Bushido

In all honesty, I don't really know how long Bushido has been out, but I really hope it's been quite some time. At least that way it's many poor qualities can be justified, if not forgiven.



At first, one would think Bushido would be another stealth assassin game, and I'm pretty sure that's what it's supposed to be. But the fact that it isn't becomes blatantly obvious from the very first level.



There's your character, hiding behind some bushes. Yes, I know his head is clearly visible, but eyecare must not be included in the castle guards' health plan. So far, so stealthy: if you time it right, you can jump up and stab the guard through the back, you coward. From then on, however, things just get screwy.



Could someone please explain to me how I'm supposed to silently cut this guy's throat if he's standing on the very end of the ledge and doesn't move? Unlike other games of this type, you can't run up the walls, so a quick attack is totally out of the question. Instead, you have to bounce from one wall to the next, grab his attention, then make a hasty retreat before facing him.



Am I the only one who sees a problem with an assassin game that features more swordfights than assassinations? And while I'm on the subject, what's up with bouncing off walls? That might work perfectly well in Fancy Pants Adventure, but it's not exactly the most graceful, ninja-like movement, is it?



It really shouldn't come as much of a surprise that Level Two is almost a carbon copy of Level One. This, for instance, is the first kill:



Drop down, hide behind a bush, wait until the guard passes and stab him. It's the exact same thing you do in the first level. The only difference here is that there are two more guards, rather than one. Oh, joy. I don't know if anyone else has mentioned it, but there's a glitch in the game that can freeze the guards completely, turning them into statues that just float in mid air, incapable of doing anything.



Well that's just great. Also of note is the sheer stupidity of the guards.



I don't expect mind-blowing AI, but if one guard can see me through a wall, I expect the guard standing on top of the wall to do the same.



Twenty kills is impressive if you don't know that there aren't even ten guards in the first mission. Despite being Hilton-esque in their stupidity, the guards are also fast sons of bitches, and they'll cut you down in one strike. On the bright side, you have a seemingly infinite number of lives, which comes in handy when you have to attempt the same level again and again and again.



Mission Two isn't a whole lot different from Mission One, but then all the missions tend to revolve around the one goal of "Kill everybody." By this point, however, I'd done away with any intention of being sneaky and proceeded to hack and slash my way across levels, killing whoever I came across and not giving a toss about anyone I left behind. It just seemed to be the easiest way to save myself an aneurysm, as there is no point in trying to play like a proper ninja assassin.

Hmm, that leaves me with another question - why would a game named after the traditional code of the Japanese samurai centre around a character who is quite clearly dressed like a ninja?



I'm not exactly sure what the correct name for these characters are, but I refer to them as Those Tough Bastards That Always Kill Me In These Games. Thank God for the ability to jump, is all I can say. Otherwise I'd be stuck there all day trying to reach the asshole's head. It is a shame, though, that my character is seemingly incapable of jumping to one side unless I am already running in that direction.

Anyway, the goal up to this point has been to enter the castle, where you will find a number of shogun that you must kill.



This is the castle. I don't know about you, but it doesn't really scream "Medieval Japan" to me. By this time, even the developer has stopped trying to pretend this is anything but a hack and slash action game, and the enemies pile on to kill you. Fortunately, this is where standing still, repeatedly pressing the attack button, comes in handy, and you can leave the bodies piled up to look like they're about to recreate the scene in Shortbus where those three gay guys sing the United States National Anthem into each other's butt holes. Or something like that.



I don't know if this is supposed to be a stairway in the castle, or an underground tunnel. Either way, it's going to require that you bounce off walls and attempt to jump onto platforms more than you'd ever want to. Mercifully, you get back outside pretty soon, where the enemy have just installed:



Spring-loaded spikes! And not just any old spring-loaded spikes, but ones that will go off even if you're just in the air above them! Yay!

I have no problem with traps, especially since I'm not having to conserve energy or lives, but at least make them so they don't go off for no apparent reason.



Yeah, I got through it. It took the better part of half an hour, but I did it. And I must admit, the ninja's expression is kind of funny. But that was not an assassination. That was Rambo in the Orient. And to be honest, that would be fine if the game wasn't so damn frustrating. Add to that the poor artwork that looks like it was knocked up on MS Paint in fifteen minutes, and the relentless repetition from level to level, and Bushido is more than just a bad stealth assassin game; it's a bad game in general.

