The Underground Man | a Review
originally published on 05/09/2024;
Hello everyone, I am the russian speaking G.E.M.Simov, a man from underground, mentally, but above it, physically, and I’ve come to tell you about “The Underground Man”.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
Critics like VideogameDunkey might be of the opinion that “Death Stranding” was the first strand type game, but they are wrong. The first strand type game is “The Underground Man” (henceforth TUM), because it features such a vast number of features that are made purely for the sake of inconveniencing the Player that it is impossible to imagine it being anything other than that.
TUM is a macabre combination of a text-based adventure game and a proper adventure game, taking the worst aspects of both and slamming them together into some vile abomination of gaming. It is painfully difficult, not because there’s something challenging about it, but because it is obscenely obtuse.
This funky game features a split screen - the upper half of it showcases the game world and Characters, or at least the area currently occupied by the Player Character (PC), while the lower half of the screen shows the interactions between Characters. Those interactions occur through text - lots and lots of text, requiring that the Player writes out whatever they want their Character to say.
So, the game features movement - through the use of the A and D keys, as the game world features the four directions: Up, Down, Left and Right. A moves the PC left, D moves them Right. The Player can make the PC jump with the Spacebar, but that is not very useful.
The Player can also pick up items with the E button, and can attack with the Enter button. In addition to that, the Shift button can be pressed, and held down, to slightly increase the speed at which the text, which is presented to the Player, is written out. The speed up is so minor that it is not worth the effort - the first sign of a true strand-type game!
The second sign that this is a strand-type game is the fact that to even be able to play it, the Player must first write out a backstory for their Character (whom they create themselves through a very complex, totally pointless sequence) of at least 140 characters.
The third sign that this is a strand-type game is the fact that if the Player presses the wrong button while going through the tutorial, they get a game-over screen and must make a character again. There is no saving, and there are very, very few checkpoints - one every other chapter, which would be around 20 minutes of playtime.
Another reason why this is a strand-type game is the fact that the Player is forced to go through 20 to 30 areas, at least half of which contain enemies, with just 3 hearts. Each enemy has at least 4 health, requiring at least 4 hits to take down, while the PC has 3 hearts, meaning they have 3 hits worth of life in them, dying on the third. It could be said that this game is definitely a strand-type, because the first time a certain enemy is encountered, it only takes 4 hits to kill, but the next time it takes 8 hits to kill. Due to the pattern recognition in our brains, humans would assume that that kind of enemy only has 4 health, because of our previous experience with it, and so we would let our guard down and get hit, losing 1 heart.
Regardless, this game keeps going. It is a brutal slog, not only because of the stiffness of the movement and the incredibly rudimentary nature of the combat - which features hitting, walking back slightly so that the PC is out of the momentarily staggered enemy’s range, and hitting again - but because of the fact that saying the wrong thing to almost any one of the characters leads to instant death, and another twenty minutes wasted.
Fortunately, but actually not quite, this game features the option to get a hint - 3 hints, actually, which directly present the Player with a list of acceptable answers. One very important thing - this should not be played as a text-based RPG or as a “good” text-based adventure. It should be played as a “game book”, in which the Player is allowed to either go to page 13 or 35, with there being no great amount of options. In addition to that, it should be noted that due to the fact that this game borrows the bad from both types of adventure game, the correct answers are all very bizarre and completely unhinged.
So unhinged, in fact, that one such answer is WRITING OUT THE BACKSTORY the Player has written for their character, WORD FOR WORD. There is no alternative to this - either write out your backstory or die!
This means one simple thing - the Player will have to play through the game, slog through the combat section, then carefully use the 3 hints at their disposal, writing down the possible answers on a note, or in notepad (it’d be better to use a real piece of paper for this, because, as previously stated: pressing the wrong button, and alt is the wrong button, gets the PC killed). Following that, the Player tries their luck, dies, and repeats.
The game, then, is as far away from fun as possible. It does feature some massive improvements over itself - such as the second big slog through 30 screens, which is better because the Player now has a companion who also fights! Regardless, the combat remains utterly dreadful. If an enemy is close enough to attack the PC, and has attacked the PC, and the Player has decided to trade blows, that’s not going to happen, because the PC cannot land a hit on the enemy if the enemy is in range to attack. So the key is to space properly and just hope that things work out.
That’s not all, though, because even while staggered (and supposedly unable to move or attack) enemies can, actually, attack. So it’s just incredibly esoteric. Other things that don’t work in this game - hitboxes/collision detection, which determine when two objects come into contact (such as the PC and something that hurts the PC, Bird Poop or fish or bullets).
Other things that do not work - there are three sections in the game that feature platforming, two of which are conventional - making use of the PC and normal controls - one of which is unconventional, reminiscent of Battle Toads’ infamous bike level. Now that I think about it, the more this game dwells in my head, the more I realize it’s just some ill-fated abortion produced by an unholy union of Cobra, Battle Toads and Fallout 3.
