Achievement Unlocked 2

Plenty of games, from the cheapest Flash programs to the most expensive console titles, have implemented achievements and bonuses as an incentve to keep playing, sometimes long after you've completed the game. This week's good game, Achievement Unlocked 2, takes this concept to its natural result by making a game where the goal is to collect every achievement possible. It's metagaming at its finest as you bounce around numerous levels as a blue elephant intent on gaining every worthless but welcome pat on the back.



The achievements come thick and fast almost from the first go, but there are 250 to collect and they aren't all so easy to pick up. Achievement Unlocked 2 does a great job of expanding on its predeccesor. You're still a flat blue elephant in a large white room, but now you can actually travel to other levels, collecting coins to unlock new areas.

Some parts of the game are downright weird, like the hamster wheel that you have to spin around in and the big button on the roof that lets you flood the floors below. Actually, that last one has a purpose, as there are some spots you can't reach otherwise.



I suppose I'm giving myself an easy week, as there isn't a whole lot to write about. You jump around, you collect coins, you try to avoid and land in spike pits - it's about as straightforward as you can get. There are no enemies, no big bad at the end, no motivation other than to score all of the achievements. But what makes Achievement Unlocked 2 so damn impressive is just how far it's come since the first game, keeping things simple while expanding the title for new and old fans alike. That alone is worth pressing the "Play" button - and yes, you get an achievement for that, too.

Exit Path

All right, I'm starting to get back into the rhythm now, this week reviewing a game that turns the rock all the way up and the suck all the way down. Exit Path is a fun, fast platform game that presents us a tale of a lone individual trying to achieve freedom in a cold, oppressive world.

OK, so it's hardly the most original of concepts, but let's give the game a chance. It sports a very pretty look, with a somewhat stylished, simple layout that's functional while retaining a certain sense of style. True, nothing particularly jumps out at you, but it's a good, consistent look that fits the game's plot.



What really impresses, though, is the gameplay. The animation is fluid and dynamic, with our hero racing through numerous violent death traps in an attempt to escape. What makes things more interesting is the use of the "Flow," a meter that allows you to move at supersonic speeds for a small amount of time. Used effectively, the flow can shave seconds off your time. But if you don't watch your step, you could end up meeting the business end of a flying axe, which makes the game much more frenetic.



Don't worry if you do end up tasting a laser beam or getting crushed by a spiked platform. There are checkpoints on every level to save you the trouble of going through the same obstacles again and again. Plus, like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, death in Exit Path results in time reversing to the last time you weren't being mangled by a giant circular saw. It's a nice little touch and, while we wouldn't miss it if it wasn't there, it's a good example of the effort put into making a high quality game.



Completing levels and collecting caution signs opens up a bunch of options for customising your character, including everything from paper bags to bunny ears. But if you want more, or if you're just tired of the single player game, Exit Path contains a sweet multiplayer option that lets you face off against four others in a race through a number of unique levels. I'm not really one for multiplayer games, what with my general misanthropy, but Exit Path makes it so simple that it's not surprising to lose a lot of time trying to outdo others in a series of high speed contests.



All in all, Exit Path may feature plenty of things we've already seen before, but it's a finely crafted game that offers plenty of entertainment. If you're looking for thrills and speeds through a technological wasteland that seeks only to eviscerate you, then Exit path is the game for you.

Oil Spill Cleaner

Here I am once again, finally slipping back into my regular schedule after starting a work placement a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, I'm ready to write a review this week. So, is it good game or bad?

Oh.

Well, that's depressing. And with that in mind, I decided to subject myself to a game based on the most depressing news story of the last month, that of the unending oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Yep, Oil Spill Cleaner is a light-hearted (at least, I think it is) little arcade game that I think was trying to transmit an environmentalist message but that got too caught up in upsetting people deeply. Crude oil is flowing into the Gulf at an alarming rate and, in a move that will surprise no one who watched the response to Hurricane Katrina, you and you alone have been given the job of cleaning it up.



