By Alec Meer on October 24th, 2008 at 7:45 pm.
The Rock, Paper, Shotgun inbox, monitored with terror and suspicion by all four us, has a tendency to fill up. Now, we’re very diligent about deleting anything that isn’t about getting a bigger willy or inheriting a South African fortune, but occasionally emails about videogames nonetheless manage to reach our eyes. It’s almost like people expect us to write about games on this games site. The cheek of it.
Unfortunately, being SeptOctNovember, it’s silly season for big game releases, which means we’re getting a mite behind on all manner of interesting indie and online fare. Huge apologies to those developers and sites who’ve sent us these that we are too weak to give each its own post, but let’s hope we can make some amends by grouping a few mini-treasures together below for your esteemed delectation.
Karoshi Suicide Salaryman has been speaking deeply to me, given that I’ve spent pretty much the entirety of this week bed ridden and praying for release from this snotty mortal coil. It’s a – hey! there aren’t many of these- 2D puzzle-platformer, superficially with the trad. goal of reaching a level exit. The twist is that you can only end a level by killing your character – bad sitcom stuff, where an unhappy protagonist keeps getting interrupted just as he’s finally going to the deed. Only with more giant spikes and falling crates. It’s kinda crude, but super-clever and there’s some excellent ingenuity in making obviously fatal traps as hard to reach as as possible. Particular favourite: firing a gun at a sequence of trampolines then jumping into the ricocheting bullet. It’s like Portal, but with more Farewell, Cruel Worlds. Also, it appears to use the incidental music from the Adam & Joe radio show’s Text The Nation segment, which is really confusing. (Thanks to Kevin Veale for the tip-off.)
Sanctioned Renegades is an in-browser (using the Unity webplayer thingy, which I’m sure will make someone moan about Linux support or something) mutliplayer FPS with something of a Far Cry (1) aesthetic, somehow squeezed into just 10 megabytes. Quite the technical achievement and… and that’s all I can tell you, because the Unity plugin repeatedly crashes on load on my PC. I’m going to speculatively blame Vista 64 for the time being, and hope you have more luck.
Game Krunch is a new webgame portal with myriad broswer-played delights lurking within. I’ve particularly enjoyed Tactical Assassin Substratum, which is sort of a browser Hitman with stickmen. Your perspective is that of a sniper rifle scope, with everything around it black – so it’s a matter of locating your target more than it is of shooting him. With everyone a stickman, your victim is rarely obvious – you need to read to supplied intel to find out what actions will give him away. Dead good, this’un.
24/10/2008 at 19:56 Fumarole says:
The Game Krunch link doesn’t work, but the Tactical Assassin Substratum one does.
24/10/2008 at 20:16 Marcin says:
Bah, mission 5 is a reflex test which I suck at. There’s no control over the knife. :/
24/10/2008 at 20:18 Klaus says:
Nuh uh
The assassination game appealed to me immediately. I’m not sure what that says about me…
24/10/2008 at 20:33 CrashT says:
This is like the third Tactical Assassin game I think you can find the other two (All three infact) on Kongregate. The first has slightly more challenging missions, and the second allows you to upgrade your weapons an such.
I shall have to check out this new one. Cheers.
24/10/2008 at 20:41 hydra9 says:
@Marcin:
I had to give up at the ‘knifer’ mission, as well. Seemed pretty cool, up to that point.
24/10/2008 at 20:46 pepper says:
Yeah the knifer mission isnt too easy, i forgot to note down the next mission, but i think someone here will do that for those that cant get past it!
24/10/2008 at 20:49 pepper says:
Alright, the mission after KNIFER is called GUARDS
24/10/2008 at 20:50 Klaus says:
Woohoo, completed the tactical assassin game with a score -2030. Bow to my supreme skills.
24/10/2008 at 20:53 pepper says:
So your bringing people back to life? ^_^
24/10/2008 at 20:59 Klaus says:
Ok, I misread. It was actually 0, I was looking at something different. I got 7384 the next time. It helps to metagame.
24/10/2008 at 21:05 Senethro says:
I’m sitting on Karoshi #22. Any suggestions?
24/10/2008 at 21:08 AlexW says:
I believe the next code is ‘GUARDS’. Good luck, and yes that level is a pain in the arse.
24/10/2008 at 21:15 teo says:
the sniper game is really inspiring
24/10/2008 at 21:16 Radiant says:
/inspiring/??
24/10/2008 at 21:21 Little Green Man says:
Karoshi Suicide Salaryman, isn’t that the flash one? In which case bleh, the Gamemaker ones are much better.
24/10/2008 at 21:25 roBurky says:
That suicide game is a flash remake of the the excellent Karoshi. I very much suggest everyone ever also check out the even better Karoshi 2.
24/10/2008 at 22:36 SanguineLobster says:
That man in the hat didn’t know what hit him.
24/10/2008 at 23:34 D says:
Theres a striking similarity between man with hat and Yahtzee. Maybe the assassin is working for Eidos?
24/10/2008 at 23:37 Klaus says:
I actually shot the other guy several times just for the hell of it.
24/10/2008 at 23:52 Ian says:
I found and liked the assassin games a while ago but wish there as a little more to them.
Not that I’m really griping, because they’re good fun and some of the missions are done really well.
25/10/2008 at 00:21 OJ287 says:
Sniper game is good. Theres a pattern to the wobble on the knife. Theres at least one point in each one where youve got a 50/50 shot of clicking at the right time.
25/10/2008 at 00:53 Marcin says:
I got past the knifer using OJ287′s anticipation method.
However, I’m stuck on Karoshi #13. There’s only one button and nothing happens when I press it … halp!
Senethro, which one is #22?
25/10/2008 at 00:56 rabbitsoup says:
Sanctioned renegades is great fun, the only problem is the weapons are all upgrades so once the other guys is better equipped your knacked
25/10/2008 at 00:57 Marcin says:
Nevermind, got it. That’s clever.
25/10/2008 at 01:04 Pags says:
Never been a big fan of the tactical assassin games. I’m a Flash-gaming elitist.
Intrigued by Sanctioned Renegades though, so far I’ve been quite impressed by the Unity player’s capabilities.
25/10/2008 at 01:07 Aftershock says:
The Assassin missions are in such short supply because of the time it takes to make them such quality.
Also, having played all three, i’d say that the first is the best, closely followed by the third. The second isn’t all that good, especially with the weapons purchasing. AND DISTRACTING GUARDS.
25/10/2008 at 03:33 Pheonix K says:
Silly *season*, perhaps?
25/10/2008 at 03:47 Down Rodeo says:
Linux support moan moan geekery moan moan Windows slaves moan moan.
I tried my best, ok? It’s too late for clever humour. I don’t think I’ll be missing much anyway. These are fun diversions – fun, but not as good as (for instance) Freespace 2! Thank you GoG!
25/10/2008 at 07:16 Corbeaubm says:
Sanctioned Renegades is an interesting experiment that could eventually become awesome. At the moment, it feels like one of the earliest shooters. No ducking, no jumping, no running, and little feedback to tell if you’re hitting your target. Plus a weapons promotion system that tilts the game into a blowout after a bit in favor of the better side (debate the merits of this at will).
26/10/2008 at 03:57 Donald Duck says:
BUT DOES IT HAVE THE DRM????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:( :( :(
27/10/2008 at 10:08 alphaxion says:
for those stuck on suicide salaryman.. I found a playthru when I got stuck on a levelhttp://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pG1QIpfCXkc&feature=related
29/10/2008 at 00:55 Holly says:
Would love to pick up Fallout and Fallout2 again, and I remember enjoying Messiah enough to possibly play it again.
Thanks for the link~