The Robbers

Oh God. I hate this. I hate this whole thing. I hate reviewing these awful, awful games, even it is down to once a fortnight. I can't believe there was a time when I did this twice a week. What was I thinking? See, the "bad game" reviews are always posted so late because I just can't bring myself to actually write about these monstrosities. Every word is like an ice pick through the temple. It inspires nothing but pure, unadulterated rage and depression, and that usually gets directed straight at the source of my anger. This week, that would be The Robbers.



Oh Jesus, how I hate this game. Hate it with the fiery intensity of a million suns! What an ugly, awkward, frustrating game this is. It makes one wish they suddenly lost all five senses so none of them would be sullied by this terrible game. Yes, even the sense of smell, such is the horrendous stink of The Robbers.

Why is it so bad? Look, can you just take my word for it this one time and save me the hassle of writing another 500 words on the subject? No, of course you can't, because anyone who reads this on a weekly basis is a sadist and I am your bitch. OK, where to begin. First of all, it's a puzzle game that wants to be a platformer that wants to be... I don't know, Kitten Cannon. You've got three robbers, and each of them has a skill. One can climb walls, one bounces off walls and one can push things. None of that sounds the least bit impressive, but you don't need a PhD in theoretical physics to smash in a window.



And by God, does this game look ugly! They were probably going for something gritty, urban, stylised. They ended up with garbage. Are the robbers even human? I can't tell. The big one looks like some kind of ape creature. You've got a limited amount of time to reach a big jewel and you move the characters around by clicking and dragging the mouse. In a miniature golf sim, that works fine. In anything else it's slow and annoying. In The Robbers it's so frustrating that it makes me want to chew a pigeon. Jesus, that last sentence doesn't even make sense! Why would anyone do that!? This game is driving me insane!



Half the levels aren't even possible! I should have known exactly what I was getting myself into when I was trying to get bouncy boy past a rotating platform. Nine times out of ten it can't be done. No matter how strongly you throw the characters they don't jump for squat. When this guy hits a wall he goes frickin' crazy, bouncing off every available surface. But you've still got to get him over this platform and he just doesn't move fast enough to do. If you could jump again in mid air things would be much easier, but you can't do that either. Even if you manage to land on the platform, you'll never jump off it fast enough to keep from slipping back down to the ground. It's a good thing the first eight levels are unlocked from the start or I wouldn't have seen any more of the game.

Wait, that's not a good thing at all!



Most of the time all you can do is set the power to maximum and pray for a miracle because God knows there is no way the average human gamer could figure out a real strategy for success. Half the time the puzzles are just completely moronic, anyway, like the level that sees the big guy Brute overcome obstacles by jumping up again and again and again. Or how about the climber trying to reach a jewel as one of the walls closes in? The wall moves so fast that you can't possibly reach the jewel in time, and even if it didn't get caught behind the wall you're not able to climb up there anyway. You'd think if the walls were closer together it would make jumping from one to the other easier, but apparently The Robbers is set in Crazy Cuckoo Land, where common sense doesn't exist!

To hell with this game! Let it burn in the pits of Hades for all eternity! Oh God... God, this game is awful!

Mobster Roulette 2

Apologies for the late edition, folks, but I'm catching up on work and here with a scrappy, crappy game for your perusal (or rather, dismissal.) Coming hot on the heels of its predecessor, Mobster Roulette 2 is that most idiosyncratic of things, a strategy game with no strategy - or fun, for that matter.

It seems you lost $30,000 in a crooked card game and now you've got 24 hours (well, 2400 seconds) to pay it back to the gangsters you borrowed it from. Sounds like hard work, doesn't it? Well, it is, made all the harder by the minimal methods by which you can raise the cash. Mobster Roulette 2 is composed of several mini-games, none of which have had a lot of thought or effort put into them.

