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Subject: "Meanwhile, I've been playing..."     Previous Topic | Next Topic
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Gryphonadmin
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Jul-11-14, 06:41 PM (EDT)
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"Meanwhile, I've been playing..."
 
   ... Viscera Cleanup Detail.

It's a janitor simulation. Really. You're a janitor in a video game universe, and your job is to clean up the map after more exciting games have gone through - pick up the body parts and shell casings, mop up the fluids, and get everything squared away again.

Fair warning: It's an Early Access game on Steam, which means it's not finished, and occasionally things go wrong. (In my experience, these are often very amusing malfunctions, occasionally the best parts of the play session, but I can see where they would be very frustrating if they came along at the wrong time... but then, since you're essentially paying a little to beta-test the game, well, what were you expecting?) OTOH, it's mighty cheap (I paid 8 bucks for it a couple weeks ago; the price is supposedly set to go up as the game gets closer to done) and bizarrely engrossing (as it were).

I sort of backed into it, because I bought the remake of Shadow Warrior (which is great - it still has all the wang jokes, but they aren't as, I dunno, mean-spirited as the ones in the old game), and it came with a crossover VCD pack in which you clean up the site of the first level after Lo Wang has gone through and sliced up a couple dozen yakuza mooks in it. I think it's an excellent concept and I hope RuneStorm wangles crossover deals with other shooter franchises in the future. I look forward to tidying up Black Mesa in Gordon Freeman's wake one day.

Anyway, the game. Like I said above, it's weirdly captivating. Very more-ish, and kind of... meditative. There are no other characters (except the corpses), no one is shooting at you or trying to stop you from accomplishing your goal, so you can work at your own pace and just... get on with it. Apart from the machines which dispense buckets of water to clean your mop in and bins to pile small bits of debris in for easier conveyance to the incinerator (both of which will occasionally malfunction and deliver you a selection of fresh body parts instead), your only enemy is yourself.

And you sometimes are your own worst enemy in VCD. When you're dealing with that much blood, and that many sources of blood (carelessly handled body parts can spread it everywhere), just mopping it up without tracking it all over the rest of the map can be a challenge, and the physics engine is set up to permit, and punish, sloppy work. I occasionally get into these Three Stooges-like runs of clumsiness and bad luck where I'll tip over a waste bin full of organs taking a corner too fast, step in my mop bucket backing away from the scene of the disaster (splashing bloody water all over the place and getting it on my shoes so I track it clear back to the bucket dispenser), then the bucket dispenser malfunctions and dispenses some more organs instead...

Apart from the Shadow Warrior crossover (which is, let me just say this again, a brilliant idea), there are two VCD games: the main game, in which you play a janitor who has to clean up a space station after something not entirely unlike System Shock 2 happened there, and a mini-game called Santa's Rampage. In the latter, you're cleaning up Santa's workshop after he evidently snapped, got roaring drunk, and massacred his elves and reindeer. (Compare the "Weird Al" Yankovic song, "The Night Santa Went Crazy".) Words are inadequate to convey how utterly wrong and yet hilarious this concept is.

(Also, in Santa's Rampage you can actually kill yourself by accident. While cleaning up the reindeer stables, I accidentally dropped and set off a Molotov cocktail, which splashed flaming gasoline into a bin where I had previously stored, among other things, a bundle of TNT, igniting the fuse. I... did not clear the area quickly enough. Rather brilliantly, if you do this, you return to the start area and get a message that the previous janitor's carelessness has forced the company to hire you to finish his work, and your first order of business is to go and mop up your previous incarnation's remains.)

Anyway! It's a pretty disgusting game, but then, it's called Viscera Cleanup Detail, so you probably could have guessed that. However, if you're not squeamish about digitally simulated dismemberment and evisceration aftermaths, it's also a pretty damn amusing game, and I'm finding it great for passing bits of time and reorganizing my thoughts. It seems like a really simple premise, but as you get into it you start realizing that if you don't have some kind of a strategy you're going to get nowhere. (There is actually an achievement in Santa's Rampage for making a bigger mess than you found. I haven't clocked that one yet.)

It's also got a co-op network mode, so you can play as part of a team of janitors, but the current readmes indicate that this mode doesn't work very well yet, and I'm not much for the multiplayer experience anyway, so I haven't tried it. Besides, to me the beauty of VCD is that you're the only one there, unsupervised, and you can get exactly as much or as little done as you care to. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Meanwhile, I've been playing... [View All] Gryphonadmin Jul-11-14 TOP
   RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... Pasha Jul-12-14 1
      RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... Gryphonadmin Jul-12-14 5
          RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... Pasha Jul-12-14 10
   RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... Proginoskes Jul-12-14 2
      RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... Gryphonadmin Jul-12-14 6
   RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... Zemyla Jul-12-14 3
      RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... Gryphonadmin Jul-12-14 4
   Oh, I forgot to mention, Gryphonadmin Jul-12-14 7
      RE: Oh, I forgot to mention, Pasha Jul-12-14 9
   RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... laudre Jul-12-14 8
      RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... laudre Jul-13-14 11
          RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... Gryphonadmin Jul-13-14 12
              RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... laudre Jul-14-14 13
   RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... ebony14 Jul-14-14 14
      RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... laudre Jul-14-14 15
          RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... twipper Jul-14-14 16
          RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... Gryphonadmin Jul-14-14 17
          RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... CdrMike Jul-14-14 22
              RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... Verbena Nov-17-14 33
      RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... Gryphonadmin Jul-14-14 18
          RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... Nova Floresca Jul-14-14 19
              RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... Gryphonadmin Jul-14-14 20
                  RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... laudre Jul-14-14 21
                      RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... Pasha Jul-16-14 23
                          RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... laudre Jul-16-14 24
                              RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... Zemyla Jul-16-14 26
                                  RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... SpottedKitty Jul-17-14 30
                  NetHack as a Spectator Sport Proginoskes Jul-16-14 25
                      RE: NetHack as a Spectator Sport Gryphonadmin Jul-16-14 27
                          RE: NetHack as a Spectator Sport Proginoskes Jul-16-14 28
                              RE: NetHack as a Spectator Sport Gryphonadmin Jul-16-14 29
   RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... laudre Jul-20-14 31
   RE: Meanwhile, I've been playing... JFerio Nov-17-14 32


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