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The Adventures of Darwin
PlayStation 2
The Game the Evangelicals Warned You About
4.5/5 stars
“The Adventures of Darwin” (“AoD”) is one of the few games in the ‘Simple XXXX Series’ franchise to see release in North America. While the Japanese developer of this franchise, Vingt-et-un Systems (which means ‘21’ or ‘Blackjack’ in French) has been around since 1999, only three of their games, with “AoD” being the last, were ever released in North America and only eleven were released in Europe, leaving them a largely Japan-locked developer of budget games with generic titles. It would seem, then, that Vingt-et-un is the quintessential shovelware developer, especially with their outside-Japan publishing handled by trash magnate, D3. In fact, I had never heard of Vingt-et-un OR “AoD” before running into this game while working on the MeltedJoystick database. With the game costing next to nothing on Amazon Marketplace and the back-of-the-box providing a strong resemblance to the ‘Pikmin’ franchise, only with cavemen and evolution as underlying themes, I figured that, as a fan of both ‘Pikmin’ and older evolution-themed games like “EVO: The Search for Eden” and “Seventh Cross: Evolution,” I could afford to take the chance and try out an unknown game by an unknown developer.
Presentation
For a no-budget PS2 game, “AoD” looks incredibly good, even when upscaled via a backward compatible PS3. Most of the game takes place in 3D polygonal environments, with a 2D sprite-based-and-menu-based home village. Both the 3D work and 2D work are sharp, clean, colorful, and stylistically consistent. The stylized, cartoony character models look just as good up close as they do with the camera zoomed all the way out, with barely a hint of jagginess or imperfect textures. The animation is also quite well done, with both Darwin’s cavemen and the various prehistoric beasts of the world moving like one would expect.
The soundtrack in “AoD” is also quite pleasant, with no voiceacting to mess things up. Most of the music in the game consists of tribal beats, with a different tune for each of the game’s stages. I was really impressed with the depth of the audio this game produces, as one of the stages features an incredibly deep didgeridoo baseline that caused me to temporarily mute the TV to see if there was actually heavy equipment outside my window.
The only real problem with “AoD’s” presentation is the translation. While the game makes a point of improving the translation as the game progresses, representing Darwin’s tribe’s increased linguistic capabilities, it never really feels like a native English speaker edited it. Even worse, instead of the traditional ‘OK’ and ‘Cancel’ buttons when making choices, the player is always presented with ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ buttons. While this would be a perfectly acceptable alternative in any situation where there are two choices, the game also uses ‘Yes’ instead of ‘OK’ in simple confirmations, like when loading a save file. Thus instead of saying, ‘OK, my save is loaded,’ the game comes across as saying, ‘YES! My game is loaded!’ It’s a minor nit to pick, but it really is the only thing wrong with this game’s presentation.
Story
Normally, I try to avoid all spoilers when discussing a game’s story, but “AoD” just won’t allow me to do so. Reader beware!
The game begins with a monkey named Darwin having a dream about a meteor causing the end of the world. Convinced this is a prophetic dream, Darwin convinces the rest of his monkey gang that they need to ‘evolve’ by gaining ‘wisdom’ (read: ‘stuff’) in order to save themselves from the ‘apocalypse.’ The other monkeys immediately agree and make Darwin their leader. With his small group of warriors, Darwin sets out into an unknown world.
As he discovers technologies, which have been conveniently left behind by… someone… in skull-shaped treasure chests, Darwin and his monkeys evolve into ape-men, various forms of proto-human, and eventually homo sapiens, all while improving the lifestyle of their home village.
SPOILER ALERT
It turns out that the ‘wisdom’ was left behind by previous cycles of humanity which were destroyed by God. The final stage of "AoD" takes place in a ruined modern city where Darwin and his cavemen encounter God (called ‘Zeus’ in the game, but we all know the Christian concept of God is just a syncretism of the Jewish Yahweh and Roman Jupiter… e.g., Zeus) in a massive temple. God laments His continual screw-ups in creating intelligent life and tells Darwin He plans to destroy the world again before moving onto a different planet and trying His luck there. A confrontation ensues and the cavemen ultimately defeat God. As a final ‘offering’ to Darwin’s evolved humanity, God leaves behind a gift, which provides one of the game’s two endings. The ‘bad’ ending involves God giving humanity firearms, which results in humanity wiping itself out. The ‘good’ ending involves God giving humanity the concept of monarchy, which seems to be much more along the lines of Plato’s philosopher kings than traditional European monarchs.