Omega Warrior

In theory, a side scrolling action game where you run around playing a one man army, hacking mutants apart in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by nuclear war should be an enjoyable playing experience, if not a brilliant one. I was, perhaps, expecting too much from Omega Warrior, but at least I'm not alone in seeing it for the pile of ass that it is.



A nice little slideshow fills us in on the back story. Radioactive Necro-Mutants (which is a kickass name, regardless of how shit the game is) are building a giant weapon of mass destruction. Unfortunately this is the future, so there aren't any semi-literate Texans with the power to launch a full-scale invasion around. Instead we have the Human Alliance, and to be honest I'd probably sympathise with the doomed spies a little more if it weren't for those Manga sweat tears on their heads. They don't really give off the impression of fear that one is about to be torn apart by mutants, but more "Mom's gonna kill us if we get these suits dirty!"



Anyway, you head off into battle with the entire mutant army, while the rest of the Human Alliance stay at home and play Jenga. Maybe.



I must admit, the artwork used in each level, and the little animations in the background, made a very good first impression on me. But I was annoyed to find that the Omega Warrior moves like he's walking through treacle. Everything is very slow and the response to button commands can lag a little. This can get pretty annoying later on as you try to raise your shield, but your character is too busy swinging his sword around or getting slashed in the face by a mutant. On the bright side, the mutants are quite easy to kill at first. You have two attack buttons, A and S, with D acting as your defence button. But you'll spend most of your time repeatedly tapping S, as the first attack is pretty weak and leaves you open to attack. Stronger mutants come along halfway through the first level. You'll recognise them easily because they'll be the fat ones.



I suppose the extra layer of blubber works as a great shield to your sword. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the developers discussed this idea.

"Right, so we have regular mutants, and then slightly stronger ones."
"How will we tell the difference?"
"Well, I thought we might make the stronger ones fat."
"Excuse me?"
"You ever try to take down a fat guy? Those bastards are hard!"



I wasn't having much trouble dispensing good human retribution to the evil mutants, but I wasn't having much fun, either. Things quickly got too repetitive: run forward a bit, meet mutants, kill them, run forward a bit more. As long as you're able to run around the mutants and have them all on one side of you, it's very easy to defend yourself. The enemies will usually come to you, meaning you can just stand there, swinging away with your sword and nailing anything that comes past. I was starting to feel very bored indeed when:



The acid rain began. At least, I assume that's what it is. As soon as it hit the ground it just sort of stayed there, keeping that same falling raindrop shape. Acid rain - it comes out of nowhere, and you will get hurt by it. I was no longer bored; I was just pissed off.



Finally, near the end of level one, you meet a new enemy. Yeah, that's right - ugly Goth girls. Ugly Goth girls with kung fu moves that will kick your ass if you don't get your shield up in time. Are they more challenging than the other mutants? Yes, but not by much. And besides, I only faced one of them. then it was back to the fat guys and wimps, and then the level ended with no fanfare.



Out of nowhere, and for no discernible reason other than I'd killed everything, the level was complete. But hey, you gotta dig that hero pose. Heading into level two, you're inexplicably now indoors, where you face:



That's right - more of the same. By this point I was getting pretty good at killing mutants and wasn't having that much trouble. And doesn't the shield look cool in that screenshot? Hold down D and you'll get a full blown forcefield. It no doubt comes in handy when you're showered with the acid rain, which started up again.



OK, this is bullshit - I'm indoors. What's happening here? Did I happen to pass the only hole in the roof just as a rain storm picked up? It's not like they couldn't do something like a cracked pipe or steam shooting out of the ground - you know, something that would have made logical sense inside a building.



After the acid rain, we finally meet a real challenge. Actually, that's a lie - I kicked this rotating saw thing's ass the first time I played. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember exactly how I did it, so I got stuck there for fucking ages, trying to figure out what strategy to use. Should I put up my shield and strike just as it passes? Should I hack away wildly and hope for the best? And how come it can still hit me even when I'm not near it? These questions remain unanswered; I managed to beat it eventually, but if you asked me how I wouldn't be able to tell you.



After that son of a bitch, I figured things couldn't get any worse. Then these assholes in robes showed up with electrified whips, and they beat my ass to oblivion.



And here's the final kicker - you only get one life. If you die, you have to start the level all over again. You have to go through the same bullshit and hope that you'll have enough energy to make it to the end. Well, I would have started again, but quite frankly I couldn't be arsed. I could think of better things to do than play this game, like DIY dental surgery or smashing my face against a brick wall repeatedly. If the jerky animation doesn't piss you off, the molasses slow pace will. I take back all the bad things I said about Achilles two weeks ago. Compared to Omega Warrior, Achilles is fucking Double Dragon. Yeah - Omega Warrior is that bad.