Your little boat is equipped with a vacuum designed to scoop the oil out of the water and you work eight hour shifts, between which you can buy upgrades. Above all, you have to stop the oil from reaching the Louisiana coastline, where it will destroy the natural habitat of the animals there and result in those photos of oil-covered seagulls that make my fiancée cry. I will say that Oil Spill Cleaner plays pretty well, but it's no more complicated than having the boat follow your mouse pointer around the screen. It isn't exactly pretty, either. Maybe games that look like they belong on an Atari 2600 are in vogue right now, but in my view the retro thing should be done lightly. At the very least, upgrade your graphics to Commodore 64 level, guys!



The ship upgrades are all effective, I suppose, but what annoys me is how one can't skip an upgrade level, even if you've got the cash. You've got to buy each upgrade in its correct order, which sounds like a waste of money to me (but then, I'm not a government official or the vice-president of a multinational corporation, so what do I know?) What really grinds my gears is that, with every level, the oil spill naturally gets faster. So all you're really doing is keeping pace with the oil. You never really get an advantage over it - in fact, it's pretty depressing to clear up a section of water just to see it turn black again almost instantaneously.



In the end, sometimes you just have to approach the oil in the same manner any self-respecting D & D gamer approaches trolls and kill it with fire. This is actually a lot of fun, but it costs you 10,000 points a shot, so know when to use it - usually when you reach the point of total boredom.



Yes, that would be Oil Spill Cleaner's biggest flaw: for all of the frenetic bouncing back and forth, scooping up crude oil to help save the turtles, the game is remarkably dull. Every level is simply the same slog for 96 seconds, just a little faster. And as the game goes on, you start to understand how those dealing with the real oil spill must feel when they watch millions of gallons of black death seep into the ocean. You never, ever get ahead of the spill and you'll never, ever finish cleaning it up. It's only inevitable that oil will hit the coastline and then you'll have to focus on cleaning that mess up, too. I don't know if this game was supposed to educate or entertain, but it did neither. All it did was make me flail angrily and curse the folly of man. I'm pretty sure video games shouldn't do that.

Destructo Truck

So here I am, lucky enough to have a few pretty darn good games over the last few days, and thinking about which one I should review for this week's Big Mean Flash Gamer. Tough call, really; adventure, action, puzzles - I've played a pretty wide variety this past week and been thoroughly entertained.

But only one of those games allows me to drive a lorry down a ramp and crash it into a never ending line of buildings. That game is Destructo Truck.



Destructo Truck gets points immediately because it reminds me of the always wonderful Indestructo Tank series. But while those games have you driving along, merrily smashing into enemy aircraft and vehicles, Destructo Truck eschews any meaningful narrative or in-depth character development and instead focuses on building bashing goodness. It's a bit like when Michael Bay told the screenwriters of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen to remove anything that slowed down the pace or gave a hint of character development. Except Revenge of the Fallen was shite and Destructo Truck rocks your socks off.



Still, I expect Mikey boy would appreciate this game. It taps into something that I believe all men have, which is the innate desire to burn things and jump on stuff. All that Destructo Truck asks of you is that you drive as fast as possible down a long ramp, sail off the end and then sit back as your truck barrels through building after building, creating the longest "Smash Streak" possible to access power-ups and bonuses. With the salvage from destroyed buildings you can purchase upgrades for your truck, even redesiging the chassis and body of the vehicle.



That's really all there is to it. In that regard, Destructo Truck probably doesn't have a lot of replay value. But there's something deeply satisfying - even cathartic - about watching a bright yellow truck smash its way through 57 buildings and businesses before rolling slowly to a stop. It's the same reason a game like Burnout is so popular: all the thrill of a grinding car crash straight out a Bourne movie but without the annoyance of serious injury or insurance claims.



Controls are simple - the right arrow to accelerate and the Space bar for everything else. Upgrade rockets, your engine etc. and watch the truck roll trough buildings like they were made of paper. Can't get much better than that! The graphics are exceedlingly simple, but then nobody's playing this for its remarkable visuals. Everything does the job just fine, so while it doesn't win any awards for innovation, one can't fault Destructo Truck for focusing simply on getting the fundamentals right.



