Happy

I’m a firm believer that a review should never take longer to write than the game I’m reviewing did to finish.  In that spirit, I have about seven minutes to write this piece on the game Happy.  Well actually it’s about 6 minutes and change now.  Fuck, I better stop wasting time.

Happy is a side scroller where you play as a snowman-looking thingie who has to get cupcakes or something.  It’s unquestionably a game designed for the kiddie set.  There’s no enemies or anything.  Just a few jumping sequences.  You move left and right and your dude rolls.  If you release the stick, he keeps rolling until something makes him stop.  You can also double jump.  That’s pretty much it.

I should point out that all the proceeds from this game go to T.A.G. Pet Rescue.  I’m sure it’s a fine charity and the dude who made this had his heart in the right place.  But I’m not in the charity promotion business.  I’m a critic.  And as a game, Happy really fucking sucks.  It’s just such a nothing of a game.  There’s no reason to really play it.  It’s horrible.

The best thing I can say about it is the graphics are nice in a coloring book sort of way.  Everything else is just a huge waste of hard-drive space.  The levels are dull and there’s almost no personality in this title.  The music would be kind of nice in county-fair sort of way, but it’s full of bad notes that sent shockwaves through my spinal column.  And although Happy tries for the kiddie crowd, it even seems to fail at that.

Recognizing that this game certainly wasn’t designed with a 22-year-old curmudgeon in mind, I let the kids of a family friend give this a go.  Two young whippersnappers, age 6 and 4, each gave it a complete play-through and they thought it was boring too. I think adults often fail to comprehend the things that entertain children.  I remember the kind of computer software my parents would bring me at that age, whether it was for educational reasons or otherwise, and it was rare that it was something that I found engaging.  Kids are more sophisticated than grown-ups realize.  The twenty minutes the two kids spent on Happy was anything but a happy time for them.  I had to make up for it by digging my Nintendo Wii out of storage and playing a couple of rounds of New Super Mario Bros. on it with them.  I asked them afterwards what they thought of Happy compared to New Super Mario Bros. and they said it was a total piece of SEVEN MINUTES IS UP!

Happy was developed by SOLLOMAN Games

80 Microsoft Points helped control the pet population in a way Bob Barker never quite envisioned in the making of this review.