Thursday, September 04, 2008

OIJ)(#QIOJ - aka: Random

...And we're back. This has been a crazy summer for me, and Avert Your Eyes has suffered as a result. Now that things are winding down, we should be back on track.

This week I decided to take a look at ROM CHECK FAIL, which is another of those mashup games that have been popping up lately. The game basically takes a mix of different classic games, and then randomly selects a backdrop, player character, enemies, and music from these games. So one minute you're Pac-Man in a Super Mario Brothers level finding a dot to eat so you can eat the ghosts, the next you're the ship from Space Invaders taking out asteroids from, well, Asteroids.

Now, when it works, it can be pretty damn fun. The problem is since everything is random, the situations aren't always as ideal as I described above. When it doesn't work out, you're playing as Mario on a Pac-Man level, trying to destroy the bricks from Breakout. How does that even work? Luckily, your only goal is survival. Even that becomes quite difficult, as sometimes everything will randomize and you'll just die immediately from both player character and enemy spawning in the same space. Unfortunately, this happens more often than it should.

ROM CHECK FAIL is still a blast to play, it's just too random for it's own good. The unachievable goals aren't really a problem, so if they can find a way to prevent the all-too-present instadeath, the play experience will be much better. Still, it's only a 6.6MB download, and system requirements are slim, so it's painless to install the game, even if playing it is not.