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“I don’t even.” It’s a fragment of a sentence that’s been euphemized into a
general expression of shock, surprise, or confusion; the “WTF” of the 2010s. And
for a game like this, it’s really the only way to put it. Maybe I’ll add the traditional
preamble, “What is this,” giving a more Jack Skellingtonesque tone to my consternation,
a subtle subtext of wonder at the madness I’ve just experienced. Ajare & Watch - and
I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly, because I believe it to be Spanish and that’s one
of the languages I’m kinda fuzzy on - exists on the premise that a couple scam artists
bolted together and reprogrammed 10 knock-off Ukranian-made Game & Watch units. And somehow
a Neo-Geo CD was involved. And now some hotshot gaming critic is keeping his ladies waiting
for sex, because he’s trying to play this thing. What is this, I don’t even.
The game itself - the actual, playable game, not the moderately absurd framing device - is,
true to the name, in the style of an old LCD Game & Watch... for the most part. I don’t
recall those old games having RPG-ish level progression, NPC characters who sell you ***
and cupcakes and drugs and cars, and... women who absolutely need your companionship. Yep,
get your Rob Schneider on, because you’re a *** on a mission... a mission to buy
sports cars to satisfy your mid-life crisis. And then you’re attacked by knife-wielding
dudes and a woman disposing of consumer electronics in a non-OSHA-approved way. And then you have
sex with her and get paid. All it’s missing is one straight razor to an eyeball, and you’ve
got Un Chien Andalou. Salvador Dali would be so proud.
And there’s the other strange quirk of the game: the translation. I’m used to stumbling
through Engrish - if you grew up playing RPGs, you kinda have to be - but seeing it derived
from a different language throws me off. In fact, you can chose to play the game in Spanish
- Spanish Spanish, not Mexican Spanish - and I get the feeling that doing so wouldn’t
have cost me that much comprehension. It’s like watching an octopus on a treadmill. If
you thought the gameplay didn’t make sense - and it surely doesn’t, what with deranged
roaches running into you as you try to soliloquize after waking up - just tune into the completely
fake development diary, where Mr. Orange and JJ (The game’s creators, in a seemingly
incomprehensible mashup of Reservoir Dogs and a Turbografx-16 platformer) walk you through
just how they made this thing. It may have involved mailing one of them to Russia. That’s
what we’re dealing with here. Ajare & Watch might not work as a game - LCD diversions
like this weren’t designed for long play, they were designed to induce frustration and
be thrown at a younger sibling - but it’s worth the dollar they’re asking just to
entertain yourself with all the tangential madness that surrounds this mass of wrong.
Not many games get me laughing out loud at the manual. This is one of those games.