Flash game review bonanza 2

Continued from yesterday’s Part 1

Gogo Happy & Smile

Author: HAPPYandSMILE
Genre: Beatemup

Synopsis: This game is an unabashed rip-off of Alien Hominid, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You can play as either Happy or Smile, a cat and rabbit who fight a group of evil bears that drop lots of cash money. For those unfamiliar with Alien Hominid, Happy & Smile plays as a side scroller/beat-em up, pitting you against an unending onslaught of foes as you move across the city.

Style (9/10): The game is wonderfully themed, the art and orchestral music coming together to make the game seem like an old school gangster movie (albeit one about cats, rabbits and bears). Character animations are detailed, fluid, and possess a nice amount of variation.

Substance (7/10): My main issue with this game, much like with the original Alien Hominid, is that it is difficult to the point of wanting to jab the nearest sharp object into your brain. Beyond this though, the game offers good side scrolling action. Players can choose between a close-up attack on enemies or use your standard gun that has infinite ammo to kill them from afar. Enemies drop a variety of weapons with limited ammo, and killing them fills up the bar for your super attack, which unleashes a devastating blast on unsuspecting bears.

Bonus points: -20 points for being a blatant ripoff.

Overall score 8/10: If you can deal with the difficulty, this game will provide a lot of entertainment as you attempt to memorize the layout in order to progress through the game without dying. If you can’t deal with the difficulty, Happy & Smile still serves as a good distraction until the increase in your blood pressure induces a heart attack.

Thing-Thing Arena

Author: Weasel (xX_weasel_Xx)
Genre: Survival Beatemup

Synopsis: if you’ve seen any of the “madness” movies you have some idea of what you’re playing here. If you haven’t, imagine characters that have limbs and head unattached to their bodies, all of them bent on killing each other. You will control one of these characters, and your goal is to stay alive as long as possible as a horde of other creatures attempt to slaughter you.

Style (4/10): If you’ve seen the madness movies, you know that the graphics are horrible, and the only redeeming feature is the artistic way in which the main character murders all of his opponents. You will never come close to achieving these artistic feats, and so all you have left are shoddily drawn characters and buildings. The only positive aspect of this game’s art is the high customizability of the character you control: players have a large variety of faces and outfits they can use. The music, while not offensive, is not worth complimenting either.

Substance (5/10): Mindless fun. That’s all. There are a few different modes to play with that offer a variety of difficulties, weaponry, and opponents. I find that the zombie survival mode is the most fun, because you have infinite ammo and a decent weapon, letting you focus less on worrying what gun to use and more on how you are going to deal death (or undeath?) to your zombie foes. Despite the variety in modes, however, the game gets old very quickly as there is nothing to do but run, shoot and jump.

Bonus points: -30 points for being related to a series of animations that should just die.

Overall (4/10): Unless you enjoy racking up high scores for the sake of seeing big numbers, you won’t enjoy this game for more than five minutes.

War Bears

Author: Gionatan Iasio (ioji)
Genre: Action/Puzzle

Synopsis: War Bears places you in charge of a tactical squad of bears of the same name. In this mission you are trying to stop a bank robbery by a team of robber bears. Each of the four bears has a special skill (somewhat akin to the Lost Vikings games) that will help you solve the various puzzles needed to finish the game.

Style (8/10): The game employs a very cutesy style which is both odd and complimentary for the elite crime-fighting bears. Even better however are some of the exchanges between the War Bears and their adversaries. A severe lack of non-diegetic music leaves the player listening to some rather repetitive and grating sound affects.

Substance (10/10): This game excels in an area almost every flash game lacks: variety. The puzzles offered here are incredibly diverse, including simplistic fights, memory tests, and reflex games. Even though a lot of progress is gained through trial and error, you’ll find yourself feeling very accomplished when you discover the solution to the problem at hand. Further, the game offers a good scoring system that rewards you for finishing a mini-game without making any mistakes. This score then converts to an overall rank at the end of the game and also allows you access to special files that have summaries of each of the characters. The one drawback to the game is that there are a few instances where not doing something early on can leave you impossibly stuck later in the game. Despite this, the game is still incredibly fun to play.

Bonus points: -1000 points for only having one level.

Overall (9/10): This game is truly the cream of the crop of flash games. Unfortunately, once you have figured out how to solve all the puzzles and beat the mission, you’ll find the game does not have the nigh infinite replayability inherent to many flash games. Still, the sheer genius of this game makes it an incredibly enjoyable couple of hours of entertainment.

And that concludes our review of top games at Newgrounds. While there are some respectable games here, I think most of the content only serves to remind us why some things are better left to professionals. Tune in next time when I discuss Rawls’ and Nozick’s competing theories of governmental legitimacy, by which I mean review more flash games.