American McGee's Grimm

Found this on American's flickr stream (American is a big ole hero of mine, being the original designer on Quake):

Pretty or wot! He did such a fab job with Alice, I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. I wasn't interested in Bad Day LA as a subject matter, but fairy tales? Heck yes.

Actually, on reading that Idle Thumbs interview, I realise that I made a shallow, snap judgement on Bad Day LA based on the title. I'd assumed it was a GTA-style game, I certainly didn't realise it was a political game. That's pretty fine. I think I'll go buy it after all...

The idea for Bad Day LA was born when American McGee drove on Sunset Blvd past a billboard from the Department of Homeland Security. He was immediately struck by the ludicrousness of the billboard's slogan, which said "Bio-chemical terror attack! Are you prepared?". Everyday Americans most likely aren't prepared for a terrorist attack, and who knows how they could be. There is little reason to be prepared anyway, as the likelihood of becoming a victim of a bio-chemical attack surely is lower than that of being randomly hit by a car. As various book authors have been scrambling to point out as of late, Americans live in a culture of fear.

"I felt an overwhelming urge to do something about this issue," American said in an interview with IGN in June. "If I were a film director or a political blog writer, I would have been inspired to go off and make a movie or write an article... But seeing as how I make video games for a living, I felt that I had to find a way to inject this ageless message into a game: We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

Comments

[Jeff]

Don't buy the game. It's a disaster. Not just gameplay-wise, but also as a political satire. American McGee's idea of political commentary is making his main character pull down his pants and take a crap in the middle of the highway.

And that's just the intro. The rest of the game is just as dumb and crude.

My advice: stay away.

[bob]

"Don't buy the game. It's a disaster"
It's really too bad to hear that about "Bad Day"- it would be nice to see some smart political commentary in a game, especially on this subject- it seems like a game that deals satirically with terrorism hysteria could really work well. I admit, however, that it would be hard to be more absurd than real life these days. For instance- about the same time the Boston ridiculousness was occurring, a street got shut down in a Californian city because there was a pile of white powder in the road. (Note to public- if you see some white powder, and you AREN'T in a bio-weapons lab, it ISN'T anthrax.)

[hanford]

I don't think American was the designer of Quake as much as a designer ... a junior designer IIRC.

[WandringSoul]

From Wikipedia:

The game received abysmal reviews from nearly all gaming sites and publications. GameSpot gave it a 3.0, and called it "an abject failure."

IGN gave it a 2.7, saying that "it's terrible."

Metacritic gave it an aggregate score of 30 percent, while G4's X-Play gave it their lowest rating, a 1 out of 5.

Most critics also noted that the game's main attempt at funny, political satire also fell flat. PC Gamer gave it a 20, saying it was "so tasteless I needed to wash myself with lysol after playing the game". Gamespy "awarded" the title 'coaster of the year award for 2006'

[Alice]

Cripes. Ouch!

Re: Quake, wikipedia says he was the level designer. I just seem to remember only four names on the box, or credit leaders, but maybe that's the mists of time erasing everything but the memorable names...

[Tom]

Having just booted up Quake to take a look at the credits, he's listed as "Design" along with 3 others John Romero, Sandy Peterson and Tim Willets.

But Bad Day LA *stinks*. It's an awful game. Still better than Little Britain though :-)

[Mojo]

According to Wikipedia, American was a level designer at Id, no more, no less.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_mcgee

[ttancm]

All this bad press about Bad Day L.A., I actually enjoyed it.

It's really tasteless, sophomoric humor (Beavis and Butthead, more recent South Parks), but it was a fun play for me (short however). It's not a very polished game and there are a few bugs, but it occupied me for a day or two and made me giggle a couple of times.

If you aren't easily offended (the game pokes fun at a lot of sensitive areas, politics, race, religion) then it's worth picking up from the bargain bin in my opinion.