{"id":1303,"date":"2007-07-25T13:21:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-25T20:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2007\/07\/25\/worst-game-evar\/"},"modified":"2007-07-25T13:21:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-25T20:21:00","slug":"worst-game-evar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2007\/07\/25\/worst-game-evar\/","title":{"rendered":"Worst. Game. EVAR"},"content":{"rendered":"

No, I’m not talking about the Ravenchase Great America Treasure Hunt<\/a>, about which many of the participating teams<\/a> have<\/a> already<\/a> complained<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’m talking about the “secret illegal cross-country road race” depicted in the short-lived TV series Drive<\/span><\/a>. I watched the final two produced episodes last night–mostly because of Nathan Fillion and Melanie Lynskey–and y’know, I wish someone would make a puzzle-hunt show which actually deals with the puzzles.<\/span> If I want melodrama, I’ll watch Gray’s Anatomy<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Although it would be interesting to compare and contrast the event actually run by Ravenchase last week, and the one imagined by the producers of Drive<\/span>. Let’s see…<\/p>\n

Ravenchase:<\/span> required several hours of driving between checkpoints each day.
Drive<\/span>:<\/span> featured truckloads of green-screen “driving” footage every episode.<\/p>\n

Ravenchase:<\/span> used obscure ciphers and symbols like the Ogham<\/a> alphabet to encode messages.
Drive<\/span>:<\/span> used ambiguous phrases like “Surrender USA” to indicate specific locations.<\/p>\n

Ravenchase:<\/span> allowed teams to take time penalties in order to get hints on difficult clues.
Drive<\/span>:<\/span> did not offer hints.<\/p>\n

Ravenchase:<\/span> changed their own scoring rules several times in attempts to make up for puzzles which hadn’t been adequately playtested and often contained errors.
Drive<\/span>:<\/span> blackmailed players into performing mysterious and arbitrary tasks to satisfy the whims of the shadowy organization running the race.<\/p>\n

Ravenchase:<\/span> did not require teams to do anything illegal.
Drive<\/span>:<\/span> did I mention that the exact<\/span> phrase “secret illegal cross-country road race” is spoken at least<\/span> once per episode?<\/p>\n

Ravenchase:<\/span> no players were seriously injured, not even during white-water rafting.
Drive<\/span>:<\/span> one player, dead; one player, shot in the stomach; numerous others threatened.<\/p>\n

Ravenchase:<\/span> gave the winning team a model sailing ship trophy.
Drive<\/span>:<\/span> claimed that the winning team would receive a $32 million prize.<\/p>\n

Ravenchase:<\/span> ended at a bar in New Orleans, where teams partied until the wee hours.
Drive<\/span>:<\/span> didn’t end<\/span> so much as just stopped<\/span> after six episodes, with nothing resolved. At least Amy Acker got a couple of lines.<\/p>\n

~CKL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, I’m not talking about the Ravenchase Great America Treasure Hunt, about which many of the participating teams have already complained. I’m talking about the “secret illegal cross-country road race” depicted in the short-lived TV series Drive. I watched the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[36,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-tv"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}