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1-15 of 15 - egostat (Purgatory of Social Ineptitude), May 8, 2024
- Max Fog, March 25, 2024
1 of
1 people found the following review helpful:
50% Chance of Exactly As Advertised, December 24, 2023Adapted from an IFCOMP23 Review
Excerpts of interview between JJMcC from a future where he has played DMcBGKitN, and JJMcC from the past, right before playing. For clarity they will be post-McB and pre-McB, respectively.
post-McB: “You won’t believe the crazy chain of events that led to this, but I’m, WE’RE, a TIME TRAVELER now!”
pre-McB: “This is bananas, tell me all about it!”
post-McB: “Where do I start? Well, on the eve of the Texas Inquisition of '25…”
// TRANSCRIPT -FFWD
“… our Postmate driver population the whole time…”
// TRANSCRIPT -FFWD
“… chants of ‘Martha, Martha’ with a lowing, droning ‘Steeeeewart’…”
// TRANSCRIPT -FFWD
“…K-POP KABAL and their meme bombs…”
// TRANSCRIPT -FFWD
“…and I ended up here!”
pre-McB: “Wow, what a story! You know what this means?”
post-McB: “I mean, so many things. What are you thinking of?”
pre-McB: “Now I can do REAL Reviews Out Of Time!!”
post-McB: (nonplussed) “That’s your takeaway?”
pre-McB: “I was about to play Dick McButts in IFCOMP23 and I have a few preliminary notes, lemme run those past you. Gonna be a lotta testical synonyms, yeah?”
post-McB: (off balance) “Uh, yeah. So, so many.”
pre-McB: “I mean I’m expecting a lot.”
post-McB: “You will not be underserved.”
pre-McB: “I’m also expecting outlandish escalations.”
post-McB: “Yes, oh for sure, but also less than you might think.”
pre-McB: “Less? Really?”
post-McB: “In raw volume. (wry smile) Hoo, the midpoint though…”
pre-McB: “Spoilers!”
post-McB: “I’m you from the future. The only thing we have to talk about is spoilers.”
pre-McB: “We have shared memories!”
post-McB: “And what would we have new to say about those?”
pre-McB: (brief, awkward silence) “Next question, is it funny? Can it sustain the bit?”
post-McB: "Well, understand there are two branches, one outright player trolling. Fortunately we don't get that one."
pre-McB: "Wow, thanks winds of Fate! So it was funny?"
post-McB: “Yesss, mostly, but it’s better when it’s surprising.”
pre-McB: “Is it review proof?”
post-McB: “Iron clad. Impossible to write about.”
pre-McB: (skeptical) “I’ll figure it out, it’s not like I’ll just phone in a cheap gimmick. Oh! Can we say it together?”
post-McB: “Sure. 1,2,3…”
Both: “Sparks of Joy! Seamless!”
pre-McB: (laughing) “I figured…”
post-McB: (laughing) “Dude you haven’t even played it yet.” (laughter dying) “Wow, we really had NO integrity in this did we…”
pre-McB: (oblivious, still laughing) “Is the gameplay worth discussing…?”
post-McB: “WHOAH! Something weird is happening, oh crap I can feel a slip coming on. Quick let me tell you about the Great Collapse of …” (rest inaudible behind…)
pre-McB: “DON’T GO! YOU HAVE TO TELL ME DO I GET TO RACK HITLER?! DO I GET TO… FUTURE ME DON’T…”
//TRANSCRIPT ENDS
Played: 10/17/23
Playtime: 35min, finished after 4 crushings
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy, Seamless
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience is complete
Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless
6 of
6 people found the following review helpful:
DICK MCBUTTS GETS REVIEWED IN THE NUTS, December 1, 2023(This is a lightly-edited version of a review I posted to the IntFiction forums during 2023's IFComp).
There are some stories that, when you encounter them, worm their way into your brain and take up permanent occupancy. Borges’ “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” is on that list for me; the piece concerns an eccentric Frenchman who so fashions his life so that he can write, from scratch and without reference to the original, simply from his own mind and direct experiences, a brand-new version of Don Quixote that is exactly the same, textually speaking, as what Cervantes wrote. But even though every character precisely matches, the story’s narrator tells us that the two books are not the same: there are some passages where Menard writes so movingly, and with such fiery, personal inspiration that the corresponding bits of Cervantes pale in comparison.
We have something slightly different here: instead of two identical works with the same title but different authors, DICK MCBUTTS GETS KICKED IN THE NUTS has one title and one author but two entirely separate texts. I was spoiled on this feature by some of the forum discussion surrounding what’s clearly an entry that wants to be noticed, learning that there’s a random die roll at the beginning that determines which of the two versions a given player will get. I also knew going in that one is linear, full of typos and egregiously offensive, while the other has some actual gameplay and is legit funny.
