Constellation Games (6 page)

GAME REVIEWS OF IRREVOCABLE DECISIONS 2.0 PRESENTS
Handle the Real Style
(c. 90 million years ago)
A game by Clan Extra Echo and Clan Let It Sink
Reviewed by Ariel Blum

Publisher:
Clan Extra Echo (?)
Platforms:
Brain Embryo
ESRB rating:
M for grand larceny and occasional vengeance

Looking through fifteen thousand extraterrestrial games used to be kind of a fun activity, good way to spend a weekend, but now my livelihood depends on finding the SINGLE MOST AWESOME GAME ever made for the Brain Embryo so I can port that game to human computers, and it's becoming a bit of a chore. Which makes me more and more worried about my backup plan of becoming a gigolo.

Handle the Real Style
is not the game I've been looking for. I'm writing about it because it's the game that taught me how to look at Farang games.

You may recall my
Gatekeeper
review, where I used the word "blob" a lot. This was an accurate depiction and I stand by it. These games are full of multicolored roundish blobs. I figured there was some complicated 3D shape overlaid on the blob in the RF band which I didn't see because I don't have antennacles.

But
Handle the Real Style
starts off with something I recognize: a starfield. Stars give off all kind of light, and they're pretty quiet in the RF, so they look about the same to Farang as to humans. Pretty nice graphics, too—there's a kind of nebula thing in one corner of the sky, and you can even see the Milky Way.

And there's this strange two-tone blob in the middle of the screen, just like in
Gatekeeper
. I found the controls and moved the blob around, assuming it was a space shooter with a starfield background. But as I moved around, other shapes occluded the stars and I realized that I was looking
up
at the sky.

That's the secret. Humans make games with top-down views, and Farang make games with bottom-up views. I was looking at these little brown blobs like they were the top view of something, or maybe the side view of something, but actually they're upskirt shots of Farang: little circular forms with leathery feet at the bottom and the wiggly antennacles sticking out.

Now these games make a lot more sense. You start
Handle the Real Style
on the beach. Eventually the sun comes up and the stars go away. You can go into the ocean, dive as deep as you want, and the camera will stay right beneath the player character the whole time, as the sky and the water's surface fade away past the draw distance.

The CDBOEGOACC describes
Handle the Real Style
as "a vengeance game typical of the period", and doesn't say much else. I admit I find this game a little light on the vengeance. You can go into other peoples' caves and steal their stuff (lots of Farang games are based around theft, the way human games are based around homicide), but you never see the other people. The world is detailed, well-realized, and completely empty. If you revenge yourself on someone, and they never find out, is it really vengeance?

There's a lot of text in
Handle the Real Style
, but no way to translate it, so I just made up my own story. In this game you play the last Farang on Earth (well, whatever they call it), taking a post-apocalyptic opportunity to steal back all the power tools lent to his/her neighbors over the years and never returned. I'm through with this game, but I may drop back in a couple years from now to see how (in)accurate that story is.

Update:
Here's the now-obligatory rebuttal from Curic.

Curic:
The "nebula thing" is a nebula.
Please add this to your review. That nebula was very
prominent in the night sky back then and very
important to a lot of Farang.
ABlum:
ok
why was it important?
Curic:
I don't know. People were very
superstitious back then.
They probably thought they could get
there if they built a big
enough tower or a fast
enough spaceship or
something.

Beep beep. "Pick up," I said. My hands were covered with free-range chicken juice. "Hey, Jenny."

"Do I have a job yet?" said Jenny from the phone on the counter. "I'm gonna call every day, like a plucky newspaper dude."

"I've been planning the cookout," I said. I held up my drippy hands to the phone. "Things are marinating."

"What are you looking for? Like what's the criteria? 'Cause I can scout the database myself, while you marinate."

"Uh, when the Constellation made the database they assembled a histogram of reactions to each game, kind of like they use on Groupinion. I'm trying out the games that everyone likes."

"That won't work," said Jenny. "Everybody 'likes' Trent Fellersen, but I wouldn't show his art to aliens."

I washed my hands and put a lid on the chicken. "He's the one with the airbrushed... What's wrong with his stuff?"

"Okay, you remember the cartoon I drew way back when, where Picasso's painting a still life and Bugs Bunny keeps stealing the fruit?"

I remembered. "Yeah."

"When Bugs Bunny steals the fruit from Trent Fellersen, Fellersen doesn't even go after him. He just gives up, and sells the painting as is. Like, 'yes, it's a primer coat and the outline of an apple, I'm a genius.'"

"Sounds like you don't like him," I said. I dropped potatoes into a pot of water.

"Oh, I 'like' him," said Jenny. "'Like' is the placeholder emotion. Don't give the world more shit people 'like'. I want to do a game that that some people loved and some people hated."