The simplest way to guarantee some money is by smuggling weapons across the border, which pays a cool $1,000. The game itself is simple enough: drive your car down a perfectly straight piece of highway, avoiding road signs and oil slicks as well as the cops, and reach the border before time runs out or the vehicle suffers too much damage. As far as driving games go, it's not the worst but I've seen far better, and winning isn't all that difficult. You could easily raise $30,000 just by doing this over and over again, but that would get as monotonous as it sounds, so let's see how else we could make some dough.

Ah yes, gambling - because that's worked so well for us so far. Again, there's nothing mind-blowing about these games. The blackjack game is straightforward and technically fine. It's a perfectly acceptable and adequate mini-game. But I could play far more interesting versions of blackjack online and not have to worry about some time limit coming down on me. Mobster Slots has the same issue - it isn't a bad game, just not a great one either. To be honest I've never seen the appeal of slot machine games online, unless you're working for some kind of reward, so there wasn't much motivation to keep on playing.

Strangely, I had my best success on the roulette table. I was able to guess correctly most of the time and tended to go with safe bets rather than pick a specific number, so I won a pretty penny. I suppose it makes sense that a game called Mobster Roulette 2 would feature a pretty decent roulette game. Perhaps if they'd focused on that instead of a bunch of lame mini-games, it would have made for a better final product. As it is, the roulette is simply good. But whoever runs this casino may want to read up on child labour laws, because the person in charge of the table sounded a lot like a little girl.

There's one other method of raising cash that I can't help but feel was added in the vain hope of causing a little controversy. If you get tired of running guns to Mexico and losing cash at the blackjack table (and you will), you can always grab your gun and just start shooting people on the street. There aren't any consequences for doing it, so grab a 12-gauge and blow 'em away! It's a bit gratuitous, all things considered, and you never earn more than nine or ten dollars per person. As a way of breaking up the tedium, however, it's great.

On the off chance you actually have some spare money, you can spend it sprucing up your home, which is looking remarkably bare; I guess borrowing from the Mob really was the last resort. Why you'd do this and what it has to do with the main plot of the game, I have no idea, but I'm guessing it awards you bonus points at the end. Regardless, it's just an unappealing garnish on a meal that didn't look very good to begin with.

In fact, nothing in Mobster Roulette 2 is very appealing. It's a game that looks and plays in a very workmanlike fashion. It's almost as if the developer released a beta, having not yet added the final touches to make the game more interesting. As it stands I just couldn't be bothered spending forty minutes to find out how it might end. There isn't enough to hold your attention for forty seconds, if I'm completely honest. Mobster Roulette 2 is a functional, acceptable game that holds little appeal and less staying power. In terms of gangster games, this one barely ranks as a common hood.

Axis of Evil

Although I'm a pinko Commie liberal scumbag in my day-to-day life, I do enjoy turning to the dark side on occasion. I can still remember playing Dungeon Keeper in my teens, siding with the bad guys in Command & Conquer, and in more recent times exploiting the capitalist system in the wonderful Oiligarchy. But why are these games so popular? Well, d'uh! They're fun! Sure, doing good to your fellow man is important, and everything, but sometimes you just want to let your inner bastard out to play.

That's why I had such high hopes for Axis of Evil, a game that allows you to be an evil dictator hell bent on becoming a nuclear power. Of course, it wouldn't be in this week's Big Mean Flash Gamer if it was any good, and its rating on Addicting Games told me as much before I even clicked the Play button. But since I'm a glutton for punishment, I had to give it a shot.



The first job is to name and design your dictator. Here's my guy, Gregory McAsshat; although he is a prick, he does have a bitchin' beard and pipe combo going on, so it's hard not to give him some kudos.

The next decision is to choose what region you want your dictatorship to be a part of. There are three choices of varying difficulty, each area described by a man who sounds almost exactly like Eugene Hutz, lead singer of gypsy punks Gogol Bordello. This was the best thing about the game, other than the ability to name your character McAsshat. I decided to go with the easiest region, which is the Far East.



So we get on with the game proper, and before doing anything else I'm asked if I want to set up a statue to commemorate my victory in the entirely fair elections. Well, sure, why not? I suppose it isn't such a hot idea, because every time you build something it reduces your support among the people. I don't think it's actually building stuff that gets them down, but rather what you build. Hospitals and schools would be a good choice, but in Axis of Evil the emphasis is on firepower, and lots of it.



