Hmmm.... This is going to be an odd review. I've never thought about reviewing a website game, mostly because the people who play them are the sort of people you'd want to avoid in a dark alleyway. Unfortunately, this game seems to only further my point...
Ahhh... where to begin. Well, let's start at the beginning:
You crawl out from the ruined basement. Grimacing, you put the few coins you found in your tattered pocket. Smoke fills your nose, but sadly you cannot remember a day when the air was fresh. Screams in the distance - but you don't even twitch. It is getting dark, you notice. If that was not enough reason to cause you to head to one of the few safe places left in the city, you hear some sort of scratching from one of the few standing walls across the torn up asphalt. Something is changing and the zombies seem to be restless. Heading down the street there is a few things on your mind. Who will win, zombie or human? And how long can you survive on what is left in this city...
Ahem. That's the login screen. From here, you register on the site, get a screen name and password, login, and begin 'playing'.
At least, that's what any normal person would do. However, for those of you without experience on internet games that focus on 'management' of a character, it's rarely so easy to simply start the game without knowing how it works. Yet, that's exactly what the game expects of you. *Sigh*...
I'll be fair. The game has a tutorial section, and a help section, and a forum. All those things aren't terribly difficult to spot from the main screen, after logging in. However, knowing what I'm getting into would be helpful. I may not be a particularly internet saavy person, but I know for a fact that many games at least explain what it is you'll be doing in them BEFORE you get to playing them. Oh well, I'm in... now what?
Well, the game has you managing YOU. Except in a post-apocalyptic world infested with zombies and humans alike. Smart zombies. Kinda like Fallout 3, except without stimulating graphics. You start out as a hobo, with a few bucks and a penchant for attacking people. In fact, I've found out that the only way to truly level up in this game is to attack people ruthlessly. When you finish them off, or get finished off, someone gets sent to the hospital where a timer tells them how long they have to wait before they can continue 'playing'. Also, you can get arrested while doing certain activities, which leads to ANOTHER time-out session. Just what I want out of a game, to be sent to the corner like a pre-schooler.
Then there's another thing that bugs me, the fact that this game makes a point of only letting you level up if you attack some other poor guy trying to play this game. It's bad enough that you have to wait a certain amount of time IRL in order to do some activities, but then to have to sit still while waiting for the game to let you play again? What cruelty. It's bad enough, considering how low this game SHOULD rank on the interesting meter.
There's just not much to say about this thing. It's a well-coded site where you spend hours feeding the inane addiction to keep leveling your character. While there's inherently many problems simply with the idea of any game being as boring as this, I'd actually have to say that it's one of the better ones out there. There's plenty of junk versions of this same thing to find on the internet, and even a few with the same theme as this one, however there's a question to ask about whether those games are really that much worse...
It's the kind of game you tell yourself you shouldn't be enjoying, and yet for some reason you are. I had this kind of experience once with an old game called "New Legends" for the X-box. It was the BIGGEST PIECE OF SHIT on the system. But I truly adored that little shit-stain of a game. I had a similar experience with a game even more recently called Dirge of Cerberus (which someone will soon be reviewing), which I knew sucked massive balls, yet I still found enjoyment in that game. Sure, the exp. system wasn't super balanced, and the fact that it was an FF7 game that didn't show off anyone other than Cait Sith and Vincent was a real sucktastic move on Squeenix's part. Yet, there I was, playing the game right up until the rather overblown fight with a strange psuedo-Hojo. Now here I am, playing what should be some boring piece of crap... half to death. And I'm not alone. There's probably tens of thousands of players on that site.
So how would I rank this game? Eh. I would rank it with a resounding "Eh" that extends to the ends of the Earth. That "Eh" would top mountains, cross oceans, and beat Obama in next year's electorals. However, what I've said about enjoying the occasional bad game should stick out. While I don't suggest you buy every game that hits the bargain bin, I also suggest that you not be afraid to look in there and give a game the occasional benefit of the doubt. Even if it's a bad game, there's no accounting for taste.