Heaven's Hoodlum

It's been a pretty good week for online games, it must be said, but there's no wheat without a little chaff and today it comes in the form of Heaven's Hoodlum. The concept is certainly different, I'll give it that: you play a hoodie mistakenly sent to Heaven and your goal is to stay there for as long as possible before you get kicked out.



You fly around on a cloud collecting bling, mobile phones and the occasional joint (so that's one theological question answered.) At the same time you have to avoid mines and what I can only assume are the Heavenly Police, represented by a cloud with a flashing red light on top of it. Touch these and they'll explode in your face. I guess we're dealing with Old Testament God. New Testament God would most likely have sat down with the hoodlum and tried to reason with him; Old Testament God is ready to blast his ass out of the sky. But then God is a much more understanding celestial being these days - proof that fatherhood really does change a man.



Like I was saying, the mines will blow up and take away some of your health. This depletes on its own, anyway, so you have to top it up with floating Bibles. Your health is represented by a yellow face that becomes angelic if you're doing well and devilish when you're not, but then you're playing a character who spends most nights drinking Dutch Gold and smashing telephone boxes - I really doubt he cares about his health.



Of course, it doesn't help that the Bibles you need to stay alive are generally in the same vicinity of something that wants to kill you. Normally this wouldn't be a problem; with a steady hand, one could manoeuvre around the bombs and get the power-up. But that's when the controls come up behind you and smack you across the back of the head while their friend records it on his phone. I hate to use the phrase "broken controls" but these are pretty damn deserving of such a title. In Heaven's Hoodlum the slightest press of the buttons can send you careening across the screen. If you build up too much momentum you'll find it almost impossible to avoid colliding into some form of explosives, so you have to move slowly in order to keep some semblance of control. Of course, the problem there is what to do when stuff is flying across the screen and you can't get to it quickly enough.



Another gripe is your character's propensity to disappear off one side of the screen and reappear on the opposite end. This can have its advantages when you're trying to avoid the exploding clouds, but is a pain in the ass when you bounce off the top or bottom and suddenly fly off all over the place.



As far as Game Over screens are concerned, this is pretty lacking - I mean, would it have hurt to show the Hoodlum in Hell, having red hot pokers shoved up his urethra? OK, maybe not his urethra. It does provide one smirk, the moral: "Hoodlum's belong in Hell."

So I'm guessing this guy got laughed at by a bunch of hoodies and this his is revenge? I don't know - I doubt many of those guys play Flash games. They'd be too busy downloading Paris Hilton porn, updating their Bebo page and watching the "Mikey the Pikey" video. The developer's grammar is at about the same level as most hoodlum's, that much I know, but at least his spelling is better. I'll give him credit for that.

Blood Car! 2000!

Technically, I should love Blood Car! 2000! For one thing, the title is great. For another, it has the best plot I've read in quite a while. Here it is on the loading screen:



"The year is the future." I love it. No, seriously, I fucking love it. You see, I first started gaming at a time when titles didn't need long, complicated back stories. The plot could usually be summed up in two sentences ("Ninjas have kidnapped the President! Go get 'em!") The graphics, by today's standards, were shit. But no one cared about that because as long as the game played well, it didn't matter that your intergalactic battle tank was really just two squares and a rectangle. Blood Car! 2000! provides a great nostalgia trip with its eight bit graphics and non-existant storyline, but it fails in the most important department - that of gameplay.



There are two modes of play - the first is a race against the clock to kill 28 hapless citizens placed around a small town. The second is a time trial through three different race courses, trying to cover the distance in the fastest time possible. The first mode obviously offers the best chance for total bloody mayhem, as you smash through anyone and anything in your path of destruction. There are some great touches here, such as your black car quickly turning red as you plough through another victim. No area is off limits, it seems, allowing you to carve through a pleasant park area, for instance.



I wasn't sure what those blue and white boxes were the first time I played the game. It was only on the second or third level that I realised they were portaloos. Yes, you can crash into them, and yes, you will send shit flying everywhere.

But my personal favourite is the graveyard:



It's about time someone grew the balls to make a game where you mow down mourners in a cemetery. I give Cryptic Sea serious kudos for that. But I have one gripe with them, and it's about the controls - they fucking suck.



