by Bart G. Farkas

The Cockroach. Perhaps the most hated and despicable household pest ever. I mean, there is nothing worse than pulling out a box of Bran Flakes and finding a 2 inch Periplaneta americana or a slightly smaller Blatella germanica squiggling around amongst the flakes. Ewwww. Yuck. I was once on a Russian ship in the South China Sea, and there were more cockroaches on that ship than there are zeros behind Bill Gate’s bank balance. It was hell. However, you do get used to them after a while. And of course, with us computer users so used to dealing with bugs it seems only natural that eventually we’d get a game based on the most heinous bug of all, cockroaches. Pulse Entertainment, those clever folk that gave us Iron Helix oh-so-many years ago, have come up with one of the most original, and bizarre games I ’ve seen in a long time.

The Story
Mojo begins with a handsome video/rendered introduction where a rather unbalanced gent by the name of Roger Samms (you) is getting ready to take a hike with a suitcase stuffed with lots of crisp fresh money. This large sum of cash was recently embezzled from a research grant Roger was awarded to study, what else, cockroaches. As Roger gets ready to make his escape from a fetid apartment above a San Francisco bar, he decides to take along the one memento (a locket) his mother willed to him. Upon examining the locket Roger is rather unfortunately transformed into a cockroach. Bummer. Now you have to figure out how to get yourself back into human form, but without hands you’re gonna have a bit of a tough time. Actually, you’re gonna learn a surprising amount about what it’s like to crawl around on a floor littered with cockroach traps, pesticides, and even the odd cat. And to twist that bitter knife of irony another turn, it’s your cat that wants to make a (rather crunchy) meal out of you. The real fun of Mojo lies in the hidden storyline, in fact, it’s basically up to you to unlock the plot as you proceed through the game.

As snug as a bug in a rug
Over two years in development, Bad Mojo does not disappoint when it comes the audio-visuals. With over 800 graphic scenes and more than 30 minutes of live-action video interspersed throughout Mojo, this shouldn’t be a game you’ll finish in a day. The interesting twist to in the graphical machine is the incorporation of 3D topography onto 2D imagery, thus providing a highly realistic backdrop for your roachy escapades. While cruising around as a bug you’ll be very impressed with the quality of each screen as you move into it. Pulse has truly left no stone unturned in making Mojo realistic from a bug’s perspective. Add to this an effective and sometimes creepy background score, and the scurrying begins. 

Six legs and a couple antennae later
Once you actually get to move your cockroach around (from a top-down perspective), the fun really begins. Your cockroach scurries in an unsettlingly familiar manner up and around pipes, desks, and even into vacuum cleaners. Movement is accomplished with simple use of the arrow keys (although this could be different in the final Mac version) and requires no arcade-style skills. Occasionally as you enter a certain area you’ll get to see a video cut scene. These snippets are well acted and believable making for a highly enjoyable experience. Clearly Pulse did the right thing by hiring quality actors to portray the rather disgusting array of characters, and nothing can beat the real video clips of a cat eating what looks to be a cockroach.

The puzzles are not particularly ground-breaking, but the way the puzzles are hidden in the pretense of the roach environment elevates them to a somewhat higher, if not more  absorbing level. Also contributing to the fun of the game is the utter lack of knowledge given to you in the beginning. You won’t know that you can use other bugs as bridges when navigating a Roach Motel until you actually try it, and I apologize for that little giveaway. But believe me, you would have figured it out. Exploring the performance envelope of your roach is also an integral part of Bad Mojo. Your little insect can do things humans can only dream of (or abhor) including climbing up vertical surfaces, entering small holes, and survive being catapulted across a room.

Mojo Rising
Bad Mojo will be a fabulous game not only for Mac gamers in general, but for anyone who has ever been creeped-out, grossed-out, or annoyed by the great pestilence. The cockroach. Come on, they’ve been around in basically the same form for 350 million years, and there’s over 3500 separate cockroach species, so why not join em? They’ve got to be doing something right! The novelty of the cockroach premise aside, this is a well engineered concept from gameplay to screen art to storyline, and it would certainly be capable of great things even without the help of our six-legged friends.