....
tl;dr There's no graphics, and the game is...
EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
Ahhh... where to begin. Well, let's start at the beginning:
You crawl out from the ruined basement. Grimacing, you put the few coins you found in your tattered pocket. Smoke fills your nose, but sadly you cannot remember a day when the air was fresh. Screams in the distance - but you don't even twitch. It is getting dark, you notice. If that was not enough reason to cause you to head to one of the few safe places left in the city, you hear some sort of scratching from one of the few standing walls across the torn up asphalt. Something is changing and the zombies seem to be restless. Heading down the street there is a few things on your mind. Who will win, zombie or human? And how long can you survive on what is left in this city...
Ahem. That's the login screen. From here, you register on the site, get a screen name and password, login, and begin 'playing'.
At least, that's what any normal person would do. However, for those of you without experience on internet games that focus on 'management' of a character, it's rarely so easy to simply start the game without knowing how it works. Yet, that's exactly what the game expects of you. *Sigh*...
I'll be fair. The game has a tutorial section, and a help section, and a forum. All those things aren't terribly difficult to spot from the main screen, after logging in. However, knowing what I'm getting into would be helpful. I may not be a particularly internet saavy person, but I know for a fact that many games at least explain what it is you'll be doing in them BEFORE you get to playing them. Oh well, I'm in... now what?
Well, the game has you managing YOU. Except in a post-apocalyptic world infested with zombies and humans alike. Smart zombies. Kinda like Fallout 3, except without stimulating graphics. You start out as a hobo, with a few bucks and a penchant for attacking people. In fact, I've found out that the only way to truly level up in this game is to attack people ruthlessly. When you finish them off, or get finished off, someone gets sent to the hospital where a timer tells them how long they have to wait before they can continue 'playing'. Also, you can get arrested while doing certain activities, which leads to ANOTHER time-out session. Just what I want out of a game, to be sent to the corner like a pre-schooler.
Then there's another thing that bugs me, the fact that this game makes a point of only letting you level up if you attack some other poor guy trying to play this game. It's bad enough that you have to wait a certain amount of time IRL in order to do some activities, but then to have to sit still while waiting for the game to let you play again? What cruelty. It's bad enough, considering how low this game SHOULD rank on the interesting meter.
There's just not much to say about this thing. It's a well-coded site where you spend hours feeding the inane addiction to keep leveling your character. While there's inherently many problems simply with the idea of any game being as boring as this, I'd actually have to say that it's one of the better ones out there. There's plenty of junk versions of this same thing to find on the internet, and even a few with the same theme as this one, however there's a question to ask about whether those games are really that much worse...
It's the kind of game you tell yourself you shouldn't be enjoying, and yet for some reason you are. I had this kind of experience once with an old game called "New Legends" for the X-box. It was the BIGGEST PIECE OF SHIT on the system. But I truly adored that little shit-stain of a game. I had a similar experience with a game even more recently called Dirge of Cerberus (which someone will soon be reviewing), which I knew sucked massive balls, yet I still found enjoyment in that game. Sure, the exp. system wasn't super balanced, and the fact that it was an FF7 game that didn't show off anyone other than Cait Sith and Vincent was a real sucktastic move on Squeenix's part. Yet, there I was, playing the game right up until the rather overblown fight with a strange psuedo-Hojo. Now here I am, playing what should be some boring piece of crap... half to death. And I'm not alone. There's probably tens of thousands of players on that site.
So how would I rank this game? Eh. I would rank it with a resounding "Eh" that extends to the ends of the Earth. That "Eh" would top mountains, cross oceans, and beat Obama in next year's electorals. However, what I've said about enjoying the occasional bad game should stick out. While I don't suggest you buy every game that hits the bargain bin, I also suggest that you not be afraid to look in there and give a game the occasional benefit of the doubt. Even if it's a bad game, there's no accounting for taste.
....
tl;dr There's no graphics, and the game is...
EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.