Podgamer -- game reviews and features for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, except not rubbish

Universal Review   Podgamer Recommended 

Rock opera

by J Nash (November 9th, 2010 at 11:21 pm)

Game: No, Human. Publisher: Vol-2. Authors: Rolf Fleischmann (game), Sebastian Elser (music, in association with Fred Chopin and Ed Grieg). Price: £1.19/€1,59/$1.99. Buy the game.

One of splendid outer space deflection puzzler No, Human’s finest elements is the atmospherically perfect soundtrack of uncluttered, slightly melancholy classical piano pieces. Once again exhibiting the grasp and sensitivity that made Thief the Musical a byword for unscalped tickets, three unemployed louts from Exmouth have transformed the new game’s 80 zen levels of hypnotically replayable high score asteroid flinging into a rock opera that’s already enjoyed very nearly a run in very nearly a theatre.

We contractually present an excerpt of what leading critic Preddington Quatt is already calling in sick to avoid.

ACT ONE

(An empty stage. All is black.)

UNIVERSE
(a bellowing echo)
SPACE…

(A spotlight picks out UNIVERSE, who has a huge round papîer maché head and cardboard crown.)

UNIVERSE
(lament)
… is boring
Oh, so boring
There’s too much of nothing to do.

Since the big bang when the strings sang
I’ve been stuck in this linear paradigm
Supernovae bowl you ovae
Maybe once, perhaps twice, but not billions and billions of times.

The dulling dark, the boonless moons
No luminary.

The galaxies lack spark for me
Uninspire-ally.

I clop across deserts of stars
Andromeda-ry.

The wellspring’s dry
(So boring)
No fun left for me
(So boring)
Dotted every infinit-I
Crossed every infini-T.

(The UNIVERSE sighs. Then another spotlight picks out HUMANITY striding across the stage, a heavily labelled holiday bag in each hand, an angled boater on its fishbowl helmet.)

HUMANITY
(jaunty)
Space
What a great place
For the human race
With a suitcase.

We’ve outgrown the Earth, it’s time to extend humanity’s worth
Universal pollution is the solution.

Let there be space stations
And nightclub libations
And saucy gyrations
For all nations.

UNIVERSE and HUMANITY
(together by coincidence)
Ha ha ha!
That’s the diabolical laughter
I wonder what comes after?

ACT TWO

(HUMANITY is unpacking the suitcases behind a cardboard frame indicating a shield, oblivious of and separated from the UNIVERSE by a complicated arrangement of asteroids and ringed planets played by the COMPANY shuffling in ragged ovals with appropriately decorated boxes on their heads.)

UNIVERSE
(crafty)
A black hole would be peasy
A collapsar far too easy
I must learn to be teasy and squeeze my fun from bangs.

Orbits I can influence
Trajectories by inference
Debris forms a confluence of speed and boomerangs.

I can swipe, I can curve
Coast a magnetic swerve
Nudge a rock to a path
Jounce some ice for a laugh.

I can win by a plan and sometimes a fluke
I never play dice but now I am playing snooker —

(The UNIVERSE knocks a FIERY ASTEROID into the orbit of a planet, glancing it via slingshot into the SHIELD FRAME, which falls over, the asteroid ricocheting past another rock into a second planet which reverses the polarity and sends the rock hurtling backwards and off HUMANITY’s bonce.)

(The COMPANY shuffles backwards to give the impression HUMANITY is drifting away helplessly from the galactic core.)

HUMANITY
(passing from the spotlight)
You haven’t heard the last of me.

UNIVERSE
A prospect that lights me with glee.
(crescendo)
There’s no Hathor, no Achamán, no Dana, no Shiva
It’s all me, chums, the Universe as Griefer.

(The UNIVERSE guffaws heartily as the music fails to stop and instead devolves into the usual infinite noodling. The audience thins as each viewer becomes fed up, leaving only a couple of unimpressed sheltering tramps and a slumped financier.)

Judge this