Meat Puppet I Retro Review
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- Опубліковано 24 лип 2024
- A short retrospective review of Kronos Digital's 1997 isometric shooter. Many thanks to Hanferd's channel and The Collection Chamber for their help in getting the game running on modern systems. Next video will be Roger Zelazny's Chronomaster. Timestamps below:
00:00 Opening
01:20 Overview
04:34 Gameplay
11:21 Visuals and Sound
17:35 Story and Writing
21:57 Outro - Ігри
![Lp. Последняя Реальность #107 РОДНОЙ ДОМ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IK3QKzKUlHM/mqdefault.jpg)
Hello everyone, great news - Meat Puppet just went up on GoG.com! You can find it here www.gog.com/game/meat_puppet? though be aware I haven't played this version so I can't speak as to which version it's using and such. As always with GoG games, be sure to check reviews and the forums just in case.
Very clarifying, thank you!
I love the basic concept of 'what if Pris went on a successful revenge-rampage against Tyrell'.
There was already some ideas for the sequel sketched out by the leads, unfortunately I lost contact with the ex-Kronos guy I was talking to about that :(
Awesome. Huge respect for anyone making in depth reviews about completely forgotten games.
Good news: Meat Puppet is available on GOG now.
Thanks for letting me know!
Toonstruck was actually amazing.
This channel is criminally undersubbed. Plz do a video about NoX, that would be dope! Cheers.
The hack and slash? I could never progress more than 30m into the game because it kept crashing when I got on an elevator.
@@MrEdders123 Yes! from Westwood. It's brilliant and sadly forgotten. Really worth playing. If you can get your hands on it I would love to hear your opinion. Cheers.
That's the most Aeon Flux videogame I have ever seen. Looks like something I would have enjoyed back in the day. Great video!
Well, there is an actual Aeon Flux game (based on the movie though, so not as quixotic)
@@MrEdders123 Ah, I had forgotten about that movie. Hard to match the amazing aesthetic of the original series.
Epic content, loving the review of older obscure games. Had to pick this on up on GOG (on sale right now)
Keep em coming , cheers! 🍻
Fantastic video! I'm so glad someone finally took a look at this as a huge fan of Kronos' work.
I just subscribed. Love your content so far. Hope you keep it up!
Great video! Just wanted to post that yesterday (Feb. 1, 2023) Meat Puppet went live on Steam. Although I'm guessing with this type of game, the GOG version probably plays better.
That recently? I thought it went up a few months ago.
You sir, deserve alot of credit to make this totally forgotten game thru time in the mids of "PC master race" period of late 90's. The truth was, why did I "dig out" this game in the beginning? I think it all started reading this in a magazine (PC Zone from England, UK, now Defunct) not to mention the character kind of appealed to me as I thought she looked "sexy", back when there was alot of "Strong Female protagonist" due to Lara Croft starting that craze (or Chun Li).
Anyways at least you finished this game not to mention finding info of this game too!
I covered it for the er..."strong female character" design too ;)
@@MrEdders123 Haha, I see you are a man of culture too! But seriously, this might be a garbage game, but it does deserve to be remembered in a way for few people who remember this game vaguely. Also I am surprised some of the Dev went on to make a few more famous game like Fear Effect... this explain why Fear Effect 1 has a shitty control
@@hanchiman I actually deleted a whole section where I said this seemed to be a common theme with Kronos - awesome art, bad controls :p
GrimBeard should absolutely play this.
GOTH GAMER NATION RISE UP
Got to love 90s cyberpunk art style. So much darker and gothic looking than what we get today which I can only describe as gutter punk clown trash...
Yeah I really liked that aspect. I think it worked really well with 2d art as well.
I did not know this game! I think it looks great. From the era of weird and out there visuals aka > the 90s! I miss this era when you felt that every game had it's own mood but was also made by someone that had no idea what he was doing.... I really miss that originality.
Yeah, the death of the "C-list" or "Double-A" publishers is one of the biggest problems with the modern market. Even a shooter like Meat Puppet is just prohibitively expensive to make with a team of the same size.
Shame the controls are frustrating, the game looks very fun and stylish, as you said yourself. Thanks for covering this, I had no idea it existed.
Great review
Well, it just got released on GOG so yay and stuff or whatever. 👍
Sucks that the controls were janky but I still might give it a go. Thanks for the video.
Thanks! I'll pin a notice on the video so everyone knows
Great video !
Good stuff. Never head of this, but after this video, I checked OST. Its pretty neat.
