The tribe has spoken. You are the weakest link. Goodbye. Review

The tribe has spoken. You are the weakest link. Goodbye.

Welcome to Survivor: The Interactive Review!

The only review you’ll ever read that’s actually more fun than the

game itself! Test your vocabulary as you customize an actual Game Revolution

review! Cringe in fear as we tell our frightening tale! Wonder what the hell

is wrong with the creators of this game! Simply choose your favorite words

and interact away!

Wanderlust. Click to enlarge!

All right Revolutionaries, this is it. We’ve bashed The

Crow and Catechumen

for a long time, but that era is over. There’s a new load of

crap in town, one so bad that it caused the entire Game Revolution staff to

become violently ill with

Stand back, everyone – Survivor: The Interactive Game is here!

I imagine that the majority of you out there know the basic premise of the

Survivor television show. A bunch of stereotypically

dumb Americans are dropped on a sheltered ranch, preserve, or lush tropical

island in the “middle of nowhere” where they must survive.

Week after week, they face challenges to win supplies or immunity from exile.

Every episode, some poor

is kicked off the show with the last remaining member claiming the million

dollar prize.

I’ve endured most of the first season and the entire second season of the

show and can attest that Survivor: The Interactive Game is nowhere

near as interesting. In fact, you could probably

and have more fun. Most notable on this game’s long list of problems is the

fact that YOU CANNOT PLAY IT. Just get ready to yell

at the top of your lungs because this

is all you’re going to see. That’s right, the game doesn’t even work. There

is a patch to fix this error and get the game started, but as of this writing,

I have yet to get past day

without crashing out to the desktop. While this offense certainly warrants

a toss into the

, it definitely isn’t the only thing that makes Survivor the absolute

worst game of all time.

You’ll choose from one of the 32 cast members from the original Pulau Tiga

or Outback shows. You can also make a custom character that is actually not

customizable. There are a few stats to tweak, but they really don’t make a

difference in the game at all. Pure

Each “episode” (there are between 3 and 13) consists of 5 stages: 2 Survival

Periods, 2 Challenges, and the infamous Tribal Council. The Survival periods

are about as much fun as

, since you don’t do ANYTHING. You don’t move your character –

just wanders around aimlessly trying to get some task done, like fishing,

which actually looks more like urinating into the river. You don’t explore

at all and you definitely don’t do anything that might be mistaken as ‘fun.’

The purpose here is to build alliances with other players through multiple

choice conversions that make no sense whatsoever. Just click on another aimlessly

wandering person and start chatting. Here’s a snippet of a conversation between

Debb and I:

 Debb: Don't you trust me? 
 Me: I must be losing my mind.
 Debb: You must have got a bad coconut.
 Me: That's a good one.
 Debb: I don't trust you.
 Me: Whatever.
 Debb: I've got work to do.
 Me: Let's take one thing at a time.
 Debb: What have you heard?
 Me: Don't you trust me?
 Debb: What's bothering you?
 Me: What do you think?
 Debb: I wonder what's going on at home.

I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to speak

Dennis The Menace, look out. Click to enlarge!

Next is the Challenge phase, where you’ll compete in some of the sorriest

excuses for mini-games known to gamer. Some games involve trivia contests

that only the biggest Survivor nerd would have even a vague shot at

(ie. For how many hours did Keith stand on the log?). Others involve first-person

shooter aspects where you are pushed down a fixed rail with only limited ability

to aim. You might want to look back behind you in order to take a shot at

a target you might have missed, but you can’t shoot any direction other than

forward. There is also some sort of puzzle that takes about 3 seconds to solve.

What

thought this would be fun? The worst part about it is that there are more

lame games! Thank god I was never able to play them due to the best crash

bug in the world.

If you actually manage to keep playing, you’ll eventually make it to Tribal

Council where you’ll vote someone off. Aha! Take that, you stupid computer

player! But get voted off by a bunch of computer controlled players and you

might as well give yourself a

A picture is worth a thousand words – or just three

specific ones.

Don’t forget that during the course of your

experience, you’ll be looking at what might be the worst graphics to hit the

PC gaming scene since they invented color monitors. It’s even more visually

offensive than

Thick, crusty edges are everywhere, there’s absolutely no collision detection

and the textures are, well, nonexistent. For some reason, sections of the

ground have a tendency to suddenly disappear. The sky looks like

and the trees look like grass stains on a pair of old jeans. Even the video

footage taken from the actual show is crappy. I’ve seen better looking things

The audio isn’t any better. The small bits of voice acting in the game amount

to basic tribal grunts that signify anger or happiness. The rushing of the

river sounds like a guy sitting in his bathtub playing with his

. Even the "tribal beats" are so bad, songs like this

sound like a Grammy winner.

Just in case you were interested, there’s also some sort of multiplayer mode.

I’d love to tell you more about it, but since the game crashes more than , I could never get it going.

THIS JUST IN… According to recent sales figures, Survivor has become

the #7 selling PC game for the week ending November 24, 2001. Do not, I repeat,

DO NOT under any circumstance give this game as a gift to anyone you would

like to stay on good terms with. Not even die hard Survivor fans could

possibly enjoy this game. Instead, send a copy to

They’ll never recover from this horrible disease. How did the same company

that published the excellent Civilization

III give this stinker the seal of approval?

If you actually bought the game for yourself, return it. I don’t care that

you opened it already – demand your money back. Just tell the store manager

Seeing as how this game is the worst thing anyone at Game Revolution has

ever seen, it deserves special grading treatment.

No dear reader, an ‘F’ is much too high for a debacle such as this. Instead,

this game gets a Cursed Tiki Award

and the very first Game Revolution ‘F-‘. We wouldn’t want to insult

by giving this piece of the same grade.

So there you have it. Indisputable evidence that anything

can become a game, but only something really special can invent a new grade.

Do not, under any circumstances attempt to play Survivor: The Interactive

Game. You definitely won’t