Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, a trip back to a time when multimedia could do anything. Just most of the time, not very well.
Many villains love to try and get inside your head. Tender Loving Care just does it for kicks. It's a game! It's a movie! What does that mean? That it's better not to get too excited about the possibility, even if it did come from the creators of Uncle Henry's Mindblowers – a game said to have only sold 176 copies worldwide, and thus in the running for the least successful commercial game of all time. Oh, and they also made The 7th Guest. This though was very different; an erotic thriller that would hate for you to think it's just dumb smut. It's very pretentious dumb smut, and don't you forget it!
Tender Loving Care is the story of a struggling couple, Michael and Allison, in the wake of their daughter's death. Allison is incapable of even acknowledging the tragedy, insisting that little Jody is in her room and quite fine thank you very much. Michael is all too aware of the reality, but helpless to actually do anything. Enter John Hurt, most famous of course for playing the comedy barman in Privateer 2, haunting his house by way of greenscreen magic and guiding you the player through their story.
John Hurt isn't the only actor who doesn't get naked, but is the one for whom that's the biggest relief.
Hurt is Dr. Turner in this one, a strong contender for the worst shrink ever, as well as both narrator and quizmaster for the main game and about a million deeply personal questions about everything from whether you like being watched during sex to what a cartoon bear should do when its cub poos in its nappy. That is not a joke. That is a thing that happens. All of this is done in character though, with the big goal being to help him find out why Michael and Allison's story ended in tragedy.
"It's as much a mystery to me as anyone else," he sighs. "Perhaps you can help…"
The more the story drags on, the more it becomes clear that all three of its stars are right here.
Well, yes, Dr. Turner, I do believe I can. A struggling couple came to you for assistance, and your immediate suggestion was what I believe is referred to in the trade as Sexy Nurse Therapy. Specifically, a live-in nurse called Kathryn is dispatched, quickly takes a liking to Allison, may or may not have an equal sexual interest in Michael, and for one reason or another this led to murder and mental collapse. Eventually, that is. Not soon. TLC is longer-winded than a runner who finished a marathon only to be punched right in the stomach, and most of it is spent having variants on the following conversation:
ALLISON: "Kathryn is helping me!"
MICHAEL: "Kathryn is not helping! I hate Kathryn!"
KATHRYN: "I am so helping, and I will prove it with logic."
MICHAEL: "Your logic is surprisingly sound, but I'm still not buying it."
KATHRYN: "I also have boobs."
MICHAEL: "I find myself temporarily convinced by your arguments."
ALLISON: "I'm so happy Kathryn has finally given me a reason to live again!"
MICHAEL: "GET THAT BITCH OUT OF MY HOUSE!"
DR. JOHN HURT: "Goodness, how intriguing. What do you think about all this?"
Rinse and repeat over multiple discs and hours of treading water.
It's also not really an adventure game as such, though there is a plot and there are choices that affect it. They're disconnected from the action though, taking the form of general comments on the characters and what you think's happening (not much, usually) and a set of "Thematic Apperception Tests" – TAT for short – which take the form of endless questions that try to build a profile of your psyche as you play. The fact that we know going in that it ends in tragedy and that there is nothing you can do about that perhaps speaks a little of the creators' own state of mind at the time.
Or perhaps not. I'm not a psychological adventure game. I am however fairly sure that for most players, the mix of 'erotic thriller' and 'interactivity' meant that Tender Loving Care's attempt at an exploration of the human psyche actually became an epic quest to get the sexy nurse's bra off. Tits for TATs, if you will.
Or, sometimes, two for the price of one.
That might sound a little cynical, but no. It's about two minutes before Kathryn is pushing Michael out of her room by pointedly taking her shirt off in front of him, as well as acknowledging that while therapists don't go around in slinky nurse outfits, she's going to be wearing one because… um… this case… really… demands it. Honest.
