Big Brother Is Going To Have A Hell Of A Lot To Answer For If This Is The Quality Of The Spin-Offs (Revenge of Marjorie the Chicken (PC))

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	Revenge of Marjorie the Chicken (PC)
Date:	24/05/01 (41 review reads)
Rating:

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Everyone still remembers C4's Big Brother series right? Yes, I'm sure you do, it was one of the most talked about programmes in television history, despite the final instalment drawing an audience of less than 10million viewers. And then when it finally left our screens we were still bombarded with Big Brother spin-offs in the form of Nick's book, Nicola's pop single(*smirk*), Darren's Kentucky Fried Chicken advert...etc. So its hard to forget. Well like anything else which is successful, sooner or later someone drags the licence too far and brings out a complete piece of trash...like Nick's book, Nicola's Pop single...lol.

AND REVENGE OF MARJORIE THE CHICKEN!!!

What? What does that have to do with Big Brother I hear you ask. Well, basically someone in their infinite wisdom decided to stretch the marketing point an incy-wincy bit too far and give Darren's favourite chicken her own computer game. Oh Please...

...but then if its a good game we can of course ignore the fact that this is the most cynical attempt to cash in on this program to date. Perhaps its great, packed with exciting levels and wonderfully humourous gameplay, something to keep you entertained for hours???

Perhaps not.

Revenge of Marjorie the Chicken is one of those hurredly cobbled together game licences which we see all too often hitting the market to lift as much cash as possible out of our pockets before the fickle public forget what the hell the movie, book, televison programme etc. was all about and move on to something else. It is truly awful. If you have a look at the homepage for the game, they tell you that their website(Marjorie the Chicken that is- not Big Brother's) received around 3.8 million hits per week from punters after a free download of this game - and hence the obvious decision to release it as an official licenced product. But wuite frankly, there are lenty of games I play on the internet which I wo
uld be less than willing to part with my hard earned cash for should I come across it in a shop. This would be one of them. Its fun for at least...10 minutes.

So whats it all about(or what do I get for my £9.99)...

well first of all you'll need to have:

PC Intel Pentium 133MHz
Windows 95/98 with DirectX 6
Windows NT with Service Pack 3.5 or Windows 2000
16MB RAM
350 MB Free Hard Drive Space
SVGA Graphics Card with 1MB RAM
Soundcard
Mouse

and then your ready to go!

Basically(and there nothing more than basically) ROMTC is a return to the old days of 'Operation Wolf' style shoot-em ups. Don't remember those...oh ok. You have a cross-hair onscreen and must shoot a pre-determined number of objects before the timer runs out. Don't complete this task and you die. Do - and you move on to the next level. And thats about it. In ROMTC you are a hunter, and must shoot a specified number of birds, hot air balloons(?) and other things which fly, although the wierd graphics means that I'm not too sure what they are meant to be...flying eggs? Who knows. You get to select from a variety of different weapons with which to do this ranging from a hand gun to a rocket launcher, although all are virtually the same to use. Basically you manouver a cross-hair around the screen and shoot when something goes under it. Different weapons have to be used on different things though, for example, hot air balloons can only be destroyed by rocket launchers apparently, so there's no point shooting it with a pistol all day because nothing's gonna happen. The screen scrolls right to left or left to right or you can just stay still - there really is little point in moving and occasionally Marjorie pops up and very(VERY) slowly trains a double-barrelled shotgun on you. If she gets you(which usually only happens when she is off-screen - ie. the game cheats) then you lose some of your viewing area...o
h dear. If not, shoot everything you need to before the time runs out and you are onto the next thrill lacking level - which is exactly the same but with a different background.

To be honest, the graphics are suitably garish and cartoony and there's nothing too wrong with them, its just the gameplay is horrible. Moving a crosshair around the screen with the mouse and clicking when something goes under it is not sustainable fun. Especially when that is all there is to do from one level to the next. Being shot by Marjorie off-screen is at best annoying, and as Marjorie only ever appears in the same place, you are reluctant to leave that spot, so there's no point in the scrolling backgrounds. Leave, and you get shot...or stay in one place and don't. Silly. Couple this with sound effects which are virtually non-existent and you have a game which maybe worth downloading for nothing, but certainly isn't worth buying for £9.99. There is the added bonus of being able to become Marjorie after completing the levels and shooting people apparently(!) but I've never stuck with it long enough to find out - oh and there's networked play as well...again not something which has held any interest to me considering how badly the game sucks.

Overall then, not something to keep you amused for more than half and hour at the most and a really laughable attempt to cash-in on the Big Brother phenomenon. I'd advise you to give it a miss, but then you might like this sort of thing. Try a demo from the site first:

www.marjoriethechicken.com

and make up your own mind if you don't believe me. I think you'll agree though.

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