I once had the misfortune of playing Glover...
Back in the day when I was still an adolescent metroid, I had the misfortune of renting Glover for the Nintendo 64 from my local video store. I didn't play it that first day because my mom thought to rent me a movie entitled "The Wizard" because I was a huge-*** nerd back then and movies about other nerds playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on a big screen TV for cash prizes and the fate of an autistic gaming prodigy child made my loins brown with excitement.
~
So I watched that movie and it was sick. The kids won the Mario 3 tournament and the autistic boy was crowned a champion. I went to bed that night with a smile on my face and a self-proclaimed promise to play video games for three hours longer every day from then on. As it would happen, I came Down With the Sickness the next morning (ooh-wa-ah-AH) and stayed home from school. I decided to whip out that sweet-*** game I rented from the store and begin my path in the footsteps of that random autistic boy in "The Wizard."
~Chapter 1~
Glover is a heart-wrenching tragedy set in the high middle ages. It tells of the innocent blunder of a nameless wizard who drops his gardening gloves in a cauldron of pea soup. One glove benefits from his bath and discovers the joys of sentience, he is deemed Glover and I played as him.
~
The other glove suffered a Campbellian moral infection, displeased with his existence as a convenience for beings greater than himself, his sentience brought only agony and hatred for all living beings. His name was Cross-Stitch and his evil laugh echoes across the world map every time you start the game. It scared the **** out of me when I was a kid. That ghastly, "Er-ha-ha-HAHAHA!" still creeps me out and brings to mind images of obese middle-aged men pulling lint from their navels. Since moral absolutism makes for a quick story, Glover has to find and kill Cross-Stitch because solving problems with your words makes you a ****
~Chapter 2~
Glover is a decent looking game, ignoring its glaringly sharp polygons that could put out a child's eye. There are a wide number of colors made use of, varied environments including Atlantis and a futuristic, I-Robot world. However, the developers got too busy scratching their groins halfway through and decided to predominantly make the ground and sky textures with only a pair of colors. Everything else in each world is nicely detailed. The animation for Glover himself is quite smooth and makes me want to clap my hands like a gleeful seal. The music isn't great, in fact it makes me feel a bit nauseous, perhaps combined with the overuse of green and orange in some of the environments (lazy*** developers). Maybe its just my memory of being sick that's been triggered.
~Chapter 3~
I was attracted to Glover initially because he used a rubber ball for all of his techniques and that's some *** slapping good innovation! I still find it pretty cool that the rubber circus ball Glover bounces around has its own working physics and can be used to jump higher, hit switches, kill enemies, and cross gaps. Such things were still uncommon then.
~
Now this would have made the game good if the cartridge didn't leak poop all over my N64. Glover is a puzzle-adventure game which means I got to wander the endless orange-green plains, listening to uninteresting music, while trying to navigate the labyrinth worlds to find some 100 playing cards very world and push a bunch of switches. This was pretty lame, considering that the worlds are rather large, its hard to reach certain areas, and everything you're looking for is obscured and irritating to track down.
~Chapter 4~
I actually played my way through the first world without trouble, but trouble would find me in the form of the first boss. A giant totem pole made out of fish. Technically, there was a whale, a fish, and a crab I think. All they did was hop around slowly and wait for me to kill them. I took pity on those poor turds of a bass and slew them with my rubber ball. I was disappointed by this lack of challenge and proceeded to Atlantis world.
~
Then the **** hit the fan. Poseidon himself was clearly pissed off with me, and I had no soldiers following me back home from Troy to distract him with. So the god unleashed his mighty trident and hid all of the 100 cards I needed to find in the far corners of a ridiculously large map full of bridges and platforms and water pits that you can't climb out of once you fall in. I lost my rubber ball several times on accident trying to hit faraway switches and fend off enemies.
~
There were also monkeys. I gave up soon after that, knowing I was no match for such shenanigans. Glover had frustrated me enough, so I put the game back in its rental box rather than continue and begin gnawing on my controller in rage.
~Epilogue~
You should play Glover because its more innovative than Halo and 70% of the other recycled crap released every year.