Check out the rectangular man in the green jacket. Despite being surrounded by several badly mushed corpses, and despite the blood covered car revving its engine nearby, he senses no danger, and just stands there. This dumbass deserves to get run over.



Or maybe he knows that the car is a bitch to control and will slide right around him in a wide arc.



In the end, I had to line the car up just right and hope that he didn't move out of the way before I ground him into the asphalt. The car turns like it's floating in the air, and sharp turns take a lot of practice. It reminded me of the first time I played Wipeout. There's a great game in here, but first you have to master these extra-sensitive controls that will test your patience like nothing else. It's a good thing you can pretty much ram through everything short of buildings and trees, because Blood Car! 2000! would be hell on earth otherwise.



Blood. Explosion. Sweet.

This is what I want to stress - I really, really wanted to enjoy Blood Car! 2000! The only things that constantly got on my nerves were the bad controls. I played this game on Thursday and instantly thought, "I'm reviewing this on Sunday." But I went back to it on Friday and I actually started to get into it. I was getting the hang of things and I dug the sophomoric humour. I began to have a little hope.

But every time I missed someone by a millimetre, I felt that tiny piece of rage build up inside me. And then, when I wasn't slipping and sliding everywhere, I would get stuck between walls or trees and it would take me ten seconds to slowly ease my way out.



I don't want to have to ease my way out of that shit. I want to blast through it and take out an old lady in the process. I'm in the motherfucking Blood Car! 2000! for Christ's sake!!

So, I may sound petty, but I just couldn't get over these things. It's not like they made the game impossible, they just made it irritating. I don't play games to be irritated. Challenged, yes, but irritated? Hell no.



I should say something about the race mode. Calling it a "race mode" is wrong because you're not racing anything except the clock. If you can get round the course within a certain amount of time you'll be awarded a gold, silver or bronze trophy. You can still run people over, but there's really not much point, and in truth this mode doesn't really add anything to the overall game. The option to have police cars chase you as you kill innocent pedestrians would have been nice, but instead we get a half-hearted time trial.



The race courses can be fun the first couple of times you play, and you can also use shortcuts to improve your time, but once you've scored the gold interest starts to wane. Checking out their website, it seems Cryptic Sea have made some fine games, and the emphasis is more on downloadable desktop games than online flash titles. If they were to expand on Blood Car! 2000!, perhaps by adding different lcoations and more options, I'd certainly be tempted to buy it. But first they're going to have to fix those busted physics and give us a little more control over the vehicle. Blood Car! 2000! is not a bad game, but its flaws leave a sour taste in the mouth.

Pimp My Grill

Pimp My Grill is the latest in a long line of what I suppose you could call "Bejeweled clones." The object of the game is always the same - line up three or more of the same coloured jewels and/or symbols in order to remove them from the playing board. To beat each level you must score a required number of points, or in the case of a game like Atlantis Quest retrieve several artifacts from the board. Where Pimp My Grill differs from the largely generic horde of jewel-themed puzzle games is its use of hip hop beats and phrases. The result is a bright, colourful game that looks as good as anything out there and which should appeal to the rap music loving masses. But I don't expect it will hold their attention very long.



The first thing to do is to "Choose yo' dog." I went with Snow Flake because who the fuck am I trying to kid?



Once you've picked your character, we move onto the actual game, where we're presented with the wonderful sight of our "dog's" mouth, filled with diamonds and jewels. Hell, if my mouth had a never ending pile of jewels in it I'd flash that shit too. And so we begin, switching jewels to make those lines of three and filling the Bling-O-Meter. Don't worry, no need to rush - there isn't any time limit. At first I wasn't sure of this, but after leaving the game alone for ten minutes I came back to find everything just as I had left it. It was still playing the same ponderous beat, and no doubt things would have stayed that way if I hadn't gotten on with the job of pimping my homie's grill. Or something.



Eventually you fill up the Bling-O-Meter and you pass the level. You then go back to the mouth and start again.

That's pretty much it. It's the same mouth, the same size playing board and pretty much the same jewels. The only difference is the level number is now 2 where it was once 1.

Now, I've seen this before, most recently in Anchor Ball, and I'm getting pretty tired of it - developers trying to pass off multiple versions of the same level as a whole game. It's not a whole game. It's just Level 1 fifteen times. I played through seven levels of Pimp My Grill and not one was any harder than the last. The only thing to differentiate one level from the other was the occasional addition of a new gem. I think Einstein said it best with the phrase, "That's bullshit."

