Blog FeedThey Drive Me Nuts
You’ve seen them before. You’ve even played them before. They’re the primitive methods of entertainment that you play when absolutely nothing else takes your fancy. They’re not much more complex than Pong, and even Pacman gives them a run for their money. They’re Flash games, and they drive me up the wall.
The vector graphics. The corny, 80’s arcade-quality sound effects that even dated mobile phones can do better. Can I get the piece of rubbish in the bin? Can I shoot enough Osamas at point blank range? Even browser games using little more than HTML and a database get points for what aspects of them make up a good game, despite being without any graphical interaction. At least they aren’t mindless.
I’m not trying to take away from the hard work that the guys from sites such as Miniclip put in to their products, really I admire people who can do things with Flash because I can’t. And I’m sure there are a few Flash games which actually have some point to them - I’ve seen some RPG style ones before. But when there are games such as UT2004 or a good strategy title, what’s the point? It irritated me to no end the other night seeing my brother playing Flash games when I knew he could have been playing any number of other respected titles, to which I’d actually be comfortable sitting in the same room while they’re played.
If you’re at work or school and can’t play real games, I suppose you’re excused, but they still drive me nuts. I can’t remember the last time I had a pet peeve like this. So there. Now Pseudo doesn’t get to have all the bitching to himself.
12th November | Reply
I know exactly what you are saying. Anytime someone links me to some flash game I am soon to hit close. I just my time is spent better elsewhere and flash gaves can’t hold my attention… much. Every once in a while I will hit something and be playing for longer. Usually it is more out of hatred for the game itself. “Its just a stupid little flash game, I can beat this!”
12th November | Reply
Actually, Sega put some of their Super Monkey Ball mini-games online (I forget the names but there was one that felt a bit like PilotWings) as Flash games and they were highly addictive.
The thing is, you’re never going to get UT2004 into something as instant as Flash for a long time. Get over it. What they do provide, however, is a few moments of fun that can be loaded by your browser really quickly, and that’s what counts as far as I am concerned. No loading times (usually), no having to pay £30, just instant fun that you can forget about. Yeah, a lot are crap, but it’s free crap so who cares?
12th November | Reply
Because of the human need to overcome challenges, how silly they may be. If I get linked to another Yeti sports game, I’m sure to see what score I can get, but once I do, I get bored and move on.
Playing these games in same manner I play UT2004 or WoW seems weird to me, but just playing them occasionally seems perfectly fine. And if it isnt, well sir, than I dont want to be fine!
13th November | Reply
Personally I’m a sucker for some flash games - or more to the point, any flash game that has a software toy or ’sandbox’ element to it - a la the aformentioned Yeti games.
There are also other elements that appeal about Flash gaming - accessibility whilst browsing being one, novelty being another. The internet is a breeding groud of originality, free speech, and consequently bad taste.
Flash gaming in this sense is an outlet of a rising subculture of homegrown internet humor - the ytmnds, the Photoshop Phridays, the topical (or just plain obscure) webcomics - that brings out the gibbering teenager in all of us in a way that overemasculated men shouting ‘HEADSHOT!’ to the sound of a Dutchman screaming ‘LINK MEEEEEEE!’ somehow doesn’t quite manage.
15th November | Reply
See, the thing about flash games is that if you’re one of the folks who play them all the time, you have no real experience about good games. But as a person who plays real games, you know better, erego you cant play em for too long. The worst is when a flash game annoys you because you cant beat it. But like someone else said, theyre a waste of time when you got time to waste. Kinda like former clan mates websites that you read, when youve got papers to do. Many, many papers. Hmmmm…. *runs off to do papers*
17th November | Reply
Is throwing a piece of rubbish in the bin really that much more mindless than, say, a quick game of counter-strike on some public server full of 12 year-olds? We all know that the team play and strategy is non-existant in those situations.
For what it’s worth, I wasn’t playing the rubbish-throwing game for very long. But I was playing Peasant’s Quest until I finished it (a few hours). Why? Quite a few years back this would have been considered a “respected game”, although I don’t see why I shouldn’t try games that only lots of other people like. The reason I was playing was because it filled a niche two-hour break that I didn’t want to spend shooting things up. “Get a decent RPG!” I hear you say. For want of two hours of entertainment, overkill is beyond an understatement. It would take me half the time to learn how to get started! Being able to finish the game in one sitting is both more satisfying and less addictifying.
If you’re ashamed of me playing them, maybe you’ve forgotten what a game is meant for. Just as a large computer program like Firefox is respected so are the little ones, like the app that tells me the temperature of my CPU. Sure, if I had to choose between them I’d pick Firefox in a second. I use it for much longer periods of time and get more useful work done with it — but I’m sure glad I have both.
How come we can’t preview comments before we send them?
18th November | Reply
Not ashamed - irritated. It’s much less interesting to watch from where I’m sitting in the room. Besides, you don’t have Counter-Strike installed, and even if you did, you know it doesn’t count. It’s community is the bane of the online gaming’s existence.
Never thought of having a preview for the comments, but I’m pretty sure the blog software doesn’t support it on it’s own. There might be a plugin though.