The Feeble Files is a 2D cartoon adventure game originally
made in 1997 and brought to the Macintosh by Epic Interactive, the
publishers of Simon the Sorcerer II. It’s a comedy that matches
wit for wit some of the most well-known comedic adventure game productions,
and it is every bit as enjoyable as any classic LucasArts or Sierra
game that I’ve had the pleasure of slapping into the ol’ computer.

It is an animated comedy, cleverly written and well-drawn, with superb
voice acting. The game also has two features that make it worth every
dime the player spends–it is the longest game I have played (taking
into account that The Longest Journey has not been ported to
the Mac, of course), and the puzzles in this game are some of the
most difficult, if not the most difficult, of any adventure
game. This is a game that requires patience–if you don’t have it,
don’t play it.

The game is third-person, and the main character is an otherworldly
being called Feeble, from the planet Grenelon. Feeble lives in a society
controlled by an entity known as the Omnibrain, an all-powerful, all-knowing,
all-seeing Big Brother. But here the Omnibrain is a really jolly,
smarmy version of Big Brother who balances his installation of fear
in the populace in equal parts to buying it off with arcade galleries,
pill-popping shops, and a zoo with examples of conquered species floating
in preservation liquids, among other things. It is a society with
happiness by decree or threat, and with this in mind the game is also
a clever parody on the ethics of governmental interference in the
lives of its citizens. But this message is subtle and never hammered
home; rather it is delivered with the best of comedic sensibilities
in a very light, clever manner.

Feeble, a worker in the Crop Circle Division of the Omnibrain’s dictatorial
government, known as the Company, unwittingly finds himself involved
with revolutionaries called the Rebellion in a plot to overthrow the
oppressive Company. As a member of this group of rebels, Feeble enjoys
a series of misadventures leading to a wonderful surprise ending.

One of the finest things about The Feeble Files is the absolutely
sterling writing. The player is given an extraordinary amount of long,
well-played movie sequences, where large chunks of the storyline are
rolled out. This is not a game with a lot of tedious reading to get
the flavor of what’s going on; instead the story is carried forth
by well-drawn, richly detailed characters that are an absolute pleasure
to follow.

The graphics feature rendered animation and are well-designed and
consistently amusing and interesting to look at throughout the game.
There is quite a bit of back and forth of the characters as the game
progresses, but unlike other games where this mechanism begins to
wear painfully thin, in The Feeble Files it never comes off
as redundant because there is just so much darned garish, interesting
stuff to look at. Colors are bright; characters are well-drawn and
funny. The movie sequences are just great, with a real depth to the
animation that is very dissimilar to the usual style of most cartoon
adventure games.

The game screen design is very clean, with everything needed by the
player stored in something called the Oracle Systems personal database,
accessed from the game screen by clicking an ever-present circle in
the upper left corner of the screen. In the Oracle, an encyclopedia
is included, and it is important to use not just to gain valuable
clues to solving puzzles in the game but also because it contains
much clever and amusing writing read out loud to the player by the
voice of Peter Tuddingham (previously known by Brits for his work
in Blake’s 7 as the voices of Orac and Zen), who captures well
the haughty, autocratic essence of the overwrought government laws.

The one drawback to the Oracle is the inventory system. Inventory
does not disappear once used, and Oracle does not allow the player
to reorganize items so that used ones are at the bottom–in fact,
it keeps the most recent items the farthest away. This system is cumbersome.

I would be remiss if I did not take the time to say just what a high-quality
job the voice actors do in this game. Led by Robert Llewellyn as Feeble,
the actors bring the writing to life, and the two work in tandem to
make the game an excellent example of what can be done right in adventure
game stories. Llewellyn, a British author and television performer
best known for his portrayal of Kryten in the sci-fi comedy series
Red Dwarf, gives Feeble just the right degree of bewilderment
and irony to pull the character off properly.

Did I mention that the puzzles are hard? Let me reiterate. These
puzzles are hard. I double-dare any JA+ reader to finish this without
the use of a walkthrough at some point. And yes, you can certainly
consider this a challenge. With that said, it’s fair to point out
that the puzzles are, at the same time, fun and fiendishly clever.
Some are inventory-based, and some are built directly into the game.
There is an action sequence, but it is certainly built for the adventure
gaming crowd, giving the player unlimited chances to try it again
until she gets it right. A good thing, as this player was using a
trackpad and needed more than a small amount of leeway. There are
also some arcade puzzles that must be completed in enough quantity
to progress to the next portion of the game, and to those who’d like
to know what the secret is to get through these, all I can say is
persistence is your best tool, as these randomize each time they are
played.

Some problems that I experienced that are worth noting: The game
had a repetitive problem of freezing on my computer. I did not try
a pared-down set of extensions, which may have addressed this problem.
It was, however, played on a six-month-old iBook with lots of RAM,
and not a lot of third-party extensions, that is used almost exclusively
for gaming (and this is the first game to crash like this since I
acquired by iBook), so I felt that this may be more a situation with
the game than computer. It was however, very easy to “Force Quit”
the game and quickly reload, so I wouldn’t let someone considering
trying the game be put off by the prospect of these freezes.

Although this is a minor point, the game docs omitted an explanation
of how to use inventory and where it is stored. This caused a fair
amount of frustration and increased the learning curve at the beginning
of the game.

One bonus is that the game comes with a folder of saved game files
so that if one of the devilish puzzles thoroughly stumps the player,
she can still play and not miss the rest of the game. Whoever had
the foresight to do this gets a gold star, as it was, based on the
difficulty in completing some the puzzles, a wise move.

Final Grade: B+

System Requirements:

Mac:
PowerPC 180 MHz or faster
Mac OS 8.6 or higher
32 MB RAM
4 MB VRAM
760 MB hard drive space
GameSprockets

PC:
Windows 95/98
Pentium
16 MB RAM
100% Sound Blaster-compatible sound card
4X CD-ROM
25 MB free hard disk space
DirectX-compatible SVGA graphics card