Junkman
Dec 13 2004, 05:17 AM
Game: General Cartman
Creator: Beamer
Genre: Action
Description: War is being waged between North Park and South Park. Help Cartman do everything which is needed to make South Park victorious.

Rating: 40%

Review: Everyone's debuts as a game creator always call for great nostalgic moments. Most first attempts at making a game usually always are miserable and plain laughable, no matter how dedicated you might be to make something which is actually good. I remember the first game I ever worked on; I thought this was one of the greatest things I've ever done back when I was making it, yet a single year later, I thought this was the most horrible thing that ever lived. Well, I have no idea if the same story applies to General Cartman, but I just felt like making a random rant here. Punch me. smile.gif

General Cartman is Beamer's third game to be ever made, and it shows. The graphics are rudimentary at it's best, there's a really basic engine within the game's boundaries, but it's surprisingly fun, yet. The game tells the story of Cartman, who's trying to win the war against North Park and in order to do so, he need to go through various levels, shooting at enemies that just stand there, shooting in the direction they're facing at without ever changing course. The game supposely was created using only Klik and Play's step-through editor, and that is enough to warrant this game an honorable mention. I never ever managed to use that editor properly, but that might be because you just can't make anything good out of it. smile.gif Bullets go right through enemy soldiers, thus a single bullet can easily kill a row of soldiers without a sweat. You can even kill them by shooting the bullets they shoot at you, so that means something. Cartman is quite amazing, now that we think about it. smile.gif

There's some cool moments in the game, yet. The tank ride was quite a fun part of the game, although like most of the game, it's pretty much broken. The tank is driven in a rather screwy matter, seeing that no hot spots nor action points are used. That means that the tank will usually shoot from nowhere, too. The gameplay also is fast and functional, so there's no real boring part in the game neither. It's just laid out in a really basic fashion, so it's mostly why the game doesn't manage a great grade.

Graphics are pretty standard fare. The sprites used are really basic, plus most of them don't even feature any kind of animation. The backgrounds really are basic for the most part, as most of the background elements are single-colored background tiles or objects such as water streams and other similar objects. Graphics aren't too awful, but there's no spectacular graphics neither. There also is no music at all within this game (apart from the South Park theme song) and most of the sound effects are taken from South Park and the Windows 95/98 sound files.

To sum it up, General Cartman is about everything you'd expect from someone's early projects. There's nothing that is miserable or awful within this game, although it doesn't manage any great results neither. It do manage to be a fun game, despite it's load of things that could have been improved or that simply are way out of place. It still is good for an early project, yet. smile.gif