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Stickman Madness
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It's often difficult to find games friendly to children in these liberal times. We are seemingly thwarted at every turn by material in games deemed inappropriate for young minds by society's goose-stepping nannies. But not today. Today we've found you a game free of the disagreeably foul scourges of civilized society; tobacco, Coke products, and oil company executives. There's nothing in this game to suffer through. Unless you don't like excessive violence.
Today's featured game is, Stickman Madness, although a more accurate title would have been, "Stickman Heads Getting Blasted at Close Range with Blood Everywhere". In this game you play as a stickman who had just sat down to a nice lunch only to be interrupted by some rowdy gun-wielding stick-hooligans out for some blood. Why you were targeted and whether you and your dinner date are good guys, bad guys, armed innocents, or food critics is never established. The object of the game is to dispatch any stick-enemies before they can gun you down. You aim and shoot using your mouse The spacebar will reload your weapon. Reloading is extremely important in a kill or be killed kind of game. The life-meter on the bottom left will indicate whether their shots struck you. Once your life runs out the game ends with a disturbing image of your character hanging upside down, riddled with holes, in a meat freezer.
Stickman Madness has some of the best stick-artwork we've seen. The stick-artists who worked on this stickman project can be proud. The character animations flow believably and the simple line-art backgrounds move with 3D sophistication that is as fascinating as it is enjoyable to watch. The game-play is engaging and well planned, which came as a pleasant surprise after playing countless target shooting game that quickly lost our interest. On the down side, with all the thought that went into the artwork and the game-play, we were disappointed that very little went into the game's story-line. Or if it did, it didn't go beyond tying wicked acts of killing together and calling it a plot. To put it simply, the creators never establish whether your character is a good guy or not so the violence lacks any context. It becomes a well-done but pointless shooting spree in which you become a faceless thug dispensing violence while the game's morality slides into the muck. If you particularly enjoy playing whack-a-mole first person shooters might take a crack at this game. If you're an immature gamer who giggles at words like, "crack", or the kind of person likely to become a serial killer, this game will probably appeal to you. We don't recommend this game to casual gamers.
