[ grunt ]
- MIRROR: Hey! - LGR: Oh!
LGR: Okay.
- LGR: Dude. - MIRROR: [ goofy chuckle ]
LGR: Could you get any creepier?
Mmm... probably!
Please don't.
LGR: Ugh. So, I guess it's December.
MIRROR: Yup. Christmas.
Christmas! [ wheezing chuckle ]
LGR: Well, then it's time for "Christmas Lazy Game Reviews."
Or else my clone will never go away.
MIRROR: Mmm hmmm...
[ goofy chuckling ]
[ grunt ]
[ music: "Carol of the Bells" ]
[ fizz ]
[ sips ]
Aahhh...
[ typing ]
[ music ends, fades out ]
Is there no end to the idea
that Santa Claus is just moments away
from snapping and going into full homicidal maniac mode?
Because I've lost track of the number of games I've covered
that take this juvenile concept and run with it.
You'd think there would be a bit more variety in the motives
behind holiday massacres.
Anyway, here's another one.
"Santa Slayer,"
developed by Digital Dialect
and released as freeware in 1996
for Windows PCs.
And, man oh man.
This is so far past the bottom of the barrel,
we've gone subterranean.
Just look at this thing.
"Santa Slayer," oddly enough,
is a six degrees of freedom first-person shooter,
much like what you'd expect from games like
"Descent" or "Forsaken."
However, unlike those games,
this one sucks in every way imaginable
and then goes out of its way to make sure you're completely dissatisfied by the end.
For one thing, even though you can move around in any direction,
you can't strafe left or right,
and there's not even any joystick or mouse support.
Meaning that moving and aiming is an absolute chore.
The next issue is...
literally everything else.
The game play is asinine,
the graphics are hideous,
and the sound effects are stolen
from Windows 95 and "Duke 3D."
[ explosion ]
[ beeping ]
[ rapid gunshots ] [ scream ]
I'm wasting my life here, folks.
And I'm fully aware of it.
That's not good.
I should be out decking the halls and caroling the bells or something.
I'm not even sure what the point of this game IS!
I mean, there's zero story or context given in the game itself,
or its readme file, but you can shoot things.
So, who cares, right?!
There are evil elves with machine guns
and imposter Santas flying around that throw exploding presents.
So, for all I know,
this is just Santa having a bad fever dream.
I guess the goal is to shoot
whatever moves, but actually,
I'm not sure.
Because the game doesn't end
when you do that!
Seriously! Kill everything and nothing
happens.
You just sit there,
contemplating existence in silence
until you just decide to kill yourself
with your own weapons.
[ explosion ]
Now that's some dark holiday commentary right there!
At first, I thought there was something wrong with the game
because, after all, the whole thing looks like something wrong.
But nope.
The readme file actually says:
"When you've killed everything, nothing will happen."
"Restart the game if you want to play some more."
"And no, you can't get into Santa's Workshop!"
"What do you expect – it's free!"
What do I expect?
I expect an ENDING of some kind.
How hard could that have been to implement?
Even simply making the game exit would have been
SOME kind of ending, but
instead this is the epitome
of slapdash development.
Kind of impressive, really, but
what was the point?
Well, it seems this was some kind of programming exercise
with something called the Cancun Engine,
although I can't find ANY other references to this engine online.
The team behind this, Digital Dialect,
went on to do all sorts of impressive stuff later on, though.
Things like the PC ports for "Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee"
and "Metal Gear Solid,"
as well as a game called "Adrenix."
This is another six degrees of freedom first-person shooter,
and this is just pure speculation,
but I'd wager that it uses the same engine
as "Santa Slayer" here.
Alllright. Maybe that's all this is.
An exercise by a fledgling team of game developers
in a new 3D engine
that they used later on.
Well, at least that was productive for THEM.
But why did they bother letting this loose on the public?
Surely, if this was meant as a Christmas gift
to the gaming masses, then it's the malicious kind of gift.
Like a bucket of snakes
or blankets laced in smallpox.
There is a multiplayer mode,
but I can't for the life of me imagine
who would want to put themselves through that kind of pain with others.
The only net positive is maybe that it runs at over 600 frames per second.
And according to some people's standards today,
that means that it's automatically legendary for PC games.
So...
in terms of frame rate, I guess this is
the Game of the Year for 1996!
On any other terms whatsoever,
it's a piece of Christmas coal
with zero redeeming qualities.
But what do you expect – it's free!
Ugh...
[ music: "Jingle Bell Rock" ]
Ah, it's the first Christmas video down.
There's a couple or more... somethin' like that to go.
I haven't decided how many I'm doing this year, but there are more
coming soon here on LGR.
So, stay tuned or subscribe if you'd like to
to be notified whenever they're out.
There's always Twitter and Facebook to bother me.
And Patreon to bother me with money?
Okay, wait...
None of these things bother me!
Actually, I quite like them. So do them.
And as always, thank you very much for watching!
My apologies it had to be a crappy game like this, though.