Elk's Revenge

Notice how my reviews are going up later than usual these days? There are two resons. The first is because I'm no longer a jobless bum, able to review pointless Flash games at two in the afternoon. The second is the dearth of shitty games right now. I know there are bad games, but I'm talking about real garbage here. You know, I might even have to start reviewing games I like.

HA! No chance of that when they keep making crap like Elk's Revenge.



No prizes for guessing what Elk's Revenge is about, but I'll break it down anyway. You're an elk, all right? And there's this bear. Well, the bear regularly gets shitfaced and starts kicking you around. this time, however, he has the hiccups, which means you can get your revenge!

I don't know, if it was about elks jumping around collecting coins I'd say it was unoriginal, so either way this game loses in terms of plot. But the goal is simple enough: ram into the bear. OK, I like watching animals fight for my own amusement - let's play this thing!



There's just one catch: you can only hit the bear when he hiccups. And this is where things get annoying. First of all, there's no way of knowing when the bear will hiccup. Secondly, there's no way of knowing how long you'll have to ram the bear. It could be a few seconds, it could be none. If he's not hiccupping and you happen to be anywhere near him, he kicks you twenty feet in the air.



I must admit, I do like the cartoonish artwork, but the novelty of your face being left behind by your body wears off after the seventh or eight kicking.

Oh, and by the way - see how the screenshots all seem to have been taken from the same spot in the playing area? That's because that is the playing area - all of it. You've got 552 pixels from end to end in which to outmaneouvre a fucking bear. Of course, the developers have cut us lowly gamers some slack by giving the moose the ability to jump!



Wow! You can expect to jump a lot in this game, which is great until the bear hiccups only when you are in mid-air, giving you even less time to headbutt his ass (sometimes literally.)



Why would the elk run away, anyway? Why is he such a pushover? OK, I understand, the bear is drunk, but so what? It's an Elk, God damn it! Elks are badasses. They do all sorts of crazy stuff like start shit with bisons. Any animal willing to butt heads with a bison can deal with a friggin' bear.

But seriously, if you're going to make a game based around animal conflict, you could at least make it a little more gamer-friendly. Sure, you don't just have to ram the drunk bastard; once you make it past level 1 you can obtain the "Death Hoof", which is basically a mule kick. Yeah, I wasn't really planning on getting that close to the bear, but thanks. There's a certain amount of promise to Elk's Revenge, and if they make a sequel I'll give it a shot, but as it stands the game blows chunks. You'd have much more fun getting a real bear and elk to fight. But then, that's more fun than a lot of things.