Survivor Review

The tribe has spoken. You are the weakest link. Goodbye.

Welcome to Survivor: The Interactive Review! The only review you’ll ever read that’s actually more fun than the game itself! Test your vocabulary as you customize an actual Game Revolution review! Cringe in fear as we tell our frightening tale! Wonder what the hell is wrong with the creators of this game! Simply choose your favorite words and interact away!

ll right Revolutionaries, this is it. We’ve bashed The Crow and Catechumen for a long time, but that era is over. There’s a new load of        horse crap in town, one so bad that it caused the entire Game Revolution staff to become violently ill with  explosive diarrhea.  Stand back, everyone – Survivor: The Interactive Game is here!

I imagine that the majority of you out there know the basic premise of the Survivor television show. A bunch of stereotypically dumb Americans are dropped on a sheltered ranch, preserve, or lush tropical island in the “middle of nowhere” where they must survive. Week after week, they face challenges to win supplies or immunity from exile. Every episode, some poor loser is kicked off the show with the last remaining member claiming the million dollar prize.

I’ve endured most of the first season and the entire second season of the show and can attest thatSurvivor: The Interactive Game is nowhere near as interesting. In fact, you could probably       sleep on broken glass       eat your own liver and have more fun. Most notable on this game’s long list of problems is the fact that YOU CANNOT PLAY IT. Just get ready to yell  “Argh!” at the top of your lungs because this is all you’re going to see. That’s right, the game doesn’t even work. There is a patch to fix this error and get the game started, but as of this writing, I have yet to get past day  -4? without crashing out to the desktop. While this offense certainly warrants a toss into the garbage, it definitely isn’t the only thing that makes Survivor the absolute worst game of all time.

You’ll choose from one of the 32 cast members from the original Pulau Tiga or Outback shows. You can also make a custom character that is actually not customizable. There are a few stats to tweak, but they really don’t make a difference in the game at all. Pure  crap.

Each “episode” (there are between 3 and 13) consists of 5 stages: 2 Survival Periods, 2 Challenges, and the infamous Tribal Council. The Survival periods are about as much fun as watching paint dry, since you don’t do ANYTHING. You don’t move your character –  he, she,  it,  just wanders around aimlessly trying to get some task done, like fishing, which actually looks more like urinating into the river. You don’t explore at all and you definitely don’t do anything that might be mistaken as ‘fun.’

The purpose here is to build alliances with other players through multiple choice conversions that make no sense whatsoever. Just click on another aimlessly wandering person and start chatting. Here’s a snippet of a conversation between Debb and I:

Debb: Don’t you trust me?

Me: I must be losing my mind.

Debb: You must have got a bad coconut.

Me: That’s a good one.

Debb: I don’t trust you.

Me: Whatever.

Debb: I’ve got work to do.

Me: Let’s take one thing at a time.

Debb: What have you heard?

Me: Don’t you trust me?

Debb: What’s bothering you?

Me: What do you think?

Debb: I wonder what’s going on at home.

I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to speak “Stupid.”

Next is the Challenge phase, where you’ll compete in some of the sorriest excuses for mini-games known to gamer. Some games involve trivia contests that only the biggest Survivor nerd would have even a vague shot at (ie. For how many hours did Keith stand on the log?). Others involve first-person shooter aspects where you are pushed down a fixed rail with only limited ability to aim. You might want to look back behind you in order to take a shot at a target you might have missed, but you can’t shoot any direction other than forward. There is also some sort of puzzle that takes about 3 seconds to solve.

What  dumb f***ing idiot thought this would be fun? The worst part about it is that there are more lame games! Thank god I was never able to play them due to the best crash bug in the world.

If you actually manage to keep playing, you’ll eventually make it to Tribal Council where you’ll vote someone off. Aha! Take that, you stupid computer player! But get voted off by a bunch of computer controlled players and you might as well give yourself a wedgie. A picture is worth a thousand words – or just three specific ones.

Don’t forget that during the course of your  survival  experience, you’ll be looking at what might be the worst graphics to hit the PC gaming scene since they invented color monitors. It’s even more visually offensive than The Crow. Thick, crusty edges are everywhere, there’s absolutely no collision detection and the textures are, well, nonexistent. For some reason, sections of the ground have a tendency to suddenly disappear. The sky looks like a 2-year old’s finger paintings and the trees look like grass stains on a pair of old jeans. Even the video footage taken from the actual show is crappy. I’ve seen better looking things in the dumpster.

The audio isn’t any better. The small bits of voice acting in the game amount to basic tribal grunts that signify anger or happiness. The rushing of the river sounds like a guy sitting in his bathtub playing with his rubber duckie. Even the “tribal beats” are so bad, songs like this sound like a Grammy winner.

Just in case you were interested, there’s also some sort of multiplayer mode. I’d love to tell you more about it, but since the game crashes more than a bumper car, I could never get it going.

THIS JUST IN… According to recent sales figures, Survivor has become the #7 selling PC game for the week ending November 24, 2001. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT under any circumstance give this game as a gift to anyone you would like to stay on good terms with. Not even die hard Survivor fans could possibly enjoy this game. Instead, send a copy to        your worst enemy.     They’ll never recover from this horrible disease. How did the same company that published the excellent Civilization III give this stinker the seal of approval?

If you actually bought the game for yourself, return it. I don’t care that you opened it already – demand your money back. Just tell the store manager the box contained false advertising.

Seeing as how this game is the worst thing anyone at Game Revolution has ever seen, it deserves special grading treatment. No dear reader, an ‘F’ is much too high for a debacle such as this. Instead, this game gets a Cursed Tiki Award and the very first Game Revolution ‘F-‘. We wouldn’t want to insult The Crow by giving this piece of bleeeech the same grade.

So there you have it. Indisputable evidence that anything can become a game, but only something really special can invent a new grade. Do not, under any circumstances attempt to play Survivor: The Interactive Game. You definitely won’t survive.