Tender Loving Care then continues to plant its flag with the option to poke around the house in a way that's similar to The 7th Guest, only without the horror elements or being randomly asked to cut up an evil cake into pieces for no apparent reason. Its biggest oddity is that despite having an actual set for the movie portions, exploration is all 3D rendered. Even more oddly, the characters are still around, despite this being a story told via flashbacks. Going into Kathyrn's room for instance, she's standing there on a greenscreen taking notes, and confusingly aware of your presence but not her upcoming potential death.
"Who are you?" she demands. "And what are you doing in my room? Oh. Wait a minute, I see. You're the… viewer, right? I didn't realise you could just sneak up on me like that. You never know what I might be doing… You're probably going to snoop around my room, aren't you? Guess there's nothing I can do about it. Oh well. You probably won't find anything… too incriminating, I hope."
Not. Suspicious. At All. And nor are the little details you can find when she leaves, including her current reading material – "Witchcraft And The Divine Feminine Goddess: The Wiccan Path For The Apprentice Witch" – or diary. I'm not sure exactly how much details change based on decisions throughout the game, but I tried two radically different sets of answers to the opening questions and her opening entry didn't change. First, she complains about the taxi driver – "He waited until we were on an isolated country road and out of nowhere he said that he noticed I wasn't wearing a bra and was wondering if I had any panties on."
Then she goes straight on to say that Michael is going to be a problem… because the thirty seconds they had together were enough to get the hots for him. "The way he looked at me. Watching his eyes wander over my breasts and hips filled me with an unexpected rush of excitement. Part of me wanted to encourage those eyes. But the better part had sense enough to shut the door. I have to watch myself. This case is too important, too rich an opportunity to risk losing it over an attraction for my patient's husband."
Uh-huh. Like much of the game, this isn't really brought up elsewhere because TLC doesn't keep track of what you've read. This means that plot elements go completely unremarked on, and the characters tend to bounce between personalities between individual cuts. Sometimes that's okay. Michael is confused and guilty enough over, say, sleeping with Kathryn about seventy different times that it's not too surprising that he does the deed, then storms back into her room to try and kick her out of his life. Often though, scenes just don't connect that well, and not because you're throwing the plot all over the place.
Note to self, maybe put a password on this at some point…
Pulling things back to the psychiatry that Tender Loving Care longs to think it can do, it's time for the first proper TAT – staring at a copy of the (lovely) Hopper painting Nighthawks and being asked surreal questions about drawings and artwork that only occasionally tie directly into the story – a picture of two naked lovers for instance offering the potential name "Michael and Kathryn", along with "Mum and Dad" and "Mulder and Scully." In your dreams/fan-fic, Tender Loving Care…
Here's a couple of examples. How would you react?
Oh, and here's the first hint that this game has forgotten half the population. There are others.
If it's not obvious, this is a very bizarre game. Tender Loving Care is about 60% absolute boredom, in which Michael and Kathryn discuss Allison's state of health, medication, and generally try to avoid mentioning that the daughter she thinks is in her bedroom is dead with various levels of sniping and passive aggression. Mostly, this is a back and forth of wills, or to be more accurate, Kathryn's will and Michael's willy. Whatever options you choose, the psychology quickly gives way to scenes of her doing things like crossing her legs in her nurse's uniform, or him heading outside and spying on her standing naked in her window. Early on, that can be substituted with her simply being in her underwear. Later, it can step up to her squishing herself against it while licking the glass with malevolent joy, followed by John Hurt asking lots of incredibly personal questions about your sex life.
"Well, still doing better than Phantasmagoria 2…"
But of course, Tender Loving Care is ultimately the story of a struggling couple trying to come to terms with the death of a child – the most painful experience that a parent can possibly go through, and the slow, agonising recovery as a result. It's not simply about Michael wanting to put the O into Obamacare. That would be incredibly tacky and-
"The next TAT will be given in the bathroom," growls Dr. John Hurt. "Look for… the book."
Oh, right, yeah. Thinly disguised softcore porn…
To the TATmobile then!
