Fluffy: Operation Overkill

Remember how fun the hoverbike sequence from Battletoads was?  Wait, you mean to tell me it was an exercise in futility?  That it was your childhood introduction to the rage quit?  That you would sooner have your pee-hole violated by rabid woodpecker than be reminded of it ever again?

Well I don’t think it looked that bad, but I do sympathize with all you poor souls that lived through it.  You see, I never actually played Battletoads. I just known of that level by reputation.  It also seemed to be the inspiration for the boss that ended my play time with Fluffy: Operation Overkill, the latest game picked out for me by my loving-caring-maybe a bit disturbing boyfriend Brian.

I’m not sure what’s up with Brian.  He seems so nice and salt-of-the-Earth most of the time.  And yet he picks out games like this or Bird Assassin for me.  We’ve never talked much about his childhood, but after these choices all I can picture is being raised in some kind of demented barn, being bullied by farm animals, and forming a blood vendetta against everything you would find in a petting zoo.

Fluffy is a side-scrolling shooter where you play as a spooky looking squirrel wearing a hazmat suit who is out to wipe out everything in the forest because they’re allegedly infected with some kind of virus.  I call bullshit on that one.  He looks like he’s just a bit too happy to massacre the cast of Open Season.    Maybe he was looking for an excuse, saw a rabbit sneeze or something and said “well fuck it, end of the world plague, let’s get armed.”  Either way, the only thing the game does have going for it is the sheer scale of violence on display.  When you shoot something, its guts spill out, heads going flying, and blood turns bodies of water red.  I’m sure this alone will be enough to lure in those hopeless torture porn losers who get hard whenever anything on-screen winces in pain.

Strip away the admittedly well done gore and all that’s left is one of the very worst games on the marketplace.  It all starts with the embarrassing controls.  The only option you’re given is to use the control stick.  Why this was done, I have no clue, since there’s nothing analog about it.  The slightest nudge of the stick sends Fluffy full speed ahead.  This would be okay if you could use the digital pad, but you can’t.  I can’t imagine how much this will suck for those saps with first-gen 360 controllers that always seem perma-stuck to the left.  I reckon it would render this game impossible.

The gameplay is completely lacking as well.  You can’t aim anywhere but straight ahead, so every action sequence is just taping the fire button and nothing more.  There are Atari 2600 games that offer more versatility.  Meanwhile, you have floaty jumps and bad collision detection that will leave you taking undeserved damage multiple times.  The first boss battle is a prime example.  You take on some kind of pig thingy that instakills you if you’re within farting distance of it.

And finally there was the Battletoads homage I mentioned above.  In this case, you’re running from a pig driving a combine harvester.  You’re forced to jump over various gates WHILE shooting moles that cling to your body.  The problem is the gates are too close together and your jumping is too slow and unresponsive.  I tried to beat it dozens of times, my blood pressure rising to dangerous levels.  I took a few breaks, until finally I had enough and rage quit.  I intended to go back to it later, only to find that the game had no auto-save and I would have to start over from the beginning.  Fuck that, and fuck Fluffy: Operation Overkill.  It’s a broken, botched, poorly developed piece of shit.  Sure, it looks good, but so does the hooker on the corner.  And like that hooker, Fluffy won’t leave you itching for more.  It will just leave you itchy.

Fluffy: Operation Overkill was developed by SO SO DEV Games

240 Microsoft Points thought a better name for them would be Sucky Crappy Sarcastic Airquote “DEV” Games in the making of this review.