The Internet is a fast-moving medium and quality is relative. As each year passes, the overall level of competence in platforms like Flash game design goes up. This means that what passed for a decent game just a couple years ago is now a complete waste of time. It didn't dawn on me until this week just how similar the worst games of 2010 are to the best games of 2000. I'd even get all nostalgic if it weren't for the sheer awfulness of today's game selections.
Creator chidongongo2 (a name that suggests there is somehow an original chidongongo out there) is not a resident of these United States, as evidenced by the Spanish text at the end of war at space ship, but that's no excuse for his obvious lack of effort. The tragic thing is that this game comes really close to being passable. You pilot your little space ship, which is war at, fighting off enemy space ships that are determined to destroy your solar panel array/futuristic space station. Just when things are looking up, some clip art from a much better video game shows up to ruin your day. I've come to appreciate Flash games that have sound effects made exclusively by the human tongue, but everything endearing about war at space ship is ruined by a persistent glitch that makes enemies invulnerable once they've reached a certain point on the screen. Oh, well. Maybe chidongongo3 will do better.
One of the earliest varieties of Flash game was the "avoid falling stuff" simulator, a type of game that requires prolonging the suffering of a doomed character in some sort of hell box designed to rain some sort of death on him for all eternity. Most of these games are terrible and the genre didn't really come into its own until somebody translated ragdoll physics to browser media, but William (Korstad?)'s Plinge is perhaps the worst AFS game I've ever seen. It forces you to guide the painfully slow-moving head of a ruddy-cheeked child through a neon green room while black and red spikes fall from the ceiling. The disembodied brain case is unfortunately too large to actually dodge the majority of the spikes, so the health bar dwindles steadily and silently until the whole nightmare ends with the tortured child saying, "Tanks for playing".
Here's the beautiful, weird and kind of ingenious part of this game. While it plays like the harmlessly stupid fantasy of a 10-year-old girl, Joe Jonas Demi Lovato Kiss is very clearly the work of somebody much older and wiser. It's one of the latest titles from games2rule, a website dedicated to this kind of calculated crap. The art, while not exactly good, is simply too good to be the product of anyone but a professional. There are recognizable celebrity figures, pulsing speakers and moving lighting effects. Whoever really put this game together knew what they were doing. A game doesn't need to be good if it guarantees a high CPM. Personally, I like it for its unintentional, surreal humor. As the title suggests, the point of the game is to make the titular Disney employees lock lips, except they decide to do this on stage while an increasing number of Jonas brothers arrive to play their instruments and pretend that absolutely nothing is happening. Then, at predetermined times, a freaking eye opens up in a piece of the plywood set, prompting the two lovers to smile and pose for the crowd and not run screaming from the bad trip that has become their life together.
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