[fizz, sip]
Aahhh!
It is the summertime, and that means...
nothing.
I have, however, found quite a few PC games recently on my excursions
out to random places, such as Goodwill and flea markets.
And ran across this freak:
H.U.R.L.
"Hilarious, Non-Violent, 3D Action Game."
Rated "All" by the RSAC.
Made in 1995
by Deep River Publishing and Millennium Media Group.
"Grab your water balloons and head into the trash-filled world of H.U.R.L.,"
"a hilarious, 3D cartoon game that will have your heart pounding and your side splitting."
"The only thing that gets hurt in this game is your pride."
"You're a squeaky clean secret agent hot on the trail of Bob the Slob"
"and his Hardcore Union of Radical Litterbugs."
"H.U.R.L. has stolen the world's supply of underwear."
"It's up to you to get it back."
"To catch Bob, you'll have to outrun and outwit his mob of trash-tossing critters"
"who'd like nothing better"
"than to bury you under a mountain of slime."
"You don't know gross until you've been hit with old kitty litter."
In other words, this is just crazy.
I had to get this as soon as I saw these descriptions.
"Take a bite out of grime!"
It's your standard DOS game for 386 computers and up.
"HURL your lunch in Fast Food Alley."
"Contains 3D continuous motion."
What?
First-person action, wacky animation, etc.
I think I've seen enough.
This looks patently ridiculous,
so I have to try it immediately.
[goofy AdLib music]
So it has AdLib sound, which is a good thing.
I am a HUGE fan of anything with AdLib music.
Not too much for credits, but–
QUIGLEY: We're countin' on YOU, mate,
to clean up the Slob Zone and capture Bob the Slob!
I'd like to 'elp ya do it,
but I've got to stay 'ere an' shampoo me kangaroo!
Good luck, mate!
LGR: Okay, that's the first sign of trouble:
the worst Australian I have ever seen.
Or most importantly, heard.
Here we have a list of the random things you'll come across.
Creatures and forces of nature,
as well as the different items you will come across in the game.
And the very simple, standard controls:
Spacebar to open doors, Alt to shoot, etc.
[whimsical AdLib music]
So the game itself...
greets you with an ugly pig thing
which apparently does nothing but sit there.
It seems all you really need to do
first is get used to the handling!
This has to be the worst-handling first-person shooter I have ever played!
In my previous review, Depth Dwellers,
it took you forever to turn around.
Well, this one, it turns you around completely in about a split second!
So it makes aiming or moving– just everything–completely awkward.
WAY too fast.
Once you get over that little bit,
it seems the entire point of the game is to go around
and kill creatures such as evil ducks with ties.
And also to pick up the random bits of trash
which you can then convert into money.
I read that this game is one to teach kids great values.
Well all I'm learning so far
is that walking is a chore,
ducks are evil,
pigs are brain-dead morons,
going around and picking up all sorts of random trash
out of alleyways is fine,
as long as you go
and convert it into money or weapons later on.
And showering in public is perfectly acceptable,
but we'll get to that later.
There's trash all over the place left by this Bob the Slob's minions.
Apparently they're OCD minions,
because everything is laid out
in a nice, little, evenly-spaced line of trash.
When you go to the Trade 4 Trash,
you can buy three different types of weapons:
water balloons, soap and deodorant.
I could only imagine how effective this would be in real life,
throwing deodorant and soap pieces
at, like, dirty hippies on the side of the road
and homeless people and–
well, you get the idea.
I honestly only ever buy water balloons.
And just as fast as you move,
you shoot even faster.
So you run out of your ammo pretty much as soon as you press the button.
The pigs serve no purpose
other than to get in the way and look stupid.
You can shoot them with a single water balloon and they'll fly away.
Which is made of total rad, by the way.
The game is your simple find the key,
find the exit,
shoot bad things along the way,
get a few things to restore your health along the way.
There's a very high degree of random occurrences in this game,
such as this pay phone, which does nothing!
[dial tone, touchtone dialing]
VOICE: You'll never catch me, sad dude. I'm too slippery!
Although I have to give it points for interactivity.
You also have showers, which you can use if you get dirty.
This is the only game that I can think of you can actually use a shower
and shower off.
At least in this kind of a game. I know you can do it in The Sims.
The aiming is absolutely horrendous.
You can't really shoot anything and then you end up dying
because everything hits you from about a hundred directions at once.
Sometimes you just shoot straight through things.
Sometimes you can't shoot at all.
Once you get all the keys,
you'll find where to go and then you get to the exit.
[sliding door]
[chime]
[sliding doors]
QUIGLEY: You're off to a great start, mate!
I'm with ya all the way!
In spirit.
LGR: That guy is a shifty punk!
And an absolute pansy!
I have a feeling this one of those conspiracy games
with a big twist at the end where HE is actually
Slob the Bob or whatever at the end
who stole everybody's underwear.
Doesn't he look like an underwear thief to you?
And the second level is absolutely classic.
[country AdLib music]
Yeah, it's a trailer park.
Complete with twangy, country-western music.
This has to be one of the few trailer parks in a game,
other than maybe Postal and Redneck Rampage that come to mind.
You can go inside pretty much all of them.
It's also one of the very few games with working toilets
which DO restore your health,
which I have to give it extreme props for that.
And again, I can't stress how bad the controls are.
I tried this on multiple computers with different speeds.
And it's a challenge just to get to the door.
You end up sliding left and right past it,
or it closes before you can get to it because it's so bad.
Otherwise, I really would kind of enjoy this game.
I actually like this game. I don't know what it is about it.
Maybe it's just its strange colors and its weird ideas.
But it has character. You cannot deny that.
And its quirkiness is just awesome.
So...
I'm not sure that I would recommend it.
But if you like old-school first-person shooters,
I would say why not.
It was also released as Slob Zone 3D a little bit later on,
so that's something to keep in mind.
You can find either version not too difficultly.
And every level
is very much distinguishable from the last.
So...
It doesn't really get boring.
Geared towards kids, it's pretty simple to play,
and there's only one boss at the very end of the game,
which is Bob the Slob, so you don't really have to worry about that at all.
So it's purely an old-school first-person shooter experience.
So if you like that, I would say why not give it a try.
It will probably be about the weirdest game you will ever play
in this genre.
[country AdLib music]