The King of Hearts was wrong: sometimes the best place to begin is the end. This is one of the endings of Alone in the Dark. Obviously it's a spoiler, but it's only spoiling a game that's not worth playing. If you've seen it already, you know where this is going. Eight minutes in, your face and your palm are going to get a lot better acquainted with each other.

"I'm the Light Bringer. I'm the fucking universe."

What's so wrong with that line? The naked desperation of throwing a wholly needless swear word in? The idea that Satan sounds more menacing if he drops the F-bomb once in a while? Is the ultimate manifestation of evil not threatening enough without toting a macho potty-mouth to inflate the game's age rating?

Eleven years ago, Little Big Adventure 2 got it right. The following is spoken upon confronting LBA 2's final boss. The main character's arch-nemesis has a cage full of children suspended over a pit of lava. If ever there was a time to break out the colourful language, this is it. So he squares up and says:

"You suck big time! I'm gonna take you out, and I don't mean for pizza!"

I think I got some bathos in my eye.

Pizza? That's such a weird and inappropriate thing to say. The crucial thing is it's winceworthy, not cringeworthy like AitD. It's not "I'm going to cut off your fucking face and use it as a fucking pizza base." You don't raise an eyebrow or emit a weak, desultory laugh. You wince, but you smile. It's cheesy; it's absurd; unlike AitD, it works.

This is Dinofly. He is badly voice acted. Keep in mind that bad
voice acting is a relative concept in this game.

We'll leave the syrupy ending for now and reverse leapfrog to the beginning, back to 1994 with an isometric action-adventure game for the PC and PlayStation called Little Big Adventure. It saw a young humanoid called Twinsen tasked with saving his home planet, confusingly named Twinsun, from the machinations of Dr. Funfrock, an dictator of merry moniker but disagreeable demeanour. In 1997 Little Big Adventure 2 picked up a few years after Funfrock's defeat, charting the story of aliens of dubious motives disrupting the lives of Twinsun's inhabitants.

The modern gamer might struggle with some aspects of LBA 2. In spite of sporting a dashing 3D engine when the player is outside, interiors are handled by the same isometric camera and pre-rendered backgrounds that the prequel employed. The jarring difference in styles is comparable to Only Fools and Horses, when the camera would switch from crisp interior footage to fuzzy location shots, as explained by the demigod-like Charlie Brooker. The practical implications are that younger gamers, unfamiliar with the joys of isometric gaming, might be put off by the clumsy wandering around.

All of the game's action is tinged with a certain inelegance, in no small part due to the tank like control scheme. Controlling Twinsen involves selecting a "mode"- either Normal, Sporty, Aggressive or Discreet- which dictates the manner in which he interacts with the environment, how he moves, or how vigorously he attacks. There is, after all, nothing quite like kicking someone in the head discreetly.

It's not really about the controls, though. They can be ungainly, but they serve to help you get through the game's puzzles and battles well enough. What you'll remember is the atmosphere. The LBA games are often cited as something of a sunshine fest, sickly sweet and cheesily told. Maybe it's the quirky oxymoron of the title that gives this impression, or maybe it's the talking elephants. The intro movie to LBA 2 gives a taste of this saccharine aesthetic, although diabetic readers should consider themselves warned of its content.

In the spirit of full disclosure, the voice acting is that good throughout the game. Every line of dialogue in the game is voice acted, which won't impress you much because you've actually heard some of it. But in my less cynical, more easily impressed youth, it was quite startling.

So, which visionary publishers were at the helm? Well, EA, as it happens, but I'd imagine people were probably yarning about what a sterling chap Mr Iscariot was before he started giving impromptu pecks on the cheek to his friends. The real twist in the tale is that the developers of the LBA series, Adeline Software International, hailed primarily from Infogrames, developers of none other than the original Alone in the Dark. So I guess the lesson we could all learn from that is...erm...the French make good games when left to their own devices. That old chestnut.

This makes the game perfect fodder for casual "aren't the French a bunch of ponces?" racism, and is in that respect a pretty poor advertisement for taking France seriously. Taken as the product of the archetypal French games studio, it serves as a one-game validation of every national stereotype you'd argue against if you heard propounded at a dinner party, or at least you certainly would argue against them if you're half the namby-pamby fence-sitting Liberal cultural relativist that I am.

These are the children of Twinsun, frolicking in the sun. Don't you just want to punch their faces off?

Flowers? Children dancing? A man in a dress? Pastry for breakfast? Where's the gritty dystopian future? Where are the flames crackling and bones crunching underfoot? Where are the damn shoulder pads?

The dystopia is actually closer than the screenshots suggest.The first game in the series portrayed an Orwellian police state, showing the player surveillance, suppression and ultimately the need for violent resistance. LBA 2, in spite of starting with cheeriness and loveable clumsy giraffes, quickly heads down the same route. The alien invasion which forms the drive for LBA 2's plot manifests itself in a creeping sense of being spied upon by strange visitors. The game never loses its touch for comedy, striking a Psychonauts' Milkman level like balance: guns poke out of bins; holes cut out of newspapers hide eyes which spy on your actions. Both games have a similar recipe- slapstick humour and paranoia.