On the one hand, this is clearly just a play for the Golden Banana of Discord. On the other, that’s a good meta joke, and the combination of title, authorial pseudonym (my money was that this was Graham Nelson’s triumphant return to IF; it was only slightly disappointing to learn it was actually the very funny Damon L. Wakes), and blurb was sufficiently funny that I decided I’d play along: I resolved to take whichever version the RNG offered up, and not game things to replay the other one, in order to obtain the intended experience.
Reader, you probably know me well enough by now to know that I was secretly hoping to be stuck with the terrible one, and my hopes were not disappointed. The five-minute vignette I played was entirely linear, moving sentence-by-sentence through a zero-context extravaganza of genital trauma and bodily excreta with cameos by Adolf Hitler (as promised), various 80s movie villains, and a troupe of cancan dancers. There’s only one dramatic element – it’s the one in the title – that plays out in a variety of scenarios, the content set off by a nauseously-oscillating green-and-pink background, rakishly-angled text, and typos that couldn’t be more aggressively awful if they tried.
But there’s the rub, of course they tried; the whole thing is entirely calculated to be bad, rather than naively bad. And I found that knowledge colored my entire experience, and meant that I actually kind of enjoyed something that’s objectively terrible. We’re back in Borges territory here, but legitimately so: like, when I read that Darth Vader shrunk himself down into two mini clones, and one of them kicked DICK MCBUTTS’ right ballsack and the other kicked his right ballsack, I didn’t roll my eyes at the slapdash mistake, but chortled at the skillful trolling. Similarly, the rising-and-falling action – no, not of the kicking, but of the game’s pacing, which hits several fake-out climaxes in its short running time – seemed balletic to me, cruelly playing on the naďve player’s hope that this thing is finally ending. There’ve been troll games in the Comp before, so it’s really not hard to imagine the Cervantes DICK MCBUTTS, which would make me angry about how it wasted my time and how cavalierly it deployed Hitler for cheap laughs; but this is the Menard DICK MCBUTTS, and it is sublime.
I’m still rating it a 1, of course. Anything more would be disrespectful to Mr. Janus.
3 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
It’s longer than it seems… ;), November 22, 2023 DICK MCBUTTS GETS KICKED IN THE NUTS is what you could consider a joke entry. It is a nonsensical and completely unserious game, where the point is to make you chuckle, one way or another. The game is not just dipped but fully immersed in absurdism… if you got the correct start when opening the game. I reached multiple Dead Ends, and one True Ending out of Three.
I was pretty lucky, getting the good path from the moment I clicked Play, avoiding the flashing image and on-purpose terrible spelling*. I got to enjoy the adventure of Dick, our protagonist, trying his darn best to protect his family jewels from getting the kick. If this sounds juvenile, it is on purpose. The game is meant to be a joke through out (if that was not yet obvious from the title and the author’s name), and can be enjoyed by playing along with the joke (making the situations even more absurd than they are), or making fun of the game for how stupid the sequence of events is going (how unlucky Dick is to have to choose to flee towards two different shoe factories…).
*Whether the author did it on purpose or not, just for having that path, it will be a Banana of Discord contender for sure.
While it is very humorous, it is also a very specific kind of humour, which will not be of everyone’s taste. It is a one-type-of-joke kind of game, which can become tiring pretty quickly, if you are not in the right mindset. It’s crude, it’s rude, it’s balls-y*.
*yes, not very smart
Though, the author should be commended for how long they managed to keep that joke going, never once faltering, always doubling down. It is pretty impressive how creative the game stays even with just one scenario, and the sheer amount of branching available in the game (every passage or two, you have a choice). It is a commitment to the bit I’ve only really seen with major shitposting and memes*. Just for that, kuddos Hubert!
*hrem…Goncharov
This was a riot of a game!
Last note, importing the game on Twine give the dumbest but most topical overview of the passage placements. Extra points for effort.
- nilac, November 20, 2023
- Jacob MacDonald, November 16, 2023
- jaclynhyde, November 13, 2023
- The Hungry Reader (California), November 12, 2023
- Edo, November 6, 2023
- Cerfeuil (*Teleports Behind You* Nothing Personnel, Kid), November 4, 2023
- Sobol (Russia), October 29, 2023
- Jade68, October 11, 2023
- Zape, October 9, 2023
- Pegbiter (Malmö, Sweden), October 2, 2023
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