In this adaptation of the the Boris Vian novel of the same name (written under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan) you play as Rock Bailey, the world's strongest Volcel. His efforts to remain celibate lead him to be kidnapped under mysterious circumstances , and he must get to the bottom of why and who is behind it.
If To Hell With the Ugly excels at something it is style. The gorgeous mid 20th century cartoon art style and jazzy music really lend themselves to the charm the game has going for itself. The game consists of adventure game detective sections moving the investigation forward, paper mario style turnbased battles with pseudo QTEs and the odd stealth section. They all work reasonably well to convey the tone and pace of the story and on normal difficulty arent particularly challenging but that suits me just fine, personally.
The only thing that bothered me slightly is at times the videogame adaptation clashes slightly with the established story (which I have not read but I can only assume is the culprit for this) and we get one of my least favourite gameplay tropes : "Win the battle in gameplay but lose anyways because the plot demands it". I guess its to be expected and there are also some sections where it just feels like the 90s thing where movies were adapted into point and click adventure games by just gracelessly inserting inventory puzzles into roadblocks for the player to continue the story. Admittedly they are easy here but arent usually complete busywork, so they strike some sort of balance for the most part.
Rock Bailey is an interesting protagonist, he's not particularly likeable but he's interesting to play as for the most part. The story's pretty fast paced in general and events move so fast it can be sometimes hard to take stock, but admittedly from what I have gathered this is pretty faithful to how the book is written. The humour and absurdity give way to certain... surprising elements I wasnt expecting and the ending in particular I imagine won't be to everyone's liking but feels appropriate. What thematic throughlines I could gauge on a first playthrough are mainly about the vapidness of at the time contemporary american culture, the worship of superficial beauty and superficial friendships.
It occurs to me something Ive been thinking for a while, why is it that videogame adaptations of novels seem to (usually) exceed in quality that of film adaptations? Surely one audiovisual medium should translate to the other easier than literature which is not. Now obviously there are great movie adaptations that people love like goldeneye, escape from butcher bay etc, and Im not blind to the fact that most movie adaptations were rushed tie-ins given the same importance by the studio as the colouring book and matching tea-towels, thus a tendency for them to be bad, whereas a book adaptation is more likely to come from a genuine desire on the part of the designer to adapt a beloved work. But even with all this I can think of more examples of good games based on books or short stories than films. Metro, Witcher, I have No Mouth, the dead money DLC, Disco Elysium kind of, Parasite Eve, Pentiment and Edith Finch arent strict adaptations but take a lot of influence etc. I don't know, maybe I am just cherry picking but I think there's something to this theory. Perhaps precisely because Film and Games are more similar there is less room to change and add or maybe its the structure of Book and Game being more active in involvement of the audience than the more passive nature of film? Idk if anyone has any thoughts on this or wants to call me an idiot youre welcome to respond in the comments section. For Further Reading, the game's lead designer shared an article on the subject of adapting the novel into a game which I found enlightening
As for To Hell With The Ugly it was a lovely surprise, a short game at 3 hours long which didnt outstay its welcome although ends rather... abruptly? Intentionally of course but I can see it being off putting to many.
If To Hell With the Ugly excels at something it is style. The gorgeous mid 20th century cartoon art style and jazzy music really lend themselves to the charm the game has going for itself. The game consists of adventure game detective sections moving the investigation forward, paper mario style turnbased battles with pseudo QTEs and the odd stealth section. They all work reasonably well to convey the tone and pace of the story and on normal difficulty arent particularly challenging but that suits me just fine, personally.
The only thing that bothered me slightly is at times the videogame adaptation clashes slightly with the established story (which I have not read but I can only assume is the culprit for this) and we get one of my least favourite gameplay tropes : "Win the battle in gameplay but lose anyways because the plot demands it". I guess its to be expected and there are also some sections where it just feels like the 90s thing where movies were adapted into point and click adventure games by just gracelessly inserting inventory puzzles into roadblocks for the player to continue the story. Admittedly they are easy here but arent usually complete busywork, so they strike some sort of balance for the most part.
