| Them's Fightin'
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Reviewing this game requires two disclaimers.
ONE: This game was made for Gilbert's Terrible Game Contest. Thus, I will be reviewing it as a "terrible" or "joke" game, not as a normal game. This doesn't mean that bad things will get it points, it means that it just has a somewhat different set of criteria.
TWO: The designer behind this game, the younger brother of Uncommon, very recently died (at the time that I'm writing this review, I mean (Nov. 4, 2005)). I do not believe this will bias my rating of the game but I guess it's something to keep in mind.
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| Graphics |
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They're not great, but not all of them are bad either. The backdrops are all MS-Paint style, you can tell what things are but it's not really pretty to look at. Hero graphics are just outlines with no particular shape and a face in the middle. There are only a few enemies, and they're fairly simple as well, but they have a bit more shape to them than the heroes do.
Most of the walkabouts are, like the hero graphics, just blob-ish outlines. That's okay since that seems to be what the characters are, but they're kind of hard to see sometimes. The maptiles were definitely the best graphics in the game. They weren't great, but they showed some definite potential.
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| Storyline |
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So the story is basically that you want revenge against The Man Who Wears Purple. It's not long enough to really develop more than that. But at the end, after you beat him, he tells you why he wronged you, and that's a great moment.
The dialogue was largely misspelled, as you might expect from this sort of game. It's not your typical LOL I M AWSUM LOL crap, and it's not L33T either, which is nice. Just regular speech with lots of misspellings, and I am going to assume that it was intentional. There are actually a few places were it made me laugh, like during the intro and a bit later when a character's name was misspelled three text boxes in a row.
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| Gameplay |
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The height of the gameplay is definitely the intro "cutscene." The cutscene is animated MS-Paint drawings. Oh, but it's more than that. You see, the pictures don't animate automatically. You have to press the space bar to get them to animate. It's silly and it's weird and it's kind of pointless, which makes it a great example of joke-game gameplay.
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Battle |
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These were nothing too interesting. There are no skills and gaining levels doesn't do you much good (nor is it really necessary). However, the regular battles are fast and easy, so they don't really detract from the experience. The only boss battle may be unbeatable. I only tried once, but I didn't last long enough to kill him and it took a long time to die anyway. You can run from any and all battles though, so you can just skip this one if you want to see the ending. I don't know how you would beat this guy, I think you'd have to level up a LOT first, and even then you'd be fighting for a very long time.
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Map Design |
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There weren't too many maps, just the town and the forest. The town had many houses, but most of them seemed to lead to the same interior, which was weird. The forest was just a few branching paths, and you would know where to go if you had talked to the people in town, which I thought was a nice touch.
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Balance |
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The regular battles were really easy and short. The boss battle was not reasonably beatable, unless I'm missing something obvious. Heh, so, I guess the balance was unbalanced.
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| Music |
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Not especially memorable. I didn't mind it, but it wasn't great. I am not familiar with the songs, and thus have no idea whether they were ripped or original.
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| Enjoyment |
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Heh, yeah, I have to say I did enjoy this game. I quite liked the beginning and ending, and while the rest wasn't anything great it was short and there were a few amusing parts.
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| Final Blows |
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I'd say this is worth a download, at least to play the intro scene. Like I said, it's short, so even if you don't like it it won't take up much of your time. You have nothing to lose!
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You can see the hero there, if you look closely. |
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Final Scores
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Graphics: 2/10.0 |
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Most were nothing special, but the maptiles were promising.
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Storyline: 3/10.0
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Fairly amusing at times, and the ending was well done. |
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Gameplay: 3.5/10.0 |
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Great beginning, the rest wasn't anything notable.
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Music: 4/10.0
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Most of what I heard sounded okay, but it wasn't always placed that well. |
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Enjoyment: 6/10.0
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Yeah, I did enjoy this. It's short and you can skip the boring parts anyway. |
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Overall Grade:
C- |
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| Final Thoughts |
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Press boton. |
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