Mar 20, 20202 min
Impotent Products
Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro have teamed up once again to bring gamers a unique and horrifying experience. This digital interactive teaser puts players behind the eyes of a shopper endlessly perusing an aisle that's void of any toilet paper. Once the player-controlled character reaches what they think is the end of the toiletries shelves and turns the corner, they find themself in an identical aisle to the one that was just left behind, completing a perfect, synchronous loop.
Player interaction takes the form of walking and bringing up one's shopping list, which just happens to have "toilet paper" written as many times as can fit on the piece of paper. There are no other shoppers to fight with, and there are no employees around who you may ask for access to a secret stash of TP. Hideo Kojima designed this with the intention of creating a difficult challenge as well as a horrifyingly realistic depiction of grocery store shoppers during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Progressing further in the game requires that the player deviate from the singular grocery list item of "TP" and pick up a bag of beans or rice that is mistakenly, mysteriously placed in the aisle. The teaser is at last completed during the "final loop," which has the player come across a shelf that is sporting both an industrial-size can of lentils and a 36-pack of four-ply Charmin Ultra Soft bathroom tissues. If the player chooses the lentils, they are able to leave the store and self-quarantine while the credits roll. If the player chooses the toilet paper, an irate shopper named Lisa strangles them with a garrote made of twisted-together Cottonelle flushable wipes. GAME OVER.
TP sold wherever your Libertarian uncle is hiding his hand sanitizer/Areolae of Large Circumference Magazine stash.