Some media outlets got a Wii, we got this weird thing on a PowerBook

Published Dec 08 2006, 10:13 PM by Ryan Stewart

A couple weeks ago, some woman brought this MacBook over with a game she wanted us to play installed on it. I haven't really had time to get into it (plus my wrist is still sore from when I went over my friend's house to play Wii Sports,) so instead we told our man Sean (who's gone from taking orders from Stephen Colbert to taking orders from me . . . something seems wrong about that) to give it a shot. His impressions:

For the last hour I felt like I was in an arcade in the late ‘80s, trying desperately to finish a game whose new mechanics still seemed cool after quarter number three, only to stop being fun mere seconds later. I was actually on a MacBook here at The Phoenix playing The Act, which felt like the hell spawn of Dragon’s Lair, Leisure Suit Larry, and cracking a safe—it’s exactly as fun as it sounds.

The game is based around what is essentially a video editor’s jogging tool, which I use to navigate specific instances of a clichéd cartoon (complete with those “You’re not a real doctor!” moments of vaudevillian hilarity). Each level asks me to guide the nebbish protagonist through awkward social situations, turning the jogging knob to interact with the people and world around him with one-to-ten dynamics. I feel like a human applause meter rating bands at a sock-hop.

In the end, I get the girl of my dreams, save my brother from getting a lobotomy, and want to write an angry letter to Nintendo for making the conventional controller no longer cool to develop for.

-- Sean Bartlett