Awful Flash Game Roundup: Third Time's Not A Charm
It's time once again to delve into some of the worst flash games ever uploaded to this questionably useful technology the French call L'Internet. How is it that such offensive bits of so-called "entertainment" found their way into this series of metaphorical tubes? Well, as I've often pointed out, there is no filter in this medium. I've been talking to some congressmen about that, but they're too busy with their silly drug war and Supreme Court justices to really address this issue. Perhaps some of them will see the following collection of abhorrent games and pause long enough from their orgies of nitrous oxide and bourbon-covered Slip n' Slides, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, to pursue due recourse.
Palsy-afflicted monkey mutant Vegard20 unleashed this lazy piece of crap on Kongregate to a chorus of forum-based detractors. When several of them had the gall to point out that The Crash Game was probably created in less time and with less effort than befits a proper flash production, Vegard20 stepped forward (so to speak) to address them. With as much eloquence as his game design suggests he might have, Vegard20 responded, "It haven`t been published i 9 hours XD". Indeed, Vegard20. What a sweet song ringest forth from thy golden tongue. I commend you on your cleverness. After all, your game would feel incomplete if it were merely a crudely drawn and utterly silent simulation of a vehicle careening into a stand-alone brick wall, sans any instructions. How subversive of you to make the one button used in your brief but striking game completely unintuitive. Also, bravo on your "weird stuff" mode that demonstrates what is likely a previous failure to code properly. You are truly an artist at the fringes.
I'll admit, I have a secret admiration for creator Billzter. Despite designing a horribly ugly, utterly joyless game that clearly communicates its pointlessness, I still played the damn thing for close to ten minutes looking for some kind of progress. Players navigate a white circle through an MS Paint-tastic world via a top-down perspective collecting items that serve absolutely no purpose. At the bottom left (or according to Billzter, the bottom right) is a pop-up list of player Skills, including Battle, Woodcutting, and Minigame Skillz. Collecting items, pressing buttons and getting your dot killed gives you experience, but those points do absolutely nothing. Occasionally, grabbing an item will dump you to the start screen. Make no mistake, this game is twelve kinds of bad, but it's genius in its own way. There's a part of me that still wants to go back to see if I'm missing something. That's eerie.
Perhaps my rating of this game has more to do with my false expectations based on its misleading title than it does with any inherent badness. This is as much a basketball game as a shoe-tying simulator would be a running game. Sure, it's vaguely related to the game of basketball, but it doesn't really attempt to represent the sport in any meaningful way. Unless a lot has changed since I last watched the game, I don't believe basketball consists of a single player standing at the three-point line refusing to move any part of his body except his arms and counting how many baskets he can get in a row. Really, this is more of a "humor the disabled kid" simulator than an actual basketball game. Also, while I fully support the depiction of a diverse range of ethnicities in video games, I highly doubt that black people like being digitally represented by sprites that look like burn victims.
As always, I encourage all of you readers to go out there and support the designers of good games. Also, please contact your congressman about the fetid condition of the Internet. Blackmail them if necessary, or just for fun.
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