Meh

[Bob the Hamster]

(review originally posted in <a href="http://superwalrusland.com/ohr/issue37/ ... msterSpeak issue 33</a>)

Meh is a celebration of that hellish job that we have all had to do at some point in our lives (my own involved distributing coupons for $1 off pie). This game focuses on that most special type of job hell, Retail. The lamented plight of the register jockey.

This sad tale follows the downfall of of a young wolf-collie named Fenris, as he is slowly driven mad by his job (or more specifically by his customers).

The gameplay involves a random sequence of events, usually centered around one or more obnoxious customers. In almost every case you will be offered a choice. As in real life these choices are rarely a matter of "right" and "wrong". They are usually a choice between one small wrong and a different small wrong, or at best, a choice between apathy and (probably ill-advised) action.

As far as I can tell, virtually everything you can do erodes your sanity, although some things erode it faster than others. Its a case of "Damned if you do, and damned if you don't".

Part way through my first playthough, I mad a "bad decision". In my defence, I thought I was being offered some AA batteries, (and I am still not 100% sure I wasn't) but the upshot is that whatever I was offered and accepted led to my incarceration, ending my game prematurely, with about half of my sanity meter remaining.

Somehow I suspect I was one of the lucky ones. (Although when I played again, and got a different ending, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't as bad as I expected)

The pool of random events in the game is fairly small, so long before you run out of sanity you will have seen everything several times. This repetition is accurate. Retail IS mind-numbing, but it is still a shame that there ins't more to see.