Zeus Poplar presents:
Stephen King's The Mist PC Game Review
I made an exception with Angelsoft's The Mist text adventure because it followed the short story's plot closely. After a strange mist blankets a small town, the hero finds himself in a supermarket under assault by hedious creatures.
 Blarg, that's no fun! And neither are supermarkets, so naturally my first steps were out the front door.
 Um, right then, I'll investigate the store. After a couple of minutes wandering empty asiles, avoiding local yokels, I realized I wasn't going to like The Mist much... even before things got glitchy.
 I got my hopes up when I found a back door, but it just lead to a useless truck. Maybe I was going about this the wrong way. No man is an island. Humbled, I searched for human companionship.
 Hilda was as shy as I was awkward ("tye"?). Desperate, I broke about 47 personal rules and initiated small talk with a Church Lady.
 No matter how much I strove to avoid her, Carmody would track me down and make me her sacrificial virgin. Apparantly she was a sort of crude "get the heck outside" motivator. Geepers, I love time limits in puzzle games! Especially when they force you outside to an almost certain and unavoidable death:
 Riddle: How doth our hero vanquish The Bug? After several minutes, the water-soaked-wooden-bong-like wheels of my mind churned out a solution. Raid! But the Raid, though previously mentioned, was nowhere to be found. More wandering, more being sacrificed. Huzzah, the monotony is finally broken when I discover a box of salt. Yay for salt. Hey, The Bug was "slug-like", right?
 I realized then that The Mist has no puzzles. There's no actual skill involved. You just bumbled around until your inevitible Death by Sacrifice/Random Insect Encounter. Even trial and error was imposible; the save system wanted to format my hard drive. After aeons the random Bug/Hoary Foot events failed to trigger, allowing me to get to finally get the hell out of there, but not before I came down with a previously undocumented phobia of grocery stores. Fearful of pop music and discounts, I sought solace in the local garbage dump, but in time, even that simple joy lost its luster. On the verge of virtual suicide, I hit the streets and ducked in the nearest exterminator's.
 After a half hour that felt like six years in Hell, everything was falling into place: I picked up the Raid, aimed it at the bug, and...  Zeus Poplar actually prefers Myst. Ouch... – Zeus Poplar (email me about this!) More Stuff By ZeusImages © & ™ their respective owners. |
I dig text games -- at least ones with good writing -- but aside from
the rare Legend of the Red Dragon orgy, I never play 'em. They frustrate me: mazes are annoying enough when you can actually see them... and I have a heart condition; 
