Ironic Self-Parody?
A Review of Dilbert's Desktop Toys
Edmond Meinfelder
Great things are not common, but extraordinary. The rarity is due to excruciating hard work and painful attention to detail. Excellence is not easy. Like Dilbert, we often suffer some executive with more words than brain, thinking, "With a little work, we can make something great here. It will be easy." Standing on this side of the fence, the farce is obvious. However, on the other side, the brown grass withers and suckers, born on the minute, call the shots.
Yes, Dilbert's Desktop Games is a prime example of little thought
and high hopes. Somewhere, someone thought, "All we need do
is buy the Dilbert license, make some simple games and rake in
the cash." If we distill the thought to its essence, we discover
some executives believe they can create items of painfully low
quality, add flashy wrapping and make bundles of money, just as
Dilbert creator, Scott Adams, humorously asserts. Once you play
Dilbert's Desktop Games, you realize Dilbert is funny because
Scott Adams is right.
What do you get for $20? A melange of items able to re-define boredom. The bottom of the barrel is the rubber stamp. You can grab the rubber stamp and place Dilbert-esque sayings on your desktop. Ever had a rubber stamp as a child? Trust me, the electronic equivalent in Dilbert is less fun. You could argue the electronic stamps doesn’t use the kind of ink children wreak havoc with daily, but so what?
Too often, I see someone use a jive filter program to create a document featuring eubonics-like text from standard-speech files. Dilbert's Desktop Toys provides the Jargonator, able to convert normal speech into management talk. Knowing the Jargonator’s source -- offensive racial software -- my taste for this toy was lacking. Worse, seeing words like “hello” replaced with “salutations” fails to impress for even five minutes.
Some toys pick up the pace, if only slightly. Boss Evaders, a
Space Invaders clone, almost reminds me of the fun I had
playing on my Atari 2600. Enduring Fools, a Whack-a-Mole
clone, was almost as fun as the Mac freeware, Bonk. Can-O-Matic,
however, is slightly original. Catbert shoots employees at
products flying across the screen. Employees colliding with
viable products get to stay with the company. Employees who
miss, or hit defective products are, one assumes, laid-ff. Can-O-Matic
is as fun as it sounds. Project Passoff is a bizarre kind of
table hockey with different pucks causing different results upon
scoring. Elbonian Airlines has Dogbert launching workers to
islands, ships and airplanes with the slingshot used by Elbonians
as an economical substitute for jet planes.
The most bizarre toy is the CEO Simulator, where you play games over the span of days. Fail to check in after three days and your game is, literally, up. The biggest novelty here is someone going to so much trouble, making the game inconvenient to play. However, when you can play, you either hire employees or consultants, motivate and discipline workers and watch the results unfold over time. The CEO Simulator is both limited and inconvenient to play.
Techno Raiders, the most promising toy, is a simple 2-dimensional
side-scroller. Navigate Dilbert as he avoids co-workers and
gathers donuts. Dodging into safe zones, blasting
co-workers with cell phones, dropping black holes is fun.
Unfortunately, a sameness persists from level to level failing to
inspire. Over time, you find yourself losing gadgets (lives) not
because the game is difficult, but because you become reckless
from boredom. With more work, Techno Raiders could become a
contender, but only in a now trite category, the 2-dimensional
scroller.
Dilbert's Desktop Toys is funny, but only as ghastly self-referential humor. Dilbert's Desktop Toys is the sort of software I expect from Dilbert's pointy-haired manager. The software's creators digest Scott Adams cerebral humor, and regurgitate a brainless mass barely representing its source. Dilbert's Desktop Toys shows anyone can read books like "The Dilbert Principal," but not everyone will understand them.
Gamer's Zone Scorecard
| Product: |
Dilbert's Desktop Toys |
| Company: |
Dreamworks
|
| Cost: |
$19.99 |
System Requirements:
Any Pentium running Windows '95 with a soundcard and a mouse will do.
Breakdown:
Fun Factor 1
Graphics 2
Sound 1
Interface 3
Replayability 1
Overall Score:
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