It is time once again to don my pockmarked helmet (those vulture droppings
are lethal to the bare head), adjust my clanky armor and wield my rusty sword
as I traverse anew down those moss-covered cement steps that lead to that dark,
dank corridor. I raise my lantern, blackened from previous fruitless searches,
and see the sign. In my misbegotten misery it seems to wink at me, and I feel
powerless to stop myself from opening the door to the Dungeon of Shame.

What
black hole of gaming has transported me to this macabre madness I know not. Scattered
around my ankles are the remnants of half-played adventure games. Empty cardboard
boxes and cracked CD cases are strewn everywhere. There are actually CDs embedded
in sections of the dungeon walls as if they were hurled with great force. I hear
hysterical giggling, and slumped in a far corner of the room I find a deranged
looking individual. His bloodshot eyes seem to pierce my very soul, and I can
feel his pain. His grimy hand reaches toward me, and he utters that one word I
had hoped and prayed to never hear again.

The word brings chills to my soul.
Painful memories rush into my mind before I black out into a blissful unconsciousness.
That one word is … SPUD.

Spud. Chills run down my spine. Is Spud a game
about potatoes? Boiled versus baked? Crinkle-cut versus waffle? No. Spud is an
adventure game about … Santa Claus.

Our first entry into Dungeon of
Shame, The Scroll, was deservedly so as it did nothing right. But how do you justify
including a game with colorful, animated 3D graphics, gorgeous cut scenes and,
for the most part, a cute plot. How about when the subject matter is so ludicrous
as to almost defy description?

Spud is the name of Santa Claus’s grandson,
and it seems Grandpa and his magical toy machine have been kidnaped by the evil
Doctor Chilblain (this name must be said with a tremble in your voice!). During
the course of your search to save Santa, you will visit such traditional Christmas
sites as a tropical island populated by Jamaican speaking animals, a submarine,
pixie mines, a penguin village replete with gun-toting penguins and that personal
Christmas favorite of mine, Hell.

Is this game intended for children? I
don’t think so, as the puzzles are much too obtuse for youngsters (at one point
you must put a paper party hat on a gnome in order to steal a key from an ogre,
the reasoning being that the bells on the gnome’s regular hat tingle when he walks
and this will wake the ogre; the problem here is that I never actually heard the
gnome’s hat tingle and had no clue as to why the ogre kept pummeling me); plus
there is some highly questionable subject matter in the game (more about that
later). A blurb on the front of the box states that “… it only looks like
a kids game.” Yet an adult would find this game tedious (thanks in part to
the subject matter) not to mention downright silly. So exactly what sort of audience
is Spud intended for? Another quote at the bottom of the box cover trumpets proudly,
“Spud stands head and shoulders above such games as Myst” and is attributed
to the United Kingdom edition of PC Gamer. After days of reflection, I am still
not certain how to interpret that line.

One positive point that Spud has
in its favor is the instruction booklet (remember, this is back in 1996 when game
companies still felt benevolent enough to include such a trinket). For without
this booklet, never would I have know the following–“Spud is the kind of
kid all parents wish they had adopted instead of having children themselves. Well
behaved, honest, kind to animals and a big fan of vegetables and having his face
scrubbed clean by his mother’s spittle soaked handkerchief when out shopping.
Yes that’s his public face, away from the glare of the cameras he’s just like
every other street-wise, smart-ass kid.” Wait a minute, this “street-wise,
smart-ass kid” is so dumb that he doesn’t even have a clue that his grandpa
is Santa Claus until he is kidnaped. He never finds it suspicious that Gramps
shares his house with three talking reindeer or that his basement is full of toys.
The only clue we ever have that Spud is street-wise is that he wears his baseball
cap backwards. And about those reindeer …

Rudolph, Donner, Blitzen and
Prancer are all roommates of Santa. Well actually, Prancer is an inflatable reindeer
that Spud finds under Santa’s bed. Hmmm. If you think that is strange then consider
the following. Early in the game, Spud needs to get the attention of the reindeer
so they will fly the sleigh to rescue Santa. Spud spots Donner in the shower and
lets out a long wolf whistle. Then in true adventure fashion, since Donner can’t
hear you above the din of the shower, you whip out a wrench from your inventory
and shut off the hot water valve. As Donner slowly turns around you notice that
she has huge breasts! She then says in a sexy voice, “Why Spud, who else
could give a girl a hot flash on a cold night like this?” As she pulls the
shower curtain aside Donner then remarks, “Oh Spud, I thought it was your
Grandpa again!” Draw your own conclusions here, but personally, I think this
game should have been called Stud.

The voice acting, with one glaring exception,
is intentionally humorous. The Emperor Penguin excellently mimics Marlon Brando
as The Godfather. The Jamaican accents on the island are extremely authentic.
It is Spud, the voice you hear the most, who is a problem. He is supposed to be
a young teenager, but his voice sounds akin to a raspy sailor who has been out
drinking and carousing all night. Spud’s deep, throaty inflections actually had
me questioning what the developers of this game were smoking for pleasure.

Other
minor problems: the save system only offers three slots, and your saves are recognized
by the time and date you saved. I found this to be extremely frustrating. You
can die at almost any time so you must save often. Plus, this “life and death”-like
environment really adds a negative air to what is supposed to be a humorous game.
The “Super-Look-Around-O-Vision” lets you look around a 360-degree area,
but it is often very pixelated. The inventory and icon system, which is actually
very easy to use, becomes a major problem during an Indiana Jones-type scene when
you must have a bag of sand not only in your hand but also showing as your screen
icon before you even begin the puzzle. This one puzzle, which I knew how to solve
but could not maneuver correctly due to the bad interface in this one scene, actually
caused me to quit playing this game for over a year.

One major problem:
it is bad enough that Spud is one of those games that requires a walkthrough to
finish (and even then it is difficult), but I have had two different copies of
this game and both times have been unable to finish due to a bug right at the
very conclusion!

What’s up next for the Dungeon of Shame? Well, there have
been many nominees from the readers, but only the true “classics” make
the final grade. See you soon.