Flash Game of the Month: August

The flash game of the month is Tactical Assassin: fun, Fun, FUN!

The first thing that stood out to me when playing this game is how good the presentation is overall. It feels like Metal Gear with the ambient sound and life like sniper rifle round discharge, hell I do not even know if that is the sound a sniper rifle makes for sure but it sounds incredible. The user interface and music also have a Metal Gear vibe, especially the music that is ripped directly from MGS, which I noticed in the credits later. The stolen presentation elements brings me to an important point about this game, by stealing those elements it probably allowed the creator to elevate the core game elements to another level… this is smart design, kudos for focusing efforts on the mission briefs and assassination scenarios and lifting the rest from games that got it right already.

I know I might be the only person out there that enjoyed word problems in math class or on silly standardized tests but I LOVE THE USE OF THEM IN THIS GAME! The mission briefs are so amazing because they explain to you slowly what you need to do while telling a bit of story and setting up the mood of the hit. The briefs get you thinking and out of that guns blazing mindset most players get into when they get a virtual gun in their hands. The creator penalizes this behavior even more be allowing the player to skip the brief and just shoot blindly which almost certainly results in failure. After failing the brief is read and read thoroughly ensuring that almost all players will have the same experience at some point. The brief has some other nice design touches such as multiple objectives so the player is again taken away from the single-track mindset, again very clever and maintains the theme of the game, good job! The change of location and weapon per chapter was a nice tough plus stick figure art is awesome too!

Good Luck and Have Fun!