OK, seriously, I have started writing this entry half a dozen times. It is due to go up on the site in twelve hours, I have nothing at all to show for it, and it’s starting to piss me off. Even when I’m not playing it, The Ring: Terror’s Realm manages to shit in my cereal. What the hell is wrong with this game, and why does it hate me with such volcanic levels of burning passion? What did I ever do to you, game? For crying out loud, I spent money on you. Do you have any idea how much I wanted to see you succeed? Yes, I’m an idiot. I’m  a masochist. It’s not like that time I spent my childhood savings on a copy of AD&D: Heroes of the Lance. I was an adult when you came out, I read reviews saying you were terrible, and I ignored them because I wanted so badly to prove every nay-sayer out there wrong. “I will show those idiots,” I thought, “because I, as a fan of the Japanese film Ringu, will know things these stupid basement-dwelling reviewers won’t.” Also I had a girlfriend. Surely that put me in exactly the right position to critique and enjoy this game while laughing at its flaws. But like everything else awful in my life, I brought this disaster on myself. And worse, I paid for the privilege.  For all of you who suffered at the hands of The Ring: Terror’s Realm, I am profoundly sorry.  This software can be called a ‘game’ only by redefining the meaning of that word to include “torturous lack of fun”. This, then, is my chance to set things right.

The only way to win is not to play.

The Ring: Terror’s Realm is (if you couldn’t tell by its appearance in this column) licensed from the monstrously successful Japanese horror franchise. It involves a videotape containing a short montage of strange clips, filmed in a disturbingly realistic style. Legend has it those who watch the tape will die in one week from a curse. This is a nifty idea for a horror-themed game, and it’s easy to understand why someone would be eager to adapt it from the source material.

This is what we expect from a game called “The Ring”.

What is less clear, however, is why developer Asmik would go out of their way to look at the facts of the story, pay to acquire the license, then discard nearly everything about the original novel and say, “No man, we’ve got a much better idea. Computer viruses!” Because if you can read a story about tech from the 1980s causing the deaths of innocent people then make the leap to ‘computer viruses’, you need to stop bogarting that shit and share with the rest of the class.

THIS is…not.

The story revolves around Meg, whose boyfriend dies under mysterious circumstances after researching something at the Center for Disease Control. Donning her best “oh no my lover just died horribly!” perpetual grin, Meg gets a job at her late boyfriend’s CDC lab so she can dig into the research he was conducting before he bit the dust.

Look at that smirk. This girl knows WAY more than she’s telling.

From here, we shift into a clunky 3D attempt at making a point-and-click adventure game where Meg slogs from bathroom to office searching everywhere for clues, interacting with some of the worst voice-acted animatronic humanoids committed to GD-ROM, and hoping to God something will happen to break the monotony already. While in the office, you are completely safe and free to explore anywhere you like: there’s no fighting,  no running, and no inventory management. Only when you find a VR terminal does that aspect come into play. And by “play” I mean “suck.”

…watched ALL of the porn.

The Ring: Terror’s Realm does nothing competently. The controls feature a short delay between player input and on-screen reaction. The camera fights with you every step of the way in its attempt to keep you in the middle of the screen at all times, which makes it difficult to get a useful angle on anything. The game borrows liberally from better survival horror titles, but unfortunately it takes only the dumbest bits and fails even to implement those properly. From Resident Evil, we have the idea of the storage boxes for inventory management and limited saves (using a video projector, because something like a notebook, PDA, desk phone, or even a mini digital recorder you would use to actually make personal notes about your discoveries would make entirely too much sense). From Silent Hill, we get the idea of a ‘darker’ realm co-existing alongside the real world, and real-time light-sourcing from a flashlight. Unfortunately Meg’s flashlight is the worst model in the world, treating your batteries like they’re the Special of the Day at an all-you-can-eat Alkaline buffet and casting solid-block shadows out of everything upon which it shines.

“I’m just…projecting my FEELINGS so I will remember them.”

And so it goes. Character models are first-gen PS1 quality, the music is dull and repetitive, your local high school performance studies troupe would put the voice acting to shame, and your enemies are human-sized monkey/werewolf hybrids because at this point nobody in management had the balls to tell the modelers to quit screwing around and get back to making a game about a killer VHS tape. Boss fights are an absolute joke: the larger monkey/werewolves move far faster than Meg, soak up an obscene amount of bullets without slowing down, and are impossible to kill without the player maneuvering in such a way as to get the boss monster ‘stuck’ on a piece of furniture in the room.

Though it did strangely predict the creation of “Seven Days to Die”

The Ring: Terror’s Realm has no earthly excuse for being this terrible. By the time of its release, there were multiple well-established third-person horror franchises, even on the Dreamcast, it could have used to cut-and-paste its way into casual mediocrity. Instead this wretched joke of a cash grab drowns every ounce of gameplay in a barrel of liquid excrement, infant tears, and the blood of dead kittens. The only fun to be had while playing it is noticing how much fun you are not having while playing it, something that gets old after the very first “was that a fart or a blood splat?” sound from the frigging title screen.

Is nothing sacred to you, game? !

A complete failure on all fronts, The Ring: Terror’s Realm is my most enthusiastic choice for worst video game ever made. If this series convinces you of nothing else, I will have done my job.

Michael Crisman

In 1979, Michael Crisman was mauled by a radioactive Gorgar pinball machine. After the wounds healed, doctors discovered his DNA had been re-coded. No longer fully human, Michael requires regular infusions of video games in order to continue living among you. If you see him, he can see you. Make no sudden moves, but instead bribe him with old issues of computer and video game magazines or a mint-in-box copy of Dragon Warrior IV.


If he made you laugh, drop a tip in his jar at http://paypal.me/modernzorker


(If he didn't make you laugh, donate to cure his compulsion to bang keyboards by sending an absurdly huge amount of money to his tip jar instead. That'll show him!)