Unconstrained by ridiculous questions, Kathryn sets about integrating into the family as cryptically as possible. She begins ordering Michael around in odd ways, like telling him not to mow the lawn because Jodie is sleeping, and that Michael also needs to start playing along. His response, not too surprisingly, is to drive right down to Dr. John Hurt's office to ask, in a nutshell, "What the shit? Why did you send that possibly literal witch to my house?" Dr. John Hurt's is to politely, very tactfully, point out "What I did, I did without choice. In the name of peace and sanity."
"But not in the name of the Doctor!" snarls Michael.
"Well, no," agrees Dr. John Hurt. "It's 1998. I won't be doing that for another decade and a half."
And then it's back to exploration, where he proves what a medical professional he is by letting you randomly poke around in his patient files for a bit, and then doing another TAT. Dinner-dinner-dinner-dinner, TAT MAN!
With Kathryn still rocking the slinky nurse act, Michael resolves to become the biggest dick in the universe. Everything Kathryn seems to achieve only annoys him, whether it's getting Allison enough out of her depressive funk to help put away the groceries – gasp! – to breathing. We find out that there's guilt at the root of this, that Jody died of having ketchup splattered onto her head during a car accident, though whether Michael or Allison was driving at the time remains a matter for a pop-up question.
Michael's not as horny as he seems. He just has a thing for badly compressed video ladies.
The fight continues though, with Kathryn constantly pushing for Allison to get a pet for Jody, for Jody to have a TV, for Michael to learn how his mouth closes and practice it on a daily basis, and other things that are meant to be a little bit suspicious but actually seem reasonable enough. Michael is so cross, he doesn't even bother pausing for a decision point before charging back to Dr. John Hurt to accuse her of being clueless… discovering too late that she's in the room, with a new haircut, and overheard the entire accusation. Both point out that whatever Kathryn's doing seems to be working, Allison's mood changes being represented by a) smiles and b) not wearing a bra, and Michael has to reluctantly agree. And then instantly declare that it's not enough! After all, Kathryn's been in his house for, what, a whole three days and still his wife's two year long trauma isn't fixed.
"Would it cheer you up if we added a little lesbian subtext?" asks Kathryn.
"No!" pouts Michael. "Okay, maybe. A little. But only if I don't get to see anything good!"
"Thanks." "No problem. All part of the fan-service."
Meanwhile, back in the Valley Of Endless Padding…
Goodness. It takes a lot to make Peter Venkman look professional, but you just did it.
"Why don't we dabble a bit in the realms of the psychic?" declares Dr. John Hurt, presenting a mini-game in which you have to concentrate and use 'all your psychic abilities' to work out which card is hidden. When you get it wrong, because psychic powers do not exist he growls "Concentrate!" and "You're trying too hard!" When you get it right, he declares it "Magnificent."
Dr. John Hurt, I hereby revoke your fictional medical license.
In fact, I revoke it twice.
The main reason for things like that psychic test though is that there's really not much going on in the main story. There aren't many big secrets to be revealed, and the characters are too locked down early on to develop in interesting ways. Tender Loving Care sprinkles in additional information in notes and e-mails and other things scattered around the house, as well as a couple of weirder things like the sound of a child in Jody's empty bedroom, but it's all a bluff. The closest thing to a supernatural event is that Michael's boss when he finally goes into work turns out to be Henry Stauf from The 7th Guest. The most intriguing thing about the game is its weird questions, and the strange mix of boredom and generally (though not exclusively) PG rated naughtiness. Like the way that it casually has Kathryn call up
Tender Loving Care tries to mix things up with the addition of elements like that silly psychic test and the sound of a child crying in Jody's empty bedroom, but it's clear that there's no supernatural stuff going on whatsoever, with the possible exception of the fact that Michael's boss turns out to be evil Henry Stauf from The 7th Guest, making it a complete waste of effort. The most intriguing thing is its strange mix of boredom and PG-rated naughtiness, like the way it casually has Kathryn call Michael up to her room for a boring, pants-optional talk on his wife's progress that's much more awkward than it is sexy.
"…and that's why your wife… what do you mean I forgot something?"
