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Beavis and Butt-head Do U. Review by Jen I am one of those deprived Americans who doesn't have cable TV and so don't have much exposure to Beavis and Butt-head, MTV's music video commentators. What little I have seen, I have detested, I believe mainly due to the fact that I think music videos are stupid. However, I played Beavis and Butt-head in Virtual Stupidity a couple of years ago with much enjoyment, even going so far as to rank it in my lifetime top games, and so I was really excited to hear there was a new B&BH adventure game out. I was not disappointed by Do U. The eternal question in this game is whether the boys will score with the chicks. Beavis and Butt-head's high school class, along with their weenie of a teacher, Mr. Van Driessen, take a field trip to the local state college in order to get a feel for what awaits them in the arena of higher education. Our intrepid heros have another goal in mind, however—they only want to drink beer and score with some college sluts. However, Mr. Van Driessen is firm—the boys must complete the college tour, which involves getting eight different sign-offs in eight areas of the college, in order to attend the reward party at the end of the field trip. Of course, Beavis and Butt-head can't do anything the conventional way or be bothered to expend much effort, so they endeavor to obtain the sign-offs in their own unique fashion. Everything Beavis and Butt-head do is aimed at the ultimate goal of scoring with some college sluts, which gives rise to much juvenile humor. I enjoyed the dialogue and the story quite a bit (I have very low comedy standards, I readily admit). In moving your cursor around the screen, when you encounter an object or person you can interact with, a cartoon "thought balloon" appears over B&BH's head (I will refer to them as one character from here out because they might as well be Siamese twins) indicating that you can do something. Your left mouse button interacts; your right mouse button examines. Items you pick up go into your inventory; to use them, you drag them out of the paper bag on the upper right of the screen. Playing the game is very straightforward, as is the method of moving from one area to another. To see another area, you click on your sign-off sheet and then click on the area you want to go next. The use of the inventory items is rarely what you might expect, and therein lies the challenge of the game. There were a couple of arcade sequences; one such near the end of the game was very difficult for me, and I lack any semblance of patience when I have to try things more than about twice—I had to ask someone else to complete it for me. I also got stuck enough a couple of times that I had to resort to asking for hints, but when I found out the answers, it turned out to be something I had just overlooked. I liked the ease of the interface, and the puzzles had just the right level of difficulty—some easy, some hard, but mostly somewhere in between. My overall rating would have been higher were it not for that one arcade sequence. The quality of the graphics is very good—as you all (should) know, Beavis and Butt-head are cartoon characters and so this is a cartoon game. The entire game, both the active portions and the cut scenes, had TV-quality animation. Even when you, the player, are idle, B&BH are always doing little things like picking noses, checking privates, and falling asleep while standing up. There are no great technological leaps here—no 3D rendering or anything of that nature—but the simplicity of the game allowed a great many scenes to fit on one CD with no slow load times or other drawbacks that are inherent in more technologically advanced games. I really liked the fact that relatively older technology was still used to produce a fine adventure game. The music is mostly heavy metal, as you might imagine, but there is not enough of it. There is one portion of the game where the music is some kind of seventies easy listening disco kind of crap, which I just hated, and I was stuck on that part for a while. I had to adjust the options to turn off the music there, and I think the game designers were sadists for even putting it in there. However, it was exactly appropriate for that particular portion of the game. The voice acting is quite well-done, although the characters are purposely annoying. B&BH did tend to get on my nerves when I inadvertently made them say the same things over and over again, and I would have liked to reach my hand into the monitor and slap that wimpy Mr. Van Driessen upside the head until he saw little birdies flying around his head. However, weenie-on-purpose is much preferable to weenie-by-accident (like the main character in Sanitarium). Sound effects in this game were great—lots of "plop"s and "squelch"es, as you might image, all exquisitely gross. I leave it to you to play the game yourself to find out whether
B&BH did, in fact, score with some college sluts. I recommend
this game to any who are not offended by constant "dammit,
Butt-head"s and toilet humor. It has all of the elements
of a classic adventure game, and it was really fun to play. |
The Verdict
The Lowdown Developer: Illusions Available for: Four Fat Chicks Links Screenshots
System Requirements Windows95/98 Where to Find It Playing
Games 14.95 |
