Happy Tree Friends False Alarm

"Ugh, STAY AWAY."

Well, a game based on the overly violent series of cartoons featuring cute woodland animals getting killed in sick ways. We all knew it was coming, but is it any good? The short answer to the question is "NO." The story to this game is incredibly hard to pick out and the level variation is just awful.

Gameplay: 2/10

Remember the days of the good 2d side scrollers on the NES, good beat'em ups, addicting gameplay, the good old days? Well kiss those memories good bye if you buy this game. The objective of this game is simple, "get to the end of the stage without dying". Unfortunately, this task is rendered horrendously difficult because every possible obstacle is out there to turn your animals into mangled piles of gore. You have 4 tools to dispatch the obstacles, Activate, Freeze, Burn, and Explosion. Every obstacle is able to be destroyed by one of the 4, however, finding out how to do it is almost impossible before the stupid animals wander into the middle of the pit of lava. you're trying to freeze. This repeats all over for the 24 levels of the game

The next thing that needs mentioning is the camera work, or rather: "the camera doesn't work". Moving the camera up and down is impossible, so, to look at the higher sections of the stage, you need to drag the cursor all the way to the direction the level raises. To go back to your animals, take your cursor and drag it all the way back to the other direction. The cursor is slow to move and feels incredibly stiff.

The stage construction is linear, and the obstacles are quite out of place, for example: a hospital will have a series of wood-saws and a candy factory will have a lava pit. There are about 8 different stages and each stage consists of 3 sections of increasing difficulties. The first stage is the incredibly easy candy factory and the last is the Saw Mill. There is also a tutorial stage if you chose to include that.

The last way this game is virtually unplayable is because it is way too hard. The first stage is incredibly easy but starting at the second one, death will come from places you would never think to look and catch you completely by surprise. On top of all these out of place death traps and hazards, you're being timed and if time runs out, it's game over.


Graphics: 5/10

Not terrible, but there is CERTAINLY some room for major improvement. For example, all the characters are able to move smoothly, but the lack of colors on them makes certain parts of the game clash against other parts and can annoy the eyes after prolonged exposure. The backgrounds are uninspired and share the same bland color schemes to them; ie. The Saw Mill is different shades of brown, the Candy Factory is different shades of pink. The line between HD and not is hardly even close to crossed and all HD ends up doing is making the game have a slightly glossier look.


Sound: 6/10

The music in the game is of carnival style and the noises the animals make sound like they were recorded by some overly windy fifth graders who had just inhaled some helium. There is music variation in between levels, but in the end it is just the same thing either in a different tone or pitch. The hazards themselves hardly make noise and because of that, detection is almost impossible.


Replay Factor: 0/10

If you can stand even playing through this game one time, the second time you will like it even less. You know what to do, there is no difficulty change (not that the difficulty setting is easy anyways). The only reason to play it again would be to get gold medals on all of the stages.

+Well the tree friends jumped to the gaming world...
-The jump landed in some mud
-Horrid Control
-Uninspired Levels

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 07/22/08

Game Release: Happy Tree Friends False Alarm (US, 06/25/08)