Rock Bailey is an interesting protagonist, he's not particularly likeable but he's interesting to play as for the most part. The story's pretty fast paced in general and events move so fast it can be sometimes hard to take stock, but admittedly from what I have gathered this is pretty faithful to how the book is written. The humour and absurdity give way to certain... surprising elements I wasnt expecting and the ending in particular I imagine won't be to everyone's liking but feels appropriate. What thematic throughlines I could gauge on a first playthrough are mainly about the vapidness of at the time contemporary american culture, the worship of superficial beauty and superficial friendships.
It occurs to me something Ive been thinking for a while, why is it that videogame adaptations of novels seem to (usually) exceed in quality that of film adaptations? Surely one audiovisual medium should translate to the other easier than literature which is not. Now obviously there are great movie adaptations that people love like goldeneye, escape from butcher bay etc, and Im not blind to the fact that most movie adaptations were rushed tie-ins given the same importance by the studio as the colouring book and matching tea-towels, thus a tendency for them to be bad, whereas a book adaptation is more likely to come from a genuine desire on the part of the designer to adapt a beloved work. But even with all this I can think of more examples of good games based on books or short stories than films. Metro, Witcher, I have No Mouth, the dead money DLC, Disco Elysium kind of, Parasite Eve, Pentiment and Edith Finch arent strict adaptations but take a lot of influence etc. I don't know, maybe I am just cherry picking but I think there's something to this theory. Perhaps precisely because Film and Games are more similar there is less room to change and add or maybe its the structure of Book and Game being more active in involvement of the audience than the more passive nature of film? Idk if anyone has any thoughts on this or wants to call me an idiot youre welcome to respond in the comments section. For Further Reading, the game's lead designer shared an article on the subject of adapting the novel into a game which I found enlightening
As for To Hell With The Ugly it was a lovely surprise, a short game at 3 hours long which didnt outstay its welcome although ends rather... abruptly? Intentionally of course but I can see it being off putting to many.
5 Comments
@cdmcgwire Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I definitely think there is some truth to it. Maybe I could compile some examples from either side to compare. Im not sure I agree however that literature is inherently less susceptible to misunderstanding of the message, particularly because as you said books have to be constructed in part by the reader, there have been many times I have watched a film adaptation of a novel where I went "oh, I didnt think thats what was going on there" but perhaps this is because I have a bad habit of skimming at times
Yeah, that could definitely be my own bias as a programmer and writer. I tend to read everything word by word and come with the assumption that if the sentence made it through editing, then its meaning is significant, even if only a little. I've had too many times where understanding one word made the difference between hours of frustration and a smooth work day.
@cdmcgwire fair enough, I am more of the "rage for 1 hour at my code not working until i notice I didnt assign any value to a key variable and the problem is resolved in 5 seconds" style of coding
If it works at the end of the day, it works. 😂
cdmcgwire
11 months ago
. . . But, I do think there's another factor at play. Books give more material to work with and they lay out that material more plainly than a movie. Not only is there literally less, as movies are a mere 110-130 min average runtime, but a lot of the themes and detail are communicated "implicitly" through visuals. I would argue that's actually fairly explicit communication, as (good) directors speak through those visuals with intent. However, for most people interpreting those visuals, they may as be hearing a different dialect, if not another language entirely.
That is to say, I think there's a lot more room to misunderstand what the original work is (and isn't) saying with movies, whereas books have a more legalistic effect on conveying what is important to the story.
Somewhat ironically, there's also a kind of inverted effect where it seems people fall back on the concrete visuals and action of a movie too quickly when trying to adapt it, whereas the book leaves only the concepts concrete and everything else abstract, so it's easier for the mind to reimagine what a concrete implementation would be.
Anyway, hope there was some interesting insight in that word soup of mine. Thanks for the interesting topic to think about. 🙏