New playthrough: "The Monitors"

 

New game!

Did you ever watch one of those 80s comedy movies again, and immediately think they would never be able to get away with that type of humor in this day and age? Well, that's the feeling I had with The Monitors. Norwegian developer Old Man Games have released the English version of their five hour point 'n click adventure game Overvåkerne. They were so kind as to offer me a free Steam key, but it felt like a poisoned gift because I ended up playing through a game I doubt very much I would have ever played otherwise... 

Some innocent office flirting...

You play as Henriksen, an office employee sending out quite the Walter White vibe, who has endured years of bullying and being taken advantage of by his co-workers, while his wife Else keeps calling him from home to accuse him of postponing one household task or other. One day, in true Falling Down style (except for the baseball bat and Uzi), Henriksen cracks and plots revenge. When an anonymous person in the restrooms also gives him a set of ear buds with which he can eavesdrop on the three surveillance guards in the security room commenting on everything that goes on in the building, he starts his mission with a lust for blood and a clear disregard for his personal well-being and self-respect.

The handy task list...

A handy notebook always keeps you up to date of your quests. Most of the puzzles are very easy to complete and usually don't take much more than simply clicking on the available hotspots or using the found inventory items. Henriksen will shake his head whenever you try something that won't do anything, limiting the possibilities and making it very easy to figure out what you have to do. There are a couple of more interesting puzzles, though, like figuring out how to get a piano from the third floor to the first floor by using the ventilation system to influence the people present, and to raise the noise level in a room by figuring out how to upset everybody gathered there in a very basic deduction game style.

Fuse box, check. Tool chest, check. Screwed vent grid, check...

So yes, there are some things to love in this game, if the basic graphic style doesn't bother you. There are a couple of other elements about The Monitors that didn't sit well with me, however, even though the game actually warns you of them beforehand. The first isn't all too bad, if you don't have sensitive ears when it comes to the English language: when you start a new game from the main menu, Kato, the main surveillance guard, asks you if you really want to play the game in English. If you persist, he will indulge you but once more with the warning that you'll play the game in English... ish. After all, it's one of the Norwegian developers himself who does all of the voices.

My facial expression throughout most of the game...

I must admit, after a while the voices grow on you. Henriksen himself isn't voiced, but the show stealers are the three security guards. Kato has a singsong lilt befitting his insecure personality. Maybritt sounds like a chainsmoking old lady. Rune's voice is higher-pitched referencing their doubts about their gender identity. There are many extra characters, some of which are voiced, others only mumble a bit. I have to be honest: after the first five minutes of gaming, I went back searching for a way to choose the original Norwegian voices with English subtitling, but I wasn't able to find that option. Neither was there an option to turn off the voices completely. Since I still wanted to play the game with music and sound effects, I endured those heavily accented voices and like I said, after a while it stopped bothering me.

One of the more innocent gags...

The other element that bothered me more, however, has to do with the type of humor but mostly with the adult themes. While much of the humor is of the poop, pee and barf variety, there's a lot of adult tinted "humor" as well; if you can really call it that. There are many gratuitous and explicit visuals, some quite disturbing, and even one scene that totally made me lose my respect for the main character. Thankfully we are fully warned about this on the game's Steam page. (I can't even mention what happens in the game, because doing so actually blocks this post on the socials...) This game is indeed very much intended for an adult audience, so please, keep your children away from this! I won't go too much into detail (and believe me, I could, because there are plenty of disturbing visuals here!) but it's bad, even in this rough, cartoon pixel art style... There are many depictions of certain female body parts, a weird hallucination of a human/animal hybrid, a strange hole in the wall of a toilet booth, sounds of a certain exclusive "group activity" you'd rather not be a part of...  All stuff you normally only encounter if you accidentally google the wrong words... Seriously, why did I actually play this game?

Handy-Harold! Love him!

Thankfully all that explicit material was balanced by in my opinion the funniest character in The Monitors, one that doesn't even have any lines (and perhaps it's even because of that): Handy-Harold! This guy shows up all over the place in all kinds of outfits: a handyman, a waiter, a choir boy, a nursery maid, a butler, perhaps a dozen different versions in total. This guy is great comedy material and my opinion the best part of the game. It was always amazing to see him pop up in a new environment and in a new get-up.

Don't ask...

There's lots of silliness and surreal weirdness in this game. If you like slapstick spoof movies like Hot Shots, Airplane!, The Naked Gun, or movies filled with adult content like Revenge of the Nerds and Animal House, you will definitely like this game as well. And while I could crack a smile at a lot of the jokes, I drew the line when the game kept taking the piss out of a character with a heavily exaggerated form of urinary incontinence. This spiked the meter from cheeky comedy into just plain nasty and gross territory for me. Coupled with all the adult imagery, this makes The Monitors a tough game to like, for me. While I certainly enjoyed the puzzles and some of the humor, I just don't think I was the intended audience for this game. But perhaps you are? 

You can find the The Monitors on Steam (if you still want to, that is)!