Crash


How To Be A Complete Bastard

Author: Nick Roberts
Publisher: Virgin Games
Machine: Spectrum 48K/128K

 
Published in Crash #45

How To Be A Complete Bastard

Are you a complete bastard? You can try your worst in this adaptation of Adrian Edmondson's Virgin book. With all the decorum of a herd of psychopathic wildebeest, you manage to gatecrash a fwightfully yuppie party and proceed to wreak havoc.

A split screen shows two views of every room you enter; either can be rotated to show a further aspect.

This offers you the great opportunity of thoroughly searching other people's furniture. Behind the closed doors of cupboards, units and wardrobes lurk everyday items that in the right hands - your hands - can cause aggravation, irritation and mutilation to any unfortunate in the vicinity. Any two objects can be carried at once and examined at will, but how you can use them depends on how drunk you are.

How to be a Complete Bastard

Your body is one great factory of noxious gases, fuelled by what you eat and measured by a Fartometer; these fumes, delivered with all the grace you can muster, clear rooms of guests - fast. (Take care near naked flames though.) You are also linked to a Smellometer registering a general level of BO which, for a true bastard, should be high.

Drink is readily available: extra-strong lager intoxicates you quickly, as shown on the Drunkometer, but if you drink too much the display begins to spin wildly.

Check your water levels on the Weeometer and go go go while you can. Leave things too long and an unthoughful Nigel or Samantha might have occupied the loo. But you could go elsewhere, couldn't you?

Limitless supplies of coffee can sober you up: so can medicine. Other liquids should be avoided if you want to stay alive!

The yuppie guests provide the ideal opportunity for you to engage in highly undesirable conversations. Push them hard against obstructions and they'll find it hard to resist your charms, offering information and providing the opportunity for a bit more mayhem.

Each of the unpleasant actions you commit earns you Bastard points, but other things are considered very "girly" and must be avoided if you want to keep that total high. If your unpleasant activities force the yuppie guests into leaving, letters making up the phrase "COMPLETE-BASTARD" light up.

The game is finished when all of these letters are illuminated, by which time you'll have the place to yourself.

Mike

Such a lot of this depends on your opinion of Ade Edmondson's humour. If, like me, you quite enjoy it, then the game should appeal, but there's a lot in it that could easily offend. And if CRL's Dracula, not a particularly nasty game, carried a 15 certificate then surely this should be subject to certification too.

Still, the graphics are quite good, the text is usually quite funny, and though the jokes stop being funny after 10,000,000 goes the game remains reasonably playable.

Ben

Coming from the people who did Tai-Pan, one of the most serious games this year, this is a shock - and it should have ben much more appealing. There are a few nice eatures, like Bastavision, but though they're neat they don't add much to the gameplay. How To Be A Complete Bastard is along the lines of Jack The Nipper, with lots of added nausea and bad taste - it's fun to play for a bit, but I doubt you'll come back to it.

Nick

Adrian Edmondson's book is brilliant, and so is this game. The graphics are well-defined and the colour is good, though limited. The way you can rotate both the top and the bottom screens is very confusing, but essential.

Comments

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: Good monochromatic playing area with decorative surrounds
Sound: Girly opening tune, and spot FX
General Rating: Humorous and generally good, but perhaps not much lastability

Nick RobertsBen StoneMike Dunn

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