So Blonde Review

September 26th, 2008 admin Reviews

Review

So Blonde

	Wizarbox
	dtp entertainment/Anaconda
Genre:	Adventure
	September 26, 2008
Platform:	PC (reviewed)

Review by Greg Collins
January 19, 2009

So what’s up with So
Blonde anyway? Is it just so so, or is it so good you can’t
stop playing? Okay, I’ve gotten that out of my system now.

So
Blonde is an adventure game from a couple of companies called
Anaconda and Wizarbox, who are new to me. I must admit I wasn’t expecting
much from this entry, once I got it working on my PC. I had to buy
a graphics card (256 megs, ATI) to play this! Everyone else gets a
graphics card to play the latest monster game from id, but not me.
I have to beef up my specs to play what is really an old-school adventure
game. I still don’t understand this compulsive industry-wide need
for more massive computing power in every single new game release.
Is it really that big a selling point? By sheer coincidence I happen
to have recently replayed the game that So Blonde
is doing its doggone best to emulate, LucasArts’ Curse
of Monkey Island. I first played Curse
about eight years ago on Windows 98 running in Virtual PC on my G4
PowerMac. This is a system that choked on graphics specs higher than
1 megabyte. The game ran beautifully, full screen. I’m not saying
adventure games don’t benefit from technological advances. Not even
I want to go back to the original SCUMM engine with the verbs lined
up at the bottom of the screen (fine as it was in its day). I’m just
saying you shouldn’t have to buy a new computer every year to play
them.

The reason I was not expecting
great things from So Blonde is because I assumed,
based on the title and the screenshots and other material on the official
website (www.soblonde-game.com),
that this was a game designed for teenage girls. Sunny (“So”)
Blonde is a 17-year-old American teen princess cruising the Caribbean
with her parents when she falls off the ship and washes up on a very
unusual island. I thought this was going to basically be an adventure-game
version of those dress-up doll games you see on the web. You know,
Sunny goes around meeting hunky island guys and gets to wear a lot
of wonderful new outfits and go to parties and things. Sure enough,
the hunky island guys put in an appearance and she does get to wear
one really fab dress, but otherwise this game is nothing like what
I anticipated. I’m not complaining, because the real surprise of So
Blonde is that it really is a terrific old school LucasArtsy
adventure game with gorgeous graphics (thanks, ATI).

I’m
just not sure it’s such a wise marketing idea to try to sell a really
good, intelligent game as a ditzy teen blond vehicle. There’s a sort
of tension here, the game pulling two directions at the same time.
Sunny Blonde is only sporadically the classic blonde American princess
throughout the game. For far too long, for instance, she keeps thinking
she’s on some sort of theme island. This was a funny conceit for the
first two minutes, not the first two hours. However, the rest of the
time, she’s as sharp as a tack and courageous, a real heroine. It’s
almost like half the people producing this game thought they were
making a lightweight game for teenage girls, and the other half thought,
hey, screw that, let’s make a great traditional adventure while no
one’s looking.

The ace up the sleeve of
this game is the involvement (story and dialogs) of one of adventure-gamedom’s
greats, Steve Ince. Of Broken Sword fame. And while
So Blonde is mainly channeling Ron Gilbert and George
Lucas, there’s also a definite Broken Sword strain
to it. In particular the lush, quasi-realistic yet cartoony, brightly
colored backgrounds. In fact, this game is channeling a lot of old
classics. It’s like some sort of monster mash-up of Ince’s (or someone’s)
favorite pop culture icons. Not only do Broken Sword
and Curse of Monkey Island characters make oblique
appearances, so does Luke Skywalker’s X-wing. There’s also a fair
amount of Will Elder Mad magazine-ish animated marginalia — tiny
cartoon characters popping up in the corners waving signs, or Max
of Sam and Max fame bobbing up out of a barrel. At first I admit I
found this distracting, because I assumed these were game clues. Once
I realized it was just the game designers amusing themselves, I got
used to it. I still kept clicking on them, just to make sure, but
I got the gag.

This is not to mention
the whole Peter Pan vibe. In fact the game basically plays like Wendy,
updated for the 21st century, going to Monkey Island and battling
Captain Hook. Perhaps I should elaborate on that.

You
see, Forgotten Island, like Never Never Land, is a place out of time.
The inhabitants have been frozen by a curse, essentially stuck in
a time warp for the past 200 years. Which is why everyone wears flouncy
shirts and knee britches and full length dresses and kerchiefs and
One-Eye the pirate has the same tailor as the aforementioned Capt.
Hook. Sunny washes ashore and can’t understand why her cell phone
won’t work. In traditional adventure game style she wanders around
solving inventory based puzzles, talking to colorful characters and
expanding her area of exploration, until she of course runs across
the special dilemma of Forgotten Island (or, in the original French,
L’ile Oubliée). Naturally, Sunny sets about setting everything
right, having a raft of adventures along the way and nearly getting
killed a half dozen or so times. She also meets Max (not the one of
Sam and Max fame), an animal described in the game as a cross between
a dog and a bear but which really looks like a large Pepe Lepew, only
with more stripes.

Honest, it sounds nuts,
but it all adds up to a very charming, whoppingly entertaining adventure.
And a long one, at that. The save games keep track of your playing
time and I was almost embarrassed to see my final save clock in at
about 23 hours. And that’s just “game” time. The real time
I spent was probably twice that. This is one of those games where
about halfway through you’d swear you’re just about at the end when,
lo and behold, a whole new area opens up. Which is good. That’s what
adventure games should do. By the way, the save slots appear to be
unlimited, a good thing.

