A Fork in the Tale

Derp.

Snap31_1The indeterminate storyline of AnyRiver’s A Fork in the Tale casts you as an ordinary Joe who is spirited away to the fantasy land of Something-Somewhere (Eseveron) after a mysterious shooting incident — a magical bracelet allows you to explore and interact with this parallel world while your mortal body lies on an operating table back on Earth. If this sounds confusing, it’s because it is — with virtually no introduction and the plot slowly spoon-fed over the course of five discs, you’ll spend much of the game in the dark as to what’s going on.

A Fork in the Tale is entirely full-motion video, played in first-person perspective with your voice provided by the Derp himself, Rob Schneider. Schneider’s input is (curiously) the best thing about this game — his wisecracks are sometimes funny, although they do tend to get repetitive when his comments start looping. Still, he’s far more of an asset to the show (game?) than a drawback.

The gameplay mainly consists of clicking on the right hot-spot at the right time, as highlighted by symbols. As you come to a point in the constantly-moving video requiring a decision (Which way to run? Should you block or punch? Up the stairs or through the door?) you’re given a second or so to click on the right highlighted hotspot. Since this is mostly an exercise of trial and error, solving the combat is a matter of memorizing which symbol to click at what time.

AnyRiver’s A Fork in the Tale deserves some credit for attempting to do something different with the much-maligned medium, but you’ll also find the common pitfalls – cheap production, repetitive gameplay (what little there is) and little value to really keep you around from begging to end.

System Requirements: Pentium 75 MHz, 8 MB RAM, 35 MB HDD, Win95

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