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Worth playing... once. For curiosity's sake.

  • narcodis
  • 05/20/2010 08:05 AM
  • 1836 views
CHRONO TRIGGER (hereby referred to as Not Chrono Trigger, or NCT)


Anyone can probably guess at first glance that this game is not to be taken seriously. It's a joke game, made to be completely humorous, and with the actual intent of being a bad game. Being such, I found it difficult to find the right angle on how to write this review. The game is bad, so that goal is definitely fulfilled, but underneath the layers of awful, there's a glimmer of quality trying so desperately to hide itself. You can tell that the author has some experience in the craft, but... I'm just not sure.


THE GAMEPLAY

The idea of this game is that you are trying to not die, and pretty much everything kills you. Buildings kill you. NPCs kill you. Bridges, the wrong paths, "booby" traps, many many bombs, castles, and not to mention, a guy in green who literally hangs your ass on a wall if you cross his path. I'm pretty sure the band of heroes committed suicide at least once. This is basically the game. Saving is an option anywhere, and the player is advised to save often so deaths are pretty inconsequential. This mechanic stays pretty funny through most the game, but there's definitely no strategy involved. It's kind of a game of trial and error over and over, which stops being fun pretty early on. The variety of deaths stays pretty diverse and interesting to keep the player entertained, though towards the end it gets kind of cheap and overplayed.

Battles are a joke, aptly so. I never took a single point of damage, and I think there was only a single instance where I didn't kill an enemy in a single blow (the last boss).

It's a pretty simple game, and the dying is funny so it doesn't even matter if you die. But it soon becomes you want to play through the game just to play through, and the deaths more or less become a necessary evil.


THE AESTHETICS

The graphics and music are supposed to reflect the music of a bad game. Except for the occasional spurt of oontz-ing dance music with rainbow colored screen flashes, the game is mostly 8-bit rips and minimal nes-sounding tunes. Again, the game excels at being bad, which is intentional, so bravo? In any case, there is a certain degree of effort placed into the game's visuals and sounds. In any case, it was all pretty unmemorable, and mostly pretty unpleasant.

There was a room towards the end of the game where there was nothing but a really loud yelling, and a picture of a guy with really bad teeth constantly flashing across the screen. this happened maybe twenty times in this single room that spanned only one screen. It was really really really annoying. Especially since I died in the very next room, so I had to do it twice. Bleh..


THE FLAVOR

The story of this game starts with you and your band of Bubble Bobble heroes speaking with the king, who tells you Action 52 has plagued this land with it's terrible-ness, and you must rid the land of it's horrible ways. The fact that Action 52 has made the world of NCT into what is literally a terrible game is a concept that intrigues me.

The dialogue in NCT is... well, it's consistent. Most the characters have dialogue that I can only describe as "terrible english". I'm sure there's a more appropriate term for it, but that's essentially what it is. Any of the other characters in the game are written pretty well, but there's also alot of really tasteless dick jokes abundant in the game. I did laugh at the guy who asked to be orally serviced, to which you had four options that all said Yes. It's later revealed that he doesn't have a penis to be gratified with. The rest were pretty bad jokes though.

The menu and combat dialogues were all either "duh", "shit", or "penispenispenispenis...". Very classy. I think it's supposed to be ironic. It's an RPGMaker game and it doesn't even care if you know how to play.




THE BREAKDOWN

Pros:
-Funny.. very entertaining in this regard.
-Short and sweet.
-Not sure why I enjoyed this game.

Cons:
-No real challenge.
-Playing through the game became tiresome.
-Really lame jokes at times (dick jokes)
-Nothing pretty to look at whatsoever.


VERDICT:

Play this game. Play it once. Just because I know you're curious. It's not a good game... it's a bad game. It is a bad game because of Action 52. But despite that, it has moments of intelligence and wit that made me smile, and other times made me roll my eyes straight into the back of my head. This game is not for everyone. But if you're like me, maybe you'll enjoy it as a small diversion.

Posts

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Booby Trap! <3

I guess it's hard to review this kind of game... especially to give a rating at the end. Because after all you still have to compare it to other RM games.
Corfaisus
"It's frustrating because - as much as Corf is otherwise an irredeemable person - his 2k/3 mapping is on point." ~ psy_wombats
7874
Frankly, I believe that you were too generous with your score, because this game was admittedly submitted as part of Drakiyth's "Crappiest Game Reviews" contest, meaning the goal was to try your hardest at creating a game that is physically painful to play.
Where was Drakiyth's contest? I have him subscribed on YouTube.
Corfaisus
"It's frustrating because - as much as Corf is otherwise an irredeemable person - his 2k/3 mapping is on point." ~ psy_wombats
7874
The contest was on Charas-Project. His reviews are all over his channel on Youtube.
2 stars may seem generous, but as bad as the game was, I still enjoyed it. It's like watching a really really bad horror flick because it's funny... and when it's intentionally bad, then it's purpose was served, you dig?
My brain felt like I had eaten too many video games after playing this.
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