Look, behind you, a three-headed monkey! Wrong game, wood-lover. Anyway, you know, in spite of Monkey Island, it was Maniac Mansion which catapulted Lucasfilm Games to fame. Fast forward a few years. The company is now called Lucas Arts, and the lead designer of Maniac Mansion (as well as Monkey Island) has left. Time for the long-awaited sequel.
Neither protagonist Dave, nor his girlfriend Sandy make another appearance. After all, it was the Edison family which really engraved itself into the public consciousness. In addition, one of the optional characters of the first part, Bernard, is put in the top spot. He's assisted by his friends Hoagie (an overweight wannabe rock musician) and Laverne (a medicine student presumably on drugs). They receive a note from Bernards friend Green Tentacle asking for help. Apparantely, Purple Tentacle has sipped on the sewage of Dr. Fred's atomic mud machine. That made it super smart. Being evil, the goal is obvious: Ruling the world.
I remember hearing sometime in the 90s that a new video game came out in which you play an earthworm. That made me curious, if only because of the sheer absurdity of the idea. The worm is put – as it turns out – into a fancy power suit and is also equipped with a small pistol that can even be converted into a rocket blaster via power-up. The worm's origins are unmistakably the world of colourful, funny cartoons that popped up like mushrooms in those times. My surprise just increased as I heard about a version of that game for my little monochrome Gameboy.
While I watch my character walking slowly towards the sunrise at the end of Valiant Hearts: The Great War, I take a look back at the road that has brought me here. Considering that for the most part it lead through the battlefields of World War I, the journey was surprisingly rich in variety, and it entailed even some nice memories besides all the horror. Yet it has been exactly those contrasts, these emotional ups and downs, which make these sensations so intense. Its beginning seems almost a bit unreal now, but soon the story will come to an end, and I cannot remember when I had such a feeling of accomplishment at the end of a computer game.