V.I.P.

***V.I.P.*** is the ninth episode of Just Bad Games. It was released on September 23, 2019.

## Transcript

**Shane**: *V.I.P.* is a game based on a TV show about a personal security agency from Beverly Hills, California.

**Adam**: Developed by Ubisoft, *V.I.P.* on the PlayStation 1 is what happens when you take one part rhythm game, one part shooting game, and one part beat-em-up.

**Shane**: Just blend it all together, and-

**Blender Creature**: Kill... kill me.

**Adam**: Now look, you may be thinking that this game is gonna be a straightforward homage to what that TV show was all about, which was just childish bodyguards solving crimes- stylishly? Look, the show wasn't all that good.

**Shane**: Now best case, maybe it's a lazy but passable slapped-together action game.

**Vallery**: Bad Dr. Kindle. You know blackmail is a big bozo no-no.

**Shane**: It's worse.

**Adam**: The game opens at the offices of V.I.P.- V.I.P., do we know what that acronym stands for?

*(Verile Impish Pachyderms)*

Yeah, that might be right. Anyway, the V.I.P. crew gets a phone call from Dr. Kindle. The good doctor asks for protection because a group of armed men are just kinda wandering around his lawn.

**Shane**: The girls tell him to hide and stay safe, but this dude's like-

**Dr. Kindle**: A place to hide? I'm kinda in the middle of a surgery here.

**Shane**: You what? In the middle of surgery? You're in your home, decked out in shades, and wearing a white sports jacket while you're cuttin' someone up! You might get a little dirty. The V.I.P team rushes out to Kindle, and we get our first taste of combat.

**Adam**: Uh, could we call this combat?

**Shane**: I don't know. What would you call it?

**Adam**: *Dance Dance Revolution*, if in *DDR* you were awkwardly fighting people.

**Shane**: You see, the fighting sequences in this game consist of a random selection of buttons appearing in the dead center of the screen, which you must tap in the correct order as quickly as you can before the time runs out.

**Adam**: Now, you may be thinking that this was just an easy way for the programmers to make faux beat-em-up gameplay without actually trying.

**Shane**: You'd be right!

**Adam**: But then you jump to the next character in the level, and the gameplay switches to an arcade-style shooting sequence.

**Shane**: Hold up. Does every character in this game play differently and feature a unique gameplay design?

**Adam**: Huh. That's actually kind of interesting.

**Shane**: Maybe this game features tons of stages of gameplay, so that any one style doesn't get too boring and repetitive. This would be a genius way to deal with what could otherwise be a forgettable-

**Adam**: Uh- nope, nope. The character that was just shooting is now just doing that stupid *DDR* thing. Basically quick time event button presses over and over again to make your characters punch or kick.

**Shane**: Seems like every character, regardless of their speciality, ends up with button prompt combat. There has to be more to this game, though, right?

**Adam**: As we successfully get the doc out of his mansion, the perspective changes to an enemy's sniper scope. Now, you'd think that this would change the gameplay, but-

**Shane**: Quick time events!

**Adam**: Uh, wait. In the next level, the V.I.P. offices are surrounded by evil henchmen, and you have to use your stealth skills to-

**Shane**: Quick time events.

**Adam**: Okay, after that, the team's computer expert needs to take down the enemy's communications- d-d-don't bother, let me guess: quick time events.

**Shane**: Actually, no!

**Adam**: Wait, what?

**Shane**: It's far worse than all of that quick time repetition: hacking means it's time for a puzzle sequence.

**Adam**: Okay? So, what am I supposed to be doing here?

**Shane**: Move lines to match up with the lines in the background.

**Adam**: This a puzzle?

**Shane**: Yes.

**Adam**: But- it's not puzzling. It's just adjusting the graph to look like another graph by barely pushing up and down.

*(gameplay continues)*

**Shane and Adam**: Hacking!

**Shane**: Now, if this doesn't really feel like hacking to you pros out there, they've got another hacking section later on in the game.

**Adam**: Oh, really? Do you have to mess with code or play with files on a hard drive, or-

**Shane**: Slide puzzles!

**Adam**: I solved those when I was in preschool.

**Shane and Adam**: Hacking!

**Shane**: Look, they didn't even bother to make it look like a crazy hacking sequence. This is clearly just a basic desktop with very little visual flair.

**Adam**: Attention to detail doesn't seem to be the developer's strongest suit. Let's look at some of the cutscenes.

**Shane**: The group rushes to get Kindle into hiding. That's three characters right there pulling up to the hideout, plus the doctor. That's four people.

**Adam**: In the next scene, bam! Five people. It's okay, we know. Numbers are hard.

**Shane**: Oh, but it gets even worse than that. Now folks, bear with us, because this is a spiraling rabbit hole of shoddy work. Now pay close attention.

**Adam**: The bad guys storm the hideout and kidnap Dr. Kindle and the two characters protecting him. These three, kidnapped.

**Shane**: At this time, the other characters are in a building which is clearly the Los Angeles Convention Center, hacking into the criminal organization's computer network.

**Adam**: The hacking group finishes their job and they flee the convention center- you can even see the building in the background, but you know what else you can see?

**Shane**: Dr. Kindle and the other dude that are supposed to be kidnapped and nowhere near any of this!

**Adam**: Wait, hold on. How do you accidentally render a full cutscene with the wrong character models?

**Shane**: I think they just reused the people in the back seat from this earlier cutscene.

**Adam**: Oh, to add more confusion to the mix, directly after the driving away sequence, the hacking group pulls up to the hideout where the other team was kidnapped. Who's in the car? Uh, three people. Let's take a look back at the convention center from earlier. How many people? Four people.

