This Is A Cry For Help

PC review by Matt Smith, published on Wednesday 19th November 2008

Once upon a time, PC games came in massive, rain-forest consuming boxes, each containing more air than a extra-large bag of potato chips and consuming enough shelf space to turn an obsessive floor manager into a insomniac. By and large, the cardboard mansions containing those older games were nothing but empty space, but even so, they usually contained quite a bit more than what can be found in today’s ultra-slim DVD cases. For a time, finding a one hundred to two hundred page manual wasn’t unusual, nor was it strange to find extras like world maps or technology sheets. That isn’t to say that the manuals were useful, or that the maps and tech trees made any sense – they often seemed as wasteful as the boxes they rattled around in, and as the Internet completed its transformation from geek’s luxury to common household tool, they were made obsolete by websites like GameFAQs. But there was something about opening up a heavily-taped cardboard box, smelling a freshly-printed tomb, and scanning over an obscure map. Somehow, those items made it seem as if I wasn’t merely paying for some information zapped onto a disc.

This Is a Cry For Help brings me back to those days. Not because it ships in box; in fact, all I received in the mail was a single CD nestled tightly in a smooth slip barely thicker than a few sheets a paper. But once I popped the disc in my drive, I began to get the feeling of nostalgia. This Is a Cry For Help, you see, is not just a game (or rather, compilation of games). It is a complete package, filled with comics, sketches, animations, and commentary. Before I played a single game, I already had the feeling that I’d received something that had some love put into it. That had, if I may be so whimsical, soul.

“Before I played a single game, I already had the feeling that I’d received something that had some love put into it.”As I noted earlier, This Is a Cry For Help is not actually a single game, but rather a compilation of games made by Edmund McMillen (with help from others, as noted in the credits) over the last ten years. If you’ve never heard of Edmund McMillen, don’t fret – I hadn’t either. His best known game is undoubtedly Gish, an interesting physics-based platformer in which a pile of sludge attempts to rescue his less sludge-like girlfriend. Or something like that. I was somewhat surprised to find that This Is a Cry For Help does not include Gish, but rather only a demo. What is included, however, are numerous flash-based games, most of which don’t require any sort of installation in order to be played.

The quality of these games is all over the map, and unfortunately remind me of another nearly extinct PC gaming phenomena: shareware discs filled with hundreds of broken or useless games. No, you don’t need to fork out anything extra to play past a certain point, Gish excluded, but the majority of the games included in This Is a Cry For Help simply aren’t much fun. The problem is that these are mostly Flash based games, and like many titles based on Flash, they have incredibly unresponsive controls and poor hit detection. This ruins games like Cereus Peashy and Carious Weltling, which quickly tire fingers trying to move on-screen characters that don’t seem to respond to repeated keyboard mashings. Other games, such as Triachnid and Twin Hobo Rocket, don’t seem complete. The controls are baffling, the objectives unclear, and the pacing non-existent. As a result, I couldn’t bring myself to play either game for more than fifteen minutes.

On the other hand, there are some real gems. One of them is Aether, a beautifully simple game which casts you as a boy with a pet monster whose tongue can apparently latch on to clouds. The game opens with your character standing on a small planet and… thats it. Its up to you to decide what to do from there, but since you’re given the freedom to swing through the sky and eventually into space, you’ll soon find yourself exploring the galaxy. It is really less of a game than it is a toy, but as a toy it is wildly successful - Will Wright could learn a thing or two, because Aether is easily more fun than Spore. Another diamond in the rough is Meatboy, a game which hints at what casual gaming classic N might be if the main character was a walking ball of meat instead of a warrior of the shadows. The controls are responsive, the backgrounds interesting, and the levels outstanding, walking the narrow line between frustration and fun. There is even a level editor, so you can create new stomping grounds once you’ve beaten the originals.

Once you’ve played through a few of the games, you’ll probably want to hit up some of comics, sketches, and commentary. There is quite a bit of stuff available for you to browse through, but like the games themselves, the quality is schizophrenic. Those hoping that Edmund might be hiding future classics of the graphic novel genre will be disappointed; most of the comics are aimed at dark humor, not drama, and there is quite a few pornographic jokes to be found. The comics sometimes hit the mark and generate a genuine laugh, and at other times are rewardingly disturbing (Edmund can draw some very creepy stuff), but there are also pages of content no more intelligent or comedic than fart jokes shared between second-graders. The sketches are quite good; should you purchase the CD, I encourage you to take some time exploring the sketch folders. The commentary, on the other hand, simply consists of short text files that rarely say anything enlightening about what they’re commenting on – they come across as read-mes more than anything else.

“This isn’t some succubus carefully crafted to seduce a user base into buying expansions and downloadable content, nor is it a masterfully marketed sequel aimed at selling four billion units on opening day.”Still, This Is a Cry For Help has soul. This isn’t some succubus carefully crafted to seduce a user base into buying expansions and downloadable content, nor is it a masterfully marketed sequel aimed at selling four billion units on opening day. It encapsulates ten years of work by a person who would be better classified as an artist than a game developer, and through both the good and bad, you can tell. You can tell that someone with more ideas than investors worked on these projects and cared about them greatly. It would have been nice if some of the less interesting content had been filtered at out, as it distracts from the better games and artwork, but it can’t be ignored that you can likely pick up This Is a Cry For Help for less than the price of an album or blockbuster DVD. You won’t find anyone selling a soul for less.