Remote Viewer

Have you predicted the phone would ring right before it did? Have you ever dreamed about the winning lottery numbers the night before the drawing but forgot to buy the ticket? Have you bought a Big Mac knowing that you would win a free medium french fries from the Monopoly promotion? Neither have I. Which is weird because Cuban women are supposed to be have some kind of clairvoyance. It’s true. It’s something they brag about. Which doesn’t explain why nobody saw Castro coming. Or the Bay of Pigs.  Or Michael Moore. Hell, you would think they could smell Moore coming. That’s one of the normal senses, right? And his smell is utterly unmistakable: a combination of bacon and farts.

My mother often claims to be a psychic. For proof of that, she offers up that she knew I would be a girl when she was pregnant with me. Sure, the odds were 50/50, but she did predict right, so obviously she’s got the sixth sense. And not the spooky “I see dead people” kind.  I mean the kind that can accurately predict a coin flip about half the time. Shit, even I should have that. Here watch. Heads!

Let me try that again. Heads!

Seriously, one more try. Heads!

Okay, fuck you, maybe it skips a generation or something. Thankfully I have Remote Viewer to practice up on. For the low-cost of 80 Microsoft Points, I can hone up my ability to randomly guess things spit out by a computer. That will come in handy if the Robopocolypse ever starts.

Remote Viewer has ten “levels” that allegedly will help you fine tune your ability to read people’s minds. Or something like that.  I’m not actually sure how it’s supposed to work. I mean, what good is reading the thoughts of a machine? If I can see what it’s thinking, doesn’t that make me a Technomancer and not a psychic? I’m so confused.

Levels 1 through 6 all offer the same game: pick the card that’s covered up. Each level adds another card. In level one, you start with only two cards. In theory, the average person should finish with 50% accuracy. I finished with 40%. Six times in a row. Well, at least I’m consistent. Level 2 adds another card. In theory, I should be right 33% of the time. Instead, I got 0% on my first try. So not only am I not psychic, but I’m so far removed from it that it defies the laws of probability. I’m fairly proud of that.

Oh, is that what those letters stand for? I thought it was “A Keen Queef.”

Things really start to get weird with level 7. It’s called “Influence.” The idea is the game will spit out a number between 80 and 120 several times over the course of a minute. You’re somehow supposed to magically cause the game to select a number that’s less than or equal to 99. If you do so, you get a point, while you lose a point if it’s more. Now mind you, I’m not making anything about this game up. It really wants you to do this using the power of your mind. There’s no buttons to press or anything.

I played along and tried to focus. But, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to focus on. The TV is where the numbers show up, but the Xbox is what’s generating the numbers. I’m not one of those people who can move my eyeballs independently so focusing on both wasn’t possible. I decided I should go with the Xbox. So I stared at it, but that didn’t seem to work. The numbers kept coming up high. I tried humming. I’ve seen psychics do that before, but it also didn’t work. I briefly thought about sacrificing a virgin to the console but the cops made it clear I shouldn’t try that again. Finally time ran out and my accuracy was 40%. Goddamnitsomuch!

So I wasn’t able to manipulate random numbers vomited out by a machine using just my brain waves. I’m a total failure. But hope did come when I tried level 8. It was the same as level 7, only this time I wanted the machine to spit out high numbers. Mustering up all the brain wavage I could find, I was able to score a whopping 58% accuracy on it. Holy shit, I’m better than average! Dionne Warwick, I’m coming for you next, bitch!

Level 9 features one of those Eye of Horus pyramid thingies that is out of focus, and using the power of my mind, I had to bring the picture into focus. I briefly thought about cheating and adjusting the reception of my screen, but I realized that was a waste of time. So back to the focusing. This time I pointed at the screen while holding a finger to my temple. I see psychics do that all the time, so it must be how it’s done. And the end result was 50%. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. The game doesn’t tell me.  If a student gets 50% on a test in school, he gets an F. Did I get an F? I need to know. My self-esteem depends on it!

The final level is trying to guess the results of a three digit “lottery” drawing. You have 30 seconds to visualize the numbers before they appear. I had two thoughts while playing this test. #1: I’m a magnificent idiot for having spent a dollar on this game. #2: anyone who accurately predicts all three numbers in sequence will want to slit their wrists for doing it in a video game that offers no rewards when the actual lottery is right there and would have made them some money. Needless to say, I got zero of the numbers right in the five tries I made at it. And then I was done with this game. I’m pretty sure playing this constitutes dabbling in witchcraft, and if I’m going to be burned at the stake for that I want to at least float a couple of inches off the ground while three weirdos chant “light as a feather, stiff as a board” around me.

I did make a prediction before buying Remote Viewer: that I would immediately regret doing so. And I was right. But that doesn’t make me a psychic. THIS makes me a psychic. Pick a whole number between 1 and 10 right now. Don’t wait to see where I’m going with this. Just do it.

Do you have it? You have a picture of it in your head? Okay, highlight the space below this line.

Seven.

Told you.

Remote Viewer was developed Developer 25

80 Microsoft Points just blew the minds of about 10% of the readers here in the making of this review.

“Gameplay” footage courtesy of http://Indies.onPause.org