Regardless, the platforming sections that are conventional are bad, because they do nothing to introduce the Player to the platforming itself. I am certain the 10 standing jumps that the tutorial forces the Player to perform are going to be of great use in jumping over pits that instantly kill the PC, while hazards bounce from the pits and through the spots where the PC is meant to stand. There is 1 whole jump that does not have hazards, and then every jump afterwards has hazards - some have two, such as sinking platforms and damaging goons.
In this situation the Presentation of the game plays a very bad trick on the Player by having no shadows and, thus, making it impossible to properly tell where the Player Character is going to land after a jump. That is especially troublesome when the spot where the PC can land is thinner than the PC itself.
The other, unconventional platforming section is needlessly fast and does not convey anything to the Player, forcing them to go through a couple of game-over screens. Something I missed - whenever the Player is faced with a game-over screen, they do not get the option to retry. They need to wait the game-over screen out, then they need to wait for the main-menu to load - all the logos and that jazz goes over, and a steady quarter of a minute, if not more, is wasted waiting. That’s really bad.
Other horrendous things - sometimes, the hints literally don’t work. Using a hint to get help nets the Player a: “FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF” message instead, which is absolutely reprehensible and necessitates either a grueling number of repeat attempts OR the use of third party software that is outside of the game - such as a calculator, a wiki, an encyclopedia - which is very bad design.
There’s a boss battle in the game. It is dreadful, because not only does the boss have better invulnerability frames than the Player Character (meaning that when the boss gets hit it is invulnerable for a short duration afterwards), not only is the range on the PC’s attack lower than the model suggests it should be, not only does the Player need to hit the boss more than 20 times to get it to its second phase, but it also does contact damage - just by touching the boss the PC takes damage, ignoring the fact that the Player has 3 health on their disposal and the boss has other means of attacking as well.
Simply put, this is a horrible game. It is as far from fun or enjoyable as possible, it actively punishes and torments the Player, it even appears to want to make itself as annoying and bothersome as possible. Even though the hint system is actually, conceptually, a really good addition for adventure games (due to the fact that they often times feature absolutely inexplicable solutions to their puzzles) TUM does not utilize it well enough and the rest of the game is a burning heap of trash. 0/3
Presentation
This game looks passable. The visuals are very mediocre - pixel art, but very reminiscent of super retro stuff, roughly the same visual fidelity as Fallout 1 - so that would be 16 bit graphics being emulated.
As previously mentioned, the screen has a game world part, which looks passable, sometimes almost decent - 2D from the side, everything is either in profile or three-quarters - and then there’s the second section, the text section, more on that later. The artwork on display in the game world is very questionable. Sometimes, there are backgrounds, other times there are none. Sometimes, there are things in the foreground, which look exactly like items that can be picked up, but are actually not items that can be picked up or interacted with at all.
Then there is the issue of enemies and the space between them and the Player Character, as well as the fact that they do damage to the PC on the very first frame of their attack animation, meaning that if the enemy is close enough to hit the PC, the PC is getting hit. There’s also the problem of things doing damage to the PC without there being an indication that they will or even can do damage to the PC.
TUM is, visually, a mess. It looks very stylized, but the colors that were chosen make it very bright and unpleasant to look at, even if the art itself is passable, even decent at times. The lack of animations, or rather the fact that the animations that are in place are so bare-bones that they barely convey anything, really hurts the game’s readability, especially when it comes to fights, as mentioned earlier.
The text section features one portrait - that of the PC, which looks impressively good - the text box and then another portrait - that of whichever Character is talking to the PC. Again, those portraits look impressively good - some are properly good, while others are decent.
One thing that presents itself as an issue that could affect Gameplay is that the game does not feature a means of checking what the PC has in its inventory. It could be that the PC has money, it could be that the PC has an item - there’s no way to remind oneself that that is the case. In fact, sometimes even picking things up does not tell the Player what it was that was picked up, and then to use said item the Player needs to know what it is, which is beyond ludicrous - the information was not conveyed to the Player in the first place, not even implicitly, so it’s stupid to expect the Player to have it at their disposal!
The main culprit here, though, is the text. Disregarding the painfully slow movement of the text, and the fact that the Player can not use the scroll wheel to go up and read the entirety of what was written, there’s something very wrong here. Now, sure, the folks who made this game were Russians, probably in their late teens, judging by the level of the writing and the humor (more on that in the Story section), but they could have at least checked their English translations.
Many words are wrongly written. Not just that, many sentences are grammatically wrong, too! On top of all of this, the game is incredibly crass - swearing everywhere, everything incredibly sexual in tone, everything trying its damndest to degrade the Player by proxy of their Character.
In regards to the game’s audio, there is music - and some of it is pretty decent. There are ambient tracks, too, and they are largely passable. The sound effects, however, are an entirely other can of worms - they’re very out of place and are not that good. A pistol going off sounds like the laser in Space Invaders being fired!
There is also voice acting, but only when it comes to game over screens, and it is only in russian, which is odd. Not only that, but the game over screen does not go away until the Player presses a button, and the audio track of the Russian man reading the text keeps looping.
Lastly, there are many options which do not do anything. There are so, so many options that are just there for the sake of being there and giving the game the appearance of something complex and worthwhile, when, in reality, there are no such options. It’s, at the very least, misleading the Player, and that’s not a good thing to do.