**Shane**: Let's see that shot of them driving away again. Okay, you see that passenger right there? She's no longer in the car here.

**Adam**: So, three people now walk into the hideout and find a note telling them about the kidnapping, and that the V.I.P. head offices are going to "soon be a memory".

**Shane**: So, they quickly drive to the head office because they think there's a bomb planted, and they need to save their friend, who by the way, was with them and should still be with them, but she's mysteriously teleported to the office for some reason.

**Adam**: Um, okay. All stupid inconsistencies aside, why not call your friend and tell her to leave the building? Instead, everyone pours into the place and starts looking for something that will, at any moment, shred everyone into pulled pork.

**Shane**: IS ANYONE SCARED? NO? GOOD! Oh, it's okay. She found the bomb.

**Nikki**: (without lip sync) It's here.

**Shane**: She found it so quickly, her lips didn't have time to shape the words coming out of her face!

**Adam**: We play a minigame to defuse the bomb.

**Shane**: And as you'd expect from completing any bomb minigame successfully, the bomb still goes off.

**Shane and Adam**: Success.

**Adam**: Don't worry, everyone's fine. It was just a tiny chunk of C4. It didn't even jostle this potted plant here. That's nice.

**Shane**: And we can just go on and on. The game fails to have a single redeeming quality in any of its cutscenes.

**Adam**: Characters have dead eyes.

**Shane**: They nonchalantly break limbs!

**Adam**: Random, nonsensical things kinda just happen- like a character's practicing martial arts on a tree and a goon just flops to the ground. Everyone's reaction?

**Shane and Adam**: KILL IT! KILL IT! KILL IT!

**Adam**: Calm down, people. Back to the gameplay, you're chasing down this goon-

**Shane**: Shh. Let's call him Tree Man.

**Adam**: -Tree Man, and you've got more quick time events to avoid umbrellas and holes in a dock. Mmm. That's good gameplay.

**Shane**: And then, we get this scene, where the Tree Man runs across several boats and- uh, did we mention that the people that made this game really weren't trying? Using pre-rendered backgrounds is a design choice made for much of the PlayStation 1 library, and believe me, we get that. But at least try to humor the audience in that maneuvering a lineup of boats isn't like walking a slight decline.

**Adam**: You think that's lazy? How 'bout this action-packed sequence where you do more button inputs to hold a door closed- which actually kills the enemy.

**Enemy**: Oh f\*\*k, a door!

**Shane**: Here's another sequence where you have three button inputs to open a closet.

**Adam**: Woo. Believe it or not, all this quick time fluff gets worse and worse. Now, up until this point, we've seen how it's an overused and lame way of accomplishing combat, but it's all pretty simple, right?

**Shane**: (laughs) Not for long! Soon, fight sequences require more and more complicated button inputs with seemingly shorter and shorter execution times.

**Adam**: Your fingers will ache, your skin will rub raw, and still, longer combinations of buttons with little to no time to complete them will be hurled at you.

**Shane**: Eventually, they actually throw sequences of six button inputs at you with literally only a couple of seconds to complete them!

**Adam**: Oh, and of course, there are no checkpoints in this game, so if you fail, guess what? You get to start all over again from the very beginning of the level.

**Shane**: As you play through the game, you're rewared with sparkling gems that give you extra health, extra power, and extra points.

**Adam**: Points are used to unlock great pictures, like this. That's a good one.

**Shane**: You also use points to unlock the cutscenes you've already seen, so that you can relive great lines like these:

**Kay**: I'm the Shaquille O'Neal of computer hackers.

**Enemy**: Run up a few more men and keep it quiet. We don't tip off the cops.

**Vallery**: Kay, it's me. We're trapped in Macabre's tower. She knows. Coolio. Now get your butts over here and save us!

**Adam**: So, you clumsily quick time your way through the rest of this piece of garbage, dealing with a boss fight here or there, barely following the plot until you get to the last level.

**Shane**: You blow up a helicopter's rotor and this happens.

*(The helicopter roter explodes, detaches, and hits explosive barrels which knock an enemy off the tower)*

I'm conflicted. That was simultaneously lame and awesome.

**Adam**: But wait! you have to fight another henchman, who walks out of the blown-up helicopter. He has super ground-pound powers. Uh, whatever. You double kick him.

**Shane**: But it's not over. The big mafia boss behind the whole thing pops out and holds what looks like- I wanna say a cross between a banana and a bingo dabber, and for some reason, he presses it against the main protagonist's head.

**Adam**: Intense. This is the final boss fight. Things are about to get crazy!

**Shane**: You press the X button five times and your character automatically takes out the boss. Seriously. We're not pressing anything, this is just happening. This is the end of the game.

**Adam**: and how do we cap off that impressive moment of gameplay?

**Macabre**: Oooh!

**Vallery**: Trick or treat that!

**Adam**: Beautiful. Pitch perfect. Here's the last cutscene, I guess.

**Tasha**: I hope I never see another facelift again.

**Nikki**: Good luck in this hood. There's more plastic here than a toy factory.

**Kay**: well, actually I hear Dr. Kindle is back in business and has reopened his practice in a brand new facility.

**Vallery**: Yeah, and he's having a special buy one get one free.

**Nikki**: Buy one what?

**Vallery**: Eyelift. Sheesh. What'd you think I meant?

*(Caption: Very Incompetent Producers)*

**Shane**: **IT'S JUST BAD.**