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Horrible Demon II: a Game Review When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one person to review the most bizarre Gameboy® game now known or hereafter invented, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires the creation of a spiteful review for future generations to cringe at. Horrible Demon II is a foreign RPG game that has literally everything--every cliché known to man, odd plot holes, superfluous and useless buildings, characters so boring you desperately pray to every conceivable deity for the bad guys to win, the customary non-dialogue in "Engrish," and even a bug that allows you to kill any enemy in the game without taking damage. In other words, it's among the top 10 reasons programming while under the influence should be a felony. Introduction & Storyline (2 out of 10 points) The first thing you'll see upon starting the... game, and I use that term loosely, is a customary plug of the programmer's hallucinogenic mushroom-inspired homepage. A second or so afterwards, you're presented with the real opening scene, which contains, among other cutting-edge features:
After you've said a prayer to the Lord God almighty, asked several other, lesser gods to smite you before your fingers hit the "Start" button, and sacrificed a goat to the Dark Lord as a desperate last-ditch effort to save yourself from some major embarrassment, the plot begins to unfold in all its Scandinavian glory.
You play Nils [sic], a young man striving to pass a difficult test in history class by memorizing such extravagant and obscure facts as "... the brave super warrior with the legendary sword... threw a stone at the demon, married the princess and got half the kingdom". I was about to call it quits at this point, but then I felt somewhat guilty. This guy deserved at least some credit: others wouldn't even be able to approach a programming console after weeks of cocaine abuse. But I digress. Nils', our hero, is inspired to attempt a repeat of history. He plans to kill a demon and subsequently take over the kingdom in the bloody aftermath. He remembers that his sister, who looks like one of those "flying bullet" enemies from the original Super Mario Bros., is a sorceress (don't ask), and asks her to summon a demon. As incentive for her assistance in his vile, Machiavellian designs on the monarchy, he offers her the title of "Princess." Judging by the overall consistency of the game's storyline, this plan, if successful, would involve her immediately moving to Mars and assisting Frodo Baggins in his quest to avenge Darth Vader's death. She agrees, and summons a (HORRIBLE!!) demon. However, unlike the careful protagonist of days long past, her idiot brother forgot all about his secret weapon--the stone--once he embarked on his mad quest for chief pimp, err, King. The plan predictably goes awry; not only does your character turn out to be a sissy with Alzheimer's disease, but the demon kicks his ass, blows up your house with his charcoal breath and kidnaps your sister. That's how the game begins, at any rate. Afterwards, you're forced to endure a grand total of around 15 minutes of maddening toil until the end. This includes traveling to such exotic RPG locales as a forest, a mountain, and eventually the realms of Hades itself. The story is clichéd, silly and bland. However, it deserves no less than 2 points for intentionally being tongue-in-cheek. Like a 1960s, black and white monster movie with a guy in a rubber suit smashing Lincoln Log cabins brought at a bargain toy store, it's so bad it's (almost) good. Had the programmer added self-deprecating humor and some inside jokes, it might actually be tolerable. Gameplay and Combat (1/10) Once inside the forest, you'll be confronted by batlike creatures--the single enemy there--every 235 milliseconds or 1.3 pixels of screen area traversed, whichever comes sooner.
Amusingly, the enemies can be torn to shreds with your bare hands (literally), unlike your demon friend earlier. This makes it a bit more playable, since you have, as of yet, no weapons. You might actually find yourself expecting the gameplay to pick up at this point. Unfortunately, the miniscule, remote semblance of fun you hoped for is quickly ruined by a startling realization. The bats consistently leave behind human currency when they die... and only that. You won't find any unique items here that make you go "Wow, that's cool, and makes the monotonous gameplay all worth it!" If the lack of unique items obtainable via combat wasn't bad enough, there's never even a random element involved in the stuff you do get. You'll always find exactly 2 gold pieces, no more, no less. This raises several deep philosophical questions, such as "Where the hell are those things getting the same exact amounts of human currency?", "why are they even lugging it around thru the forest?" and "Eww... where do bats store coins, anyway?" After you amass 10 gold pieces, you have the option of going back to town and purchasing the single weapon this game offers--a stone. Apparently, in Sweden, when adjusted for inflation, medium-sized rocks are as valuable as 10 gold coins. The costs of living in advanced civilization, I guess. Luckily, the single rock you purchase will, whether due to an intrinsic magic ability completely neglected by the storyline or simply a lazy oversight on the part of the game developers, never run out once you have it, which may explain its relatively high going price. You can use it infinite times, and it'll continue working as it did before. You never need to waste a turn to pick it up, either, as apparently, it's some kind of magic rock that automatically reappears in your inventory after bopping an enemy on the head.
