actually die is if you don't kill the officer waiting for you on your front lawn; he kills you if you try to go anywhere from "Street". Everywhere else, consequence-free murder and mayhem is the order of the day.

The game starts by prompting you to choose your gender. Naturally, selecting either "male" or "female" will prompt a confirmation followed by a parser error, and the game does not actually pause during this sequence: you can play through the entire game with the gender prompt displayed. This, though, isn't the first visible clue that this game is an utter and complete trainwreck: that would be the fact that the banner prints "Getting started is a room" immediately after the author's name.

It's more playable than either Hors Categorie or Dog Saves Baby, but that's really not saying anything at all. The game ends in a room marked "Cliffhanger" and the victory message promises a sequel; we can only hope that by Vigilante 2, the author has actually played some IF games to base his work on. Attack of the Robot Yeti Zombies or Gun Mute would be ideal.

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AmberShards, March 23, 2010 - Reply
The author's comments are gone, so I can't read what he said. All I have is what YOU and Ryusui said. Given the way that YOU are behaving, I don't have much reason to trust you. See how it works? Sigh...

Again, Vigilante is a whole game. The Introcomp "games" were not. Neither were/are most Speed IFs, which this game is quite similar to, in terms of implementation. So on a very basic level, Vigilante is better implemented and more playable than many IF games out there. Even the initial review alludes to that.

By the by, I have played it, and I'm still laughing at the level of rancor that you and Ryusui have about this one game, which doesn't aspire to be anything, and which is the clearly the work of a young newcomer to IF. Actually, the more I think about, the less I'm laughing.

You both should have ENCOURAGED him instead of CRUCIFYING him. If he was a long-time IF author or if the game was completely unplayable (like Epyk), I would have smacked him around a bit, too.

But he's not, it's not, and this ain't any way to welcome someone to the community.

Ryusui, March 25, 2010 - Reply
He deleted both his comments and his game, which ought to be telling on its own.

Look, feel free to assume what you want - it's clear we agree that the game, on its own merits, deserves a low rating - but the fact is, his reaction to my review was not to take it to heart and improve, but write his own five-star review.

The game earns points over the games I mentioned in my review by pure dint of being unpretentious: it's a mindless shoot-em-up, with heavy emphasis on mindless, and it never pretends it isn't anything else - except at the very end, where apparently the author had some grand visions of assembling a story based on his "run around and kill everything" premise. It is, yes, playable, and winnable. It's also an utter shambles, and could only have benefited from some decent playtesting - although judging from his vitriolic reaction to any and all criticism, it's doubtful he would have actually implemented any changes or fixed any mistakes.

As for rancor...well, I don't imagine you'll take our word for it, but he did fire the first shot. As far as I could tell, he got upset that his first review wasn't worshipful praise for his genius effort, or some such. You act as though we chased off the next Andrew Plotkin or Adam Cadre; what we did was tell a newbie to his face that his game should've had a lot more work done on it before he released it to the public, and rather than take our advice and improve, he exploded, practically screaming that he had carte blanche to do whatever he wanted because it was his first game. He's not worth your tears, let alone your consideration.

AmberShards, May 16, 2010 - Reply
I'm not implying that he's the next Plotkin or Cadre -- that's a darn good insult, though. I'll have to remember that one.

Yes, you "did tell a newbie to his face..." which is why he left and took his game with him.

All I'm really saying is that if you want to chase folks off, keep doing this.

AmberShards, March 20, 2010 - Reply
The game's no longer available. Now no-one can play it. Are you guys happy now?

No matter how much this game sucked, at least it was (apparently) a whole game, which is better than every Intro Comp "game" ever made.

Ryusui, November 12, 2009 - Reply
Really, now, flinging insults like a five-year-old? To you I say this: put up or shut up. Make Vigilante a game worthy of a higher rating and I'll change my review.

I recommend you play Attack of the Robot Yeti Zombies, Gun Mute and Slap That Fish (can't believe I forgot that one until just now). Each of these games consists of a gauntlet run of foes that you must either mercilessly destroy or outwit: just like your game, only they did it better. Now, these are games I'd give higher ratings to.

If you can't take a bad review, then write a better game. It's as simple as that.

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