I suppose I should mention the power-ups, since they're the only other thing worth writing about. Some gems are slightly bigger than others and if you can link them with similar jewels they'll help you out by either removing all the gems of that type or taking away the block of gems around it. On top of that there are added bonuses for links of four jewels:



I don't know what a "power baller" is, and part of me doesn't want to know. Then there's the bonus for a link of five:



I thought the O in "O.G." stood for "Original." You know, "Original Gangsta"? I don't think Dr Dre would appreciate being called old. You try it some time - he'll most likely bitchslap you into next week.



You can always play with the other characters' mouths (that didn't sound gay at all) but you know it's just the same game with a slightly larger or slightly smaller playing board. There aren't words to describe how great an opportunity was lost here to create an original puzzle game in a subgenre of pretenders.

So I'll write about Fancy Pants Adventure: World 2 instead. The internet has waited a long time for this. Building from the phenomonal success of the original, Brad Borne has done it again, creating a platform adventure game that is smart, funny, looks gorgeous and plays like a dream. I was worried at first because I had been playing an early version that didn't feature any music or trophies and which stalled every time I jumped. But the finished product is out now, and I can't recommend it enough. I know I usually slate games in this blog, but I can't really be upset when the new Fancy Pants game is finally online after an age and a half of waiting. Don't play Pimp My Grill, but definitely check out Fancy Pants Adventure: World 2. You won't be disappointed.

Achilles

I feel sort of bad for this game, because when I first saw Achilles I couldn't help but be reminded of Romanius, a swords and sandals action game from about a year ago. This was unfortunate as it had me comparing the two, which wasn't fair. For one thing, Romanius could be challenging, sometimes infuriatingly so, but it looked great, the animation was fluid, and it was a lot of fun. Achilles looks great and that's about it.

As the title would suggest, you play the mythical Greek hero, battling your way singlehandedly through five levels and fifteen stages of soldiers from all over the planet. Strangely, despite the variety of enemies, from your bog standard Greeks to Romans and even Saracens, you fight them all on the same piece of rocky beach, which at least means you can go home every evening after a hard day's hacking and slashing for tea.



Controls are simple, with A and D to move left and right, W to jump, S to defend yourself and the attack buttons are T (slash) and Y (kick.) The controls are also slow to respond, so you could easily be getting sliced up by a barbarian with a bad temper before you manage to leap away. You start off every level with a spear, and as you can see in the previous screenshot, I put it to good use. In fact, throwing the spear at an oncoming bad guy is the only way to make it useful. You would assume that the extra reach advantage would make killing Greeks a doddle, but you'd be wrong.



You face the usual array of swordsmen, spearmen and archers, but the archers are the only ones who give you any real grief in the first two levels. This is because they have the wonderful ability to fire at you from off screen. And because the arrows are usually flying too fast for you to react in time, the result is you've already taken damage before the enemy is even visible. Great. On the bright side, your health bar is refilled before the start of the next level, but if you're already low on health and an archer is taking potshots at you from somewhere off behind a rock that's not going to be much consolation.



To say I was disappointed by the first level boss would be an understatement. First you go through several of his underlings before you face the big bad guy himself. I was so busy concentrating on not getting another arrow in the ass that I failed to notice this was the boss. As he jumped around I thought, "Wow, this guy's a little more difficult than the other spearmen. I hope I have enough health left to defeat the boss." Imagine my surprise when the level ended once I'd rammed my sword down his throat. Since there was nothing to visually differentiate him from the grunts, it felt like something of an empty victory, like I hadn't killed the boss, just the assistant boss, as the big guy himself was on a late holiday with the family in Marbeya.



Another annoying aspect of the enemies was their variable difficulty. While one swordsman could be defeated by a single swing of your blade, the next one that comes along could take four or five hits before going down. This probelm persists throughout the game, with only the speed with which the enemies move making any real difference. Really, that just compounds the problem - get stuck facing two bad guys and you're guaranteed a good arse-kicking, if not death.

I want to take a moment here to write about one of the fundamental rules of side scrolling action games. Like any good rule it can be bent, but the general consensus is if the hero begins a level on the left-hand side of the playing area then their goal, whether it be a checkpoint or a boss, should be on the right. It makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, you would never have seen Sonic the Hedgehog bounce across Green Hill Zone only for him to have to backtrack to find Dr Robotnik. So with this in mind, and with only the Level 2 boss left to defeat, I marched bravely to the right.

