Max Blaster and Doris de Lightning Against the Parrot Creatures of Venus

Max Blaster is a game I am extremely divided on. On one hand, I love the written content and the story. Max and Doris are a great duo, with Max being the dumb action hero and Doris being the snarky sidekick who doesn't take his shit. Puzzles make use of their physical attributes and the different gadgets that each one has. You can switch between the two characters when they're together, but there are puzzles where you have to use a certain one.

The game's humor is really funny, with some highlights being a magazine full of bird puns and Max's repeated "I told you so"s to Doris after being saved from a snake. You also get a lot of footnotes that you can read for even more jokes. You can even type ">re-enact famous socio-political decisions" at one point and get a response. I like the interactive cutscenes that let you decide what you want to say, even if they're mostly at the beginning and end.

The thing I don't like about this game is the bugs and the unresponsive parser. So many times, I clearly knew what I wanted or had to do, but I had to figure out the right way to word it, and it felt like nothing I did would register. I'm not someone who usually gets tripped up by guess-the-verb, but this game was infuriating with it. Max's barrier tool -- you set it to a shape you want, then can summon that and use it physically -- was such a pain that I stuck to Doris until I was forced to learn how to use it.

It's so easy to get yourself hardlocked by bugs in this game. There is a mandatory portion in the middle involving opening modules on a computer, and if you use the same module more than once, you will get a parser error. There is no way to work around this and nothing you can do to progress. I also ran into numerous issues where text that was supposed to display didn't, leaving out critical parts of puzzles (the presence of a gap after you climb onto the stepladder) or story details (such as how Max gets across the gorge). I only saw these on replays.

Another problem I had was with the first split-up puzzle, Max needing to make a sandwich for robots. No matter how closely I followed the walkthrough, I was not able to get this to work. I had to restart the game and make sure I was Doris to get a different puzzle. When I entered an even more complicated puzzle with Max later in the game, I chickened out and decided to see what Doris's puzzle was, and it was thankfully more manageable. If you want the least frustrating way through the game, save often, and make sure you're Doris every time you get separated.

If you're willing to put up with an unpolished gameplay experience, give Max Blaster a try, because the story and jokes here is very much worth it.

A man swoops down onto a flying pirate ship. He fights off the entire crew singlehandedly, retrieves the stolen briefcase and is off to his next mission.

A woman infiltrates a high-security underground bunker. Through the cunning use of a coffeemaid's uniform, she thwarts the entire assembly of scheming supervillains. She is called in for a briefing on her next mission.

In two short railroaded scenes, we meet our heroes:
-Max Blaster: An action hero, larger than life, with hairdo and ego as big as his muscles.
-Doris deLightning: A stealthy spy, relying on brains over brawn.

Meanwhile,The Venusian Parrot Overlord prepares to conquer Earth. Max and Doris will have to join forces to stop him.

Max Blaster and Doris deLightning Against the Parrot Creatures of Venus is a hilariously over the top action-comedy. It parodies 1950s scifi clichés and any other clichés that may cross its path. The (anti)chemistry between the protagonists is one of these. If they were bottles in a highschool science classroom, they would be labeled "Do Not Mix" in big red letters. Needless to say, snappy conversations full of funny one-liners are the result of them working together, as well as a growing affection for each other...

After the introduction, the player is asked to choose Doris or Max as the player character. Since they have different styles of approaching obstacles and a different set of equipment that fits their styles, and since they will be separated a few times during the mission, the player will experience a different path through the game depending on this choice.
I played as Doris, so this review will be necessarily incomplete and biased towards Doris' skills. (And against that blastery blowhard who just wants to rush every obstacle head-on!)
When Doris and Max are together in the same room, the player can SWITCH TO the other character to tackle a puzzle from a different angle. However, I believe it is possible to complete the game without ever doing so. I encountered one timed puzzle where I switched, but in hindsight I realize that I probably had enough turns to do it in-character.

There's no leisurely exploring the map in the first half of this game. It starts of at a fast pace and doesn't slow down until the very end. Many times, you will be automatically moved to a new area after a scene. Only once you've penetrated the headquarters are you granted a small bit of freedom to look around. Even then, your space is limited to the few rooms immediately connected to the next obstacle.
Small, simple but clever puzzles help to heighten the tension and emphasize the urgency of the mission. Often, the solution relies on noticing a small detail in your surroundings and realizing its importance.

Just before the endgame, Doris and Max need to split up and tackle a different obstacle. The player needs to choose which problem to solve. On the path I chose, I encountered a glorious multi-step problem with a variety of machines to fiddle with. Anyone who has played Metamorphoses or Savoir Faire will recognize the vintage Emily Short-style devices.

Throughout the entire game, I had the impression of a very "full" game-world. Partly, this is because there are so many objects to examine (and take with you) and devices to experiment with. Another reason is that there are constantly things happening around you: the status of the evil plan is announced through speakers, guards are flying up and down and you get updates when Max (or Doris) has achieved a sub-goal when you are separated.

In such a well-written and smoothly playing game, it was very odd to encounter a very weird bug: on two occasions (once when I switched to Max and once at the very end), the parser prompt simply disappeared. I could still type and enter commands, but they showed up right at the end of the previous paragraph and in the same font as the descriptive text. Not a problem for continuing the game, but very disconcerting at first. I was surprised at how much the standard layout of bold commands followed by smaller descriptions was a visual handhold for me.

A hilarious action-packed parody game with an impressively intricate puzzle-engine under the hood.

This is a complex and interesting game. It contains a number of movie-like cut scenes and text effects. You play Max Blaster (with a gun and fancy force generator) or Doris de Lightning (an acrobatic hacker with special tools) as you stop the parrot creatures from attacking the earth.

You can switch between the characters whenever they are together, which is good if one path is harder than the other (twice, there was a seeming bug which rendered the game unfinishable, but I went back to my last save when they were together and switched to the other person). (Spoiler - click to show)One bug was that a key step in the sandwich machine did not work. The other bug is that I could not getup of the mud as Doris. In both cases, I was following the walkthrough when the problems happened.

The writing is fun, and the game was nominated for an XYZZY award for it. Overall, I can strongly recommend it.