Destructo Truck is big, dumb and lots of fun, so it gets a thumbs up for that. It cares little for your serious Earth, revelling instead in a ridiculous concept. and can't help but entertain.

Human Centipede: The Game

No. No, no, no, no, no. No. Sorry, but no.

I refuse. I refuse to accept this. My eyes are sending me messages but my brain is flat out ignoring them completely. This isn't happening. Jesus, if you're reading this, please come convince me that this isn't happening.

No one would have done this. No one is such a sadist nor such a masochist that they would do this, and certainly not take any kind of pride in this. So, no. This isn't real. There can not possibly be a Human Centipede game.



Oh, God damn it, there is! Why!? WHY!? What kind of monster would do this to the human race? For those fortunate few who have no idea what Human Centipede is, I will try to explain in ways that don't lose you IQ points. Human Centipede is a film about a mad German doctor who decides to create - yes - a human centipede by sewing people together in a messed up conga line, sewn anus to mouth.

There's a trailer; I'm not linking to it. I want you to stop for a moment and consider that someone out there sat down and wrote a script called Human Centipede. That writer then sold that script to a producer who clearly sat back and said, "You know what? I'm gonna take a chance on that centipede film." A director was hired, a director who was serious about working on a film about people who get their mouths sewn to someone else's ass. A cast was brought together, a crew filmed it, it was edited and then released to the world. And now there's a game. A game based on Human Centipede.

My God.



Thankfully, the game differs slightly from the movie. You play the doctor and unfortunately your creations have turned against you. Who knew that if you forced people to survive on the waste of someone else for the rest of their miserable lives, they would get upset? Anyway, it's time to grab a gun and get shooting before your mockery against nature comes back to kill you. All the while you'll need to avoid police officers as well as cars and other items that fall down the screen towards you.

I get the 8-bit look that they're going for, but the bare game screen doesn't do much to capture one's attention. I guess the image of people crawlling down the screen like a deleted scene from the movie Freaks was arresting enough. All the same, there isn't much to say about how the game looks.



There's even less to say about how it plays, either. The controls for Human Centipede are functional but the gameplay is flawed. Firing is especially problematic; you usually have to wait until a shot has hit a target or disappeared before you can fire another. There's not rapidfire options here, which makes the game a far more difficult prospect. The enemies continue to move faster and faster while you remain at the same speed. There's nothing wrong with a challenge, I know, but this gets very frustrating once you get past Level 4.



Maybe I'm being unfair, as I was going to be biased against this game from the moment I first read the title. But you know what? It's Human Centipede - what other reaction was I supposed to have!? This is a crap game based on an offensive film - not offensive in that I'm disgusted by the concept (though I am) but offensive in that this piece of crap got made while I'm still trying to get producers to pay any attention to me! Human Centipede is everything that's wrong with film, the movie business and the human race. Human Centipede: The Game is like a spit in the face after being kicked in the balls.

Ninjack

I took an impromptu two week break from Big Mean Flash Gamer, but I'm... happy to announce I have returned. And no, I won't be ducking out of the crappy game I should have given you two weeks ago. However, I refuse to give it any more time than I already have, so let's crank this review out in record time as I take a gander at Ninjack.

Or is it NinJack? Jesus, what a pun. Rodney Dangerfield would have turned his nose up at that turd. I can only assume the title comes from the main character's name being Jack and the fact that he's a ninja, though he looks more like a Street Fighter cosplayer from where I'm sitting. The game is a traditional arcade platform affair, with our hero facing off against enemies while trying to gather gold and treasure. Pretty solid concept, but pretty lame realisation.