"That's a good idea. Skewed histogram. We'll look at the rating and the standard deviation."

"Can I do that part?" said Jenny. "And get paid for doing it?"

"Maybe we can split it up," I said. "Let's talk about it after the cookout."

"Oh, oh!" said Jenny. "Did you hear about Papua New Guinea?"

"I heard that it exists," I said.

"The Constellation just landed shuttles all over Papua New Guinea. Like eight hundred people. Except about three hundred were Them; maybe that only counts as one person."

"What are they doing there?" I said. "That's the middle of nowhere."

"I don't know, handing out old computers, or whatever the Constellation normally does. I thought you'd know about this already."

"They're probably linguists," I said. "People speak a lot of different languages there."

"Well how come they get all the space aliens? When do we get some?"

"Jenny. Geez. The aliens are not a dessert."

"You know what I mean," said Jenny. "You said the BEA assholes were going to let Curic come down to Austin. She's already missing the cookout."

"I don't know," I said. "There's foreign policy shit." I picked up the phone and looked up a map. "Clearly New Guinea needs the tourism more than we do. Plus, if they do take over the island like people are afraid of, everyone will secretly think 'well, at least they only got Papua New Guinea.'"

"And they'll stop with one island? They've got portable wormholes. You can't quarantine that shit."

I looked at the map. "Oh, wow," I said. "New Guinea shares an island with Indonesia. If the Constellation takes over Indonesia, then China gets involved, and then we're all fucked."

"Where are you getting this? Why does China care?"

"They have defense pacts with all those south Asian countries."

"That's in
Limited Nuclear Exchange
," said Jenny. "Not real life."

"Oh."

"Doofus."

If you have a big cookout on the actual Fourth of July, everyone is going to some other cookout, so you're left alone with more food than you can eat. Have a cookout the weekend
before
, and not only will you have a good time, you'll probably ruin some other fucker's cookout the next week, because lots of people can't take a cookout two weeks in a row. This is my theory, anyway.

Today the Brain Embryo makes its public debut at my annual Pre-Fourth-Of-July Sexy Cookout. (Everything sounds better when you call it "sexy".) The "public" here is Jenny's friends, and my friends, such as they are. Putting the two sets together usually causes some kind of fun explosion, if only because my friends are always astounded to discover that their pickup lines don't work on Jenny's friends.

The Sexy Cookout is my yearly attempt to build the most stereotypical image of summer imaginable, so everyone can have a "fun summer" memory to look back on when it starts to rain. My friends in their work polo shirts and Jenny's in whatever they wear; beers in hand, dropping by the grill to share inanities. The sweating, the sprinkler, the heat of the grill and all the other things about an Austin cookout that are fun in retrospect.

I want to do it right this year, because this might be the last cookout. Nobody knows what human civilization will be like in a year. Next year there will be a new holiday on the calendar—the anniversary of first contact—and we may all be living on different planets. The memory of
this
summer, when we were all together in Austin; I want it to last as long as it needs to.

Jenny doesn't
cause
trouble but she's suspiciously good at pointing it out. The first sign that my cookout was in trouble came from her. I was turning the traif in the backyard when Jenny came out with a beer bottle in each hand.

"Not being judgmental," I said, "but it's a little early to be double-chugging it."

"This one's for Bizarro Kate," said Jenny. "Can you come in and set up the Xbox?"

"What? No."

"I'd do it," said Jenny, "Except some of the Brain Embryo cables look like they're
alive
. I don't want to unplug them and kill something."

"What's wrong with the Brain Embryo?" I said. "This is a Brain Embryo cookout. The whole point is to show it off."

"Nothing, I mean, it's a nice screensaver—"

"The starfield is the
title screen
," I said. "No one is actually playing
Handle the Real Style
?"

"I don't know how it works! Where's the other controllers? Are we all supposed to get cozy on the abacus?"

"Curic only sent the one controller," I said. "It's like a PC."

"Well, that's not a good party system, right?" said Jenny. "So, Xbox?"

"No! If we set up the Xbox, the boys will turn this party into a
Temple Sphere
fragfest and the girls will be pissed."

"They're pissed right now," said Jenny. "Can you ask Curic for more controllers or something?"

ABlum:
hey are u awake
Curic:
What a question! I'm always awake.
ABlum:
i need multiplayer on the brain embryo
it is a party emergency
can you drop me some hardware
or give me some instructions
Curic:
I can't drop anything anymore, by arrangement
with your government.
Many humans were worried that if we dropped small
things like video game systems we might also drop large
things, like asteroids.
ABlum:
shit
ok what about instructions?
could you just find me a multiplayer game
i am cooking right now
Curic:
There are no multiplayer games for the Brain Embryo.
ABlum:
what??
Curic:
It was a primitive computer.
ABlum:
dude every non-portable game console in human history has supported multiplayer
do you know the name of the very first human video game?
tennis for two
for TWO
Curic:
Things were different for us.
ABlum:
shit

Bizarro Kate slammed the screen door open. "Jenny, your
weird friend
is here," she called out.

