Ah yes… the stick-figure shoot ‘em up. Just you, a gun, and an endless supply of stick figures to plow down for your cathartic gaming pleasure. This type of game would hardly be familiar to a classic gamer, as the genre – if you can call it that – emerged very recently. Games like this first sprang up on sites like Miniclip and MoFunZone in the early 2000s and they arrived at a time when browser games’ performance first began to peak. And since it was nearly impossible at the time to steam high-end graphics, folks had to settle for killing stick men.
TouchGen: ‘What have these stick-people ever done to hurt me?’ This is the question I found myself asking as I sniped my way through ‘Tactical Assassin’, a new shooter from Simon Hason. Throughout the game, multiple silhouette stick-men meet their demise as brains leak from their foreheads, chests explode in red mist and new orifices are introduced to the bodies of helpless men in hospital beds. This is not a game for your pre-school toddler. Unless you’re training your pre-school toddler to become an assassin that is, in which case I would wholeheartedly recommend it.
Pocket Gamer: At the risk of ending up on some sort of police watch list for saying it, I'll admit to being rather partial to sniping games. Okay, arrest me now, officer.
There's something about patiently and meticulously selecting your target and waiting for the ideal moment to strike that appeals to many gamers' innate desire to control the world from a comfortable distance. Plus, headshots.
