When
you decide to name your project The Next BIG Thing, you’re
already promising a lot. We would expect luscious graphics; an engaging,
original script; memorable characters; thoughtful, challenging puzzles.
We would probably not be prepared to get a robot drunk, encounter
a self-mutilating poet giant, or actually go inside somebody’s
brain. But, of course, this is a world populated with real monsters,
so anything goes – and I think that is an apt way to sum up
how this game works.

Most of you are likely already familiar with Pendulo Studios for
its Runaway
trilogy, but you may not know that back in 1997, they released in
Spain a game called Hollywood
Monsters. Apparently, the concept has been nagging at them
ever since, as they took the premise for that adventure and tweaked,
tinkered, toyed and futzed with it to produce The Next BIG Thing.
The first thing you might notice about the game is that it is unashamedly
American. The logo reflects the American flag; Uncle Sam beckons us
from the cover of the box. I guess this is their attempt to make it
clear that this game is NOT anything even vaguely resembling Hollywood
Monsters, although the basic idea has remained.

Liz
Allaire and Dan Murray are the stereotypically foiled comic duo. Both
are reporters for The Quill: the latter, a deadpanning wise
guy with a penchant for booze and boxing; the former, a loony, loquacious
overachiever from a well-to-do family. Naturally, their relationship
consists mostly of banter, and naturally, one of them ends up having
to put aside their differences and save the other. The cliché
doesn’t seem stale here, though. They are both funny and quirky
in their own way – Liz perhaps more so, as we learn much more
about her throughout the game than we do Dan, whose cynicism sometimes
seems forced. The unlikely pair is assigned to cover the annual Monster’s
Ball at the home of William A. FitzRandolph, President of MKO Productions,
known for its elaborate monster movies featuring, of course, “real”
monsters. When Liz sees one of the monsters sneaking into FitzRandolph’s
office, she thinks she’s got a big scoop on her hands, and she’s
determined to get it – with or without Dan’s help.

The
game drops us in
medias res, opening with a creepy narrator figure who drops
us into the middle of the story, then backs up and brings us to the
beginning. The narrator updates us periodically throughout the game’s
chapters to tell us what’s going on and present a diagram that
indicates how we’re progressing. There is still a feeling of
being lost, though, as we are placed in this unfamiliar world where
monsters exist, and must figure out its logic or lack thereof –
and this is a great part of the game’s frustration. True, it
offers no pretense of normalcy or sanity; we realize from the start
that this is not going to be any ordinary story, these journalists
are not just uncovering some fluff piece, and we will have to suspend
our disbelief. But there is virtually no logic to the game’s
puzzles. There are times when it outlines our objectives for us –
like when Dan needs to fit certain requirements to become a suitable
subject for a cloning machine, for example – but other times,
our tasks are vague, and the games assumes that we already know everything
about the universe we have just entered. The puzzles are interesting,
yes, and quirky, but because we are in a gaming world that defies
our logical sense, the puzzles themselves often don’t make a
lot of sense until you’ve solved them and then realize
what the objective was all along. They require a lot of backtracking
through environments to find new objects and clues that have appeared
there, which you must then figure out how to use.

You
can choose what difficulty level you want to play at, which will determine
whether or not you have an in-game hints system (which can be used
sparingly) and whether or not the game will identify hotspots for
you. There are very few hotspots in each location; you can look at
them (and hear Liz or Dan, whichever one is the playable character
for that chapter, say something about them – sometimes funny,
sometimes not) or, with a right-click, touch them or pick them up.
If you grab an object, the character will retrieve it and your inventory
will appear to show you the item has been added.

To access your inventory (as well as the control panel, hints, etc.),
you simply move your cursor to the top of the screen, and the menu
will appear. Accessing your inventory is crucial, as most of the puzzles
are item-based, and many inventory items have to be combined in order
to solve a puzzle. The rest of the interface is simple, too. Arrows
indicate where you can go, and the character will walk there. Sometimes
they are painfully slow, but if you double click you can speed up
the process. I had no problems navigating through this game at all.

I
did, however, encounter a few problems otherwise. Some of the written
dialogue does not match what is said; character sometimes cut each
other off; and a few items were mislabeled. This is not to say that
any of that impeded my progress or enjoyment, but like proofreading
errors in a document, they stood out as little mistakes somebody should
have fixed. What did impede my progress was the fact that the game
sometimes wouldn’t load properly. And throughout the game, all
of the audio for the cut-scenes was choppy, which was aggravating.
I realize my PC laptop may be entering its last year or so, but I
almost couldn’t play the game because of these difficulties
– which was irritating, because it is a fun game. It’s
especially nice to look at, with gorgeous and detailed backgrounds,
great animations, lots of funny cinematic sequences. It’s charmingly
quirky, or quirkily charming (as Professor Fly, the game’s humanoid-cum-insect
scientist, would say). As much as it often doesn’t seem to make
any sense, sometimes that’s okay and sometimes it’s a
bit frustrating. You know that it’s trying. You know that it
has a lot of wonderful qualities. It just doesn’t always live
up to what it could be.

The
ending leaves us with the opportunity for a sequel (which would be,
what, The Next REALLY BIG Thing?), something that would be
welcome, because Liz and Dan (and even the non-human members of the
supporting cast) are great characters with great spunk and great dialogue.
Most of all, it’s a lot of fun, but that fun is sometimes mired
in illogical puzzles. If Pendulo Studios can fix that for next time,
maybe they will create something that is truly worth heralding as
the next big thing. For now, though, we have a pretty solid start.

System Requirements:

• OS: Windows XP SP2/Vista SP1/7
• Processor: Intel/AMD 2.0 GHz
• RAM: 1024 MB (XP)/2048 MB (Vista/7)
• Graphics Card: 256 MB 100% DirectX 9 compatible ATI Radeon X800/Intel
  GMA 3000/nVIDIA GeForce 6800 or higher*
• 1DVD-ROM: 2X Drive
• Hard Disk Space: 8 GB
• Sound Card: DirectX 9 compatible
• Internet Connection required for game activtion

  *SiS AND VIA/S3G Graphics Controllers not supported