Video Game Slush Pile: Uncharted Waters New Horizons

Last time I did my best to convince you that managing an airline via a gaming system that is now mostly confined to museums is a lot more fun than the latest murder simulator. Today it's back to the Super Nintendo for another forgotten classic. What can I say, I was never made aware of blast processing or how "Sonic's fast!" so I ended up with a SNES. What was lost in tiny spiny mammals of above average speed was more than made up in bizarre role-playing offerings such as our current subject. I was a big fan of "Pirates!" back on the Nintendo, so this seemed like a spiritual successor I'd get right into. Well, not exactly. Playing it again as an adult I can both appreciate the depth and shake my head at some of the more tedious elements that scared me away when I was young and more demanding when it came to electronic sixteenth century ship simulators.

Trade various types of wool! Engage in highly abstracted battles!

Reading the manual (Yes, I read game manuals and even derive enjoyment from said activity. I'm well aware that this makes me the hardcore 0.01% of Old School gamers) suggests that you're getting into a very demanding and gritty historical RPG. It's somewhat jarring when you actually start playing and are faced with various cartoony nonsense. You can choose from six different characters who each have their own storyline and goals, usually wacky stuff like finding lost continents, repaying tea debts and bloody vengeance against the murderers of your lover. All right, maybe that last one is a little less goofy. Either way, the colorful 16-bit presentation lends a certain whimsy to your floating rob/murder/exploit natives operation.

Let's be very clear: they are two different men.

Depending on your character choice you'll be pushed toward either exploration, trade or piracy and the game keeps track of your success in all three of these areas. This means you can treat the game as a sand box and just ignore whatever quest you're supposed to be doing, although it's definitely easier to just do what the game wants you to do. Exploration was my favorite type of game. The combat just didn't seem very engaging and trade is just mind numbing once you figure out a few good routes and have to repeat them over and over to gain gold. Adding insult to injury the character that's supposed to trade takes a bunch of loans where he promises to pay back 1000% returns on the initial investments. Maybe business isn't really his thing after all. Or totally is, if he pulls an ENRON.

Take one lousy galleon and everyone gets all pissy.

Exploring earns money either by discovering monuments, cultural items and exotic animals and returning the finds to a wealthy patron or mapping the world for a cartographer. There's a large and reasonably accurate map of the world to explore and it's fun to see what you'll uncover next. Once you get back home you can wow local cocktail waitresses with your amazing tales of adventure. Sadly, these women are firmly from the four magic phrases school of communication and also think it's socially acceptable to respond to a story of a penguin encounter with "Did it bite you?" No, but you can.

Wait until you see some of the "interesting plants" I've got back at my place.

Various storyline elements trigger as you gain fame and open up more opportunities. You might even get to meet with a ruler (they're all autocratic jerks, even the ones from Republics) and earn a royal title by appeasing the whims of inbred European nobility. The game keeps track of your "friendship" with the major nations and even let's you defect to another unlikable crowned head, an act that will probably make the game unwinnable for most characters.  

That's another somewhat surprising game element: some choices can totally ruin things. For example, I tried to low ball the price of a ship and the merchant was so offended he wouldn't deal with me again. On the plus side, you can invest in ports and grow their industry, even winning neutrals over to your nation. Money talks, let me put this Spanish flag up, etc.

Sounds awfully familiar.

The game had some "controversial" elements that, in typical wussy Nintendo fashion, were toned down (Gray blood, yay!). The churches were changed into the bizarre "Round Earth Society" and taverns are "cafes" where you might eat too much food and get a belly ache. It's gutless, but hardly surprising. We don't want completely marginal groups getting offended and creating massive free publicity, after all.

 

Charging backward with its brightly colored rear...so much like a human.

I still haven't beaten this game, although I'm pretty far into it. After I finish the exploration character I've been playing as I might try some piracy one more time, but selecting a ship and watching numbers go down isn't as awesome as it sounds. Don't even get me started on the dueling card game. It makes one long for the massive strategic depth of "War."

Graphics: Pretty standard 16 bit stuff, not even any token Mode Seven effects. A lot of the characters look like elves for some reason. The ships look like ships. Probably a bit below average, over all.

Control: Sailing the ship is easy and you can even use "auto sail" to cut out the tedium that even the game manual admits can easily crop up. The menus are a little confusing at first, but for the most part are decent. Combat is a turn-based abstraction, so nothing to say about that.

Depth: There's a lot of opportunities to dig deep into the game's economic engine, but that basic game play is actually pretty shallow, relatively speaking. It can really turn into a grind, although you're free to try something new at any time. Things like national loyalties and the individual wealth of ports are a lot less pressing when you're just playing an individual instead of running a country.

Overall: I didn't fall off the edge of the world.

