Monday, February 21, 2011

Flash Games - Sniper Game Edition

So, I don't know what it is about Sniper games that makes me sit there and have to play them, even when they're honestly not all that good.  I guess it invokes that feeling of when everything comes together to one specific point, in this case, the assassination, and succeeds.  That culmination of all the planning behind this sort of thing (even though there is none in these games) paying off.  Face it, if you ever read The Day of the Jackal, you know who you were rooting for by the end.  For whatever reason, there's that satisfaction there in bite-sized portions known as flash games.


First up is Smoking Kills, a rather satirical take on the whole of sniper games.  From the inexplicable mission briefings from indistinguishable 'bosses', to eventually poking fun at the idea of such games having anything resembling a plot, it's built from the ground-up to be half-funny and half-shooty, and does that fairly well, especially with the bonus mission.  As an added challenge, it offers a few 'power-ups', one of which being the Sunglasses.  While it makes every hit slightly more difficult by making everything darker, you look like a badass doing it*, because, well, shades.

*You may not actually see yourself looking badass or not.



Next up is Scope: First Blood, which, while not necessarily intended to be satirical also doesn't try to take itself seriously by any means, offering such missions as making a cheating girlfriend's lover, er, pay, and scaring off a mob of smokers from in front of a building by shooting out their cigarettes.  Still, a few of the missions are pretty neat once you finally understand what you're supposed to do (the construction site, namely, also the one pictured) and it's a quick fix game for your Sniping urges.


Finally, we have Tactical Assassin which is the first in a rather good series and is by far the most serious of the games offered here today.  Listening to the music, you get a really good Metal Gear Solid vibe, which I imagine is intentional, given that there's a Tactical Assassin: Substratum game out there as well from the same creator.  There's no upgrades in this one, no switching, just get your mission and execute it.  As simple as the other two games, but infinitely more detailed and, because of that, I'd say better.

There's not a lot I can say about these games; you point, click, and a stick figure dies.  It's really the easiest form of flash game out there (or one of them), but for some reason, I can't help but like them and actually actively seek them out.  The only other type of Flash game I try that with are Escape the Room games which...I'll go into another time.

By the way, some might have noticed that this post went up early and unfinished; that's my bad.  I hit publish when I meant to click "Save as Draft" and, well.  I just went into edit right after to finish it up, so I might be unnecessarily pointing it out.   But there it is, just in case anyone noticed and wondered what that was all about.

1 comment:

  1. Oh cool, I found I had a love of sniping after I played RE4/Biohazard 4 on the Wii. I was in love with that sniper rifle you first get. I still get shivers of pleasure hearing it reload.

    However, I've found that a few other games I've played I haven't enjoyed the sniping in them so much, so I'll have to check out these flash games for sure. Thanks for making me aware of them!

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