Plan 9 From Outer Space
 |
 |
Plan 9, the crowning achievement of Ed Wood Jr.'s career. Often touted by critics (and fans) as the worst movie ever made, this horrendous film lives up to it's reputation. It's cheesy acting, nonexistent sets, blatant flubs, and numerous consistency errors will make you laugh your pants off. Thankfully Plan 9 the video game is a lot better than the movie.
The game is another point and click adventure game as was popular at the time. This one is presented in a first person style (similar to Deja Vu and ShadowGate.) The actual game is contained inside of a smaller window in the center of the screen. You control your character via a list of actions presented on a tombstone on the lower right, such as talk, use, hit, push, etc. On the lower left lines of dialog appear whenever you interact with an NPC. Along the right edge of the screen lies your inventory.
The game itself follows some convoluted plot that Bela Lugosi's stunt double has stolen all the film reels from the Plan 9 movie, and you play a private detective trying to get them back. Every male character looks like Tor Johnson, all female characters look like Vamparia. There's even a transvestite in a bar wearing a pink angora sweater. Somehow aliens and Ninjas are mixed up in this as well. Too bad the movie wasn't as cool.
The puzzles are not too hard to figure out. As with games of this type sometimes the answer will be blatantly obvious (push the picture, take the cash card behind the picture, etc) while at other times you have to use the ol'-click-on-every-inventory-item-in-every-area-until-you-find-it-routine. There were maybe three areas in the game where I had to resort to this.
The problem with this game is it moves along very slowly. You can visit many areas without any idea what to do in them exactly. Also there are several areas of "dead space," i.e. areas where you do little or nothing. In a game like this each screen should have at least something going on beyond just picking something up. Also if you drop the wrong item from your inventory (such as a film reel) it disappears completely and you can't finish the game. The game of course gives you zero indication that this has happened.
The game has a certain quirkiness to it, lots of Plan 9 insider jokes, plus it's funny to see Tor Johnson and Vampira dressed up like construction workers, bank tellers, hippies, etc. I can't really recommend this game to people who like any type of action or excitement in their games. There are no flaming car chases, psychotic killer cyborgs, exploding baby heads, or chest bursting aliens here. If you don't mind 1992 cartoon graphics and plodding (but interesting) gameplay then this game is for you.