Well if the title of this week's blog isn't something to be concerned about, let me go into details.
In 1996, a company called DigiFX Interactive designed a game and got published by Merit Studios. This was a point-and-click adventure that took place in the 1950s. You take control of a character named Steve, who has awaken in this town called Harvest with amnesia. He's trying to figure out who he is, where he is, and everything else. No one seems to be giving him any kind of helpful information other than telling him that, "You were always a kidder." You stumble upon one person who seems to believe you, the love interest, Stephanie Potsdam, who everyone tells you you're supposed to marry her in a few days. All of these townsfolk are trying to influence you in joining the Lodge. You do, by completing tasks that seems like harmless pranks, but they have dire consequences on the townsfolk. When you finally manage to enter the Lodge, you come across all these random series of rooms to show that you're a definite initiate and must complete another set of tasks before you venture on an save Stephanie, who gets kidnapped right before you become an official member of the Lodge. When you finally find this woman, everything is explained to you. You are in a simulation that turns people into serial killers. You have the option to become a serial killer, or be killed in the virtual world. You see, you and Stephanie are the only REAL people in this town. If Steve picks the option to save Stephanie and live the rest of his life in Harvest, the two live the rest of their lives within five minutes, although it may seem like an eternity to them. Both of them gets killed in the real world. For some reason, this is considered the "good" ending. The "bad" ending has it where Steve kills Stephanie and gets out of the simulation. He hijacks a car and kills the woman driver in it. He's then late seen playing Harvester with his mom coming in and telling him that games are too violent. He laughs at a comment she makes and the camera zooms into his mouth where there we see that he has a severed finger in his stomach.
This games contains: violence, gore, implied sexual intercourse, masturbation, S&M, murder, suicide, child abuse, profanity, cannibalism, prostitution, pedophilia, molestation, serial killing, geronticide, vandalism, sexually transmitted diseases, and stereotypes of homosexuals, Native Americans, Italians. and others.
This is a game called Harvester.
Do I have a mouthful of things to say about this game, and I will warn you, this blog will be all over the place because it's that crazy of a game. I've never played it before, but I've seen plenty of walkthrough videos about it on Youtube and from what I've seen... no words can really describe what I think about this game. I mean, I really have no way of explaining how I feel about this game. I've sat through the entire thing and I just laughed my ass off. The game was not gory, it was digitalized in so many ways that the blood just didn't' even look real. Actually, a lot of the game didn't look real. Of course, it's live-action and live-action computer games were mostly shitty products that failed miserably in the market. However, this game is considered a cult classic. But it's very underrated, especially with the features that it showed throughout the game. I mean that's a handful of stuff this game contains, and a lot of it can't be featured in video games today, otherwise that would be considered rating the game Adult, and many stores in the world refuses to sell anything Adult rated in stores.
So, what the heck? You have a game that's filled with the most horrific stuff that soccer moms would throw huge raging fits about if anything like pedophilia or child abuse was featured in a game today. There's a lot of offensive themes in this game that makes today's game look a bit childish if you played, and I'm saying that because despite how crappy this game looked, it did feature a lot of stuff most games really can't fit into today. I mean sure there's a few themes that this game has that has been featured in other games, but how many can you say has you killing children? I mean yeah, you actually get to kill children in this game. I don't think I've touched a game yet that has me killing a child... if I do I'll list it here but I haven't.
How about we actually pick things about the game to talk about now, shall we?
Here's something I don't get, which I've already mentioned. People consider the "good" ending to be where Steve marries Stephanie, lives the rest of their lives in Harvest, and dies of old age, but towards the very end of the ending, you see that Steve dies in the real world and the people operating the machinery explains their dissatisfaction on the choice Steve made. But in the bad ending, despite that Stephanie gets killed by him, Steve lives, and lives the rest of his life as a serial killer, but he remains alive. Doesn't this mean that the serial killer ending should be considered the "good" ending rather than the bad? Sure, he doesn't get the girl in the end, but at least he has his life intact. He's not dead, so doesn't this mean that the protagonist achieved his victory? By getting out of this alive? Sure he's now a serial killer, but he's not dead. Yeah Stephanie was his love interest and gets killed, but couldn't he just find some other random chick? It's not like she was remotely attractive anyways, he could have done better...
