Heart of the Planet (Flash)

I was wondering how I was going to decide on my next game on Kongregate without being biased by Recommendations or ones that I know already looked good or bad.  I searched for "Random Game" and it looks like someone made something to pick a random game from the site.  And this is what I got....

Hit it or Quit it?

Year: 2010 -- Developer: ??? -- Site: Flonga (via Kongegrate)

First Impression:  

The description is "Help her reach the heart of the planet to save the world from evil".  A little generic..  Controls:  "Arrows to move, x to shoot".  Okay, I'm thinking something like a top-down shooter?  Except the tag is "Action" so who knows.

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Fooled around for: 5 minutes

Ugh.. Been a while since I really couldn't last longer than 5 minutes.  This is what happens with random flash games.  It's basically a Mario rip-off.  But there's no story explaining anything.  Literally just "Level 1" right when the game loads.  The controls are super loose, sliding all over the place.  The left arrow overrides the right arrow, no matter which was pressed first, so you find yourself turning when you didn't want to.  This also makes the whole platforming aspect super hard, but not because it's hard, just because it's not made well.  I guess eating a mushroom to get big in Mario doesn't make much sense either, but in this it's a carrot.  And then some random shape for "fireballs".  Big You breaks blocks, there are stars for coins, and you jump on pigs instead of carrots.  You could literally just remake Mario in this engine and everything would be there. Except the fun.

Also the music is annoying and a very short loop.

The ONLY thing this game has going for it was the art assets are actually not that bad.  Some of the textures are pretty good, but they don't match the hand-drawn sprites, and it's all probably just ripped off from somewhere else around the internet.

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Hit it or Quit it?

In case it wasn't apparent, quit it.  Reading the reviews on Kongregate, it seems everyone else agrees.  Shoddy controls on an otherwise ripped-off, but still incredibly vague platformer.  Mayyybe this was a first game/demo kind of deal for them to get used to making games, but I don't have much hope for anything else that pops up by this developer.

It looks like Flonga is just a website for Flash games, so I don't even know who to blame for this....

Infectonator (Flash)

To swipe an idea from my "Partner Site" Fluffy Fox Gamerating (see sidebar), I am going to hit a Flash game today (and possibly for a few days).  Specifically, these will be from www.kongregate.com .  It's a wealth of options to choose from, and it's easy to load them up and play them because it's all right in the browser I'm using anyways!  I could probably just turn this whole blog into Hit it or Quit it on Kongregate and never run out of stuff to play, but I don't see that happening.  Sounds like fun for now though!

Hit it or Quit it?

Year: 2009 -- Developer: Toge Productions -- Site: Kongregate

First Impression:
Most Flash games likely won't have much of a demo screen or anything, so I may be a little light on First Impressions.  This game already makes it apparent we will be looking at 8-bit graphics and listening to 8-bit music though.  Not a bad sign, just pretty much the only thing I know about it.  I chose this because I saw the sequel in my "Recommended" list, and since I hit Plague Inc a few days ago, I figured I would check out the first in this series.  The only other thing I know so far is "zombies" and "kill off the world in 60 seconds"

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Fooled around for: ~15-20 minutes (two play-throughs)
I almost stopped after the first playthrough, because things just didn't feel right, and it left a weird impression on me.  The game just seemed to end and give me a score out of nowhere.  This, plus one level giving me an insane amount of money led me to think maybe the game was glitchy.  I decided to give it another try, thinking that maybe I just missed something.  Turns out I did, and now it's hard for me to stop playing.  I have a feeling this will be something that happens to me often while I try Flash games for this blog.  The style of many Flash games fits my style perfectly.  Play for a few minutes here and here, feel accomplished, and move on with your life.  This would work well for this blog, except then I have to stop myself from playing, or I will end up playing for hours just to level up in a game that gives very little reward.  At least many games on Kongregate have Badges/Achievements.  That always helps.

Anyways, back to the task at hand.  Like Plague Inc, the biggest draw in this game is the power you feel by just starting the chain and watching the reaction take everything over.  You click to start the infection, and the nearby people turn to zombies and start chasing the others.  What this game has over Plague is that you can actually see it happening.  After each level, you can spend your money on upgrading various aspects, such as your zombies' speed, infectiousness  lifespan, etc.  In each level, you need to infect a certain number of people who are already on the screen.  Some of them are stronger than others, and can even fight back.

The two things I was missing on my first playthrough was that you get per-game achievements that give you a bunch of money.  Apparently I hit those well in the first game.  The other thing was that you have 60 seconds spread throughout all of the levels you are playing, so you have to balance your cash into effects that will allow you to take over each level most quickly because if you have too many stragglers, you are just wasting time.  In this setting, it's weird to switch locations and still be running off the same "minute", but whatever works, I guess.  Perhaps the sequels took a different approach to this.

This got super long for not really saying anything important (when do I anyways, right?), so I'm going to finish up....


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Hit it or Quit it?
I would probably actually just Quit this version to move on to one of its siblings.  If there are more games in this series that presumably play like this, I'd rather just enjoy the enhancements they probably added to the game.  If this had Badges, I would at least Hit it until I got all of those.  It doesn't, so I'm moving on.