The rock figures prominently later in the game, but you don't need to purchase one now. Should you neglect it, one will be provided automatically later on. However, should you splurge at the beginning, your quest will go much easier. Apparently, the stone is a counterpart to Link's Boomerang from the Legend of Zelda in more ways than one. Not only will it magically (and invisibly) return to you as soon as you use it, but it will incapacitate any enemy, including bosses, robbing them of their next attack turn. Oh, and did I forget to mention you always attack first in this game? Combine this with an inexhaustible weapon that robs an enemy of its only counterattack, and you can just imagine how much this adds to the game balance... Sadly, that was one of the smarter features the developers implemented, even if it was by accident. Had this review actually required an honest completion of the game, the author would have suffered a nervous breakdown halfway through it. With the cheat, I was able to maintain my sanity (almost) to the very end. Thus, I am forced to reluctantly award the gameplay 1 more point than it would receive if the programmers hadn't done a half-assed job. There are also spells in the game. Fire will attack your enemies with flames as warm (and tactically effective) as a midsummer night's puddle, while Heal, which you learn toward the end, would have been useful to patch up the injuries you would have sustained if you didn't have the aforementioned invincibility rock. Locales and Enemies (2/10) Inspecting the town will reveal your average assortment of shady characters: the seedy madam managing the brothel at which you can sleep and heal your wounds; the stereotypical Italian huckster at the poorly-stocked and exorbitantly priced weapon shop; a group of obnoxious and sometimes gay teenagers attempting to hit on your character by commenting about the weather; and a suspicious character wearing a ninja mask (who, if it isn't obvious enough yet, figures extensively in what could be called the "storyline"). Once you set out on your journey, you find the road to the southwest of town is barricaded by armed guards. So, we go back to the drawing board and temporarily retreat.
Somewhat north of the town, you'll find a strange building. Inside, a mysterious old man will be guarding a door and won't let you pass. Now, normally, this is one of the defining features of an RPG game: the standard clue that this might be an important place and you should come back to it later. It could be said, in fact, that RPG players live for this kind of thing; you know you love the adrenaline rush when you hear the characteristic sound commemorating the opening of a secret doorway... just as you suspected it would... after you carefully pieced together the sequence in which to push some obscure patterns on the wall.
The Swedish culture, however, does things a wee bit differently than our own. This house contains no discernible clues. It yields no free beds behind a secret wall panel. It isn't even the secret hideout of a gang of elderly, perverted Catholic clergymen running from the law. Instead, this place is totally and completely useless. Aside from the suspicious old guy blocking your path while nervously eyeing his barely-hidden collection of barnyard pornos in the closet, there's nothing to see here, so move along. Each area has one enemy; none are original, challenging, well-drawn or even interesting. The forest, as mentioned previously, is populated by odd, wealthy bat creatures. The mountain has fire-breathing snakes that look like irregularly inflated condoms with an attitude. Finally, the Southern Town, a.k.a. burning pyres of Hell, has some resident spooks that look like they'd run off in terror if your pet hamster came up to them and rolled over on its side. Bosses (1/10) This is probably the weakest part of the entire game. The boss battles are, in a word, pathetic. For one thing, they're not much harder than the regular enemies. For another, your magic cheat rock makes them almost superfluous. It literally makes a mockery out of any sort of challenge or necessity to think on your toes that marks good boss battles. You would lose out nothing by watching an animation of the entire game than you would playing it, and would avoid wasting precious brain cells to boot. The initial boss battle is just part of the background story. You won't be able to win it regardless of what you do, and it leads into a custcene. As mentioned before, the demon runs off to Mt. Hörberg to summon his stronger minions and perform miscellaneous unspeakable acts to (and with) the townspeople. After you leave town, your next destination would ordinarily be the hill. Unfortunately, the path is blocked by a bunch of towering weeds. Now, any normal person would just get an axe, build a bridge or otherwise show nature who's boss, but we're dealing with Swedish people here. So, Nils does, presumably, what any normal Swedish person would do when faced with a bunch of unpleasant herbs--he embarks on a quest across the pile of upside-down triangles the programmers imagined was a forest in order to steal a fire spell from the local heat sprites. Needless to say, their boss' reaction is somewhat unpleasant. After the creature wakes up and notices you, he gets mad (presumably because you relieved yourself in his private bush). You enter battle and, if you were smart and brought one before, promptly nail his rear with THE ROCK a couple of times. This grants you the Fire Spell. No, don't ask me how you could defeat a disembodied spirit in the forest with a piece of rock and gain a magic ability from it. I didn't create this game or write its storyline.
