The Pagemaster

"This game totally crapped on fond childhood memories."

If I were to walk into a store and somehow manage to find this game for $5.00 knowing what I know now about it, I would leave it alone as if it were a pit bull foaming at the mouth wearing a top-hat and bow-tie. However, seeing so this game was "based" on a movie that I used to watch countless times a day as an innocent little boy, I figured sure, why not?

Well, I'll tell you why not.

First things first, The Pagemaster is a very boring side-scroller that has you going left to right and up and down - you know, like the Castlevania games. But unlike the Castlevania titles, I found that The Pagemaster has some of the weakest and most faulty level designs that I've ever had the displeasure of trudging through. Basically, every level is the same as the next one and the one that was before it. You run around, jump on some platforms, hang off a few things, and then die because you're playing as a nine or ten year old piss-ant who can't withstand a droplet of green Nickelodeon slime being splashed onto his head.

The most notable of any level in the game would be the "3-Dimensional" flying carpet stages, where you soar an outstanding two feet off the ground to collect extra lives. Of course, it's not as easy as it sounds, because you have to go through what is deemed an "obstacle course", which is more or less a race track with only you riding a dirty rug to earn those surplus continues. Fun it is not, a bore it is. If you thought magical, flying carpets went fast, then this game will make you think again. It feels more like One Legged Fatties: Racing Debacle than anything else.

Throughout the sixty-eight miserable stages you'll journey throughout the three realms of Horror, Fantasy, and Adventure. They are capitalized because the talking books that accompany you throughout the game go by those names, each without any personality at all, much like the main character who isn't even given an introduction (the back of the box says Richard Tyler - yippee). The concept of each and every level is always the same: reach the end where you will find a book waiting; jump into it and progress to the next stage. Pluh!

The good thing about going from one dimension to another is that you can easily tell the difference between them, though credit should be given in only two categories: theme and enemies.

In the world of Horror all the levels look almost exactly alike, save the architectural design. Each visually is fundamentally the same (much like the other two realms in their own respect), which in this case is nothing but a dark dungeon. One after the other, over and over again, one frustrating and mindless blah after the next. After ten minutes in this realm I wanted to throw the game out the window and drop my Super Nintendo on it.

The enemies were indeed horrible (pun intended), but only because they were dumber than a doornail. In fact, none of the forces of evil in any of the realms are smart - they all have a pattern that is simple enough for any infant to figure out. The most commonplace of these opponents are humanoid weirdoes that look like that Mr. Hyde character that was portrayed in the film. Sadly, that's about the only somewhat-original enemy to be found in this dimension. The others are your stereotypical ghouls and giant-fists-coming-out-of-the-walls, which should be avoided for you will be not squashed, but knocked away in a cheap, G-rating manner.

The realm of Fantasy doesn't even feel like a fictional world. Instead, it gives you the impression that you're on tour in a land where everything is brightly colored and littered with beautiful butterflies, kinda like how the infamous crotch-hugger Barney did before his sorry purple tail wasn't being ripped off to be pinned on a donkey. Ahem... Yes, well, the majority of the stages in Fantasy Land are basically what the levels in the world of Horror were - dungeons. However, in this land of infinite giddiness, we get to see brighter, more vibrant colors instead of the haze that was supposed to give you the feeling of terror around the bend... Ugh.

I nor anyone else who has been around while I've been playing this game can really understand what these demon fairy things are really supposed to be. It's Fantasy Land, where in the blue hell is the cache of fictional enemies at? Search all you want and you probably won't find them - for the most part, all you will be facing are booby traps designed to irritate you beyond belief and those damn fairy spawns of Satan. Another chapter of The Pagemaster video game I wish didn't exist merely to dump scum on my childhood memories.

The most interesting of all the lands you will visit throughout this mockery of a quest is the realm of Adventure. These stages put you on big ol' pirate ships that mix the mirth of the Horror dimension with the brilliant hues of Fantasy Land. This makes for easily the most eye-pleasing section of the game, though just as in the previous two general locations, the basic idea of the levels are the same, just in different places. You'll go from ships to rocks along the water as you fight through the land of Adventure.

As expected with the mention of the pirate ships, the majority of the bad guys are indeed pirates. Actually, I wouldn't qualify them as pirates; they are more or less rodent fecal matter that has been stood up somewhat straight and given a sharp, pointy object to carry around. Then you got these parrots that look like pinãtas and are beaten arguably easier than their birthday party comrades. The one noticeable difference between the two would be the psychotic all-yellow eyes of the Pagemaster birds - I think someone was trying to send some kind of message to McCauley Caulkin... "See you in hell," perhaps. Bleh... Must look away, must look away...

