Day 297 - The Haunted House... ...of Doom
Paul Bird Week, Point and Click, Horror ·
Skeeter’s Take:
The most important thing I’d like to note about The Haunted House… Of Doom! is: it’s a point and click game. I mean that in the old school aspect where the player has a ton of options in how to interact with the world, and every action is described in text:
I’m familiar with some point and click games. As a child, I played countless hours of Pajama Sam and Putt-Putt (“Goes to the Moon”, specifically. I know you didn’t ask, but I’m going to force that information on you anyway). These were a few of the first games I played, and (along with a Sega Genesis) are largely responsible for my game addiction to this day. Perhaps something changed in the N64 generation. I didn’t have the privilege of owning one for a very long time. We found a Sega Dreamcast at a garage sale with a bunch of burned CDs of various games. Now, the Dreamcast did not feature any Point and Click games, but it was my first real foray out of the Point and Click genre and the single Jurassic Park level I would replay on the Sega Genesis. It was a whole new world, full of confusing menus in different languages and mysterious, vaguely labeled bootleg CDs. I felt myself pulling further and further away from Putt-Putt. I no longer felt the need to not Hide When It’s Dark Outside. Unfortunately, we lost the Dreamcast when my brother and I got in a fight while playing our illegally copied Japanese version of Power Stone 2. We unplugged one of the controllers while the game was running and the system bricked. Maybe there was a way to fix it, but back then I was a child, and my parents had little clue about technology. The Dreamcast died that day, and I think it killed a part of that “Point and Click enjoyer” kid that was once inside me. I couldn’t go back to the point and click games. I had seen the forbidden edge of technology. I had tasted the Crazy Taxi, and Raided Tombs. I wasn’t about to go back to clicking on Pajama Sam’s stinky ass socks. One day, I got lucky and also scored a Nintendo 64 at a garage sale. Smash Brothers and Zelda helped ensure I would never go crawling back to Freddi Fish. As the years went by, I continued down the same path, straying further from the light of Pajama Sam’s flashlight. Eventually, I saved up for a PS2 where Ratchet and Clank and Guitar Hero continued to ruin my life. I got All Ghillied Up with an X-Box 360. The camouflage kept me safe from Spy Fox’s watchful eye and guided me to the murky waters of BioShock, the vast expanse of space in Mass Effect, and Master Chief Halo 3. Eventually, the console could not satiate my hunger. I found myself buying a PC. I morphed from an innocent kid who could enjoy the same 9 (estimated) Alien Customizations in Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon for countless hours into the monster I am today:
I no longer can enjoy the slow slog through clicking on random things until I figure out the convoluted solution that allows me to progress the game. The path I was sent down blunted any chance of me finding critical thinking and puzzle solving enjoyable.The Dreamcast made me dumb. I no longer enjoy the point and click adventure. It is not a reflection of the point and click genre, nor is it a reflection of those who enjoy said genre. It is simply a defect with the Dreamcast.
So, I mean no disrespect when I say the following, but when I see this:
All I can think is, “Where is my Gears of War (2006) Chainsaw Bayonet? Where the hell is Marcus Fenix? DOM? Where is DOM? Come on, I don’t want to try to talk to the washing machine only for it to stay ‘strangely silent’. Where are the Locust? Where is my deep space waifu? Where are my cool guns and explosives? Why can’t I switch weapons? Where are the bad guys I have to kill to save the day? Where is Master Chief?”
This is a long way of saying, whatever Paul cooked up here could be good. However, I’m too far gone to be the target audience for this.
I blame the Dreamcast.
Recommend: No
Replay Percentage Chance: 10%
Time Played:
There are always exceptions
Sam’s Take:
Haunted House… …Of Doom! is Paul’s most boring game (besides IQ test I guess). It’s confusing, too slow to be funny, and it doesn’t have hilarious 3D rendered animals. I’m a point and click player, but this does nothing for me. You use a snooker cue on a trapdoor and it makes a spider fall from the ceiling and kill you.
I don’t want to talk about it so instead I will discuss something I discovered last night…
Paul Bird is an author.
The Plex Solution (or The Prophecy of the Virgin Moonshine) is a sci-fi epic that I just learned about from Paul’s Steam page. You can order it on amazon in Kindle form or Paperback. Personally, I bought two copies (one for me and one for Skeeter). All I know about it now comes from the summery on Amazon and the sample you can read from there, but there’s some promising stuff:
Before we judge too harshly, he did write this thirteen years ago, and I don’t know how old he was then… but roughly one third of the preview is describing their bodies before she “ran her hands over her soapy body”
Sorry about this one Skeeter.
I’ll report back after the book arrives and I’ve had some time to dive in.
Recommend: No
Replay Percentage Chance: 0%
Time Played: 15 Minutes
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