You're going to need it, too, because you start getting attacked almost immediately. I don't know who these guys are, but since I haven't bombed any neighbouring countries I can only assume they're rebels. There's some crap about managing resources and setting a price for them on the world market to raise funds, but really the most important thing is killing anyone who tries to get close to your city. So I guess this is some kind of war game, right? Well, I sure hope not, because if it is, then it's one of the worst war games I've ever played.



For one thing, you're only allowed a certain number of units, whether it be infantry or tanks. And while I can understand only having what you can afford, I'd like to know why the hell I can't build as many tanks as I want? Aren't I the Dear Leader of this nation? Gregory McAsshat will not stand for this slur on his honour!

But then, it might not be a bad idea to limit the troops, since so many of them are dumb as posts. Both your units and the enemy can only travel along roads (you know, like armies in real life) and your boys will travel up and down the same road until you tell them to go somewhere else. What makes this so frustrating is when three or four enemy soldiers march towards your capital city and your entire army is on the other side of the God damn country.



What the hell are those assholes doing!? I've got rebels and other nations knocking down my door, and my tank units are trundling around like they're in Canada! I'm trying to build a WMD over here!



If your popularity dips below 15% NATO start carpet bombing the country, as if I didn't have enough problems already. And just so we're clear, all this happened in less than five minutes. I had no idea what was going on until it already happened. I felt less like a dictator and more like a child king, with no control over anything. Which is ridiculous, because there are basically only three things to control.



Like all great dictators (with the exception of the smug bastards who died in exile, sipping tea with prime ministers before suffering dementia and dying in their sleep) I ended my reign of terror hanging from a lamp post. My dictatorship lasted three and a half minutes. Hoo-rah.

Axis of Evil has plenty of flash but there's absolutely nothing underneath. What strategy you can find is minimal at best. It reminds me a lot of a bad tower defence game, as all you're really trying to do is stop enemies from reaching your city. I'd expect a game like this to involve international relations, balancing your budget, quelling dissent, forming alliances - all the stuff world leaders do. But instead all we have is a poor man's war game with infuriating controls and a difficulty curve that's practically a cliff face. Definitely one to avoid.

Shopping Street

Man, I've been waiting all week to review this game.



You know, what with the economy being so far down the crapper, now more than ever we have to amuse ourselves without breaking the bank (any more than it already is.) That's when we really see the value of the millions of Flash games available to play for free online. Hours of entertainment are at our finger tips, waiting for us along the Information Superhighway. And because the economy will eventually start to recover (right?) it makes perfect sense to check out a game that might help us develop our own business savvy so that we don't find ourselves in this situation again. With that in mind, let's take a look at Shopping Street.



I want to make one thing clear - I knew this wasn't going to be a good game before I ever saw the title screen. I can't really put my finger on why, but if you do click the link above and check out Shopping Street, maybe you too will feel a little weirded out by the Flonga robot as it glides silently into the centre of the screen and stares at you with its beady green eyes. In fact, there's no music or any sound whatsoever until you press the start button and are presented with the level select screen. The goal is to build a shopping empire, starting from a simple mom 'n' pop business and eventually reaching the heights of Manhattan. Every level requires that you earn a certain amount within a fixed period of time to carry on to the next stage. I played through the whole game, amazingly, so I'm going to go right to the final New York level for the rest of this review.



I'm doing that because at no time does anything in Shopping Street change - not the background, nor the colour scheme, nor any of the shops you can build - so by going straight to the last level I can show you everything without boring with you with how I got there.

And believe me, you'd be bored. I was, and I was playing the damn game. Not even Stephen King could make describing this game anything more than monotonous, but maybe if you see how little there is to write about Shopping Street, that might put you off playing the game. Either way, I've done my job.



You start every level with the same amount of money - I guess inflation can't be that bad if you can set up a pet store in Manhattan for $3,000. The pet store should always be your first purchase, as it can hold more customers and earn more money than the boutique, which is the only other shop you can buy at the start of the level.

