This One's For You, Geoff. 3/5

Review by darut1234 on Sunday, May 29th 2011

I love the direction Sploder's going. Really, I do. I love the fact that when I post a revew with my entirely honest review it's deemed "Not in the Sploder spirit" by our commander in cheif. I didn't even know Sploder had a spirit. Perhaps it's written in a footnote under the terms of service and use which nobody ever bothers to read, and maybe that spirit says "Thou shall not be honest to the eight year olds of the site, because their parents are far too soft to allow their children accept even one ounce of 100% honesty. In fact, if they expose their child to that type of content the child might actually *Gasp* know their place in the world!"

Perhaps I'm being a bit too harsh on Geoff. He's an overall nice guy - And I'm lucky for that, because if he weren't he wouldn't stopped dealing with my garbage about three years ago. But I think when you start attempting to censor words such as "Effing" which no parent worth taking seriously would find offensive, you as a person begin to make very little sense to me personally.

But it doesn't matter what I think, because I'm the humble Sploder user who can only continue to write cynical, sarcastic reviews if he abides by the laws set by the guy who's too cool to spell his name "Jeff" like a normal person. So the following review will cater to the needs of all the whiny parents of the world who make this generation such a wonderful place to live in.

Nightmares Are Real takes your depressingly deformed blockhead through dark corridors, dark corridors with lava, and dark corridors with those endlessly annoying ramps. It's an alright game, with the occational puzzle thrown in for good measure. Nothing about it is new, and nothing about it is really memorable.

What I found really irritating was how this game didn't have any checkpoints at all, for some unknown reason. And it used way too many of the ramps where it could've used stairs. I can't say I've ever felt the urge to spend five minutes walking into a slanted surface and holding down the jump button in the vain hope that I'll successfully pass this ludicrous barrier.

It has a general structure, a clear goal, and enemies that you need to kill to pass, and isn't by any means unplayable. It's just really unmemorable, and frustratingly difficult. There's nowhere near enough health, checkpoints, or stairs - Things that should be very simple steps in making a game. Still, I've seen a lot worse.