"That doesn't go very far," said Jenny. "What's she look like?"

"It's a dude," said Bizarro Kate. "The perv with the pecs."

"That's
Ariel's
friend," said Jenny. "Go talk to Bai," she told me. "Get him to keep Dana in his pants while real people are around."

"Okay, take over," I said. I handed her the tongs.

"Take over what?" said Jenny. "You only need to turn the meat once. This isn't the Fifties." I was gone into the house.

In the living room, Bai was introducing Dana to Jenny's friends. "So it's like a paper doll?" said one unsuspecting nerd girl.

"No, she's so much more than that!" said Bai. "See, she—"

"Heeeey," I called out, slapping Bai on the back, feeling like a big fat faker. "Let me get you a beer!" I steered him, not into the kitchen—O treacherous Ariel!—but up the stairs to the landing.

"Soooo," I said, "what's new with you and Dana?"

Bai beamed. "Check it out, bro," he said, and slipped his phone into my hand. "Finally. Nearly perfect."

Over the past year, Dana has gone from a generic "blonde" virtual girlfriend, through a variety of virtual plastic surgeries, hair restyles and wardrobe changes, to someone who looks to be doing a pretty good cosplay of Dana Light. Yes, Bai has finally recreated the PS2-era outfit that we all loved when we were teenagers, with the leather pants and knife holsters on the belt and everything. The knife holsters probably not being part of the standard virtual girlfriend repertoire, since the first I saw of Dana, she was checking her makeup in a camo-pattern compact; and when she noticed that a strange man was looking at her, she smiled coyly and said nothing. Neither of which are animation loops I associate with a fucking ruthless bounty hunter.

"That's really... accurate," I said, not wanting to say "good."

"I decided it was time," said Bai. "Last week, you know, that we'd finally got to the point in our relationship where I could introduce her to my parents."

"What, with the knives and everything?"

"No!" said Bai, like he thought I was a real dummy. He took back the phone and tapped through some menus. Dana's outfit shifted to a purple evening gown, hair up in a bun—well, not a bun but whatever that's called—a diamond necklace around her neck that probably cost about as much as a real necklace, despite being made of compressed object code instead of compressed carbon.

"She sure cleans up nice," I said.

"Yeah, but it doesn't matter," said Bai. "because my folks hate her. Just like they hate every woman I've ever dated. Because she's not Chinese."

I did not think this was the real reason, but I just said: "Well, her
hardware's
Chinese."

"Parents!" said Bai. "What can you do? Did you say you were getting me a beer?"

"In a minute," I said. "I have to ask you a favor. Do you know why gay people can't get married in Texas?"

"How is that a favor?"

"Do-you-know-the-reason."

"Well, yeah, it's because of peoples'... whatever."

"The word is prejudice," I said. "Fifty years ago no one wanted to see an Asian guy with a white girl."

"Fifty years ago? How about now?"

"And ten years from now, a human will want to marry an extraterrestrial, and people will be upset about that. But right now, what people don't want to see is a flesh-and-blood human carrying on a relationship with a piece of software." (Putting aside for the moment all questions about the capabilities and limitations of that software, I added to myself.)

Dana frowned at the silence of Bai thinking over what I'd said. She looked at me. "Hi, Ariel," she said.

"Hi, Dana," I said.

"So, Jenny has a problem with..." said Bai.

"I just want her to have a good time at the party," I said. "She's had a really tough time lately with shitty clients," I said. "Can you... humor her? Just don't wave Dana around at her friends."

"Dana'll miss the party," said Bai.

"Is there any functional difference," I asked, "Between introducing her to people at the party, and introducing her to people on TV?"

"Not really," Bai mumbled. He looked up. "Okay, no Jenny's friends. But I can introduce her to you, yeah?"

"She already knows me," I said, "from last time. She called me Ariel just now."

"Awesome!" said Bai. "The cognitive buffs are working!" Dana detected that Bai was happy, and played a big smile animation.

From downstairs I heard a chilling sound: the Xbox Forever was booting up.
Et tu, Jenny?

I jumped down the stairs. "Beer's in the fridge," I called back to Bai.

In the living room, Jenny was nowhere to be seen. Bizarro Kate and two more of Jenny's friends were unfolding my old dancing-game pad.

"Hey!" said Bizarro Kate. "I remembered you had
Super Slide Dance Challenge
, so we switched the TV cables. Hope that's okay. We didn't touch your Constellation system."