My problems began almost immediately with that title music. I appreciate going for the old school, retro feel, but good God, that theme is annoying! All the more reason to press the Play button, I guess. You're thrown right into the thick of it almost immediately when some flying ghost thing shoots a blue fireball at you. That's all good, no point wasting time. You have the power to fight back, of course, using the Space bar and directional keys for a variety of attacks. And herein lies our next problem: Ninjack can't fight for shit.

The controls just end up being more complicated than you'd first imagine. You have to hold down the Space bar before pressing one of the directional keys, meaning you can't move and attack. Having to stand there and hope for the best would be OK if almost all your opponents had highly effective ranged attacks. While you have to get close enough to do any damage, then stand absolutely still before striking, these assholes can hurt you from the other side of the screen.

Oh, you've got throwing stars - a whole three. After numerous embarrassing deaths I finally realised that the best strategy is to avoid confrontation whenever possible. Yes, in the arcade game that sees you play a human killing machine, the best way to survive is to run away at every opportunity.



The overall design of the game is packed with flaws. Jumping in tight corners is one of the most frustrating parts of the whole thing - if you don't leap off a ledge at exactly the right spot, you can often find yourself falling back to the platform below you. In Level 2 I came across a phantom platform. Yeah, it looked like it was there, but as soon as I tried to jump on it I sank through the son of a bitch. And to top it all off, the game loves to toss little power-ups and bonuses in places where you have no way of reaching them. A refill for my precious throwing stars sat on a ledge just out of jumping distance, mocking me. Considering neither your health nor your weapons reset between levels, you really need these bonuses.

It all looks pretty, but then people say the same thing about Tila Tequila and she's still a useless waste of organs. By the time you finally figure out the controls, you've already reached the point of not caring. But that's OK - the game's developers clearly reached that point long ago.



Case in point: the third and final level sees you wandering in circles before finally reaching the exit point. Once you've done it, the game... goes immediately back to the title sequence.

That's it? No victory screen? Not even a "You win!"? No, you managed to complete the game and nobody, not even the people who made it, gives a damn. Well, gee, thanks Ninjack. That totally doesn't want to make me toss my computer out the window in anger!

Ninjack is a shoddy, frustrating, pointless little game, its only positive being that it's mercifully short and easily forgettable.

Ghost Guidance

I want to spend this week looking at a game that I feel has a ton of potential to be a truly great title in the future, but which manages to be pretty entertaining even now. Coming to us from Arcade Bomb, Ghost Guidance provides old school side-scrolling action with an interesting twist on the typical Artificial Intelligence character. Rather than playing a lone warrior trying to tackle an evil supercomputer, this time you are the supercomputer, or at least some kind of self-aware energy orb. Realising that humans are the biggest threat to your continued existence, but that wiping out the entire human race is impractical, you instead decide to escape by taking possession of a rocket ship and hauling ass out of the secret government lab that birthed you.



This is one of the intriguing elements of Ghost Guidance: the ability to jump from one ship to another (as long as it doesn't have some kind of forcefield around it) means you can play in several different ways, utilising each craft's strengths and weaknesses. Effort has been made to really ensure the different vehicles actually feel like different vehicles. The smallest craft are faster and have a higher rate of fire but can be destroyed with a single hit, while tank-like flyers shoot rockets that fly off in all directions. It's possible to play through an entire game using just one kind of ship but finding out what everything does is one of the pleasures of playing.



The game plays and looks really swell, though complaints of lag are justified in Challenge Mode. Still, with a huge number of ships, projectiles and explosions on screen at any one time, it's remarkable that slow down in gameplay was so rare in my experience. When you've got dozens of aircraft whizzing across the screen, it's satisfying to see it all look so damn good.

The old-school feel under a fresh paint job means Ghost Guidance should be popular with older and younger gamers alike. It keeps things simple and is all the better for it. My biggest complaint, however, is that the game is just too short.



There are only three levels overall, with checkpoints in all three so that you don't have to repeat a whole level should you die. That's all well and good, but the levels are hardly long enough to justify checkpoints, anyway. If the game was longer then this would make sense. As it stands, though, the whole thing is over in less than ten minutes. Great for coffee breaks, but not so great if you're looking for something with a lot of replay value.