Here's another thing that bugs me. How in the world did Steve and Stephanie get captured by these people who are trying to turn Steve into a serial killer? How come not Stephanie either? I mean, you have both of them in a situation where their lives are in danger and if they refuse to do your bidding, you can just end their lives within a second. But only Steve gets to make a choice, either both of them dies, or just one of them dies. I mean, what's wrong with trying to get Stephanie into being a serial killer? Is it just because of her character that she is in the game makes it hard for her to become a serial killer? And when you do save her in the end, why strip her down to her bra and panties? To make it easier to torment her? I mean throughout the Lodge levels, you're climbing a rope that whenever you touch it, you hear a girl screaming in agonizing pain. Obviously you find out that this has been Stephanie that you've been torturing, the Sergeant of Arms tells you that. But, it just doesn't quite add up. And where did Steve go after he becomes free from these people in the ending that turns him into a serial killer? I mean, we find him waking up, smiling and saying that what he went through was a cool experience, then we find him hitchhiking. I mean, yeah we can assume he was kidnapped but honestly... where did he go?
Why do most of these characters want to kill you if you don't do something right? I mean with the paper boy. If you don't give him a paper when you walk out of the house, he gets angry. Do this multiple times and he will shoot you down dead. Why? Why kill Steve for not... putting the paper out... That makes no sense either. I mean, you have all these random character that really makes no sense on existing in this game, and it gets even more out of control by the time you ender the Lodge because that place is filled with a bunch of random things I can't really describe. You're first sucked into something that's supposed to represent a monster's stomach, then you're in a kitchen... you have to face some giant monster that has a book that needs to be returned to where then you're fighting against a chess master... you're in a room with a mother who's triplets are eating her dead, a guy that murdered his family that's in the setting of Vietnam... to a religious zealot asking you wild questions about religion. I cannot comprehend on what was watching by this time. There's also quite a lot of interesting characters such as teachers who brutally beat their students down dead with baseball bats, a father who is obsessed with meat and molests little children before burying them alive, mothers who are so desperately seeking out the bake sale and baking thousands of cookie and throwing them away, a mother who has a secret sex life that tortures her husband with knives and barbed wired sex toys... I really have no idea why I am describing these characters to you. They're all messed up in various ways. It felt like the creator behind all of this wanted to make an outrageous game that had no rules, no limits on sense and logic... Just do whatever the fuck you want and hope it sells good.
Unfortunately for that it didn't sell well whatsoever and I'm glad it kinda did.
You see with a game like this, it just doesn't make sense. All those violent games we have out right now has sense and logic to it. This game just doesn't have it. I felt like during this creation, the guys behind it just wanted to make a game that would be more out violent and messed up than the games that were currently out during that time. And before, Mortal Kombat proved to be THE game that settled the creation of the ESRB rating system... not this game, it was a few years too late to be honest. But what about this game makes it where not too many people actually talk about it? I mean, to be honest, I stumbled upon this video game over a random video I clicked on while I was on Youtube, and I researched a little bit more about this game. Not too many people actually know this game exists... And when I stumbled upon a walkthrough for this game, I was stunned that this is a game that no one knows. I mean, I really thought that what this game features would be something everyone would be talking about, I can't even remember if there were any news reports on this game at the time. I remember seeing stuff about Mortal Kombat and Doom, but nothing about Harvester. Maybe it was just the fact that this game failed at selling stuff. I mean, majority of the live-action games weren't that great.
I just feel as if the creators of this game just wanted to put as much offensive stuff in this game without thinking about making it actually a great game. What's even more hilarious about this game, with all of the offensive shit that was put in this game, was that there's no black people once featured in this game. I get that it was based around the 1950s, and you know what happened during that time, but um, not a single black person featured in this game, not even mentioned either! Wowsers.
So yeah, this is Harvester, a game that I... really have no clue if I should recommend anyone to try to get a hold of or whatever. It made me laugh like crazy when I was watching the walkthrough of it, but I cannot figure out if anyone would really want to waste money, or even time, to play this game that makes no sense.
>'-'<
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