![]() ![]() ![]() So, it’s a complicated, unforgiving game that it’s NOT ENJOYABLE to play and experience…and that’s why it’s a damn masterpiece, and pretty much a big card to play in the “Are games art?” debate, because like all smart and uncompromising art, it forces its audience, the player, to face the themes and subjects we tend to shy away and shun in real life head on, confronting ourselves with the very basic yet complicated moral, theological and philosophical inner debates we rarely dare subjects ourselves to. Much of the game’s brilliance and downright chilling experience relies on solid voice acting all around…but the completely out of the blue choice of having the original story’s author Harlan Ellison himself voicing AM, something that seems like a bad attempt at being “Meta”, that enhances the game in an unbelievable way at first, Ellison seems like a giddy child voicing his own creation, almost looking like we’re in for Shatnerian levels of scene chewing…but soon Ellison’s voicework as AM turns downright frightening Ellison lets loose in his role as AM, and soon he’s become the scariest thing in the game Ellison portrays AM as petulant, arrogant being whose omnipotence is hindered by his own creator’s inferiority, which has neutered him and denied true Godhood he’s a child full of potential hindered by his parents mediocrity and inferiority, and Ellison gives such a complicated and abstract being a voice performance that will haunt both your waking and dreaming hours to come before SHODAN or GLaDOS, Ellison’s AM was the first member of the holy trinity of gaming murderous AIs. There are four possible endings in the game, all based on the choices made during the final, secret segment of the game, and reaching the sole “Good” ending demands some heavy choices and interpretations during each of the 5 original scenarios. Since Ellison isn’t exactly know for being fond of happy endings (or anything happy, for that matter), he decided to have the game be unwinnable that is, you can only lose in IHNMAIMS, but you can do so in an heroic or cowardly way, all determined by your ethical choices and ability to interpret and confront the various dilemmas and traumas facing the characters. The game’s designs, traps and monsters have all been prodded and extracted from the deepest, darkest pits of the minds and souls or AM’s “playthings”, and even if you manage to reach its sole “Good” ending, those monsters of our nature will remain haunting you long after you turn the computer off. Then it slowly forces you to face some real horror: Genocide, rape, insanity, torture, xenophobia, self-loathing and more of the worst aspects of the human nature are your enemies to overcome in this game. Each world that has been devised by AM for its playthings is a terrible labyrinth. IHNMAIMS plays you for a fool, taking you into a land of digital make believe that might pass as your typical sci-fi/adventure type game at first glance: Floating deathtraps and abandoned service stations, pyramids of circuitry and silicon, the barbed wired gates of the Regime’s Camps, primitive villages where humanity is reduced to the most barbaric tribalism and castles filled with shadows and secrets. The puzzles and challenges border on symbolism and the metaphysical, and age hasn’t done it any favors either, so in terms of gameplay AND visuals, IHNMAIMS is anything but revolutionary.Įven if it was, though, this is not a “good game”. Is It Any Good?: The game’s engine was already showing its age when it was released back in 1995. AM is finally bored, and it wants to play a little game, where each of its playthings will be granted release from AM’s hatred if they can succeed in facing a personal challenge AM has designed for them Humanity is dead All life on Earth is gone, except for the five human beings who were chosen 109 years ago by AM as its personal playthings, granted immortality and then tortured, manipulated and violated in unspeakable forms and manners for more than a century. The Premise : Based on the acclaimed short story that earned a Hugo Award, AM, a psychotic artificial intelligence born from a military project has exterminated all life in the Earth. ![]() Publisher: Nightdive Studios/ Cyberdreams The Game: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream (1995) ![]()
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