Where will you find a mix of cyberpunk, murder, twisted puzzles, and Christopher Walken acting strangely? Only in Ripper, the 1996 FMV adventure game from Take 2 Interactive.
*spoilers!* Okay, so near the very end of the game there is a puzzle with a bunch of tarot cards. However, you're not given any clues of what to do, it's just a bunch of cards. "Don't Fear the Reaper" by BOC starts playing out of nowhere, which you initially just brush aside. After all, it's the game's theme song and you're about to face off with the Ripper, so it seems like appropriate mood music. However, it's actually the clue. You have to interpret the cards by using the lyrics of the song.
This is the second review of the ripper and unfortunately they both missed that if you type in riper instead of ripper in msdos to launch the game you are greeted with a animation of an Apple spoiling quickly. A nice little eater egg.
This was before GTA on the PS1, which came out in 1997, and had the f-word censored! But GTA & this were (I guess?) made by the same people, Take 2 Interactive...
As stated at the beginning of the month, June is FMV month on my channel this year. It'll be back to normal reviews on random games and hardware next week!
I'm hoping to get the RAM issues sorted out before I review it. It's not recognizing all of its memory. The Apple IIGS is the next planned hardware review.
Have you heard of 'Frankenstein; through the eyes of the monster'? It's an interesting fmv game that I played as a kid, where you play as Frankenstein's monster, and Dr Frankenstein is portrayed by Tim Curry... Who I am sad to hear had a stroke a while back :c but the game has a nice dark vibe to it.
this is the game introduce me to B.O.C ! 1st time i hear Don't fear the Reaper was in there i quickly fell in love and start collecting their CDs and DVDs, BOC always reminds me of Mysteries , Duke Nukem Game and 80's horror films
I actually think the acting is pretty good, but you are right when you say that there are some bad performances. I see it more as a problem with the dialogue rather than the actors themselves. The ending is a bit poor tho regardless of who it is and the puzzles are very challenging and almost impossible without help at times.
when you said Christopher walken and don't fear the reaper I can't believe I didn't think "more cowbell" right away thank you for adding that gold clip.
5:07 That puzzle was actually bugged. It almost drove me crazy until I learned that there was a patch for it to function properly. Apparently, most of the time the game was unsolvable unless you installed the patch.
I have serious nostalgia for this game. I remember it as one of the FMVs that made my jaw drop. DPK and Walken are such fun in this (especially DPK). It's all so very 90's: a cyberpunk virtual reality-themed cheesy FMV PC CD-ROM game, and it is indeed glorious... except the ending which (the one I got first, at least), when solved, literally has a narration of "who knows why they did it?" and then hard exited to the DOS prompt. Talk about anti-climactic! I'd discovered Don't Fear the Reaper via the miniseries of The Stand, earlier I believe, but always think of this game too when I hear it. I still remember being awed by a trailer/demo for the game with the song before the game was released. I also vividly remember the super hard puzzles where they give you an in-game calculator (!) but no idea what to do or the chess game that cheated on hardest difficulty. Some serious hardcore puzzles in some of those Take 2 games (I believe it was complaints about those that made Black Dahlia the final one they did?).
This game somewhat remind me a lot to Westwood's "Blade Runner" 1997 game one of my favorite point and click adventure game. please give it a try. It would be nice to see a review of it by you.
7:00 the fact Christopher has to hold back laughing after “penal institutions” then delivers the rest of the line and strikes a goofy face with the cigar at the end is prime PC full motion hilarity 😂😂😂😂
I got this game when it came out and still have it I even have the pre-release demo. The music I thought was a perfect choice. The cold, methodical melody (that be a tongue twister) set the perfect atmosphere. I'm also a big BOC fan. Finding out the lyrics were part of the story was icing on the cake. These puzzles were damned hard as well. As far as acting, yeah it was wooden, but I could listen to Christopher Walken read the ingredients on a cereal box and be transfixed. If you weren't from the era of the FMV style games, it would seem trite and uninteresting I'm sure. But back in the day, 7th Guest, Phantasmagoria, Under A Killing Moon, Ripper and games like this were exciting, imaginative and made you feel like part of a real story.
I really wish they would remaster this game. Great memories, hard as eff puzzles (to the point of being unfair sometimes), and I loved the futuristic atmosphere.
TheMagnificentPony So... the first Bluray players were shipped out to stores in June 2006, the PS3 came out November 2006, I'd say that it worked fairly well for them, and the "medium" was less than 6 months old. Your comment is invalid. To Nonoba, you are correct in stating that mostly businesses used DvD drives in a pc, however there were commercial drives available.
Steven Everett About your comment with the PS3, that's because when it was first announced, Sony was the first one to jump on the bandwagon, thinking it was going to be popular. However, as with DVD, there were oppisite reactions, people didn't think it'd fair well with game and such, and said that CD's were going to stay. There were commercial drives, but nobody really bought them now did they?
Christopher Walken is just rad, in a circus freak sorta way, or a human lava lamp. You know about half the time when you see him it's going to be stupid, but you just can't help but watch!
***** yes and before that you had Omocron. The difference is that if you don't press any buttons on the prompts in Beyond Two Souls the game will select a prompt on it's own.
I first heard of this game when Spoony did his play through of it........ah the good ol'e days when spoony was awesome. And I actually heard of Blue Oyster Cult long before this game. They used to get played on the radio a whole lot, but it's been a while since they have, at least where I am at least.
owned this game, tried my best it was hard for me back then. Zork Nemesis and this really were tough. It was so cool though, wasnt it? These live action games with big name actors. Felt SO cutting edge at the time. I loved buying all the newest computer games back then. so many hours of fun and frustration.
man this thing is like the plague or 'the game', where every time my mind has managed to erase my playthrough... something happens and i am reminded of the trauma experienced and just sit weeping in the darkened corner, again. ah, great memories. thanks for the review, LGR?.. and the reemergant nightmares...
I remember the trailer of this game, a friend of me had it on a shareware cd and I liked the trailer a lot but also for the music (Blue Oyster Cult). The good old childhood times :)
The Video decoder SMACK is in the DOS game folder and accept parameters. It was able to watch the ENTIRE movie sequences making a REAL 1 hour FMV non stop, without actually playing the game.
I've been really wanting to play this game and I finally got the chance. There's a website called tonskiy which has the files downloaded via a Java applet that runs something called jdosbox, but you can manually run it through dosbox by taking the downloaded zip file which is around 3.8 GB and extracting all the discs and the already installed system files. I totally agree with you LGR about the puzzles being incredibly frustrating due to the lack of clues and the answer being so precise.
I know this video is 8 years old, but c'mon, love Christopher Walken. "This gUUUy... is un-f'n-believable" "The only thing not where it should be are her insides" Too bad I don't know a scenario where I can fit that into normal everyday conversation.
Loved that game back then. Such a Great idea. Never made it to the end. The puzzles were tooooo weird and difficult for me as a 11 year old back then. And no internet to help there ;) What was great though and doable was pandoras directive! With ripper still for me the best ever made games ! Too bad they don’t do stuff exactly like this anymore with some cool storyline cool characters and real actors! Amazing stuff!
Been a HUGE fan of LGR for some time and you are one of my top three inspirations for doing YT vids myself. Awesome everything basically. But anyways I was always intrigued by this game. Gonna play it for sure. Its it DOSBox friendly...? lol...... :-D Looking forward to more of everything, especially Oddware please. Righteous!
I played this back in the 90s, never finished it because of the puzzles. I remember one of them had a hint in the manual because it supposedly was too hard to figure out
