Migget Chainsaw Hands

Migget Chainsaw Hands, the spellcheck challenging 2D platformer created by Rooster, Ironshanks, and Beaker for a 3 day game competition promises an alien with chainsaws for hands who fights to escape a gladiatorial arena. Whether successful or not, his is a mission to take down as many with him as possible.

Does it deliver on those promises? Yeah. It does.

Migget Chainsaw Hands doesn’t have a deep story. It doesn’t have plot twists or deep characters. It doesn’t have many options, multiple endings, side-quests, or mini-games…or, maybe it does and I just suck at reaching them. But does it need them? Not really.

Migget Chainsaw Hands is one of those simple guilty pleasure games that people waste tons of time on like Doodle Jump. It’s something you could easily see as a downloadable app on a cell phone. Unfortunately, I’m not that crazy about those kinds of games. At least not when I am at home and have access to consoles or pc games. I can see me playing this sitting in a doctor’s office waiting area or while I have downtime in some other situation outside of the home but given the choice to play something else, I probably would.

One of the things that really made it hard for me to enjoy this game is the sudden vertical arc in the difficulty curve that occurs (for me anyway) around 50-60 kills. For the first few dozen kills, you can just stand in the corner and tap the chainsaw button over and over. In fact, you almost have to or you risk unnecessary damage/lost life from enemies falling on your, popping up from below, or managing to get behind you. Maybe that is why the later enemies were so hard for me; I never got the practice running and dodging the weaker enemies. But when you start to stack kills, the enemies suddenly start taking more hits to kill, draw faster than you, and multiply so no matter what you do, you get curb stomped.

Pros

Cool Concept – You have chains for hands. You’re fighting cyborgs. What could be better?

Pace – The game is quick. Well, it is for me anyway because I die fast. With practice, someone might be able to improve.

Competition – Despite being single-player, the potential for competition in this game is great. This game reminds me of when I played Atari 2600 trying to get a higher score than everyone else.

Skill Improvement– I did improve each time I played this. Even though tried several times and still had trouble at certain points ie. 60 kills, I’m sure that given enough plays I would have hit 70, 80, 90, etc.


Cons

Mechanics - I ended up standing in the corner mashing the swing button. Then as I got swarmed, I ran around frantic trying not to get hugged or surrounded. Enemy back-attacks were pretty much the kiss of death.

Repetition – As far as I know you stay in the same level with the same weapon, amount of health, etc. The enemies get faster, multiply, and get stronger but there’s really no change to your character or location.


Summary

Chainsaw is a cool game that you can pick up and play pretty much any time if you have a few minutes to kill. You can play it for hours but will probably have to restart one hundred times to fill that much space. While I did get frustrated or annoyed with the game-play, I still want to acknowledge what I view as a quality game. If you haven’t tried it, give it a shot.

Thanks Beaker!

3/5