And I kept marching, for about three or four minutes. I was starting to get a little pissed off. Where was the boss? Evil and tardy - Jesus! After an age, I decided I would try my chances and move left. Even though it went against the basic rule of side scrollers, even though Achilles can't even face left unless an enemy is there, I walked back to the start. And sure enough, after another minute of walking:



There the fucker was. Suffice to say, I took great pleasure in treating him like a life-size voodoo doll, throwing spears into his neck until he finally fell back and died.



I relished that victory while I could, because after him the bosses become hard as nails, and you are guaranteed to die at least once, no matter what you do. The Level 3 boss kept kicking me in the nuts and then hacking at my neck, handing me my ass in record time. The problem is that you have very few effective attacks. Yeah, you can jump and swing your sword in the air, but you have to time it perfectly, or you just leave yourself open to more punishment. Often dying is the best approach, as you become temporarily invincible after a regeneration. I must admit the regeneration is cool, as a pool of blood collects around your head, only for it to flow back into your body as you leap to your feet.



Quite often the main problem stems from that old friend, hit detection. Once you start meeting a bunch of enemies you'll inevitably end up standing right on top of them (or from the player's perspective, right in front of them.) You end up swinging into air. You can't move, because if you do you'll be open to attack, and the bad guy isn't about to do anything except repeatedly stab in front of him until he hits something. In other words, you're pretty fucked.



To the developers' credit, they don't hold back on the gore. Time a strike just right and you can cleave an enemy's head clean off, watching as it flies through the air. Legs get broken and hacked apart, spears run through eyesockets and blood flows everywhere. Plus leaving a swordsman with a spear through his chest, his limp body perched on the wood, gives you the chance to crack witty one-liners like, "Stick around." Or something.

(Because you see, it's a spear, but it's made of wood, so it could also be a stick. So, "Stick around." Get it?


Fuck you.)



The last boss is this big mofo, and if you don't have three lives at this point, then I'm sorry, you're already dead. This son of a bitch is bigger than you, he's faster and he has more than twice the reach that you do, meaning that you really have to die, just so you can be invincible for a few seconds and do as much damage as possible before you go jumping off and hoping you can get close enough to at least nip him from time to time.

And your reward for finally defeating this monster?



Well, that figures. I've wasted far too much time on this slow, lumbering, infuriating game, and I would ask that you don't make the same mistake I did. If you must play a Greek hero slashing away at baddies, play Romanius. Or if that's too difficult, play its sequel. But if you end up playing the games I review anyway just to see if you agree with my assessment, or if you're thick, then go play Achilles.

Elite Forces: Jungle Strike

Apologies to anyone who logged onto the site on Wednesday, expecting a review. I got called down to Cork for a job interview because I had a moment of total madness and thought it was the only chance I'd ever have of working ever again. But I'm better now. On a totally unrelated note, if you're thinking of buying a funny t-shirt, you could do worse than click on the banner at the top of this page. Yeah, that's right, I advertise during reviews now.

So anyway, now that I'm done shilling offensive t-shirts, I can get on with reviewing Elite Forces: Jungle Strike. Actually, at first I couldn't tell if it was "Jungle Strike" or "Mission Jungle", but either way it's one big unoriginal lame fest. The story behind this platform shoot 'em up is that a small meteorite fell in a jungle somewhere, but apparently it was one of those jungles where various forces spend their merry days eating bananas and killing each other, so there was no investigation into the crashed piece of space rock. Several years later, after the various forces have either killed each other or succumbed to dysentery, weird things start to happen so a team is sent to investigate. Then, and I quote:

"On the way there horrible things occur and only two people survive: a sportswoman who flied to Sochi for the Olympic Games and an elite commando."

Excuse me? This is the most random thing I've read all week. At first I thought it was the mother of all typos, but apparently Sochi is a city in Russia that will be hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. Oh, I see, we're in the future! Got it. There's no real need to, but if you like you can enter your name:



Childish? Yes. But also a good description for what I was about to play - a big bowl of turgid douche.

You can play as the girl, who's name is Kate, or the commando, Thug. I went with Thug, because like him I too am a macho manly man. I also like to think that an elite commando named Thug is a great metaphor for US foreign policy for the last decade. But then I read metaphors for US foreign policy in episodes of Invader Zim.



The controls are nothing to write home about, with the usual WASD group to control movement (I'll soon tell you why you need an Up button in a 2-D game), Space to jump (like a fucking grasshopper) and Shift to fire your rifle. Why anyone would select the Shift key for "fire" in a game like this is beyond me. Mac users may have nothing to worry about, but I'm on a PC, and as anyone who's used a PC will tell you, if you press Shift too many times a dialog box will pop up, asking if you want to to enable Sticky Keys. No, I don't want to enable Sticky Keys, I'm trying to shoot this generic black-clad terrorist.