Check out Henifin's other scores, like Blood Omen - ua-cam.com/video/wNuZozunrA4/v-deo.html
@@MrEdders123 Damn, Henifin was the composer? Blood Omen OST is one of the most atmospheric ever. He made OST for the Eternal Darkness, one of the best horror video game soundtracks ever
EDIT: sorry, you already did mention that. Tells alot of my attention span
@@gronndar Very few places actually list it in his bio, and the game's manual doesn't actually list the composer or any sound/music staff at all. He's listed in the in-game credits as the composer and music designer though, so it must be him (unless there's another Steve Henifin with no other credits to his name...)
Cool review. I'm pretty sure I have a demo CD with that feature trailer on it. I only ever played a demo of the game, and I never connected the dots between it and Fear Effect. Kronos digital entertainment was a fascinating company. All the games it made feel like they exist is the same universe, including its fighting games. Subbed.
Thank you :) I played Fear Effect but none of the other Kronos titles.
@@MrEdders123 I believe Kronos made Criticom for the PS1 and Dark Rift for the N64. Both are fighting games with visual similarities, but I don't think they are meant to be canonically related.
I remember Meat Puppet from (I think) MDK. There was a preview trailer or something either on the disc or in the box as an advertisement, I can't recall.
What I DO recall is my dad seeing the ad and going "Meat Puppet?! That means your weiner!" Will never forget that.
Yeah some of the ads for this were very funny.
Nice job. I think this games quite impressive for the time and a 10 year old me would have been obsessed with it. I dont think i have the patience to get through it today but im adding it to the buy eventually on ebay list. Id love to own that box art. The aesthetic is so good to me.
Yeah I'd love to have a proper wallpaper like GoG usually offers on their games. Unfortunately I couldn't find any old wallpapers on the dead PiE or Kronos sites, but there must be a 1280 x 1024 wallpaper or two from a press kit out there somewhere!
And yeah the aesthetic is exactly why I covered it. I think I saw an ad for it when leafing through an old CGW when making the Icewind Dale review. For some reason it reminded me of Skeleton Krew on the CD-32.
@@MrEdders123 I know someone who is really good at making wallpapers and im gonna ask him to do something for me. If it comes out good il drop you a message to send it to you.
@@jonathansoko1085 Cool! I just AI upscaled the jewel case cover and zoomed in for the thumbnail image, though there are things like high-res scans of Lotos' 3d model on a white background in magazine previews that I probably could've cobbled together to make a fan wallpaper, or something.
thanks for sharing this vid :)
Today I learned about this game from the German "banned list", this month the game got de-banned in Germany so I wanted to know what the game was about and here I am. This is a great video, thank you!
Oh that's a funny coincidence. Most likely related to it getting re-released on GoG!
Great review, your voice reminds me of Evrart Claire from Disco Elysium for some reason :D
I watched a clip. His voice sounds too young and reedy for that character model. ;P
this game is so unique aesthetically
Right! Sort of Cyberpunk-Goth mixed with body horror. I guess Shiny's "Terminus" (eventually cancelled and became the game "Messiah") was a little bit similar. Sadly I wasn't able to hunt down any high-resolution renders of the art used in promos and magazine articles. It's likely there's a press kit floating around somewhere with a bunch of that stuff on it.
@@MrEdders123 I'll have a look for it, thank you for all the content!
Definitely remember reading about this game, and seeing its ads. Wanted it so bad, but my rig at the time couldn’t handle it 😂
My rig could barely handle pcem's 133mhz Windows 95 emulation, so I guess nothing changes :D
Hey some good news! Good Old Game finally aquired this game and released it in GOG form
Hi all, I did a quick hack job splicing together all the FMV cutscenes and important in-game stuff for anyone who never managed to finish the game or whatever. You can grab it here: mega.nz/file/a5tUAA4I#uwoBstK4aXDnIci1Uqs6JAOQDOiur-7G6Lj0ItKVab4
The game's sound mixing isn't very good so I did the best I could to make it audible without blowing out your eardrums. Unfortunately some stuff, like a lot of the final boss audio, wasn't worth including due to these issues. As I noted in the review, based on the cinematic trailer on archive.org it seems like a bunch of content was cut from the final game, like area introductions, some kind of mechanical enemy, and FMV death scenes for some of the bosses.
The internet doesn't deserve you
I'd like to read the manual, has anyone uploaded that somewhere?
I played the demo for this, i was 7. Awesome game, i found the game abuse a couple years later, which made remember meat puppet, their tone is somehow similiar
There were quite a few "edgy isometric shooters" in the mid to late 90s, particularly on the PSX.
good review
Meh, it's ok
Nice
Legend has it, the word "Janky" was invented for this game.
i had no idea such weird, janky and stylish thing exists. thanks.
It has been released on GOG which is where I first heard of it. However, I don't know how well it runs as I haven't bought it. The one review didn't seem to mention any performance issues.
Thanks for the info :)
I remember this game. My dad never could get it to work, despite how much he tried.
