Progress Quest (PC) review "Progress Quest is funny as hell. It’s a mockup of role playing games and their fans, and it succeeds wonderfully at this point. You download it, and run it, and that’s it. It sits on your taskbar and goes through a role playing game for you while you do, well, whatever else you might want to do. A text window describes what you’re doing, like slaying a pillow monster with a dirty halibut, but no interaction is needed on your part past entering in your name and picking from some farcic..."

Progress Quest is funny as hell. It’s a mockup of role playing games and their fans, and it succeeds wonderfully at this point. You download it, and run it, and that’s it. It sits on your taskbar and goes through a role playing game for you while you do, well, whatever else you might want to do. A text window describes what you’re doing, like slaying a pillow monster with a dirty halibut, but no interaction is needed on your part past entering in your name and picking from some farcical stats and abilities at the very beginning of the game. There’s no graphics at all besides text, and after about ten minutes, the novelty wears off, because there literally is *nothing* else to do in Progress Quest.

I just described all of Progress Quest in one hundred twenty eight words. Therefore, I’ve got to put in quite a bit of filler just to reach the four hundred word plateau. For a normal reviewer, this might be a problem, but not for me! No kiddies, I’d like to talk to you all about a very important issue, one which plagues our society. I’ve seen it as I’ve walked amongst the streets, and I must confess, it worries me greatly. What the hell is the deal with people actually wearing t-shirts and clothing they receive for free from various companies?

You might be saying, “But Bobo, what the hell does this have to do with Progress Quest?” Don’t worry about that; I’ve already described all that I need to about the horrible wretch of a “game” known as Progress Quest. This clothes thing, now this is a serious issue. I see people walking down the streets proudly wearing shirts they received from video games, such as Illusion of Gaia, and you know what? It really disturbs me.

It’s one thing to hide your geekiness. It’s quite another thing to wear it proudly across your gigantic man bosomed chest. The exception to this is wearing it proudly across your gigantic woman bosomed chest, which I think we will all agree is perfectly fine. Yet, I digress. Where are the bullies? Where are the bullies with eating disorders and broken homes to shatter these little nerds, bending appendages into pretzel shapes and making sure there’s always a swirlie going on in the boy’s bathroom? Every time I see one of these pencil necked freakazoids talking to his friends about Advanced Dungeons and Dragons while playing his Gameboy Advance, I cry. Very very deeply. On the inside.

Well, before I pull his white underwear up over his head, producing painful wedgie sensations. It pays to be mean. If I’m lucky, I can pawn the Gameboy Advance and the seven year old Super Nintendo game repackaged as a new game inside for some quick cash. After that, I usually kick out his legs, and he lies on his back like a turtle, his leg muscles twitching oddly, atrophied and decaying from sitting on his duff playing video games so much.

Why isn’t everyone doing this? I blame the parents. It’s obvious that they’ve somehow forgot what a living hell their teenage lives were. It’s their duty as parents to ensure that their children go through just as much suffering. Don’t let little Johnny sit around, eating potato chips and masturbating to the jail bait on Total Request Live all day long! Kick his ass off that couch, tell him to go build you a fence in the front yard, and then just enjoy those sassy little minxes yourself. When he complains that you live in an apartment building, and that you don’t have a yard to put a fence around, just glare at him. Raise up one eyebrow, then say, “Did I stutter the first time?” He might still be shocked, so snarling and swearing is usually a good way to encourage him to behave.

But, in conclusion, Progress Quest sucks. Don’t play it.

Community review by sgreenwell (February 08, 2003) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.