[fizz, sip]
Aahhh!
Hi.
You know, a lot of people today
are wondering about the current state of the American economy.
Wondering if, or when, it will ever be restored to...
whatever it used to be
that was so much better than it is now.
I am here to tell you
about research that I have conducted myself,
personally, on my own,
individually,
that states exactly what is going on with the economy
and why
it is going on
with the economy.
My journey towards the truth
started with an old box of disks
I had stashed away in the corner.
Games like SimCity and Duke Nukem.
However, this was a surprise.
The game was called Depth Dwellers.
By TriSoft.
It was released in 1994, shortly after Doom by id Software.
"Depth Dwellers thrusts you deep"
"into treacherous mines."
"Do battle with the demonic Ri"
"in this exciting 3D virtual reality action game."
"Run, jump, duck, crawl and kill – do whatever it takes"
"to conquer the Ri and fulfill your quest."
"Advanced 3D technology."
"Outstanding graphics and outstanding music."
Now take note of that outstanding music.
This has my expectations rather high.
Yes, I present to you
the fact,
irrefutable,
that Depth Dwellers is, indeed,
the reason
for the collapse in the American economy
in the past...
amount of time.
Why?
Well, because...
taxes.
We'll get to that in a moment.
First here is some review information.
[thunder sound]
[bland AdLib piano music]
Rated VR-13.
Does that mean "voluntarily rated 13"
or "violent revenge 13?"
And then there's this menu music.
It's so...
ambiguous.
Is it happy? Is it sad? What is it?
So there's no Options menu. You press F10 to get to the Help screen.
So you scroll down and you see some of the keys, which–
This one here:
Press T to transport slave to "safty."
Safty?
What is that, the slave afterlife?
Is it New Jersey for slaves?
The rest of it is pretty simple stuff.
You have your mouse controls, your joystick controls,
and of course, the Gravis gamepad, which every cool game had back in the day.
Let's start this up and see what we have.
"You have been contacted by the council of the Depth Dwellers."
"Their world, Ora,"
"is under a terrible siege."
"The Ri have slaughtered many of the women and children"
"and are taking the men to the dark side of Ora."
"The men are enslaved, mines and Zendle,"
and there's some prized component that you have to, you know–
It's there.
And there's councils and princesses and...
Aurora, not to be confused with Ora,
and Ri's and...
you know, knights and strange stuff!
And then that's just the backstory.
Apparently, you're in these mines.
And there's this stolen machine, or something.
And you have to go get some plans.
Whatever. Here's the game.
You have this simple, stupid-looking gun.
And it has the most ridiculous shooting sound.
[ridiculous sound]
You can jump and duck.
Which is strange.
Because there is nothing to jump on or duck under.
[sliding door]
"Hey!"
[ridiculous sound]
[consecutive ridiculous sounds]
I don't really know what to say or what I'm looking at.
I don't think I was supposed to kill that guy.
Who cares? It looks cool.
"Hey!"
[ridiculous sound]
These sound effects are absolutely killing me.
It sounds like somebody just made them with their mouth
and slightly altered the pitch.
I mean, I could do that: "HEY!"
Boom-boom-boom-boom!
Pkkk-pkkk-pkkk-pkkk!
Some of the animations are pretty cool.
I like how when you shoot the guard things, they sort of burst in half.
Ooh, what is this?
It's a slave.
Being tortured. Ha ha!
Yeah, see, like that. You can cut their bodies up into... guts.
With your laser stupid gun.
You get this other gun later, which looks like a...
a bolt.
What'd they just go to Lowe's and find these things?
You have secrets that look like green slime on the wall.
You get up near it and a yellow opening...
opens.
And there's also a very strange stereographic 3D mode
where you can use red-and-blue 3D glasses.
I tried it out and it sucks.
This was pretty much the only major "new" feature
that's supposedly innovative about this game.
All it does is make everything harder to see. And purple.
I wandered around this first level for almost 20 minutes
before I finally found this little tiny key.
Now once I finally got there, there's this strange... thing of...
psychedelic Christmas lights that you jump into.
And it gives you this little stats screen.
It's obligatory, I guess, for these type of Doom clones.
And then the next level
is absurd!
How are you supposed to survive THAT?
I just skipped through all these levels.
With the supplied level-skip cheat from the Help menu.
They all look the same.
They all play the same.
You're really not missing anything. They're just slight re-textures
of endlessly-boring mazes.
When you finally get to the last level,
which looks like speakers on the wall for some reason,
and beat it,
this is what you get at the end of the game.
"YEAH!!"
Wait, did you catch that? Let's see that again.
"YEAH!!"
I don't even know what to say.
"Awsome."
Th-that IS awesome.
"You are awsome."
Some of the guns that you can get later are slightly different.
They look like different items that you would buy at Lowe's.
Like this useless grenade launcher that launches OVER people and kills YOU.
And this awesome, awesome flame thrower.
This is probably the coolest thing about the game is the flame thrower.
I have to go back to the music here.
I just don't understand it.
How can it be so...
lame?
And it never changes.
Every bit of the game uses the same short, annoying little tune.
I mean, just imagine if the music was like this instead.
[thrash metal music]
But no. Instead you have:
[bland AdLib piano music]
[ridiculous sound]
This is so freaking exciting and hardcore!
What kind of people
would make a game like this?
In order to find out,
I browsed the game's document files.
And came up with THIS startling information.
TriSoft is a husband and wife team
that wants to provide games that reach out beyond the screen and grab you.
Total immersion.
Bradley N. Bell and Elizabeth A. Pie...gari.
Here's the thing:
"Bradley N. Bell worked at NASA for LinCom."
"He designed and implemented Virtual Reality simulations"
"for use in astronaut training."
Yes, he did.
NASA.
At the beginning of this review,
I stated that I had the reason
for the current state of the economic downfall
that we are all so...
going through.
Well here is my fact.
[sighs] The creators of this game, as you have just seen,
were... ex... employed...
by NASA.
NASA is in fact a government entity, or at least,
tax dollars go towards it, so,
it is indeed government.
You pay taxes.
It goes to the government.
That goes to NASA.
That goes to the creators of Depth Dwellers
which inadvertently, YOU, America,
created
the economic crisis
because
all the money went to Depth Dwellers.
and failed NASA missions.
Which, in a sense, are pretty much the same thing.
Piles of steaming crap.
I hope you feel good about yourself.
You all suck!