Could you do Cybermercs? It's a lot like this and is a fusion of Alien and Diablo.
Huh I don't think I've heard of that one before, I'll add it to the ARPG list 🐻❄
Reminds me to Gorky 17.
EDIT: GoG offers this nowdays.
I keep hoping Gog will get hold of this
Yeah, it's not a hidden gem but it's not funtionally broken or anything like that. Lack of an MS-DOS version means more work to get it working, I guess.
@@MrEdders123 I found the soundtrack uploaded! Pretty nifty industrial/vocal combo (really helps me study)
@@bloodrunsclear Mind sharing where? I'm a big fan of Henifin's work.
@@razmatazz9310 Look up 'Meat Puppet Soundtrack' on UA-cam :)
Also, guess what Gog just released! O_O
Beeing from Germany, I've never heard of this game. The gameplay doesn't look that impressive since we had Tomb Raider, Quake and the Blade Runner game came out the very same year, which honestly is much better than the movie. But I immediatelly loved the soundtrack here, it stuck in my head right away and if anyone want's to pause the video and search for it, it's track 6.
Getting some "Dark City" vibes from the visuals/setting, combined with cyberpunk. Bit nightmarish tbh :) Shame that the game looks like a pain to play.
It's kind of a mishmash of cyberpunk, neo-gothic (The Crow etc.), dark sci-fi and all that. It's not THAT horrible to play, but the added annoyance of trying to get it to run will put most people off. If it ever came to GoG, with the maps and/or timer patch, it'd be worth $5, maybe. I'd call it a fairly typical 5/10 or 6/10 game from the era.
Would be cool if we managed to find any guys who was involved in making this game and ask them Q&A or any plans to release it in GOG or Steam.. but I think as you say it is an Abandonware and nobody know who this game belong to
I tried to contact Sears and Chapman on twitter. Sadly Sears abandoned his twitter years ago, whilst Chapman - who works at Sucker Punch - got into huge trouble for accidentally leaking an abandoned project on his art portfolio blog. He pretty much deleted himself from the internet last year. I messaged the devs they both work at today but didn't get a response. I doubt they'd want me spamming their linkedin/business emails with dumb questions about an old videogame lol. I did actually find one guy who worked at Kronos on youtube, but he didnt work directly on Meat Puppet and stopped answering anyway.
Would be nice to know more about how Sears/Chapman came up with everything and their sequel plans, but oh well :)
@@MrEdders123 My theory how they thought of this game might be due to the "Girl power" period of late 90's... in 1996, we had Spice Girls and Lara Croft turning up becoming Pop Icon. So they jump on the Strong Female protagonist trope? I dunno but I did notice there was alot of female protagonist in late 90's games.
Anyways sad that Sears and Chapman doesn't reply. Also you said "Sucker Punch" as in Ghost of Tsutshima fame? Haha, kinda ironic that I was watching a video about Ghost of Tsutshima about how they made the Intro iconic before you messaged me about your video.
I guess it ended well with them at the end.
Anyways who knows, maybe some other former Dev guys who might had a small part of making this game might catch your video one day out of nostalgia and tell us behind the scene. I mean crap game or not, it still deserve to have some info in it Wikipedia page someday.
@@hanchiman yeah Tomb Raider spawned a massive flood of female-led games. Obviously putting sexy girls in the game or cover art wasn't unusual before then, but suddenly there were a lot more games with female leads (or playable characters) front and center. It pissed off Toby Gard though haha.
One of those games was Deathtrap Dungeon, which I definitely want to cover this year...in fact I'm not sure some of the official art for that is even allowed on youtube without the age verification :D
Hello. This may be pretty weird to ask, but are you able to access the credits in this game from the menu? I'm asking in order to try to archive the credits onto MobyGames since this is an old game.
Hi, I don't have the game installed anymore but I should stil have all the videos. Let me try and take some screengrabs of the credits and I'll post them on abload.de soon
Hmm too many files for abload, does this MEGA link work? mega.nz/folder/q5FzHZ7B#LI3t4pw5C2hm8EupdQCXFw
@@MrEdders123 The MEGA link works fine and you gave me everything I need! Thank you so much for this, boss!
@@Teppest33 No problem, thanks for keeping MobyGames updated for people like me :D
The graphics reminds me of the cult game, Sanitarium
I love that a whole new generation is just starting to warm up to the entire premise of having no real heroes or good people in stories when games like Meat Puppet were doing it decades earlier.
There was this period of time where companies seemed to get away from the Shooter and 3D styles, because in their head they did not want to "become another Doom clone" (most of the time out of jealousy of id Software's successes, it gives that impression a lot of the time) Then, they decide to make these incredibly clunky and glitchy products, and then they still blame Doom/Quake for their failures. It's like there's no way to win.