I
still can’t make up my mind if So Blonde is a challenging
game or not. Most of the time it’s pretty straightforwardly use the
inventory item in the largely obvious place, or talk to the case-appropriate
character, but, honestly, I felt myself scrambling for almost the
whole game. And that despite Sunny’s frequent tendency to tell you
pretty much exactly what to do next. Something like her announcing
out of the blue to herself, “I need to find Max now.” But,
as I say, even with this hand-holding I was still at sea much of the
time. Which, somewhat strangely, is what you want in an adventure.
If you never got stumped you’d just watched a movie, not play a game.
Much of the level of difficulty, I suspect, is due to the size and
density of the game world, but there were a few genuine puzzle twists
here and there. You even play as Max a few times, and once as Juan.
Hey, girls, Juan is your hunky-dory love interest.

However, I’d be amiss if
I didn’t bring up the mini-games. This is now, officially, a trend
in modern adventures. When and where did this start, anyway? At least
a dozen times So Blonde stops dead to present you
with a stick-figure-ish game panel, whereon you play one of a very
familiar assortment of web coffee-break type skill games. Yes, there’s
a slider puzzle. Yes, there’s a whack-a-mole variation. You name it,
it’s here. Now, I don’t personally mind mini-games. These, with one
exception, were all stunningly easy. And as if that weren’t enough,
they all have an “automatically win for me” button. If I
have an objection to this sort of thing it’s only that it breaks the
mood. It’s a bit like watching a good play but having to climb up
on stage every twenty minutes to play a round of badminton with the
actors. I like plays. I like badminton. I don’t know if I like them
conjoined.

You know what I wish game
designers would emulate? The Groovie. You aficionados will remember
the Groovie as the Trilobyte puzzle engine from The
7th Guest and The
11th Hour. In an almost seamless manner, you moved from
the main game screen to the puzzle screen. That is, with no break
in dramatic mood. From what I read on the web, the Groovie engine
was essentially a video player that permitted player interaction.
The folks at id used it for the much-praised Quake 3 engine. How come
we don’t get stuff like that in adventure games? It’s not fair.

Game
play in So Blonde overall seems to strive to be as
Curse of Monkey Island-like as possible. You’ve got your situationally
sensitive right click action icons: look, talk and interact. The inventory
does that hide-and-go-seek thing with the bottom of the screen. Mercifully,
you can double click on where you want to go and Sunny will run not
walk there. Double-click the arrow to the next screen and you’ll directly
switch there (if available). There’s even the bird’s-eye-view island
map that traces Sunny’s passage from one area to the next. Unlike
Curse, you can’t select where on the map to go, though. A tiny teeny
Sunny just runs there. At one point in the game you get this map to
put in your inventory. Alas, it doesn’t do anything. You call it up
and click wildly and — nothing. I’m not sure if this was a glitch
on my computer or version of the game. I couldn’t think of a reason
why the designers would give you a non-functioning game map. There
are times when certain actions are triggered when you move through
certain areas, so perhaps they didn’t want you to miss those. But
they could have just interrupted your passage and plunked you where
you needed to be. Not a tragedy, but odd.

By the end of the game,
Forgotten Island gets so big that you will indeed forget a number
of places you’ve been. A trek from one end of the isle to the other
takes a rigorous amount of time, not only because of the non-map but
the load screens, which generally last about five seconds. And there’s
a load screen between most areas of the game. You will grow quite
familiar with all four of them. So much for my whopping new graphics
card! The recommended specs for So Blonde don’t sound too imposing.
I’m not really sure why the game needs to pause so long. It may be
because each screen is considerably larger than your average graphic
adventure game background. This creates a lush look to the game, with
lots of eye candy, but it also makes it a little challenging to find
everything you need to put your mouse hand on. I’m not averse to a
certain amount of pixel-hunting. After all, exploration is a key ingredient
in adventure gaming. But a couple of times, at least, I had trouble
tracking down something simply because the item in question was too
small to be readily identified.

The
story of So Blonde unfolds quite engagingly, providing
a real sense of adventure. At one point the story even seems poised
to make the leap to serious-fiction interesting. Even Curse
of Monkey Island, as brilliant as it is, has a largely functional
story. Guybrush loses Elaine, Guybrush must get her back, LeChuck
stands in the way. It’s not, you know, Faulkner. Nor should it be.
But So Blonde at one point almost gets there. Then
the hugfest happy ending kicks in. Still, a noble effort. And I’m
not myself sure if serious (even serious comic) fiction can mesh with
the adventure game. Their separate interests might fight each other.
I’d like to see somebody try it, though. The closest anyone ever came
was Grim
Fandango.

Let’s see. What else. The
music of So Blonde is also expertly done. From the
main game screen forward those steel drums will instantly transport
you back to Plunder and Blood Islands. The voice acting is also expert.
The dialog tries to be as witty as Curse, and almost gets there. Curse
is one of the few genuinely witty adventure games. It’s not just funny,
it’s brilliantly sarcastic and clever. Tough to match that.

Perhaps the thing I admire
most about So Blonde is how it unabashedly, unapologetically
goes about being a classic third-person adventure game. These don’t
come down the pike that often nowadays. LucasArts’ Monkey
Island series is indeed a model worth perpetuating. Not some
silly fad but a genuine classic entertainment form, like the detective
story or the suspense movie. You wouldn’t have wanted writers to stop
penning mysteries after Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders in the rue
Morgue,” and we shouldn’t want game designers to stop making
classic inventory-and-dialog graphic adventures. So Blonde
strives to be the best kind of adventure game and aside from a few
peculiar gaming and technical choices, succeeds. While it may not
quite reach the level of its model, it is nevertheless an excellent
game. Overall, I give it an A-.