Another issue is the ease with which the bosses can be defeated. Sure, they're big and you have to avoid falling debris as they break apart, but more often than not there's a single spot where you can stay and fire continuously at the boss without fear of being killed. For gamers who enjoy a real challenge and like the sense of accomplishment that comes with defeating a boss, this would be a major letdown.



Still, I can see great potential in Ghost Guidance. Many times I deride a game for its compelling concept but wasted opportunities. Ghost Guidance has a similar, though less extreme, problem. It embraces some of its innovations and unique elements but doesn't go quite far enough. Hopefully a sequel is imminent - something greater in scope and longer in duration, but still featuring the excellent tweaks that make the original a small pleasure.

Sushi Cat

I don't know what it is about the Japanese and extreme weight gain. I mean, I know compared to some of the things you find in Japanese media, that's pretty damn vanilla, but it's still kind of weird. Ironically, becoming ridiculously fat is the goal of this week's good game, Sushi Cat. A product of Armor Games, who rarely put a foot wrong when it comes to their titles, it's a Flash version of Plinko with the disc replaced by a gelatinous blue cat. This is not as terrifying as it sounds.

Said cat is trying to meet the tabby of his dreams, but through several twists of fate he can never seem to reach her. His solution is to become incredibly fat. No, I don't know what the thought process is there, but it is a cat, so naturally we're not going to understand everything he does. Actually, there are real reasons as to why he attempts to grow bigger, but I just find it more humorous if you think the cat's just weird and his would-be girlfriend is a feeder.



The game is composed of fifteen levels; in which one you must eat thirty pieces of sushi to continue to the next. This is done by deciding a place to drop your cat and releasing him with a click of the left mouse button. Down he tumbles, bouncing off platforms and nomming his way through many a piece of raw fish. I am always amazed at how fattening sushi is in these games. I can only assume it's based on reality, though I always thought fish was a pretty low fat dish. Still, there are other elements that might contribute to the high calorie count...

Big Mean Flash Gamer - where pointless tangents equal good copy.



It must be said that Sushi Cat looks very, very pretty. The levels are grouped together into three separate zones and each zone has a distinctive look. They also have bonuses and obstacles specific to their zone, helping to deflect accusations of repetition and giving the player a real sense of progress.

The cut scenes are also wonderfully rendered and tell a charming tale that starts out cute but actually becomes slightly disconcerting by the end. When the cat loses sight of his love, it's kind of strange that his reaction is to try collecting lots of dolls that look like her. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but... no, wait, that is what I'm saying. That's kind of creepy, Sushi Cat.



Of course, good looks don't mean squat without good gameplay, and here Sushi Cat acquits itself well. This is a game that's easy to learn but hard to master, and especially around the halfway mark there are a couple of levels that might prove difficult. But, in all honesty, this isn't a hard game to beat. If you've got fifteen or twenty minutes you shouldn't have too much trouble completing it. Fortunately there's enough to hold your attention for that long - in the latter levels, certainly, watching your tubby kitty get squeezed, stretched and bounced around is amusing. It's also pretty crazy to watch just how fat this cat can get. I mean, this is one cat who needs to run his ass around the block a few times.



A combination of cute and creepy, then, Sushi Cat tells us that it's OK to become morbidly obese for the one you love. I'm not really sure if that's a message we should be telling our children, but at least the game is fun. If you're a fan of Japanese cuisine, Plinko or Tarepanda, you might be a fan of Sushi Cat.

Go Go Diet

As some of you may know, my Big Mean Flash Gamer reviews are also available on the Way of The Geek website. A few months back, while I was celebrating 100 reviews here, I posted a special WoTG exclusive review for a woeful game called Mall Flirting. The game was technically sound, but the concept - run around a mall firing lightning bolts at boys to make them fall in love with you - was so repugnant that nothing could salvage the game in my eyes. (Incidentally, I recently came across the Japanese version of Mall Flirting, which is even more messed up, as you actually kill the boys and have their ghosts mindlessly follow you through a school.)