While the story in “AoD” is pretty nonexistent between the introduction and dramatic conclusion, it allows the game to stay streamlined, clocking in at around 10 hours to get the ‘good’ ending. I have always been a fan of Japanese-developed games/movies/animes that look at Christian mythology, as they don’t treat Christianity with kid gloves like Western developers feel compelled to do. Of course, Japan doesn’t have the Catholic Church or the Religious Right breathing down their necks! Essentially, everything in the story of “AoD” falls right in line with the godless heathen image of videogames that Evangelicals love to promote: The game pushes evolution, the main character is named after Charles Darwin, the player must actively fight against and defeat God, God is portrayed as a bastard and a screw-up, guns are portrayed as the ultimate evil, and the cyclical concepts of rebirth and reincarnation from Eastern philosophies are included to add insult to injury. I can see Evangelical Christians, Fox News pundits, and the NRA having aneurisms over a game like this… and it’s GLORIOUS!
Gameplay
“AoD” is essentially a ‘Pikmin’ clone, specifically copying “Pikmin 2” with its lack of a time limit. In “AoD,” the player starts off with a small group of monkeys and must gather resources to improve the ‘Primitive Village’ where they live. The three main resources are wood, stone, and metal, which must be gathered in sufficient quantities to raise the village’s levels in these three technologies. Other resources, like food and ‘shiny stuff’ exist as well. Bringing back resources of any kind contributes to the village’s overall level, while collecting large numbers of ‘new’ objects unlocks additional developments for the village.
As Darwin and his warriors explore the game’s various environments, they will also run across a large number of yellow stars and red stars. Yellow stars permanently increase the number of warriors Darwin can take with him into the field (to a maximum of 30), while red stars immediately add a warrior to the group if any are missing. Throughout the course of the game, it’s possible for Darwin to learn several different formations for his warriors, as well as to equip a variety of weapons.
The controls are mostly simple and work well, with the left stick controlling Darwin, the X button signaling the warriors to interact with the object Darwin is looking at, O signaling the warriors to stop what they’re doing and form up behind Darwin, Square using an equipped item in the expendable item slot (healing and stat cures), Triangle opening the game’s menu, and Start displaying the current area map (which must be explored to be visible). The main difference between “AoD” and the ‘Pikmin’ games it copies is the use of the right stick. In ‘Pikmin,’ the right stick is for sweeping the mob of pikmin around and manually directing them. In “AoD,” the right stick controls the game camera. And while I found the camera controls in “AoD” to be some of the best I’ve ever encountered in a game like this, allowing complete transition from third-person to top-down, I found that I really missed the ability to direct my mob of warriors with any kind of precision.
Aside from the lack of fine control over the mob of warriors, the only real flaw in “AoD’s” gameplay is the way quick-change menus are implemented. Pressing L2/R2 allows the player to quickly cycle between warrior formations, while pressing left/right on the d-buttons allows the player to quickly cycle between equipped weapons… except the game cycles the opposite way it looks like it should. I never got used to this reversed menu cycling, and since the game is quite short, I don’t think most people will have a long enough exposure to the menus to get used to them.
Overall
“The Adventures of Darwin” is one of the greatest pieces of shovelware I have ever played. By some fluke, Vingt-et-un managed to produce a game that is both fun to play and fun to wave under the noses of small-minded arch-conservatives. Anyone who loved “EVO: The Search for Eden” or “Seventh Cross: Evolution” will find a thematically similar game here, just with a different genre. Likewise, ‘Pikmin’ fans or anyone who loved “Little King’s Story” on the Wii should definitely try to track down a copy of this little gem.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 4.5/5
Gameplay: 4.5/5
Overall (not an average): 4.5/5
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