Larry Vales: Dead Girls Are Easy

"Dupe, insult and rob old and new acquaintances to avenge a girl you didn't really love anyway"

Larry Vales is back with a litany of life crises. Not that he had much of a life or that most people knew he was gone. The protagonist-by-default of a cult series of games even though he'd probably get rejected from entering a cult himself, Larry finds himself fired from his job as traffic cop, and his girlfriend, Suse Linux, seems to have been killed violently as well. He wants to get to the bottom of things, which is made a bit easier as he's close to the bottom of the barrel with many pop references and physically impossible puzzles that make tortured sense only after you solve them(no, wait, there are the ones that follow and ridicule a stereotype as well.) Yet pathetic though he is, Larry has certain advantages. Unlike the other game characters, he can actually move around--heck, he's learned to walk without dragging his feet since Traffic Division(maybe it's the sideburns they all make fun of him for having.) He isn't even stuck in a hotel; Stagnant, Tennessee, where Larry Vales lives, now has a map and everything. It's that sort of continual attention to more levels of detail that makes for great art, or maybe Philip Reed, the creator, set our sights low on purpose.

Vales of (In)discretion

Your object in the game is to break through what seems to be an increasing cover-up to see who murdered Suse. The game starts in an Ulcer King, where Larry's car has broken down, and he will need to get it running again operating between two sullen teenagers, an employee bathroom, and a seedy alley. Once he does he'll get his car vandalized, which isn't all bad because he won't need it any more once he gets fired--Charlie Stryker, promoted to captain last game, and Commander Fishbain, who promoted him, break you the news. You'll have to navigate the Honest Engine car repair shop, the creepy motel where Suse died, the creepy officers guarding it, a rabid mortician, psychotic doctors, and an uber-slumlord barring you entry to your own place to find things out. Of course you'll have to spend a lot of time at the station where you were fired as well, and there are a couple of items that continually find ludicrous uses, but there are good chances for revenge along the way too.

Dead Genres are Easy

Well, if someone wants to make a game where you focus on jokes, then text adventures would be number one although most people are too impatient to play them any more. Point and clicks are hardly impossible to make especially with Adventure Game Studio being free and all. It's also easy for the player, who right-clicks between the middle-finger hand, eye, mouth, old sock, and latest item activated for the standard actions you'll find in this sort of game. It's not the interface that makes the game stand out, though, although it is sometimes annoying to leave a room or a zoom-in scene within a room. As a lucky special bonus there is even a mini-game just before the end, but the best effect is the free map you pull out. Locations you can enter are starred, and in dialogue, you generally have a choice between several lines, which disappear when they aren't useful.

The descriptions of objects are humorous and also give pretty clear hints. Added to there being no way to lose(I've tried, and this is especially surprising in light of Larry being such a--sorry, this must be done once in tribute to the general tone of the game--loser) and frequent urgent situations that are obvious roadblocks to further game progress, zany puzzles never become too illogical. It's as if you're Sherlock Holmes, rooting out the impossible to get the only logical answer--as long as you neglect a basic law of nature or just of the United States. The game never needs to feel superior to you by fooling you; it's already caught you off-guard with enough insults. Drying out your leather jacket is one of the best puzzles, but others are unto themselves; for instance, your car is hit with graffiti, and the game makes you try to wipe it off--but you can only get rid of half of it. Funny but misleading, and it seems thrown on as an afterthought.

Sideburn Splitting

The graphics, made mostly of line drawings filled in or big letters, retain the crude charm so appropriate to the original as well. For instance McGruff the Crime Dog is in briefing with Charlie, and in a jail cell you see the Hamburglar and Sideshow Bob. More generally there are many broad brushes or repeated graphics(i.e. file cabinets in one room, or store fronts across locations, each with a clever name.) There's also some incidence of individual style, though; the characters' mouths in particular have weird curves that convince you no-one looks at the world too soberly.

Hair Splitting

In Dead Girls are Easy it's probably harder to figure out the pop references than to solve the thing, and the balance is disturbed a bit here towards twice-done zingers, more obscure figures, references to the last game or ''but I won't explain that here'' comments over fresh satire and cutting dialogue. I don't even particularly like the ending. But the puzzle solutions are ludicrous enough, and Larry finds new people to despise and reasons to do so, that it all works out well for the person playing. I'm anxiously awaiting the sequel which is, alas, the finale, even if I hadn't read that other people might be animated in it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/29/02, Updated 08/29/02