About To Blow Up Part 1

When I hear the term “Point & Click Adventure” it typically stimulates in me the same response as the term “Urinary Tract Infection.”  And when I hear the term “Hip-Hop” it usually causes my own stomach to digest and barf itself up.  So a game that purports to combine hip-hop culture with point & click adventures ranks right up there on the “things I’ve feared” list with “AIDS going airborne” or “Joel Schumacher is doing another Batman film.”  But it suckered me into buying it because the art style reminded me of a John Kricfalusi cartoon, and I’m a sucker for that kind of stuff.

Yea, I’ve been to Oakland.

As it turns out, About To Blow Up is about as good as a point & click on XBLIG is capable of being, and the hip-hop crap doesn’t factor into the gameplay at all.  The story is actually kind of cute.  You play as a lovable loser who aspires to manage a hip-hop act.  However, the music scene (and the city as a whole) is dominated by a megalomaniacal bastard named Mr. Sleez.  It’s fun, almost to the point that you forget how tired this genre is.  The logic is as bullshit insane as any clicker is, and those times where you’re generally lost without direction can be draining.  There are a handful of puzzles, but they’re pretty simple and can generally be solved just by randomly clicking buttons until something happens.  Which is ironic because most of the item puzzles are solved by total random guesswork.  “So you put the wig on the rat.  Well duh, why didn’t I think of that?”

I don’t really have a lot to say about About To Blow Up, other than the fact that it’s a dick move on the developer’s part to start the game’s name with “about.”  Which led to the awkwardly worded sentence above that contained the word “about” twice in a row and is totally screwing with my grammar check.  Otherwise, About To Blow Up has the best story of any Plicker on the XBLIG, along with the best graphics and characters.  I’ll look forward to future installments.  I can’t say I’ll actually review them.  It took me all day to come up with the shit I wrote for this one, and I’m only 381 words in.  383 now.  384.  Oh fuck off.  387.  Sigh.  388.  I’m done.

390.

About To Blow Up Part 1 was developed by Facepuncher Worldwide LLC

80 Microsoft Points said that all questions related to how to solve a section of this game that don’t begin with the phrase “I’m a surrender monkey” will go unanswered in the making of this review.

About To Blow Up Part 1  is ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Click here to see where it landed.

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