To make a long story even longer, fellow Geek scribe Devin de Gruyl mentioned finding another game on the girlsgames123.com website called Go Go Diet. Running this way from the Far East, it proves to be just as offensive as Mall Flirting ever was. I was reminded about it today by my fiancée, and since it's a quiet enough week for crappy games, I thought it was time to go back and call out this piece of garbage.



Go Go Diet puts you in the running shoes of a cute little girl on a treadmill. By tapping the left and right arrow keys you can make the girl run, and the goal is to stay on the treadmill for as long as possible. Nothing too worrying about that, right?

Well, the problem begins when sushi and Coke starts rolling down the treadmill towards you. You have to avoid the food at all costs, and apparently sushi is ridiculously fattening, because if the little girl ends up eating just one piece, her body weight seemingly doubles.



I can imagine a meeting between the developers probably went something like this...

Programmer #1: "So, what sort of game should we make now?"
Programmer #2: "How about something that preys on female insecurities about weight and body shape, and market it towards young girls?"
Programmer #1: "Sounds great! Man, I love being evil!"

Let's not beat around the bush here - you have to be a real asshole to make a game like this. Seriously, just a total dick. The type of guy who kicks puppies or tells women he loves them just so they'll have short, unsatisfying sex with him before he never calls them again. That guy apparently now knows Flash and is using it to make even more women feel bad about themselves.

Wonderful.



There's hope for fat chicks, though! All they've got to do is wolf down some magic weight loss medicine from a cute blue bottle! Because, you know, why stop at making young girls feel fat when you can also push the idea of diet pills and other garbage on them? I mean, if you're going to tear down their confidence, you might as well go all the way and make them mindless consumers of useless drugs that make them poop fat.



I'm really not sure what the goal of this game is. If you're trying to bring attention to childhood obesity, this is a pretty ham fisted way to do so. If the idea is to get more girls exercising, there has to be a more effective message than, "Exercise and never eat, or you'll get faaaaaaaat!!" And to be quite honest, the game isn't even all that well-made. The alternating button mashing I can deal with, but then you have to worry about moving up and down across the treadmill too, and as you play for longer more and more food comes tumbling towards you. It reaches a point where you have no choice but to take a hit and eat some food, leaving yourself open to the derogatory prodding of the mean girls at school.

All the cute artwork might appeal to little girls but it's just vomit-inducing to the rest of us. And the fact that the sweet outer shell contains such a potentially harmful message just makes it worse.



This game is just awful; there isn't a damn thing about it that I could recommend. The message it conveys can only damage the self-image of any young girl, and it lacks any interesting gameplay elements. Its only saving grace is that it's very small, less than 1.5MB of memory. But that's 1.5MB that could have gone to a game that wasn't a shallow, pointless borefest.

Canabalt

Hold up on the hate mail for a second; allow me to explain. I know my schedule is fairly erratic, but I didn't plan on posting this week's review so late in the evening. Oh no, I intended to get this thing written up nice and early so I could spend the rest of the evening playing Psychonauts and wondering what the hell happened to my life. Unfortunately Fate intervened to prevent my fun-filled night of telekinesis and self-loathing.

As I've mentioned before, I never do any research prior to my weekly Wednesday post. I mean, I write a blog - research would be anathema to the entire process. So what usually happens is I surf a few of my favourite Flash game sites, find a really bad game, and then write up a quick little rant. This method has worked for almost two years now, and I've never seen reason to change it. Except maybe now, because I've just spent the last four hours searching for a shitty game and I've come up with nothing. Nada. Zilch.

Sure, I've found some bad games, but nothing worth a post. And I did find one God awful game, but it's four years old so I've got to give it the benefit of the doubt. But a contemporary, terrible Flash game? Maybe I've just been too nice this week, but nothing jumped out and truly disappointed me. So, I did what any online writer with a dearth of material would do - I said, "Fuck it" and did something else.

