Hoodwink Review

A dystopian world where gun-toting anthropomorphs, recycled human brains plunked down onto metal robot bodies, and hippy rebels all co-exist under the oppressive thumb of a trigger-happy pharmaceutical company sounds like a neat setting to dig into. It could be, really, except Hoodwink totally botches its inherent potential from the get-go. Almost every major step of the way in this insipid, barely hour-long point-and-click adventure feels like a lesson in how not to design a game.

Navigating Hoodwink's story might be a lot more enjoyable if it made some modicum of sense. Roguish protagonist Michael Bezzle (M. Bezzle)'s adventure kicks off with a night out on the town to pilfer the items he needs to propose to his girlfriend Francesca. Most of your time spent fiddling around with rote fetch quests in the dirty slums of Global-1 is dedicated to this seemingly mundane quest, yet sporadic encounters with a cat-detective and the comically oafish UniCorp troops hint at bigger matters afoot. Wisps of frayed plot threads pop-up along the way, but none of them really come together to explain or intrigue. This total lack of cohesiveness comes to a head at the awkwardly-placed cliffhanger ending that does precious little to inspire me to play a sequel in order to find out what the heck is going on, assuming one ever gets made.

It doesn't help that things get off to a rough start. The impact of the clever narrative slight-of-hand that unfolds in the opening scene introducing Michael is lost amidst some of the most unwieldy point-and-click controls I've encountered in a long time. Simply moving around to access specific areas of the screen and interacting with objects is a constant wrestling match. Changing the camera angle and transitioning between areas is triggered by clicking vague hotspots around the environment, rather than walking over to where you want to go. While this will sound familiar to adventure gaming vets, the way its implemented here just doesn't work that well.

After I accidentally walked past a crucial puzzle hotspot sitting on the back wall following a brief cinematic, it took me several minutes of cursing and frantic trial-and-error clicking to figure how to get back there. I knew what I needed to do. The game just wouldn't let get there without a fight. This particular issue is less prevalent in the open areas found further along in the trek, but most forms of movement and interaction throughout Hoodwink's brief jaunt are awkward and sluggish at best -- and that's when they're not glitching out.

In several instances, using a staircase caused the camera to get stuck on the wrong floor, forcing me to restart the game from scratch. Wonky pathfinding also occasionally made Michael walk in the opposite direction of where I intended him to go before looping around to his destination in a bizarre roundabout way. These funky moments stand out among the more general feelings of frustration that set in when trying to get around.

Hoodwink's poorly conceived puzzles are far from inventive, and most boil down to fetching objects and bringing them to the obvious spot where they're needed. Some puzzle solutions are absurdly disconnected from their objective, like one early-on that has you hunting down matches, smoking a cigar, and cranking a machine on the wall to reveal the item you're hunting for. Others are either too basic to begin with or are ruined by the erratic hint system, which alternately tells you exactly what you need to do next or spits out vague leads. There's a rare instance or two where interactive mini-games have you turning cranks or catching bugs, but these tasks are tackled within seconds and add very little to the experience. It's not terribly hard to figure out what to do simple because there's barely anything to interact with in the environments to begin with.

The lack of puzzle creativity carries over into the one-dimensional characters that they frequently hinge upon too. Playful stereotypes abound, from the flower child hippie spouting "stick it to The Man" rhetoric to the agitated Asian food vendor peddling rat burgers in bad English, but they're more hokey than humorous. Dialogue alternates between cheesy and obnoxious too, and while some of the voice work is well done, most of it is overdone. All of this is a shame, because the cel-shaded artwork is really quite good, and the setting itself is an interesting place to explore. Unfortunately, everything else is pretty weak.

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Skyrim Easter Egg: Metal Guitarist Honored

Apparently, a few of the folks at Bethesda Softworks are big fans of Swedish metal bands. For the uninitiated, there's a quest in Skyrim called "Darkness Returns" in which the player is sent out to retrieve Nystrom's journal -- a reference to Katatonia's guitarist Anders Nystrom. Within the text, it reads, "He also mumbled some nonsensical phrases like 'night is the new day' and how he was the 'ghost of the sun.'" Night is the New Day is actually the title of the band's most recent album, while "Ghost of the Sun" is a featured track on another one of their albums, Viva Emptiness. A new album, Dead End Kings, is set to hit US stores on August 28th.

