ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Last week I started an account with the online game rental company GameFly, since I figured this would be a good way to get hold of games that are hard to find or that I want to try out before I buy them. I have a Nintendo DS, too, which means that most of the major rental retailers like Blockbuster don’t have games I can rent. Anyway, the point is, the first game I rented was this thing called “Feel the Magic: XY/XX” that seemed okay based on the description, which I now realize was carefully scripted to hide how totally screwed up this game really is. So I get the game and I can’t figure out at first how to work it and I wind up going to this minigame screen. So I select the first one, which is called “Goldfish”. This sounds so incredibly innocuous. Ha, ha!

As soon as I choose the minigame, a harshly accented Japanese voice shouts “GAWFEESH” and rainbows splash the screen. I can tell immediately that something is very, very wrong. The game screen is a stomach with fish in it, and my job is to force the fish up and out of the man’s stomach until he vomits them out. When I do this, the man’s shape heaves and retches and spits the fish out. A big rainbow zooms across the screen and some blobs that appear to be rabbits jump up and are gone again. I complete all 10 levels of this game and successfully pump goldfish and turtles of various sizes and numbers out of the man’s stomach, carefully avoiding the peristaltic tremors that threaten to wash the hapless creatures away to some unknown fate. I get nothing more than a simple congratulations for my efforts, which offends me a little. It is unclear what exactly happens if the fish and turtles are not regurgitated, but I am not sorry that I never found out.

Now I can’t decide if I even want to turn the game back on. I realize how lame this will make me sound, but I thought this was supposed to be some kind of stupid dating simulator game, and so sue me, I was kind of looking forward to it. Now what? They didn’t send a manual with the game, so I basically have no clue what is going on. Is it worth looking up some instructions on the internet, or is this game a hopeless train wreck of bodily functions gone horribly awry? Oh, well. I have it, I might as well give it another shot.

But the first minigame that involves any kind of shit or urine type theme, I’m putting this sucker in the mail like yesterday.