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AARON'S REVENGE
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By Aaron
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There's personal expression, and then there's...
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PRESENTATION
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Graphics
It's all RTP, except for a few charsets I'm not sure are even in the game or not. I could check, but that would involve playing it again. Wait! There's that "Dead People" charset where everything's turned on a 45 degree angle and made really blurry, so they have a green line around them which makes it look like they have green, alien blood like the alien in the movie "Alien 3". Then there's a star panorama that moves really fast and reminds me of Elixir of Passion Fruit.
Are they used any worse than most newbie games? No, but most newbie games look like crap anyway. The map layouts aren't terrible, but they are really boring, and the only way to exit towns is to find the 'exit' event between two trees that form a kind of gate, so you need to run through all the trees you can find if you want to leave town. I especially like the fact Aaron's house is a crappy shack in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by monsters - could this possibly explain why nobody wants to be friends with him when there are perfectly balanced people living in towns? That and he's an insufferable little cunt, I guess.
Sound Effects
Lots of people scream in pain when Aaron exacts his righteous vengeance upon them. The menu sounds are ripped from FF7. The whooshing noise is your soul trying to escape your body rather than endure this crap, so isn't technically part of the game.
Music
"This is all RTP", I thought. Then I was checking through the files and realised it wasn't RTP, just midis everybody uses so often that they may as well be RTP. They fit in the sense that "Castle.mid" is played in a castle, and "X-Zone.mid" is played in the X-Zone. Which is to say, they're totally pedestrian, overused, but, yeah, there's nothing really bad about them. Oh! They're in this game, which is pretty bad, I reckon.
Originality {0/5}
You know how I said that I thought everything was RTP because it was so unoriginal?
Extra Joy
If you're ever feeling down, you can play this and realise Aaron is so much lamer than you will ever be. Since this is an idealised version of Aaron, the real one must be even worse, which would explain why THAT BITCH SAMANATHA wouldn't go out with him. Then again, he doesn't deserve the attention. Go down to Priceline and make fun of goths instead. I know I will.
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STORYLINE & CHARACTERS
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Plot
After the mob killed his family, FBI agent Aaron Slater snapped. Vowing to tackle the corruption that the law was powerless against, he bid farewell to his old life and became... "The Revengerator". Oh wait, silly me, that was Gosford Park! Aaron is a painful little brat who's decided to kill everyone who ever picked on him in high school, which is totally reasonable since they called him "retarded" on at least one occasion. I'd like to add "self-absorbed", "irritating", "disturbingly fixated on violence", "deluded" and "pathetic" to that list, but I'm worried he might try to kill me as well (or, worse, make a sequel).
Aaron's first port of call on his epic quest is the castle of King Chris Baron ("Baron Chris Baron" would have sounded better OH NO AARON PUT THE CHAINSAW DOWN). Since I can't be fucked remembering the names of all the people Aaron went to high school with (I can barely remember the people *I* went to high school with), I'll just copy-paste some text from the game. I swear I did not make any of this up.
I will attack King Chris Baron's town, and of course my primary goal is to find Samantha Blache for thinking I was a freak. Not just her but every girl who has turned me away.
Yeah, there's nothing remotely freaky about a guy who makes an RPG in which he kills people from his high school. You're such a bitch, Samantha!
King Chris Baron I remember the days when you and your friends would constantly tease me and compare to me to the retard Jessica Hillhouse. You would even call me I tard myself.
If irony was harnessed as some kind of energy source, we could phase out fossil fuels simply by using this game.
I REMEMBER NOW!!!!!!! I don't think Sam ever thought I was a freak. Jessica must have been putting pressure on her.
Keep dreamin', buddy.
OK, I refuse to keep going. You get the drill.
Characters
Aaron's the most revenge-fixated character since the Edmond Dantés, except instead of being confined to an island prison for years and having his life stolen... he got called retarded in high school. This kind of makes him harder to sympathise with, in the sense that World War 2 was kind of violent. Aaron starts out laughably pathetic, but by the time he's in his umpteenth monologue about how his revenge is justified because X person once teased him, he's just disturbing (but still pathetic).
He has friends that join him. They don't have any dialogue beyond "Hi, I'm Aaron's friend __________" or whatever, but they are interesting because they raise this question: Why does Aaron have friends? Are they just as pathetic as him, and feel kinship? Do they realise he's a whiny loser and keep him around so they can feel superior? Are they even real, or just imaginary? If imaginary, why isn't at least one of them a dinosaur / ninja / pirate? Can they stand to be around him longer than 15 consecutive minutes, and if so, how? Aaron's Revenge: The thinking person's game.
Cut Scenes
Conversations with next to no animation, except when (SPOILERS!!!!!!!!) Samantha dies, she collapses in a pool of blood. Serves her right for calling Aaron a freak! *STABS SAMANTHA* ;;>_________<
Originality
I haven't seen it before, and I never want to see it again.
Script
If you read the stuff I copied to the 'Plot' section, you get the picture. The spelling and grammar has faults, but it's not awful. It is, however, really boring to read variations on "YOU ARE MEAN AND NOW I WILL KILL YOU AND NOBODY WILL EVER UNDERSTAND WHAT IT'S LIKE" over and over. Aw, screw it, here's some more.
Smart boy. But I have a little more information to share with you. Your right when you say she had fealings for you. I sensed them the day John talked to her. Shortly after I began feading her lies. Eventually she was convinced you were a creep.
Who they hell did he go to high school with, Darth Sidious?
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GAMEPLAY
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Events
No errors, but there's nothing to screw up. I'm taking a bit off for the fact there's only one tile that lets you leave town, when it would have taken about 30 seconds (or less) to paste that tile all around the border. There are a few variations on "Press three switches to open up the door", but nothing resembling anything more than the most basic event work.
Fun Factor
Like amateur poetry readings, it's fun to laugh at for about five minutes, but any longer and it starts gnawing away at your brain, specifically the parts that still have faith in humanity.
Combat
First up, all the monster parties on the map are default, as are all the skills except 1 (which - yes! - has something to do with REVENGE). The boss encounters are actually pretty balanced, and some aren't winnable unless you spend a while levelling up and getting money, which I really wasn't expecting - why make a game about your revenge in which the first guy you try to take revenge on can kill you so easily? What kind of half-arsed revenge fantasy is this?
Dungeons
They're all castles where the people who teased Aaron live. Yeah, they all live in castles. I don't know either. Each castle has no random encounters, and revolves around using three crystals (guarded by monsters) to open a gate. It's marginally better than a linear series of tunnels filled with random encounters, but not by much.
Special
Nope.
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OVERALL
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I'm sure Aaron and Aaron's imaginary friends all like this, and that nobody else was really supposed to play it, but it was still on the front page of Gaming World. Even as a joke, it's pathetic, disturbing and narcissistic beyond belief. Don't bother.
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