To compensate though, the TATs finally go all the way into the utterly insane:
Kathryn's game-plan is also finally revealed: to bring Jody back to life in Allison's head, represented by a doll then recreate the accident by smashing it in the hope that this time her death will stick.
"Theoretically, I think it's brilliant," declares Dr. John Hurt.
Wow. I mean… wow, seriously? That's the plan? That's… Wow. I'm no psychiatrist or anything, but that doesn't seem like a plan with flaws so much as a collection of holes connected with dumb. But then, that's what you get when your therapist spends as much time writing lesbian erotica as doing her job…
"And then we totally do it."
As seen in her diary though, spending the entire game screaming and shouting and showing complete contempt for Kathryn on a personal and professional level doesn't mean Michael isn't in with a shot. Depending on choices, he can be invited to 'meditate' with her, in a scene that deserves its ironic punctuation. It's meant to be sexy, and is the most graphic scene on offer.
It's hard to focus on that side of it though though, when it's staged… well, like this.
I think the Kama Sutra calls this one "The Paperclip". Ouch
"It was only sex, everyone makes such a big deal of it," scoffs Kathryn next time you meet, explaining that the only reason she slept with Michael was to avoid being fired and thus unable to help Allison. Unfortunately for her, this is also the point that the story tends to decide she's a full on demon rather than merely a staggeringly unprofessional therapist with an occasional taste for exhibitionism. Michael goes from acting like the victim to actually facing off against an arch manipulator, with the tone switching to full on thriller mode – the details varying based on decisions. One of the three main characters kills the dog, though which is left vague. A dark night later leads to murder most horrid… exactly who being up for grabs. A hammer is sometimes involved. Other times, it's an accidental tumble down the stairs that takes one of the lovers out. In one, Kathryn ends up killing Michael and turning Allison into her puppet. In another, he lands the blow. In none do things work out well, as explained at the start.
Even so, with the differences often feeling more a question of explicitness than actual content, things can get seriously weird. One of Kathryn's final gambits for instance involves encouraging Allison to take control, initiating sex with Michael for the first time since the accident… and that's a little creepy, since it's purely to prevent him sending her away. It gets creepier when she follows it up by bursting into the room and telling him that Jody has been calling for him… then climbing into Jody's bed naked, calling him Daddy, and making him promise never to send her away. And then telling him "You smell like a woman" and cheerfully ambling back to her room.
But who cares about that plot nonsense? More questions! More TATs!
It's hard to know what to make of TLC. On the one hand, it did try something genuinely new, even if you never actually get much control over the story beyond how it ends, and how often you see Kathryn's lady parts. On the other, it's a staggeringly self-defeating game, trying to be smart and intriguing while telling a Cinemax level story that seems painfully aware that its real selling point is having an actress willing to disrobe at a moment's notice. The rest is an absolute tangle of obvious plot twists, things revealed in notes around the house that you can't ever actually use (not least Kathryn admitting that she's slept with Dr. John Hurt, which would seem something worth bringing up during his regular appearances), and a perspective that constantly obscures the little control you do have. You don't tell Michael what to do, or even the game as a whole what you think should happen. You tell Dr. John Hurt how you feel about a range of random crap, and for the most part things just roll along on the same track until one of the scenes where they might get explicit, or it all ends. Though never soon enough.
It also seems somewhat irrelevant how you feel, since you start the game knowing that bad things happened, and everything is told in flashback. Despite you regularly bumping into Kathryn, dead at the end or not. Hmmm. Maybe she was secretly a ghost all along. That would be a twist…
The main purposes of the TATS though is that once the story is over, TLC will build a personal profile of you based on your comments – a deep psychological investigation that would make astrologers mock the lack of detail. All you really need though is one of two things. Either a) You bought Tender Loving Care in the hope of an adult adventure, and were disappointed. Or b) You bought Tender Loving Care in the hope of seeing boobies, and probably weren't. If you played your cards right. Either way though, you probably ended it feeling a bit depressed, and that's clearly a win given the type of story it tried to tell.
Pity it had to be so damn dull about it.
The post Saturday Crapshoot: Tender Loving Care appeared first on PC Gamer.
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