I'm going to review this game as best I can, but I might as well show you a sure-fire way to beat any level in this game. This method is foolproof and guaranteed to succeed every time.



Anyway, build your pet store and a couple of benches (and a "music ad" which is supposed to attract people to your store) and then the happy little people will come along and buy stuff. Once you've got the cash you can buy a boutique, upgrade your stores a little and then build a bus stop. The bus stop will grant you another dozen shoppers, which is always handy. The bus should only stop there once a day but on more than one occasion I came across a glitch that meant a constant stream which theoretically could go on forever. Clearly, whoever programmed this game has never experienced the US public transport system.



Keep on building and upgrading your shops and... well, that's it. The money will come in slowly at first, but as you build more your earnings will grow exponentially. Just remember not to waste your money on a restaurant until you've got most of the other stores, as they have very little return and people will hang around inside them forever. Even on fast mode it took ages for any customers to leave, which is a great complement to the food and service but utterly useless to me when I've got to raise a million bucks in thirty days.

Which reminds me of the most important advice I can give - switch to Fast Mode immediately and turn off the annoying music (first they give us no music, then they give us music we don't want to hear - great.) The customers move at an arthritic pace, meaning the greatest challenge is one of patience.



Shopping Street is like a Flash Field of Dreams - if you build a shitload of stores, people will come and spend obscene amounts of money. Nothing ever goes wrong in Shopping Street; there's nothing that the customers won't buy. It's weird watching someone who can't get into a furniture store deciding to visit a jeweller's instead. I've never seen such a large group of people so desperate to get rid of their money. By the time you've got all the shops built, you don't even need any of the crap designed to slow shoppers down, like benches or news stands. They just keep walking from one place to the next, regardless of what that shop is, until they run out of money and scamper off with big smiles on their faces.

I've played some really easy games in my time, but this is ridiculous. Once you've completed one level, you'll complete the rest without any difficulty. If capitalism was this easy we wouldn't be in a God damn global recession!



Sure enough, on the last day - just like always - I meet my goal. Such is the demand for electronics and puppies that I was guaranteed victory from the start. I think I deserve an award just for playing all the way through this mind-numbing, coma-inducing bore of a game.



But no, this is all I get - one last half assed graphic to let me know I'm the new Donald Trump. But then, I suppose you get out of something whatever you put in, and since I didn't have to do squat to beat Shopping Street I should be thankful for generic smiley faces.

This was the first game from Flonga that I've had a chance to play, and it goes without saying that it didn't make a good first impression. With slow, boring, repetitive gameplay and uninspired graphics, it seems the recession is even hitting Flash games - as far as ideas go, we're bankrupt.

Celebrity Pedigree

This is something of a departure for me. Christmas aside, I spend just about every week tearing into a game I think sucks, and I've never seen much reason to change that. This week, however, I will not be focusing on a crappy game. Having extensively played Celebrity Pedigree I am happy to report that it isn't bad at all. No, this game is simply terrifying.

Just when I think I've seen it all, the Internet spits something new in my face. Celebrity Pedigree might just be the most twisted thing I've yet to come across, and when you've seen some of the other titles it's been my misfortune to play, that's really saying something.



All right, I'll try to explain. You have some kennels, and these kennel contains some dogs. But these aren't just any old dogs; these dogs all have the faces of celebrities. Each of these celebrity dogs has their own strengths and weaknesses, and by carefully breeding different types you can theoretically make more advanced celebrity dogs.

...Jesus.



OK, so let's give this a try. I decided to breed Paris Hilton dog (who looks way more attractive than her human counterpart - oh my God...) with Jeremy Clarkson dog. I figured if she was willing to screw that plain-looking semi-retarded guy in that sex tape, she'd be willing to screw a Top Gear presenter.



The result is... well, as you would expect. Part of the fun in playing Celebrity Pedigree is seeing what traits the new puppies' faces will take. This puppy just looks homely. Others can leave scars on your mind that will never truly heal.