Though there are barely enough enemies (you don't need anything to count the bosses - there are none) in the game to go over the counting limitations of your hands, the available weaponry is even a more scarce a situation. Let's see here... In the realm of Horror, you get to throw these eyeballs at enemies, which are somehow bigger than the green bag that they are carried around in. Okay, I suppose I can go with that... Fantasy Land, stretching its message of peace, joy, and same-gender marriages, gives you magical dust to shoot from your fingers. Pfft! Gandalf wannabe's, I tell ya, they never learn. The dust looks strangely like cocaine, too, but well, that's probably what 75% of the development team was on whilst they constructed the game, so I suppose it's understandable... You would think that the world of Adventure would have more than just a pathetic cutlass to parade around with, but alas, that's all we are given. The even more perplexing thing about the realm of Adventure is that the main character can slash only one way and that's all. No thrusts, parry maneuvers, nothing. Dull! Dull, dull, dull!

In fact, there are a couple more simply wrong attributes that The Pagemaster has that will make you think that this kid must have eaten his Wheaties every waking morning of his life. 1) He's got a vertical leap of about 350 inches - that beats me by about 310 inches. I am not amused. 2) He can't run, but he sure can stride. 3) While going hand-over-hand on ropes, he'll tend to slide all around in an odd manner that will make those who have seen snot on the floor cringe in fearful remembrance. 4) This kid has super-human arm strength. He can seemingly pull off whatever he is hanging from hard enough to propel himself some 80 feet in any direction but down.

It's times like those that I would have normally put the game back in the box, tied a brick to it, and thrown it through the window of wherever I got it from. However, the visuals, albeit not stunning, are very well done and kinda look like moving paintings. The character models, ranging from Richard Tyler to Fantasy, are excellently detailed for a game that obviously wasn't given much time in the thought process. Animation for every moving object in the game is fluid, though I would say that gravity doesn't seem to have its effects from time to time, so every now and then you'll find yourself jumping into the air only to wig out and get killed by something you didn't see - a glitch that's in this game, as well as one I've played elsewhere.

The backgrounds, however, are a slightly different story. They're mediocre and as solid and unmoving as a freaky Harry Potter worshiper come the 21st of this month at a local bookstore. Thus, they're just about as lifeless, too. Once you see the first stage in either of the realms, you've seen the rest of them for what's left in that world. It's almost as depressing as waking up with syphilis.

If a person incapable of hearing was playing this game, s/he'd turn the volume down anyway for fear of the possibility of hearing the utter gurgles that spew from the speakers when the audio is up, for I'd have warned them of the horrible quality of every form of sound in this game. The music is way too second grade graduation slumber party-ish no matter where you are, which is a rather unholy thing when you're expecting a sinister tune in a land called "Horror."

The sound effects don't really exist - maybe four or five of them are in The Pagemaster throughout the game combined, and three of them are sounds that your "weapons" make. The other would be the popping sound the enemies produce when they are killed, and the fifth would be the hostage-mouthed muffle of the main character when he speaks one of his three words in that vast vocabulary.

One of the hardest things to do in the game is to control just what young Richard is doing. Aside from the occasional slip-up that most people have, you'll find yourself jumping to a small platform just to somehow slide right off the edge. Or maybe you've jumped and thought you've grabbed something, when in reality all you did was manage to fall some 500 feet... just to live, of course. This is McCauley Caulkin, here! You can't kill him, but, evidently, the enemies can.

Lumbering around is all the bad guys in The Pagemaster are capable of doing - but once they hit you, they can do one of two things: 1) Kill you or 2) Knock a defensive item away from you. What I mean by the latter is what if you pick up, say, tennis shoes - I mean, magic shoes, and a green sac, than whatever item you picked up first will be knocked away from you when you are hit. You can't get it back once it's been lost, either, but that's good and fair.

The Pagemaster isn't really a hard game. It's just that when you die, you die cheaply. That's the way it always is. The control and difficulty of this game go hand in hand and sadly, not for the best. When trying to attain 100 keys to gain an extra life - much like in, say, NES Mario games - you'll either over-jump or under-jump, and you can't control it because sometimes if you tap it you jump just a little bit, while the next time you might just drop. It's a vicious backhanded slap to the groin when you're doin' so great just jumpin' around when all of a sudden you fall into a bottomless pit. Quack quack.

Even if you manage to finish this game without feeding it to the next door neighbor's dog, you won't want to play it again. Besides, all you have for extras are hidden library cards that, when all are gathered, give you a secret ending that's not anywhere near worth seeing. Just another ploy to rot your mind on this game - I knew the developers had something up their sleeve! Too bad it's something nothing but a bored cockroach would even bother to watch.

The Pagemaster is a game that had some potential and there's no doubt there. However, there are a lot of missing things in this game, and I don't mean from the movie. I'm talking depth, replay, and sound quality for three. None of the characters seem to have any individuality whatsoever - not even as a team do they seem to have any mental bearing. In the end, all that is being played here is a less than mediocre side-scroller that feels - is - extremely lackluster in virtually every department. It might be worth one play through, but just for those who have nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, better to do.

And if you are one of those people, you need a role model, or somethin'.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 10/09/06