So yes, this is one of those rare occasions in Big Mean Flash Gamer where I actually get to enjoy myself. For you see, dear readers, this last week I fell in love with a game called Canabalt.



If I told you that Canabalt has been made in five days, you might be a little wary. That's a remarkably short amount of time, unless the game you're producing is a pile of crap. However, with a talent like Adam "Atomic" Saltsman at the helm, using his own Flixel software, Canabalt is a wonderful game.

The secret is in its simplicity. You play a little black and white figure who races across the rooftops of a crumbling city, trying to avoid pitfalls and obstacles thrown in your way. The longer you run, the greater your speed, pushing your concentration and reflexes to the limit.



Canabalt endears itself to you almost immediately, from the first satisfying leap through a window, shards of glass scattering through the air. Rendered in a solid eight-bit style, this is classic one button gaming. All you have to do is press the jump button; the sprite does all the rest. Sometimes that's all you need, and when most people play these games as a distraction from work, it's nice to have a game that doesn't feel like a chore to play.



It's probably a bit hypocritical of me to like such a minimalist game, especially when I've denigrated other titles for not giving players some kind of plot or context. Canabalt doesn't bother to do it either, but it's so addictive that you hardly notice and you care even less. I have a feeling, however, that Saltsman had a story all laid out for this, one he had to remove at the last second for fear of a lawsuit:

Manhattan, 2059. Having faked his death fifty years before, Michael Jackson is finally woken from cryogenic suspension. Doctors have reconstructed his face, giving him the opportunity to now live out the rest of his days in peaceful anonymity. Unfortunately, robot Glenn Beck's 9/12 Destructobots have launched their full-scale assault on the New York liberal elite. Then the call comes through. It's Tito. The Shah of Kuwait wants the Jackson 5 to perform at his daughter's birthday. Tito really needs this gig, man.

Michael must run.



Naturally, there are all sorts of nasty objects in your way. Most of these are just boxes, designed to slow you down, which makes long jumps more difficult. There are also crumbling buildings that collapse under you as you run across them, but for my money the most difficult obstacle is the giant mangling machine that drops out of the sky when you least expect it. These things will turn you into a fine mist before you know what hit you, so make sure to keep your finger on the button.

In truth, though, you'll more often than not die because you mistimed a jump. Whether it's overshooting a small building, misjudging a wide gap or just missing a window, your little guy will usually end up falling to his doom.



I suppose I should point out some faults, since that is the whole point of Big Mean Flash Gamer. And indeed, Canabalt isn't perfect. A lot of players have commented that they'd like to see a high score table, and while I'm not too worried about how I measure up to the mutant super players who tend to post record-breaking scores, it would be nice if it recorded your best runs for posterity. I've also found problems when it comes to loading Canabalt; if you have a slow connection you might be waiting for a while. I have to suspect, however, that this had less to do with the game itself and more to do with my wireless internet connection, which can go on the fritz if the wind is blowing the wrong way.

The greyscale landscape is pretty to look at for a while, and fits in with the stripped-back feel of the game, but as the screen shakes and things begin to blur it can start to wear on the eyes. Of course, this might only be a problem because I can't stop playing the bloody game.



But searching for reasons not to like this game would be like searching for a happy goth. What strikes me most about Canabalt are the little touches that you probably wouldn't miss but which just make the game feel more well-rounded and complete. Flocks of birds fly from rooftops as you land; the sprite grunts as he jumps, runs and rolls; and even the sound of his footsteps change depending on the surface he's running across. There's also a brilliant theme that has a great retro feel but that never gets annoying.



I know that people expect me to rant and rave about crappy games - why else would you be here? (Unless you're my fiancée - hi, honey.) But hey, sometimes I play good games, too, and Canabalt has taken up a lot more of my time this past week than any online title should. I wholeheartedly endorse this game, and if even a grumpy son of a bitch like me can enjoy it, you know it must be good.

I promise to return to reviewing garbage next week. But for now, let's make one more daring escape from Tito.