You can keep up to ten dogs in your kennels, but be warned - each new pooch adds to your running costs. You have to make sure you have a good selection of breeds while keeping your costs under budget.



Naturally, breeding the same dogs with each other again and again will dilute the pedigree, and you'll end up with runts like Chris Moyles dog here. I think that's a little unfair to Moyles; I always found his radio show entertaining (when I was fourteen.)



By selling some of your dogs, you can raise the funds to buy new breeds. Here in the marketplace you'll find every B- and C-List celebrity that you could imagine. Everyone from Peaches Geldof to Russell Brand are included. Even Barack Obama has been turned into a dog - though not, if I remember correctly, a Portuguese water dog, which i thought would have been obvious.



I was eventually able to work my way up to the heights of rock 'n' roll royalty by buying Bono dog. While talented, this particular breed has a habit of considering itself the overbearing leader of the pack and has a nasty tendency to yap incessantly out of its arse. I tried putting Bono dog with one of my cross breeds, and the results were far from pretty.



GET THAT FUCKING THING AWAY FROM ME.

Celebrity Pedigree is like some terrible combination of erotic fan fiction and animal husbandry. If you've ever asked yourself, "I wonder what it would look like if Snoop Dogg and Lily Allen had a baby, and they were both dogs?" here's your chance to finally find out. The only thing scarier than that mental image is the knowledge that Nigella Lawson still looks hot even when her head is grafted onto the body of a dalmatian.

I need help.

Civony

Though this week's game falls out of my usual fare, it would be wrong of me to focus solely on simple Flash and Shockwave software. There is an ever growing number of more complicated, expansive titles, bringing together networks of gamers from all over the world. Personal favourites such as Kingdom of Loathing and Forumwarz have in the past eaten up far more of my time than I'd ever like to admit. The game I'm reviewing this week, Civony, has done much the same thing, but in a totally different way.

I'd seen ads for Civony on practically every website I've logged onto in the last two weeks. Whatever company owns this game has their advertising down to a fine skill. The first thing you see is some cute chick in medieval dress telling you to come to the website and referring to you as "my lord." And then when you go to the Civony website you're met by a knight in kickass armour, swinging a broadsword through the air. Immediately appealing to the two biggest fantasies in any hardcore D&D player's life, it's no surprise people are filling up the servers.

But first, one question: what is "Civony"? I looked it up but there wasn't any such word in the dictionary. The nearest I could find was "ciphony," which is "the process of encrypting telecommunication signals, as to prevent information from being intercepted by an enemy or competitor." And I suppose that could be what they meant, except very little (in fact, to my knowledge, none) of the game involves encrypting telecommunication signals. I can only assume that the "Civ" part of the title is a reference to "civilisation," which is what you're supposed to build as you play. But "ony"? I have no idea. Maybe they meant it as a tribute to Oni, the third-person action game developed by Bungie.

Whatever, let's play. The first thing you need to do, of course, is register. Registration is quick and easy, requiring only an e-mail address. You can play as either a lord or a lady, and I of course chose the former because I'm all man. Or something.



Hold up - that guy's no bad ass medieval warrior! There's no way in hell I'm letting that avatar represent me among the online nation building community. Fortunately you can scroll through a fairly decent number of images until you find one you like.



Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about! And when you have a helmet with big ass horns sticking out of it, you can call yourself pretty much whatever the hell you want.



You also have the option of deciding where you'd like to base your city. I decided to go with Bohemia, largely out of my fondness for Queen.



This is what greets you when you begin: a largely empty town and a suggestion that you play the Routine Quest. As far as names for quests go, "Routine" doesn't exactly get my blood pumping, but I might as well get on with it since I'm not given much of a choice. The Routine Quest is designed to get players used to the game interface and also supply them with a decent chunk of resources, so folks can build up a nice little city before raising an army, marching on their neighbours, stealing their food and women, and basically getting their warlord on.



You'll get to do all of those things - eventually. But first, there's a lot of building to do. And then, once you've built everything, you have to upgrade your buildings. Oh, and this will take some time.

