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How Ocean Software Finally Made Movie-Licence Video Games Worth Playing"May god have mercy on the souls that bought this game for more than nine cents," reads a GameFaqs user review of the infamous E.T. the Extra Terrestrial for the Atari 2600. The review dates from 2000, and I can assure you that the intervening years have been just as cruel. This article ranks it as the worst video game of all time. GamesRadar+ puts it at two, with only the irredeemably broken Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing bumping it from the "top" slot.
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PLAYTHROUGH 1 (BLIND)
Heart rate at start: 97 beats per minute (BPM)Okay, so here comes E.T. being lowered from above in a pink, elevator-like structure – what I assume is so supposed to represent his spaceship. There's a lot of green in the landing area and what looks like trees. Various arrows flash on and off on the pink UI bar above the main screen as I move E.T. and… Oh. I fall down a ditch that I don't think I had any way of identifying. Hmm, bit irritating.
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Heart rate at end: 99 BPM
PLAYTHROUGH 2 (WITH WALKTHROUGH)
Heart rate at start: 96 BPMWith assistance, I finally learn the premise of the game: E.T. has been abandoned by his spacecraft on planet Earth and is searching for three missing parts of a phone to call home. The mysterious icons at the top of the screen are prompts E.T. will act out if I do the neck extension thing—so if the prompt is an arrow, E.T. will teleport to that screen, if it's a phone he'll attempt to call home etc. I also discover that the flasher is in fact an FBI agent, and the guy in the nighty is actually a scientist in a white coat; the temple he keeps returning me to is his laboratory.Right, so, grab these phone parts then and get out. Easier said than done it seems, as the phone pieces are located exclusively in the fucking googol of invisible ditches. Stumbling down them by accident when I was blissfully unaware was bad enough, but now I need to actively make my way into each hole to locate the only thing that's going to help me beat the game? Come on!To make thing slightly easier, I can collect nine Reese's Pieces—signified by black dots on-screen—before calling Elliott from a marked location and he'll bring me one phone piece at a time to save me the hassle of searching. Nice one. But it turns out that when the FBI guy bounces off me, he's actually stealing my Reese's Pieces! Oh, and he'll take any phone parts you might already have to boot. To think, an extraterrestrial from a foreign planet arrives on Earth and the FBI's sole concern is swiping mobile phones and sugary goods from the interstellar immigrant.
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Heart rate at end: 100 BPM
"Blood pressure fluctuations throughout the day are completely normal," explains Dr. Stewart McMenemin, my general practitioner. During a routine check-up I mention my post-E.T. blood pressure results, but I decide to at first withhold mentioning video games at all.He continues: "What you have to understand is that there are good fluctuations and bad ones. Your results are within the recommended systolic and diastolic range for a healthy adult male your age, so ultimately there's nothing to worry about. That's not to say you shouldn't keep an eye on future readings—it's important to stay on top of things if you have any reservations or feel ill following or whilst engaging in certain activities."Dr. McMenemin goes on to explain that pursuits such as high-endurance sport can vastly alter blood pressure. Sexual intercourse is another activity capable of spiking readings, and even bouts of laughter can see blood pressure jump as many as ten to 15 points in a healthy person with normal heart function.
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