Pendulo Studios, 2013
WHAT WE LOVE
1. The storytelling: the way the story is told is awesome. The player goes on getting more and more information about the characters and the plot, slowly but surely, in a seemingly incidental way. However, the purpose of all that information is not incidental at all: every joke, every fun quote, every little detail the player gets about Liz and Dan… is going to be of importance later on. And once the player finishes the game, every little bit of information fits like a glove in the big picture.
2. The writing: sparkling dialogues, witty descriptions, cleverly designed dialogue trees… just brilliant. Hurray for the writers, Josué Monchán and his pals at Pendulo!!!
3. Liz Allaire: if you have played the game, you will have fallen at her feet… as we have.
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Firstly, and to avoid confusions, a warning about the title: the game we are talking about was called «Hollywood Monsters 2» in Spain and Italy when released for PC in 2011 (as it was some kind of a sequel/remake of the old 1997 «Hollywood Monsters«); and was called «The Next Big Thing» in the rest of the world. However, the iOS version has been called just «Hollywood Monsters» worldwide.
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We have already stated in this blog that the linear scope of Pendulo Studios games is not our favorite approach for a point and click adventure. But when you play such a fun, technically brilliant, ingenious game as «Hollywood Monsters» for iOS… well, it’s easy to look the other way.
As usual in Pendulo games, art, soundtrack, voice acting, music… are top notch, as any other review may confirm. Played on a first generation iPad mini, the game runs flawlessly -except for some minor issues in one specific chapter- and the original interface has been cleverly redesigned for touchscreens. In a nutshell, they made a good work porting the game from PC to iOS.
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To summarize, if you want a game to «make your day» go for «Hollywood Monsters«. And if you want to enjoy it even more… go and examine everything over and over; talk to everyone; read every line of dialogue. Trust us: you won’t regret it.
¡Muchas gracias, sincronomuertos! How many drinks do we owe you for this one.
Please let me add, as the flattered writer of the dialogues in this game, that my set of priorities were (in no particular order):
– Depict the oddest of worlds as if it was perfectly ordinary, so the player felt «at home abroad», basically through dialogue
– Use every single line to talk about racism and male chauvinism, but in a subtle way
– Turn Liz into the strongest female character ever in a Pendulo game.
– Cut the number of words per sentence by 20%. Even if this may seem easy, it proved to be real though, but the reward was incredibly good for my development as a writer, since I became aware of many of my vices and limitations in the process… and, in many cases, I eventually surpassed them. 🙂
Finally, this game would have had no good English reviews withouth the great work of Catherine Dexter, or inspired US translator. The same goes for the rest of languages: Fabien and Thierry from Words of Magic, Federica from FX Interactive, Eva Hoogh, Uliana from 1C… and many more! As for the Spanish version, all my thankfulness to Carol Micó from FX, who proofread the whole script and taught me a thing or too about ortotypography…
Thanks again in my name, in Ramón Hernaez’s (the other writer and project lead) and the whole Pendulo team!
Hi, Josué!
Thanks a lot for your remarks on your work, they are really useful! It’s great to have one of the writers of a game we reviewed reviewing our own review!
And don’t worry, we’ll catch up with all the beers we owe one another!!!