Been on Miniclip all day

Written by Jake on February 17th, 2007 and posted in Game News
Tags : action, flash, miniclip

My youngest son is ill and “sofa-bound” so I’ve been action playing games on Miniclip all day (via my MacBook Pro) with him and my other son. I’ve played some pretty neat games today and some not so good ones, so here’s a quick roundup (I’ve only included links for the good ones, you can hunt out the others yourself if you really want to play them).

Rails of War is a two level demo of a full game and we really liked it. At first the train config screens seemed a bit complicated but once we got into the game we thought it was cool and very original. Basically you control a train and can only go backwards and forwards on a track, although you can change signals to take different routes. You use the mouse to aim and fire your weapons at a variety of mobile and static enemies. Plus you have to perform certain drop of and pickup tasks along the way and you mustn’t run out of fuel or be blown up (of course). Anyway, it’s pretty cool, check it out.

Commando has been around for a little while but I gave it a proper go today. It’s a side scrolling “metal slug” clone set in WWII and it’s full of action and guns. There are lots of different enemies and much variation in the levels. I used keys to control the game as mouse controls are generally bitchin’ (bad) on a laptop trackpad. The only problem I had with the game is that, when you die, you have to start all over again, you can’t resume from the last level you played - bummer.

Motherload (shouldn’t that be “lode”?) is like nothing I’ve played before (perhaps I’ve led too sheltered a life). You control a mining vehicle on Mars and have to drill down and find metal ore (with dodgy scientific names) and bring it back to the surface before your fuel runs out. At first I thought that it was probably way to simple and thus boring but it’s totally addictive! There’s loads of little subtleties which make it really interesting. Also, when you sell the ore you can upgrade your vehicle with better drills, armour, larger fuel tank and cargo hold etc. It’s like an RPG of sorts in the upgrade sense. The only bummer for me was it crashed out Mozilla 3 times and my save games were gone! The fact that I reloaded it 3 times in vain the hope that it wouldn’t crash anymore shows you how addictive it is. Let me know if it crashes on your machines.

Soap Bubble seemed innovative at first until I realised that it’s basically Thrust except that you are a bubble in some caves. You must guide the bubble through each screen (it doesn’t scroll) and if you hit the edge you pop. I found it pretty hard and not very exciting so I stopped playing it.

The Pharaoh’s Tomb looked nice - it’s an isometric style game but after dying and restarting 3 times I had no more patience to carry on. Perhaps I’ll try it another day.

Sling seems pretty innovative. You are a bouncy sticky blob that you control by using the mouse to stretch yourself so that you “slingshot” around the screen. I played the tutorial and had visions of a really neat platform game but discovered that actually all you have is a single screen and have to attach yourself to several set points to turn them green to complete the level. The game physics are interesting but I soon got bored.

Clash n Slash has been around for a while and is a 6 level demo of a downloadable Indie game. It’s teeny bit like Asteroids in that it’s set on a single screen and you control a ship which you pilot around the screen to destroy enemies. The twist is that your home planet is in the middle and all the enemies are heading for it on a collision course and you must stop them. You can upgrade your ship and planet mid-level and the gameplay is fast and fun. I recommend this game for a quick blast and I’m tempted to get hold of the full version to do a proper review.

Exile is a dungeon-based hack ‘n’ slash. You fight monsters and pickup food and keys and a bit of gold and that seems to be it. Perhaps there’s more to it later on but I found the controls too unweildy on my laptop i.e. mouse (trackpad) to aim and keys to move. Plus the game was s bit slow and boring, and the scenery was unvaried.

Desert Ambush was interesting but ultimately a bit shallow. It reminds me of an old arcade game that I had for my C64 called Kung Fu Master because all you do is walk along in a straight line and punch and kick enemies whilst ducking and jumping a bit too. Weirdly you are some army dude who is fighting undead creatures in a middle eastern country. The main guy walks a bit too slowly as well. Anyway, it’s OK - you might like it, or maybe not.

Red Beard is a simple little platformer/puzzler where you have to collect these little coloured balls to make the platforms work. Each level is small and you have to get from the start to the finish. It didn’t really do much for me but was well made.
Oh and I managed to play all of these without installing any plugins so I guess they were all made in Flash.
Anyway, I had a fun day and I didn’t even go outside once - just like the good old days Apart from my son being ill, I wouldn’t mind repeating today. I didn’t even really mind the crappier games as it’s all part of the wonderful potpourri (I had to check the spelling on that) that is Miniclip.