If, like me, you’ve noticed a definite deficit of interesting or even English posts on The Reticule of late, you’ll, like me, reflexively blame my blogging buddies. I respect you for your ability to avoid self-reflection. This new entry on your RSS feeds is designed to rectify The Reticule‘s recent remissness. It’s a punishment – each of the culprits will be coerced into an analysis of the underlying themes of the text, to be presented in front of class next week. The presentation will be worth 10% of the course’s total marks. Today I review Naked War‘s menu screen. Menu Screen Reviews might become a feature if you like what you see when you click the button wot makes more words come up.

Cute, unblinking, and clad in tank from the chin down – these are the naked warriors. Their bodies preserved and enslaved by the technologies they once dreamed would perform the high-explosive hedge-trimming they neither had the time nor suitable public attire to perform. They now perform the uniquely American role of greeter in a locale where it’s quite apparent what to do next. There are menu items. I impulsively move to click, then remember the silly premise of today’s exercise in blogging. I return to the greeter. Though she is mute, through decisive shakes of her head she communicates to me how it is essential to press on and look at other parts of the screen. She will wait for me, she will wait.

There’s a reticule present – once meaningful – the symbol steadily lost significance to me since we became a tribute site to Rock, Paper Shotgun. Aptly, the reticule is merely mise-en-scene to the prominent figures on stage – they’re animated and one of them is fuzzy – I speak of course of the text, ‘Naked War’, which dominates my monitor like an ad-supported sidebar. This is surely the lively declaration of a new and sexy way of violating one’s fellow man.

The menu music is so agreeable that I cannot help but think of my armoured mute, who can express nary but disagreement. If The Doors wrote music when they felt cheery, this is the kind of tune you’d find yourself tripping to. The most prominent lyric is, “They won’t let us in”, which happens to coincide with the souce of this indigestible linguistic linguini – seeing as how Pickford Bros’ game wouldn’t let me log in to play.

At the bottom of the screen there is some cryptic text which reads, “NakedWar1.1.061002”. This is the clue to the first stage of an Alternate Reality Game. If you type that quote into a search engine, you’ll find the only search result points to this blog. If you contact the writers of this blog, you’ll recieve death threats. This is the beginning of an exciting new gaming medium.

In conclusion, this menu screen offers only a few hours of gameplay and I couldn’t bare the anguish of repeating the experience to see the alternate ending. I quite enjoyed it. You can get Naked War from the internet.