By John Walker on February 26th, 2010 at 9:04 am.
Jim made us aware of M.U.D. TV just a couple of weeks back, using his Make Awareness Laser. And already there’s a demo for you to find out more. It’s super-dense management stuff, asking you to operate a television station with the sole intent of taking over the world. Not with your advertising. To literally take over the world as an act of mad revenge. Any suggestions that this game is based on the life story of Rupert Murdoch would be libellous, and strictly untrue. The demo offers the first two missions, as well as the comprehensive tutorial. It’s a dauntingly detailed game, made slightly more complicated by the need to physically walk your character into locations to be able to access various options. A bit like real life then.
26/02/2010 at 09:09 CMaster says:
Of course. Rupert Murdoch doesn’t restrict himself to mere TV.
26/02/2010 at 09:11 Finn says:
Haven’t played yet but by your description and even the name it reminded me of 1991′s MAD TV.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/mad-tv
26/02/2010 at 09:13 Chris Evans says:
Saw the preview in the latest PCG, was impressed by what I saw and read. Downloading now!
26/02/2010 at 09:17 terry says:
I will try this out, but I fear “zany” humour.
26/02/2010 at 09:48 Gareth says:
I keep trying to download this and getting corrupt downloads from FileFront, several times over. I see they’ve not improved. Germany mirrors seem to hate me too, so not sure if I’ll even be able to try this out, heh.
26/02/2010 at 09:49 Javier-de-Ass says:
it’s by the devs that made ceville btw
26/02/2010 at 10:19 c-Row says:
This is true to the original which had you walking from office to office as well.
26/02/2010 at 10:44 Sarlix says:
That screen shot makes me think of little big adventure crossed with bonanza bros..
26/02/2010 at 12:41 terry says:
For those wondering apparently the demo has been pulled for not having an ESRB rating, apparently a new one will be available soon. Presumably when everyone’s forgotten about it.
26/02/2010 at 16:51 Gareth says:
Had a fair bit of fun with this demo, until I lost due to using a “forbidden format”. Uhhh, a what now? Didn’t read anything about that during the tutorials… killed my advertising money, put me in the red and a straight game over. Will give it a while and try again, heh.
26/02/2010 at 18:00 Ginger Yellow says:
Gareth, if you look at the bottom of the screen that pops up at the end of each day, you’ll see a forbidden format and a favoured format (not exactly what it’s called, but something like that) for the next day. If you air the former, you get the results you saw. If you air the latter, you get more revenue.
26/02/2010 at 17:47 Flaringo says:
i can’t get a decent download speed for this :-\
26/02/2010 at 18:07 Gareth says:
Thanks for that, knew I had to have missed something. Managed to get stung with a forbidden format on my first day, so I’ll have to look around for some way of checking that other than the end of day summary.
26/02/2010 at 20:35 Bonedwarf says:
Looks like a cross between Starcraft and a fish.
26/02/2010 at 21:27 Gareth says:
Scalecraft? Starfish?
26/02/2010 at 23:00 Ginger Yellow says:
It’s quite fun, but…
a) There’s a lot of useful information/functionality missing from the interface. No way to track the performance of a series over time, for instance. It would help if it was clearer why a show is performing the way it is – how much is down to audience appeal, how much is quality, and how much is competition etc. And as far as I can tell, there’s no way to delete stuff from your archive, which means you can end up stuck with terrible/inappropriate shows and no way to get good shows except to air the crappy ones and fail your advertising contracts.
b) Quite a few small bugs (and I just ran into a crash to desktop). Most obviously, the TV in the corner often fails to update to show the current programme. If you change channel and go back, it fixes itself. Similarly there doesn’t seem to be any consistency as to when a completed/failed ad campaign will disappear from your scheduler.
c) Finally, the tutorial, like so many, teaches you how to do stuff but not why. It’s only after two runs through the first campaign mission that I’ve worked out a basic strategy for scheduling/advertising, and that’s only part of the game.
26/02/2010 at 23:54 geldonyetich says:
Having played the demo now, it seems the core gameplay comprises of assisting a very evil man in bringing ignorance to the world by monotonously filling a never-ending procession of advertising contracts. I failed the first mission because I was unable to determine why it the audiences universally descended into hatred for airing shows that targeted other audiences.
How should I put this… few games are quite as effective… at diminishing one’s will to live.
27/02/2010 at 00:56 TenjouUtena says:
Seriously, why did it take like 6 clicks and 2 sites to download a demo? Don’t we think this is a bit silly?
27/02/2010 at 01:22 Gareth says:
Fileplanet has it up for download. If you don’t mind the fact that it’s IGN, download is here and a lot more stable than the rest.
27/02/2010 at 20:35 Chris says:
*peers at screens* Huh–it’s Evil Genius starring Jimmy Neutron, it looks like. I’d rather stick with Evil Genius, myself.