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