Friday, July 11, 2008

All Bow Before the Accordion Thief


I logged in under the name AuroraNever during my play of Kingdom of Loathing for this weeks hand on assignment and had quite an interesting experience therein. Who knew that the world of biting sarcasm and stick figures could be so uneventfully-eventful. Yes, indeed, I too followed the tutorial with the Toot Oriole on Mt. Noob, north of the plains. I found this character to be rather hilarious, having made the game play more interesting with his off-beat humor and snide manor, though, I have to admit, I’ve met snarkier folks in my life. The toot sent me down into a cave at the foot of the mountain where he had hid some shiny pebbles. He said that I could spend several of my allotted adventures in the cave and so I ventured inward, hoping to see some stalactites if I could.

My passageway inside the cave was blocked by a stack of large crates. Therein, “[I] saunter up to the pile of crates and, pretending that it's the jukebox back at Al's Diner, hit it in exactly the right place with your elbow. It sets up a series of reverberations that resound through the corridor, blasting all of the crates to powder. Moxious!” After all of my effort, however, this only marked a dead end., I gained two sarcasm points from this adventure and ended up ‘looking cool’ in the act, so all in all, I can’t really complain.

A cave in! Oh no! This marks the second of my twists-and-turns in this game. I move the boulder and gain one ‘fortitude point’ while commenting on how good this will be for my figure. I move, under the boulder lifted above my head, and continue on. Luckily, at this point in my journey, my growing thirst does not go unanswered, as I come upon a blue body of water. There, I use a Frisbee to scoop the water and drink it. Apparently, it was delicious.

Finally, my actions do not go un-awarded, as I found behind a pile of laundry the pile of shiny pebbles the Toot had sent me in after. I bring the pebbles back to the bird, but he doesn’t do much of anything in response. From there, I adventure into the Hall of The Legends of The Times of Old. Herein, I do not have the proper keys to access the doors, and gesture to one day find my way through.

All in all, I found the tone of this game interesting and its twists and turns rather random and funny. I like the minimalist approach taken by the games authors in creating a world in which I can roam about unabated while getting a few laughs out of the process.

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