I know I’m coming down awfully hard on today’s title, but I assure you it’s with good reason.  I’m going to preface the remarks today by saying, unequivocally:  Sega, thank you for taking chances.  These chances don’t always work out, as is the case with Let’s Tap for the Wii, but still–I’m glad you took the chance all the same.

Basically, Let’s Tap is a collection of five smaller games all controlled by the same method: setting your Wiimote down on a box, preferably a tissue box or some similar cardboard box and tapping on the box.  Yes, that’s right–in this game, you will almost never touch your Wiimote.  You’ll play games like Tap Runner (where you compete in a four-man foot race by tapping on the box your Wiimote rests upon with various degrees of pressure), Rhythm Tap (where you’ll tap out a series of rhythms in time with on-screen indicators), Silent Blocks (where you’ll remove blocks from a stack in a bid to lower an item stacked on top of them to the ground), Bubble Voyager (where you move a space-suited character through a series of obstacles) and Visualizer (which isn’t so much a game as it is a way to play around with the tapping system to make various special effects).

I’m somewhat at a loss by this game.  There’s no storyline here–it’s almost as if Sega were making a demo reel for some greater application to be announced later. I admit that the concept is unique enough–I definitely don’t remember the last time I played a game that literally required that I never touch my controller–but I’m just slightly dismayed by the results it yielded.  Sure, this game is fun, but not for very long.  There’s just so little TO it that it can’t produce much in the way of a fun factor.  All you do is tap, tap, tap a box over and over and over and over again for little or no clear reason.  And when you smack a box a couple hundred times with your hand or fingers in rapid succession, chances are you’re going to be left with a sore arm and not much else to show for it.

In fact, after playing a round of Let’s Tap, I’m left with a whole lot more questions than answers.  Why did they even bother with this game?  There’s so very little to it that it’s almost not worth playing, except as some kind of precursor, some kind of training implement to a future game.  And it could definitely be interesting–think about a version of Missile Command where you fire missiles by PRESSING A BUTTON corresponding to a tap on a box.  Especially if you were to use the Wiimote simultaneously to aim by turning the Wiimote slightly to the left or right to adjust an aiming reticle before firing.  That’d be awesome.

But I’m getting away from the point here–the point being that Let’s Tap, by itself, is really not much of a game.  It may represent a greater game to come, but for right now, Let’s Tap should better be titled Let’s Avoid This Piece of Crap And Get On With Our Lives.

Today marks one of those days that I’m really, really glad I’m a functioning video game reviewer–I’m going to review a game that I’m absolutely convinced you need to be told about.  Chances are very good that you haven’t actually heard of it, which is why I get the opportunity to use my good offices to fill you in.  It’s called Forumwarz, and it may easily be the most unique game I’ve ever played.

You’ll play as a young forum-goer, like so many other internet users out there, who’s just starting out in the world.  You’re out to make a name for yourself in the world, and as such, you go out and attempt to “pwn” internet forums, a name for causing such disruption that you make a forum uninhabitable.  Along the way, you’ll meet a series of other internet users with a series of different goals and interests who want to employ your skills to advance those goals and interests.  You’ll run into everybody from conservative talk show hosts with bizarre proclivities to furries to indie rock figures and beyond.  But what’s lying beyond all these disparate interests?  Who are you really working for?  You’ll find out in a tale of surprising depth and intrigue.

In fact, you start out so new that your opening rank is actually “Jimmy the Re-Re”.  Please don’t bother with flames—that’s a quote.  In fact, they’ve devoted such detail to this rank that your two attacks as Jimmy are “bash keyboard with helmet” and “drool on keyboard”.  After a little time spent as Jimmy, you’ll be allowed to select a new class of character, each with different kinds of attacks and defenses—you can be a hacker, a troll, an emo kid, a camwhore or a permanoob.  You can even play through the whole game as Jimmy if you’re so inclined, but this is discouraged for all but the most extreme player.

The gameplay itself is unusual, as you select an attack, resolve the result, let the forum get in ITS attack (they’ll try to flame you with varying degrees of success) and then the process repeats until either you or the forum is down in flames.  The closest analogue is a collectible card game.  Every day, you’re permitted four “forum visits” to wreak your havoc, and the number resets at a set time each day.  This may sound somewhat restrictive, but I haven’t told you the best part yet—the game is free to play.

That’s right, the entire first chapter of Forumwarz is free to play.  The second chapter, however, you’ll have to pay to play, and the cost is minimal at best—just ten dollars.  You’d pay more for a Xbox Live title, and instead, you get a game that’s fantastically fun to play, and you can play for days in small installments.  I like to start my day with a round of Forumwarz, and frankly, I think you will too.

Oh, sure…Forumwarz doesn’t have the action and the explosions of some first person shooters and suchlike, but what it does have is clever gameplay and plenty of laughs.  .  It’s almost nice to be able to play a game that I can only play for about a half-hour or so a day instead of taking a few hours at a crack, because the trade-off for that is that I can play it for weeks and still get a great experience with something new every day. Forumwarz is great fun, and in the end, that’s what counts most in a game.

You ever have one of those days?  Your toast is burnt, your milk’s gone sour, you get cut off in traffic, your boss is a complete…fill in the blank…you know, one of THOSE days!

For those times when you wish that the world only had one throat (thank you, Al Bundy!), belly up to the Newgrounds bar and get yourself a sweet hot dose of Deadpile Rampage.

It’s a plot unto itself, as you use a variety of weapons to blast open a series of rampaging faceless minions and stack the bodies like cordwood.  It’s not about how many you kill, or how many shots you fire…it’s all about how high you can stack the bodies.

Seriously, that’s the big objective.  You don’t score points for kills, you score points for DEPTH OF BODY COUNT.  I took a ten-minute test drive on this beastie and wound up with a whole four foot deep pile.  And I had only begun to scratch the surface.  It was hard to believe the sheer bloodthirstiness of this game.  I was vaguely repulsed by it, but man, if I were torqued while playing, it would be an incredible tension release.

And that’s probably the best way to describe this–it’s a fantastic tension release. You shoot drifts of people. You stack them up.  You keep blasting them WHILE standing on the top of your corpse heap.  if that’s all you want in a game then you’ll get everything you want.  Otherwise, Deadpile Rampage will not be your cup of tea.