Wow, I'm impressed. Not by the actual enemy, of course, but by the balls on the developers who figured they'd make a game that looks pretty good and then fill it full of moronic trigger happy ADHD sufferers who run around practically yelling, "Shoot me! Shoot me!" at you. And I would, too, if my Google toolbar would stop popping up at inopportune moments. Jesus, I do not want to enable Sticky Keys!



The guys throwing grenades are the only ones that prove a real challenge. That's because it doesn't matter where you're standing as long as you're within their range. They'll lob a grenade through a steel wall and it will still land right on top of you. And that's a serious flaw, one that I won't let slide - your bullets aren't capable of going through dirt, but the terrorists have some kind of armour piercing round that can run right through anything.



Your goal in each level is to reach the cave, which you enter by pressing that Up button. You can also press Up to dodge bullets, like this is the Matrix, or something. Personally, I find if you're face to face with a bad guy, you should just drop to your knees and blast a few caps in his stomach, especially as they're too stupid to do the same. Strangely, no matter how many times you enter a cave, the next level is just more jungle. One would normally assume that entering a cave means having to walk through it until you reach the other side, the sort of level you find in thousands of shoot 'em ups. But I suppose building something that wasn't jungle would have taken up too much time. And it is Jungle Strike, after all.

So I was waiting for the next level to load, when what should I see but:



It's an advertisement. In the game! They've actually put ads between the levels. And yes, I know it's a mite hypocritical of me to point this out, seeing as how I did the pretty much the same in the first paragraph of this review, but still - advertisements while you're actually playing the game. It's almost as if Blitz Gamer realised just how shitty Elite Forces: Jungle Strike was and resorted to offering slightly better games as some sort of consolation.



Man, you better really like jungles, because that's all you're getting. I just wanted to point out two things. First, you'll occasionally find these toxic barrels that you can blow up for no real reason. Secondly, don't you just love that hero pose Thug strikes when he's not walking or shooting little brown people?



Every now and again you'll come across these transporter-like platforms, and they can drop you in areas of the playing field that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to get to. But this first one just seems to drop you out about five feet away into thin air. I could have jumped out there on my own - why did they feel the need to include a transporter? Was it an attempt to show us what they do? Isn't that what help sections are for? You can play this game in three languages, but they can't even tell you what everything does before you do.



Like any good platformer, Elite Forces: Jungle Strike has ladders, but instead of climbing them (after all, that's what an Up button is for) you have to jump and then you can climb them. Not that you really need to, because you have the leg power of a flea and besides, you're totally defenceless when you're on them.



I could go on, mentioning the translucent mines that mean you have to stare closely at the screen so you don't step on one, or the ninjas(?) that you always seem to miss, or the fact that the colour scheme means everything blends into everything else, but I'd like to think you've heard enough not to bother with this bollocks. After all, why would you want to play this boring, unimaginative, clichéd waste of time when you can play Metal Slug - on the beach?

Sledder!

I spent quite some time yesterday pondering over what game to review for today's post, but it was while visiting some of my usual gaming haunts that I fell upon Sledder! (their exclamation mark, not mine.) I was so instantly taken aback by its overall mediocrity that I felt no other alternative but to rant about it for five minutes on a blog. So I will.

As the name might suggest, downhill sledding plays a big part in Sledder!, but while I've never been sledding myself I can only assume it's far more fun than this game makes it out to be. Controls are as simple as they come, with the left and right arrow keys controlling the direction of the sledder as you watch him speed down a seemingly neverending mountain. Of course things are never that simple, and you have to make your way down the track without colliding into trees.

It doesn't win any awards for originality but it still sounded like a pretty decent game. There are four difficulty levels, ranging from "Easy" to "Insane," and since it was my first time playing I opted for "Easy" in order to get a feel for the game.

So, off I go:



Don't worry, something's coming...



It's just letting the anticipation build. I know we'll hit a big bunch of trees real soon.



Why has the snow turned pink? It looks like someone went out there earlier in the day with a flock of flamingos and a wood chipper.



What in the hell?

It dawned on me fairly quickly that I was not to expect any obstacles of any kind whatsoever, unless you count the lines of trees on either side of the sledder to be obstacles, which they aren't. The end result is that "Easy" should be relabelled "Piss Easy" and the developers should give you 10,000 points just for selecting it.