 ...who are two different people.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

DotTeeVee: 4 Magic Phrases You Can Use to Respond to ANYTHING

Having conversations with other human beings is difficult to the point where I'd be willing to take advice from even the most annoying huckster just to make it a little more manageable. When there's the promise of actually violating the natural laws of our clockwork universe via four easy replies, well you'd be a fool not to spend as much time and money as possible on this guy's "system." No more struggling to actually share common humanity, instead I'm going to run roughshod over polite interactions by utilizing preplanned language, like a very simple and poorly programmed social robot.

We meet the Wizard who will be teaching us the social legerdemain and unfortunately he's one of those annoying "Say it with me!" and "Yay, Enron!" presenters you've come to know and hate if you've ever had the misfortune of attending business seminars. If you haven't, let's just say this guy has some serious punch appeal and leave it at that. He's already in full coked-up goofball mode when we start the video, making smarmy statements that equate the spoken word to "duct tape" and then yelling "Magic!" like the world's least likable mental patient. I'm sure his audience, who must already feel like suckers for attending this thing in the first place, is enjoying having their remaining dignity stripped away by this clown.

 If you follow my system, you, too, can bang seven gram rocks.

Now we get some crazy promises that these "magic phrases" can be used as a universal response to absolutely anything. Maybe not a good response, or even one that doesn't make me want to hit this goof right in the center of his face, but a response regardless. We get this weird, almost new age bit about "validating" others, which seems kind of out of place in seminar on how to give various automated responses that are all basically euphemisms for "Go to hell."

They all start with "That's interesting!" I guess it's possible to be more patronizing, but it would probably require years of work by a douche-bag version of the Manhattan Project to achieve that. Seems unnecessary, when such a powerful conventional weapon is already available.

We now get one of four ways to complete the magical phrase and it's "Tell me more!" Bonus points for delivering it in a monotone while looking off into the distance, I guess. I just don't understand why the magic isn't working. Probably because I don't believe in it strong enough. He then goes all drill sergeant and makes the audience repeat it over and over complete with "Louder!" and "Show me your negotiation face! Arrrggggghhhhhh! That's a negotiation face!"

It's really a commentary on the power that maintaining a relatively comfortable and stable life has over the individual, considering no one wraps a pool cue around this guy's head or something similar. The urge must have been overwhelming.

"If you leave here, if you survive, you will be High Priests of Capitalism praying for profits."

We are told this phrase gets our unlikable instructor out of many "pickles." Somehow I don't have any problem believing that he's constantly making enemies and getting into bad situations. However, it isn't a perfect fix, always, which is why we have three other stock lines, after all. We get them all at once "Why would you say/do/ask that?" Yes, when we're not patronizing like a m.f. we can call into question the other person's behavior and then declare victory, hopefully from a safe distance.

How could it fail? We're told the sometimes people are less than "honorable" toward us and instead of being all "That's interesting, Sir Knight. Why would you say that?" our ego responds instead of our mechanized reply system. The conversation conjurer equates it to the effect of "chemicals in the body," which at least I believe he'd know a thing or two about, specifically going up the nasal passages and then hitting the brain. 

A sound that indicates agreement rises from the crowd as he discusses emotional overreaction, just another little reminder that we live in an angry nation full of people ready to snap at the slightest provocation. He then compares others to "energy vampires" and mentions how questioning someone's motives can remove the "invisibility cloak." Your bizarre, paranoid analogies are interesting, tell me more.

We jump ahead to trying to apply this verbal wooden stake to a hypothetical situation involving those energy vampires. Specifically, people asking you "When you getting married?" You know, I thought we were learning tips on making those big profits rather than papering over your embarrassing personal life. 

That's interesting, why would you say that?

After that brief digression into this guy's confirmed bachelorhood it's back to commanding your work kollectiv. We're told to keep our cool in the face of the occasional pathetic dissent from the last men and women we own and control. He calls the successful defusing of these attempts at free agency a "verbal karate kick" and even simulates the physical equivalent. I'm having Todd Bentley flashbacks.

"That's interesting, what's your style?"

It's almost time for lunch, so we have to wrap it up. We're encouraged to send e-mails, because it's a computer wonder age. He offers to hang with us during the midday face-stuff and declares this audience one of the best ever. "I was in Chicago (Boo!) last week and I thought they knew how to parrot phrases there...but NOBODY regurgitates the drivel I teach like King of Prussia, Pennsylvania!"

A little more crowd-pleasing and we're done. I think we can all agree that this video was interesting.

Komment Korner, That's interesting, why would you say that? edition  

 
Is this satire?

the taste in his mouth is certainly not anger, rrrrright?

In Norwegian the same words would send very different signals .. =)

Does it work with women when they like to talk to you about bullshit  

Shill Section

Aaron Zehner is the author of "Posts from the Underground," now available in paperback and e-book.

His first novel The Foolchild Invention is also available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.