Go back and listen to 1:43 from that intro movie. You can feel that mixture at work as the string crescendo strains, just for a second, and the disembodied laughter of the children hits an eerie intensity...and then the it's all gone, and makes it seem as though everything is fine.

The first thing a lot of players will do is assault their heavily pregnant wife. Naturally, you're experimenting with the controls as the game begins; you investigate aggressive mode; you look around for a target. There she is, ambling away invitingly. It seems quite logical at the time. It's baiting you, hiding below a veneer of "I suppose you could do that if you wanted to" plausible deniability. The game knows how you will behave in these situations. Twinsen walks into a preschool of jubilant children; one of the kids starts teasing him. Obviously, you punch the hell out of them. Chuckling evilly, you leave. You're met outside by the older brothers of the children you'd just lamped, and they take turns in kicking the shit out of you. To be given the freedom to choose whether or not you want to behave that way, and to have to face the consequences if you do, is a beautiful touch.

It all contributes to the dreamy, slightly hallucinatory ambience. Like the best dreams, it makes complete sense at the time...

"...and then I was in a war, except everyone had toasters instead of guns, except they shot envy instead of toast, and my torso was made out of used teabags..."

...but less when you explain it the morning after.

The character's main "weapon" is a bouncy magic ball. Used to attack enemies, hit switches and collect items, it's something of a forbearer to the Glaive of Dark Sector, only without the sharp edges and angst. It's a microcosm of the LBA philosophy. You get a laser pistol later on, and a sword, but your one indispensable tool doubles up as a child's toy.

It's gentle whimsy in the face of totalitarianism. Think a man wearing a clown suit, reading 1984 and laughing uncontrollably. I'm not sure it's appropriate, but it's a vivid image. Hit an enemy and stars, not blood, will fly out. Kill an enemy and their death throes consist of a "boing" sound and a health pick-up where their corpse should be. There's an overwhelming need to kill your enemies in the game, but it's sanitized, almost censored, to make the things Twinsen must do more palatable. You could argue that the violence dehumanises him (although technically he's a Quetch, not a human, and technically the elephants are Grobos. What is this, some sort of factual correctness contest?) but Twinsen is a good guy called upon to do necessary things: a freedom fighter, not a terrorist.

Terrorists don't use exploding mechanical toy penguins, anyway. God help us if they ever do.

With Adeline Software about as dead as a developer can get, there's every chance we may never see LBA's ilk again. Still, remnants of LBA can be found in today's gaming landscape. Thither, past the twin grey granite peaks of Cover Systems and Recharging Health which comprise the Dark Sector mountain range, beyond the yawning expanse of the Animal Crossing desert, lies Plagiarism Plateau. Not that I'd imply for a second that LittleBigPlanet's name was lifted from Adeline's swan-song, but if it was, let's just hope they remembered to pocket the sense of whimsy and zest for adventure while they were roughing the old boy up.

LBP and LBA, while superficially similar in terms of "jauntiness" and "quirkiness" and "wackiness", are far from identical in their stances. To my jaded eyes, LittleBigplanet's sense of fun seems considered and deliberate: LBA 2 can pride itself on not dissembling, on its honesty. Hopefully LittleBigPlanet will succeed, thus opening the door for more cool, genre bucking games. Eventually these titles will transform into something utterly cynical, with calculated trendiness becoming the only mandate for development. Then, perhaps, we can hope for a backlash, a demand for something most definitely uncool and resolutely silly. Something with cheesy but hummable tunes instead of Go! Team Indie chic. Something proud of its gaudy looks, cloying melodrama, talking elephant astronomers and unapologetic absurdity. Something they could even call Little Big Adventure 3, while they were at it.

Bottom Line: A swig of refreshing Technicolor in an all too grey world, striking a blow for racial harmony with one hand and punching kids with the other.

Recommendation: Buy it- it's on eBay, although it's quite rare and not cheap. I suppose you could try and steal my copy, but don't be surprised if I hit you in the spine with a cricket bat. I'll leave any other methods of procurement to your imagination...

milskidasith:
"pick-p"

You are slipping, Gigantor. Wouldn't that be caught by Word anyway?

I don't know what a pick-p is, although apparently Word 2007 and Firefox do. Changed to pick-up, anyway. Thanks!

mjhhiv:

shufflemonkey16:
I'd never even heard of these games before reading this, but I think I can say it's another good review. But something was a little different about it. Not the same as your other work. The fact that it seems short is the only difference I can use words to describe. And I'm not sure I like the difference.

Maybe I just have change issues. Still a head above the rest though.

I think I'm inclined to agree. I just can't put my finger on why. It's as witty and well-written as always, it just doesn't have the same "feel" about it. Still a great review, though it seems like it's not as overpoweringly terrific as they usually are.

I know what you mean. It's a niggling, back of the head thing. I think my reviews are normally more to do with more immediate reactions, in as much as I play a game and then write the review within a week, whereas with this I first played the game eleven years ago. I'll try reviewing a game which is new to me next time and see if it makes a difference.

Or I could just be getting old.