The Distracted Gamer

One of the things that manages to stop me from going completely insane is the existence of flash games.  Kongregate has possibly the best site for them, but there’re countless others out there.  The great thing about flash games is that they usually require very little time commitment, you can stop and start them whenever you like, and they’ve usually got a very shallow learning curve.  So for a gamer with very little time, they’re great. 

So I’ll be including flash games in my reviews and I’m kicking it off with one of the newer games on Kongregate – Hunted Forever by Pixelante

It’s a surprisingly simple side-scrolling platform game.  Very deliberately basic graphics.  The character is basically a silhouette who can run & jump.  That’s it. You can slide down walls and slopes and you can fall from any height without damage.  You can also do wall jumps (jump again while next to a wall) and you’ll grab onto ledges if you don’t quite make it.

The basic storyline is post-apocalyptic.  The machines have taken over & you’re trying to build a gun to fight back with so you need to collect parts:

These parts also allow you to upgrade during the game at ‘safe houses’ where you can buy speed, higher jumps and more health. 

Interestingly, the upgrades and parts you get carry over between games on the same difficulty level, so the more times you play, the easier it gets (unless you play on the last 2 difficulty levels where you can’t upgrade).

The machine has you

The enemy in this game is a floating machine that has a bunch of different weapons it can throw at you, including bombs that can go through any wall, different types of lasers and a flying chainsaw (seriously).

There’s also continuous mocking and insults coming from the AI, called the ‘Automatic Support System’ down the bottom of the screen.  It reminds me of a cross between GLaDOS from Portal (still alive!) and HK-47 from Knights Of The Old Republic with its constant snarky references to killing ‘meatbags’. (I noticed later that this is deliberate, watch the loading messages closely).  It also throws in a bunch of other pop-culture & gaming references, see if you can pick them all.

It would have been even better to have a GLaDOS-esq automated voice reading them, but oh well.

Sound

Speaking of sound, the music is an electronica piece from the FreeSoundProject.  Nothing fancy and fairly repetitive, but it seems to suit the game.  Every action from jumping & sliding to collecting a part & being blown up has a sound effect, which gives good feedback while playing.

Summary

It took me about 14 minutes to complete on normal difficulty, which isn’t too bad a length.  You could do it much faster if you don’t bother about getting all the parts.  The fact that the upgrades carry over improves replayability because the annoying part you had to keep jumping around you might be able to just go over this time.

The hardcore level is hard, I haven’t manage to complete it yet, but then that’s ok, it’s meant to be hard! Hunted Forever currently doesn’t have any Kongregate badges or challenges associated with it, but it may in the future.

One annoying part about the game is that it’s a bit hard to tell how much life you have left.  Your only indication is that you start to sweat when you’re on your last life.  Of course dying doesn’t end the game, you just jump back a bit and you get less points when you get to the end if you die.

It only takes about 40 seconds for the game to load on my 512kb ADSL connection, which isn’t the fastest flash game, but it’s nowhere near the slowest either.

I like this game, it’s a good little entertainment piece that doesn’t require large commitment of time and is easy to pick up.  Well worth having a look at.