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RevStu’s DAY OF FURY!
by RevStu (July 9th, 2010 at 10:11 am)
I had a really irritating day yesterday, for trivial reasons we don’t need to go into here.
By fortuitous chance, however, the App Store stepped in with some rather fine anger-themed games, which helped me vent my BOILING RAGE without murdering very many people, or doing something else that also often upsets me – spending any money.
Angry Viking (free until Sunday) even survived getting off to a terrible start, by being one of those games that MORONIC IDIOT DEVELOPERS don’t provide a single proper screenshot of on the app page, forcing me through the POINTLESS TIMEWASTING TEDIUM of having to grab one myself. They’ll get a smack in the mouth for that if I ever see them around here, but fortunately for them they get to live, on account of a fun little game.
Styled after the visually-stunning but flawed Wii game MadWorld, Angry Viking is even less sophisticated in gameplay terms. You find yourself in a snowbound forest village armed only with an axe and a bad attitude, and your mood isn’t improved when you’re assaulted by all manner of miffed locals. A hack-and-slash rampage swiftly follows, with the only other elements to consider being the replenishment of your energy by slaughtering innocent cows, and a limited spinny attack during which you can’t take damage.
In the style of iPod fave Minigore, on reaching 25,000 and 75,000 points you can subsequently jump straight into the action at those scores, and the game rapidly gets similarly frantic, with moments of respite few and far between.
Next up in the Theatre Of Wrath was Angry Viper Vicky, a simple but surprisingly challenging and very likeable game featuring a hungry cartoon snake trying to scoff lots of cute woodland creatures, while avoiding icky, horrible-tasting spiders. You’ll need a lot of skill and fast fingers to make the most of the combo scoring system and fill up Viper Vicky’s infinitely-elastic snake tummy, but the game’s full of character that’ll cheer you up even when you fail.
We’ve saved the best for last, though, in the shape of the splendid Angry Honey.
A simple rhythm-action game very reminiscent of some of the stages from the classic GBA/DS Rhythm Tengoku/Paradise/Heaven games, you take the part of an unfortunate lug who’s committed some terrible unspecified faux pas, and as a result is under a barrage of crockery and other household items from his better half.
All you have to do is tap anywhere on the screen to smash the incoming objects in time with the music (while avoiding punching the baby, just like in real life), but Angry Honey is so beautifully executed that even the most savage temper will be soothed in seconds. The music is just one tiny loop, but clever changes of pitch and speed and timing provide lots of variation, and the fusillade of furnishings quickly gets very tricky to maintain your combos in.
You can call for help from household pets from time to time, which in some unexplained manner enable you to unleash various screen-clearing special attacks, and there’s a global highscore table (though it didn’t seem to be working when I tried).
Featuring the lovely, relaxing sound of broken crockery, Angry Honey might just be my favourite new game of the week.
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