Morphman
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_(fair_use).jpg) “I’m an eeeeeagle!” - Morphman
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Morphman is a point-and-click, FMV game developed and published by Dynamic Dimensions Development and was released on PC in 1993. The player takes control of Morphman, a superhero with the ability to morph into anything else he wants as long as he sampled one and uses these powers to rescue Dr. Roberts from the evil, unseen scientists in their castle. The game was relatively obscure, even after it was released, as it was Dynamic Dimensions Development's only game they developed before they went defunct immediately.
Why It Can't Morph
- The full-motion 3D is absolutely horrid. It looks decent by 1993 standards, but it aged horribly nowadays. It makes Dire Straights' Money for Nothing video look like an Oscar-worthy award film by comparison. This was released the same year as Virtua Fighter, making Morphman look even more outdated.
- Morphman himself is a braindead moron that makes bad puns. The most infamous dialogue is "I'm an eagle!" when he morphs into one.
- At one point, he swears "G@#$$D!!#@$F%@#$!!!" as his attempt to be "serious", albeit bleeped out.
- He spouts out a lot of cheesy dialogue, makes the dumbest remarks imaginable, and at one point, he even tells the viewer every single thing that he does like he's talking to a two-year-old.
- At the beginning of the game, he takes forever to get to his next line (a prime example is waiting 20 seconds of silence for him to say "some place"), which feels like it's one-third of a minute to the point of being time-wasting.
- Morphman's design also looks like a knockoff of both Ronald McDonald and Greatest American Hero.
- The gameplay consists of having to push one of two buttons, one of which is the wrong one. So, it's a coin toss every time the buttons come up. In most parts of the game, they appear only for a few frames before getting a game over. By the way, once you die, you have to start the entire game all over again! No checkpoints, no lives, nothing!
- Speaking of which, every time you die, you have to hear all of Morphman's stupid questions & remarks that he repeats without being able to skip them. Which is just draining.
- Because of how much Morphman can easily die in his own game, starting the game over and over again makes Morphman all the more insufferable.
- The story isn't explained in-game, leading to the player being confused, unless you read the back of the box art to get this simplistic plot, but it never explained why they kidnapped the good scientist who became evil.
- Morphman's powers can be very inconsistent. One example of this is when he takes a sample from a living skeleton it turns Morphman into a skeleton; when he was able to do that again while fighting two of them, he was somehow able to spawn a weapon when Morphman wasn't able to do that the first time.
- Speaking of Morphman's powers, since this is an FMV game, you can only morph into what happens as a part of the story and not what you want to morph into. Considering that there are boxes on the screen that show what Morphman can morph into for something interactive, it's disappointing that you aren't given the option to do that.
- Padding: The game is filled with sequences that forces you to wait for Morphman to run to the next set piece or purposely drags certain sequences out in order to pad the game's length. This includes one sequence where Morphman has to choose between two levers: one will kill him, the other lets him continue. It is a coin toss whether you get this right or not, and it repeats this lever pulling sequence 6 times.
- The actual Hud is terrible. You have to play the game on a small screen with the rest of the being taken up by a bunch of small grey boxes that do nothing but show what Morphman can turn into.
- The enemies' choices are so questionable, like a living skeleton with a sword born from a deskinned doll, a tentacle of a possible giant octopus, a transparent man who is made of gas which can be killed by a laser by the way, and a Minotaur. None of this is explained!
- To add insult to injury, one of the robot dogs urinates laser beams on a canister on-screen, making the unseen antagonists impossible to take seriously, like a certain character from a bad Mortal Kombat rip-off.
- There's zero voice acting, except for a ton of stock sound effects being thrown in, particularly when Morphman dies. It also barely has any music, whenever there is music, it is repetitive and consists of the same soundtrack played over and over again.
- They even stole a sound effect when Morphman destroys the gas-man creation chamber. It is the de-rez sound from the Disney film, Tron, just slowed down.
The Only Redeeming Quality
- The idea of an FMV game with a morphing superhero sounds interesting, despite the horrible execution.
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