Indeed, the difficulty levels should be renamed, "Piss Easy", "Still Easy", "Not Much Harder" and "An Actual Challenge" because those are far more accurate. Of course, it doesn't change the fact that regardless of the difficulty very little changes. The track just gets slightly more jagged and have to pay slightly more attention. I was able to let the game run on "Easy" without moving the sledder one inch and I still racked up a decent score.

The endless mountain is remarkably annoying. There's nothing to play for, no checkpoints to reach (as far as I know - you can only play this game for so long before your bordeom has you committing suicide by driving yourself straight into the nearest spruce.) Sure, there is the incentive of scoring as many points as possible, but since you can't see how many you've accumulated until after you've crashed you could wind up feeling disappointed by your final tally.

And why exactly does the snow change colours? I understand, perhaps the developers were worried players would get bored by the same repetitive white background, but the truth is we're bored by the shitty gameplay. I can accept a constantly white screen, it's a sledding game. But I refuse to accept that anybody bar the remarkebly easy to please would find Sledder! enjoyable - and even they'd get bored eventually.

Anchor Ball

A very Happy New Year to all you Flash gamers. I had an excellent Christmas with my girl, but now it's time to buckle down and get back to ruining my day by my own rank stupidity. Today I have done so by playing Anchor Ball.

Now, I've played some weird ass games on the internet, but this one takes the biscuit. Anchor Ball is electronic keepy uppy. In other words, you need to keep the ball in the air for as long as possible, making sure it doesn't hit the ground. It's a pretty common premise and you'll find myriad versions of the game online. But I guarantee you that you won't find any quite like Anchor Ball.

Ask yourself how you would keep that ball in the air. Perhaps kick or head the ball repeatedly? Maybe you'd use some kind of a bat or stick?

If your answer, however, was, "With an anchor," you are most likely an idiot. You are probably also the developer of Anchor Ball.

Oh yeah. You always wondered if anyone would ever find a way to combine the dual pleasures of keepy uppy and swinging large heavy lumps of iron around. Well here we are!



Each of Anchor Ball's five levels have the same goal: hit the ball. Hit the ball with the anchor. Hit it again. And so you run after the ball, swinging the anchor at the right moment to send that black and white sphere blasting through space. And when I say "run" I mean "amble." The ball moves at a regular pace, but your character is slow as fuck. As a result, it's hard to ratchet up an especially impressive score. Guess that's what you get when you play keepy uppy with an anchor.



Notice any similarities between this screenshot and the one before it? That's because it's the same fucking level. Oh, I know it's supposed to be level two, but even Helen Keller could see the only thing that changed was the background. We were in a weird red jungle place; now we're in a forest. Wow. Just... wow.

And it's the same thing for the other three levels. Here you are on a snow-covered landscape:



And now you're in a... I don't know what the fuck this is supposed to be:



And finally you end up outside some... doughnut beach hut?



Were they high when they drew this shit?

Regardless, the change in scenery can't disguise the fact that you're on the same small platform for the entire game. I know there are big holes on either side, but you don't have to worry about them as both you and the ball are stopped by invisible walls. This does, however, leave me asking - how did some skinny little guy manage to jump over those giant gaps with a football and an anchor under his arms?

The developer rather kindly did include a power-up to help you score. If you hit one of the gold coins suspended in the air you'll be rewarded with five points. If you somehow manage to keep the ball up long enough to score ten points, you'll be given the opportunity to use a force field for a limited amount of time, which makes hitting the ball a lot easier.



Of course, I have a gripe here as well, because the shield has to be activated manually, meaning you stand a very good chance of losing your big score and having to start all over again. If it were to start automatically it would be of great benefit, but then getting rid of the fucking anchor you have to carry around and just kicking the damn ball would be helpful too.



I should state at this point that even though the game is split into five separate (though identical) levels, you don't actually have to do anything to reach the next drug-induced fantasy land. You just run around for forty-five seconds before being whisked off to the next bad trip, and in the end your total score is tallied up. To produce a game this boring is one thing, but to give us nothing to play for but the chance to be included on some high score table is pretty ridiculous. I'm sure some people get a kick out of saying "I scored 274 points on Anchor Ball" but I'm not one of them, and quite frankly, if I ever met such a person I'd probably kick him in the knees until he fell down and cried like a little girl.

So that's Anchor Ball. Be sure to log on for my next review, Scud Missile Frisbee.