When it comes to the game’s presentation, there are some really neat things about it (some of the portraits) but everything else is incredibly middling. 1/3
Story
TUM is some kind of joke. It’s a heavily inspired by Fallout joke, but it is still some kind of odd, nasty joke. It does have a story - seeing as it is an adventure game - but that story is so bothersome in every single aspect of its being that it is hard to earnestly refer to it as a story.
Right off the bat, this game has an issue with its tone. It starts off attempting to set up some kind of world, and it tries to establish that the world is cruel and horrible, only to then bombard the Player with Characters who are not just cruel, they are obtusely selfish and horrible to others. They demean the Player’s Character at every possible turn, which is thoroughly unreasonable after even one thing has been done by the Player’s Character (say, going to some location and beating up 30 hooligans).
That’s not all the wrongness with the story, and we are not counting the lackluster grammar and improper sentences! The game clearly draws inspiration from Fallout - the Player Character has access to a device on their arm that has a screen and shows information, the Player Character has lived underground for all his life and must venture out (by choice of his dwelling’s Overseer) to find salvation for the dwelling, which is running low on essential resources (food).
Then there’s also the fact that the Player Character’s father shows up at one point, playing an incredibly key part in the plot, whilst also being a scientist who was forced to leave his kid in the underground dwelling by the circumstances, but is reunited with him in the hour of need - which is, essentially, Fallout 3’s plotline. That’s not even all! In a throwaway gag line, this game makes fun of the entirety of Fallout 4’s story.
But what of its own? Does this game have any real story to it? Well, not really. The Player Character starts out and ends the same way he was. There is no character development for him, and there is no character development for any other Character, with the odd exception of the Player’s companion, who goes through such a rapid and instantaneous bout of development that it becomes totally unbelievable when compared to what has previously been said and done by that Character - and the development is a revelation of sorts, not actual growth as a human being.
It features a bare-bones, baseline plot that likes to poke fun at itself and everything else, supposedly drenched in Irony and perhaps attempting to critique the difficulty of old, retro games while also making fun of newer offerings for their simplicity (ala the tutorial).
In short - the underground, where the PC lives, is running out of food. The Overseer tests the PC and sends them out to find corn dogs. The PC goes to a bar (the only spot where they could get information) and gets told by the bartender that corn dogs are a joke. At the bar, the PC manages to get help from 1 of three ladies (one of whom is a trap) and sets off to help the bartender with securing their booze caravans.
After beating up two dozen thugs, the PC is arrested and spends some time in jail, but impresses the guard with his intelligence and is let go early. Returning to the bar, the PC gets drunk for the first time and then gets told that in New New York they might know. The PC goes to New New York and finds a van with potential clues, after being forced to sell off their female companion’s body for information, but that van sinks into acidic goo and becomes inaccessible.
Returning to the bar, the PC shares this with the barkeeper and asks about a spot mentioned by the extortionate sexual predator at New New York. Apparently, there’s a science station at Petersburg - so the PC goes there, finds a car with chicken legs, drives it to Vladivostok (where a bridge is being built between Russia and the USA) and finds his dad.
They finish building the bridge (out of nano materials) and, reaching San Francisco, the PC and his companion are attacked by a chopper, which destroys a corn-dog stand and knocks out the companion. After destroying the chopper with his bare hands, the PC finds corn dogs. Huzzah!
The story is bare bones and wack. Countless Characters (all of them actually) do things that make no sense, and even more so all of them speak completely unlike real people. There is no possibility of suspending one’s disbelief.
Lastly, the story really likes being horrible to women, portraying them in the most unnerving manner possible. Male characters talk about them as though they were objects, talk about them as being inferior options than men, some even try to get the PC to sell his companion (referring to her as “it” and equating her to 10 pairs of pants), others explicitly sexually assault them (with permission from the PC, not the female companion herself. Not only that, but the way the female companion is portrayed is also very unflattering and unpleasant, due to the fact it feeds into unhealthy stereotypes.
Overall, the story makes no sense. There are some funky things - the chicken leg car, as an example - but everything else is absolutely ludicrous. The taste left in the Player’s mouth after the whole thing is dreadful. 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Again, I will reiterate that I liked the hint system - it was actually supreme in concept - but everything else about this game is so dreadful that I can’t even consider giving it the point. Thus, NO, The Underground Man does not get the Legendary Point. 0/1
Conclusion
2/10. A horrible game. A pile of burning garbage - do not play this, at all cost! I’d even advise against bothering to find anything on YouTube resembling a play-through to watch, because they’re either 10 hour long attempts or some russian dude playing the game in russian. The worst thing is that I have no idea how this game wound up being the way it is.
Was the developer intent on making an unpleasant, horrible game, and also failing to present a discernible message, aside from “lol people in horrible conditions suck, dude”, on purpose? Or was this all some wicked ironic joke, or was this just the result of rookies failing to do things properly, yet going at it and doing something?
Regardless, it’s a horrible thing. Do not play it.
On the wall of shame. Immediately. Hang it as though it were some foul criminal, to loom over the fiends of the future. God save us all from things like this!