Cottages take about a minute to build. Ditto for the farms, sawmills, rock quarries and ironworks. That's not the problem; I can occupy myself for a minute. But then you try to upgrade your buildings and... well...



Thirty minutes to upgrade the town hall!? Why? Seriously, why? Does it take thirty minutes for the information to go to the server? I could upload four high quality Youtube videos in the time it takes for this one sprite to appear on my screen.

OK, so it takes a while for stuff to get done. That's all right, I'll just carry on and get a few more things built while I wait.



Or maybe I won't. So, if you want to upgrade a building or, God forbid, construct some walls, you better have a lot of time to spare. I ended up going to another website and playing some games while I waited. That's right - I played other games to keep myself entertained while playing Civony, which defeats the entire purpose of playing Civony in the first place!



I got all of this stuff as reward for achieving certain tasks, but most of it isn't even all that useful until you've got a good-sized town. I was quickly losing patience with the game and wasn't all that interested in any of the items, though there was at least an item that could cut down the amount of time I spent pissing around waiting for something to happen.



This area gives you all the information you need to know about your community, such as the population, your resources, and the size of the workforce. As you can see, my town is composed mainly of bums.



Civony is a lot like Sim City for the Middle Ages. And like Sim City, I'm sure it gets really interesting once your town starts to grow and expand. But you see, I never had the attention span to wait that long when I played Sim City, and I clearly still don't. The least Civony could do is let us release a monster or a natural disaster to make things fun.

Duel Adventure

OK, confession time. Because I could never afford a Game Boy, I never played the Pokemon games. However, because I was such a big Pokefan (the official name for anyone who watched even the later, less interesting seasons) that I forked out good money for the Pokemon game cards. I was fifteen years old, and no, I didn't so much as see a girl's breast for another seven years.

If you remember, these cards became so popular that they resulted in violence on the playground, as schoolkids were determined to find the rarest, most powerful cards. It was, quite frankly, ridiculous, but the game itself was actually a lot of fun, and paved the way for the multitude of other Anime card games that flooded the market in the years that followed.

Now someone has had the bright idea to take this concept and adapt it for the Internet. Duel Adventure certainly has all of the elements in place - except, of course, for a sense of fun.



The idea is that you are given a hand of five cards, and you must use them in the best way possible to defeat your opponent. The cards themselves look pretty impressive. I mean, check out this blue dragon! Yeah, I know it looks red, but I think you'll find the title clearly says "Blue Dragon."



You like zombies, right? Well, check out this shit! And who doesn't want, um, Armageddon? There's an option to print the cards out, so you can play in real life, with a real friend and everything. My advice is to do that, because playing the online game can be tedious, frustrating and downright pointless.



This is the actual game screen, and unless the idea was a clichéd cod-Medieval get-up straight outta Photoshop, it's not very impressive. Sure, there's the duel, but where's the adventure? Off in a better game, apparently.



It's not that Duel Adventure is unplayable. There are plenty of different card types, from monsters to spells to health potions. It's up to the player to properly balance their supply of mana while also causing damage to their opponent.



One of the big problems is the complete lack of control the player has over what cards they're holding. You don't get to choose the cards or even the type of deck you play with. The result is that this is less card game and more crap shoot, since you're at the mercy of whatever random image generator is dealing out your hand.



Because of the randomness of the hands, you'll lose far more often than you'll win. It really is all about the luck of the draw. While that's fairly appropriate, given the style of game, it gets increasingly frustrating.



When you do win (and hey, the law of averages says you will, at least once) you'll be rewarded with a new card. I learned quite quickly that of all these cards, the monsters are the most useful. You know how, in an RPG, it's always easier to club someone to death with a melée weapon than it is to try shooting them? Well, in Duel Adventure the monster card is your melée weapon.

Forget about Mana, forget about poison spells - in fact, forget about anything except the blunt force trauma of a giant squid in the face. It won't guarantee you any more wins than using your hand strategically, but it's a lot of fun. And in Duel Adventure, a game sorely lacking in excitement, at least you'll get something out of it.