Now you can go back, burn down the dangerously high grass, and travel to your original destination. The reason you couldn't cross it in the first place shall forever remain a mystery. (Perhaps Nils fears Lyme disease more than an imminent demonic apocalypse?) And I did mention you get interrupted by combat around 12 times each screenful of map area, didn't I? Once you arrive at the temple summit of Mt. Hörberg, you attempt to rescue Naomi; in so doing, you kick the original hellspawn's rear with extreme prejudice. This turns out to be quite easy, as you get a FREE rock from someone who should probably remain unnamed, but is obviously the sage ninja master you met earlier. However, the demon has already performed his dark rituals, and Satan himself will soon arrive on the scene! Unless you stop him, that is. Now you have to travel to Hell Town. The soldiers you met before, who had those critical orders to guard the pass at all costs, have probably gone to lunch, been scared off by a moth, or something else that would make sense in the game's Bizarro universe. Relax; they probably weren't eaten or killed by something fiendish, because no traces of blood or weaponry remain. As you enter the burned ruins, you find an old, wounded friend (yes, the ninja dude) who teaches you one final spell... and implores you to defeat the resurrected demon king at all costs. I suspect it's an absolute requirement, codified somewhere in an old Video Game Developers Association manual, that at least one prominent and friendly character must die in every crappy knockoff of a Final Fantasy RPG. I imagine Cliché Bonus points® are awarded if the dead character had an esoteric profession, stood out like a sore thumb from the rest of the populace, or helps the main protagonist at key points. You now continue on your journey to the lair of the Demon King. Normally, the final boss in an RPG game is the toughest of them all; one is generally caught off guard and crushed like a bug not once, but several times before becoming familiar with their behavioral patterns, attacks and weaknesses. In an average RPG, your only hope of winning lies in overuse of the most efficient, deadly and ruthless tactics you've learned throughout the game combined with impeccable defensive tactics, good judgement and sheer luck.. However, you have... the INEXHAUSTIBLE MAGIC ROCK, which is more than a match for a mere Prince of Darkness. Satan never even knew what hit him, flies off the screen in a suspiciously horizontal and static fashion, you rescue your sister and live happily ever after, etc. Strangely, no further mention is made of Nils' monarchic ambitions or of his eventual success. The storyline, as it stands, appears very incomplete. Normally, I would suspect a sequel in the works... but even the mere thought is so grotesque and inhuman, it chills me to the bone. Until and unless I find out Bertil Hörberg and co. aren't busy developing more games, I will be victim of many a sleepless night... Despite this brief exposition of the plot and other game qualities, words really can't even begin to describe it unless you see for yourself. Therefore, a movie of the entire game in animated GIF format has been conveniently provided. It weighs in at around 260 KB, but should be completely downloaded by the time you read the rest of this review, even on a dialup connection. Sit back, grab the popcorn and wonder at the depths of human programming depravity embodied in this 7-minute animation.
Overall Score (6/40): F- Well, folks, now that you've been traumatized forever, be sure to tell all your friends about this webpage so that such classics as "I am very unallowed to do so!" and "That demon was very horrible, indeed" become the next all "All Your Base Are Belong to Us"! Other reviews: "Agh! It burns!
*rolls on floor* It's like they deiberately tried to come up with the shittyest
ending concieveable "I still don't know
how you managed to take each screenshot and place the whole gif together without
going nuts." "Game by...Hörberg "I do not think,
despite my years of personal schooling in the arts of vocabulary, that I am at
this point capable of conjuring up the requisite words necessary to adequately
put into spoken form the horror that this game has left instilled in me. I,
sadly, am unable to comment...and I fear that HD2 has left me unable to
reproduce as well." "Let me start this
review by saying this game is the worst use of basic coding skills I have ever
seen. To even think that some programmer spent many minutes, dare I say hours,
creating this garbage is something my mind can't grasp. It pains me to admit it,
but I actually feel sorry for the time this poor foreign man lost in the
creation of this monstrosity.
© 2003-2004 WinAce. Horrible Demon II is free to play, distribute and lose hair over under the General Public License, and can be downloaded at the website of Gambit Studios, makers of the Liberty® Gameboy emulator used to obtain screenshots for this review. |