Since this connection was first discovered, many fans have wondered just how this in-game nod came to be. Recently, IGN spoke with Nystrom to discuss how he initially found out about the reference.

"Yeah, it's so bizarre. I have no idea, actually," Nystrom said. "One day I just logged on to the computer, checked the emails and everything -- and I think it was one of our fans on Facebook that had posted something on our wall, directing us to the Wikipedia describing the whole mission [for 'Darkness Returns']. I just started reading it, not really knowing what I was reading, until I actually discovered it was from Skyrim. I didn't put two and two together because it was so bizarre with the whole character/riddle thing and how they intertwined the titles. Then when it dawned on me that it was actually an objective inside the game, it was just like, 'Wow, how cool is this?'"

As a post script, Nystrom said that he eventually got in touch with the Bethesda developer who had written the journal. "The writer who put me in there, he contacted me," Nystrom continued. "He turned out to be a big fan of Katatonia. He said our music had helped him through a lot of working hours late at night, and this was just his way of paying respect and giving something back, which was totally cool."

It just goes to show you that if you ever want to get the attention of your favorite band, just throw 'em into your video game. Luckily, Nystrom was -- and still is -- a huge gamer himself. "I try to keep track of the video game industry -- I've had [IGN] bookmarked for ages," he said. "My favorite game ever -- it has to be a tie between Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and the first couple of Silent Hills. I was also really, really into the Syphon Filter series. I loved that one, with Gabe Logan... So many great games."

But the real question still remains: is Nystrom a fan of Skyrim? "I haven't had the time yet actually, but [Bethesda] sent me the game... As soon as we go back on tour, there's a lot of time for that kind of stuff. I think I'll just buy another copy and bring it with me and dive into that. I can't wait to play the section with me in it!"

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The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes - "Ultron Unlimited" Review

Warning - full episode spoilers follow.

The problem with Ultron is that, no matter how many times you pound him into scrap metal, he always returns in a new body and with a new plan for wiping out humanity. The Avengers learned that the hard way in this week's episode of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. "Ultron Unlimited" picked up where "Behold... the Vision!" left off a few weeks ago, as the robotic villain sought to replace the Avengers with his own, "perfected" Synthezoid Avengers. Unfortunately, "Ultron Unlimited" turned out to be the first instance where the show's new, largely standalone approach to episodic storytelling took its toll.

The problem is that the idea of the real Avengers battling their evil replacements is a little too familiar coming so close on the heels of the Skrull invasion saga. Hawkeye even seemed to point out that fact when he quipped, "Just so we're clear, I'm the real me." That brief moment of levity didn't do much to spice up the conflict, however. Even Vision's fight scenes felt strangely diminished, as the character was far from the unstoppable powerhouse he was in his first appearance. Chalk it up to his conflicted feelings on his mission, I suppose. The best that could be said for the action in this episode is that, like in "Assault on 42", the fact that the Avengers were fighting inhuman opponents allowed them to be more brutal and decisive in combat than animated superhero shows typically allow. The rampant battling was entertaining enough, just not particularly noteworthy.

The focus on Avenger vs. Avenger brawling meant that Ultron himself was largely relegated to being a backseat player. We were never given a clear idea of what Ultron's larger goal was beyond swapping the Avengers out for Synthezoids.It was cool to see the team eventually unite to battle Ultron in his all new, all adamantium shell, but by that point the episode had too little running time left to take advantage of the scenario. And while Vision's evolution from uncaring soldier to would-be human was engaging, it could have been fleshed out and expanded upon. That's to say nothing of Jocasta, who played so little role in the episode it's enough to wonder why she was introduced at all. I don't know if she's intended to return before the end of the season, but if she does, hopefully the writers will actually do something with her and her relationship to the Pym family.

"Ultron Unlimited" was at its best when it focused on that family dynamic and Ultron's Oedipal relationship with his "mother," Janet. It's too bad Hank didn't make his long-awaited return here, because there's plenty of good material to mine with these characters. A script that downplayed the Avengers and devoted more time to Ultron's efforts to both please and supplant his father would have worked a lot better. Sadly, as far as I'm aware, this was Ultron's final appearance for the remainder of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. The most we can do is hope that Avengers Assemble takes a slightly more dark and psychological approach to the character.

Jesse is a writer for IGN Comics and IGN Movies. He can't wait until he's old enough to feel ways about stuff. Follow Jesse on Twitter, or find him on IGN.

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