Really, guys who _made_ games like these blamed Doom and Quake for making subpar experiences?
It's always oddly fun seeing some people with the dumbest chips on their shoulders and the most oddly inflated egoes, be they the kind of guy who only played Sierra point n' click adventures and maybe Myst, loudly proclaiming themselves as too sophisticated for such mindless and lowbrow garbage like _shooters_ (said with a tone emphasizing disdain and disgust, with Quake in particular typically being blamed for the alleged demise of his favored genre), or that rare, yet strangely so very real strain of Ultima Underworld fan with an unrestrained inferiority complex towards Doom and its ilk.
I guess some people never came to terms with their games failing to compete with those which were actually fun.
Exactly. That's the impression I get from these people. Nice poisonous tongue there, some situations require it. 🤣🤣True and entertaining to read at the same time
The more I come back to play Doom and Hexen, the more I see them as excellent dungeon crawlers in a sense. It's all in there.
Man, the setting and aesthetics are pretty neat, but it's a shame that it looks like such an unfun experience.
Think you'd give the old Syndicate and Syndicate Wars games a look some day?
I dunno, they're not exactly obscure. It's not like there's ever going to be good cyberpunk game again though, so I might do them eventually.
@@MrEdders123 Well, Baldur's Gate isn't obscure either. I also don't think we'll ever see tactical isometric shooters from big publishers anymore either, or really isometric anything.
EA sadly booted Syndicate Wars out the door before it was finished, too, which isn't maybe apparent right away, but as you go there's a bunch of problems.
In the final level there was a bug where your inventory would be flooded with invisible and undroppable dummy items, which would prevent you from picking up and disarming explosive charges, which is something you need to do right at the start of the level, otherwise the bomb destroys the entire station, killing your team and failing the mission. I'm not sure if they ever patched that officially.
There was also the third playable faction, the punk rebels, which were left half finished and dummied out, thus only existing as enemies in the remaining two campaigns.
It's a cool game in particular but which is flawed, with lots of potential left unrealized, and sadly there's virtually no modding scene or anything for it.
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine Baldur's Gate isn't something I really intended to cover, the whole Infinity Engine retrospective series just grew out of my very first video on Icewind Dale and I got carried away 😬
I am surprised there are even fan art... so I guess it not only like 10 people who remember this game
I was suprised too, I thought it was just random fanart with coincidental titles when it first popped up. I think one of the artists is Russian - seems like both "goth" and "gothic" characters are quite popular there based on the localized cover art/adverts I see on mobygames and fantasy book covers.
Opening track name?
To be honest I don't recall, only that it's somewhere in the soundtrack. I think it's the one for the mutant clinic (the wailing is meant to sound like babies or widwives I imagine).
So in later levels, there are kids roaming around? Haha only game that allow kid killing that I can think of, was Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, although the European version removed the kids
Technically they're mutants/artificial humans/cyberdolls or something...but yeah you're blowing up kids basically. No doubt they were hoping to sell it on the edge factor (which I remember being a huge draw for teens like me back in the 90's).
@@MrEdders123 Haha yeah back then PC games was a bit more "unregulated" in a way... I remember Stainless Steel studio who made Carmageddon at one point wanted to add kids but then decided not to, as they somehow kinda knew their game will cause a shit storm with the BBFC
I wouldn't call BPJS exactly a censor. Usually they approve what can be sold (openly) and what not. Censorship usually come from companies and dev.
That means you could buy and own doom in UK, but you couldn't buy in germany. only a few games weren't allow to own.
Especially back then everything what was "too realistic depiction of violence" or extreme violence got on the index, which never really had any consistency. Especially how fast tech was moving. So if a doomclone would be released in 1996 it would get a pass. Since it wasn't that "realistic" anymore and to seperate fiction from reality was easier.
Yeaaah I know. Nowadays nearly everything gets a pass except special symbolic from the pass. Like Snipers Elite favorite kill Hitler DLC. That still isn't allowed to be sold.
But that's rather a half baked and semi informative summary. possible with more errors than in Skyrim - I meant content wise. I know my english is bad.
I did a bit of research into BPJS and Meat Puppet to see what it was actually cited for, but it's kind of hard to access those old records, even with some Germans helping me out. IMO those kind of bodies are effectively censors in terms of their influence on what content is produced, similar to devs trying to avoid an "AO" rating in America or whatever.
@@MrEdders123 fair take
You say these guys went on to make Fear Effect ? It fits, Fear Effect was also a tasteless and inept mess of a game.
Kronos did, yeah, though the Meat Puppet leads had left at that point.
Mighty algorithm better pick up this stuff, cause your reviews are good and it's always nice to hear about interesting stuff about some obscure, but at the same time known games.