Warning: while this review is completely Safe For Work, the subject of the review is certainly not. You should wait until you get home before trying out the game.We received quite a few tips about the new World of Warcraft homage game called WTF?! Currently offering a "demo" version, WTF?! is a side-scrolling comedy, featuring two main characters available for your control. You can play the scarlet-topped Blood Elf Priest named "Phallicity" or the rockin' Gnome Rogue named "Lumpen."
The premise of the game is focused on the world of...
..."Azimuth" where a Rift Lord has opened a portal from the ideaological homeworld of Karl Marx, Mary Daly, and Sigmund Freud. You start off by re-sheeping the enlightened converts of Marx, only to be forced to mass slaughter them when your mentor decides Marx is gaining followers far too quickly. After leaving them nothing but ex-sheep corpses beneath your sword, you are told to go showdown with a dwarven, and rather polite, Karl. Hijinks continue to ensue.
The controls and game play for the WTF?! are relatively simple, and definitely call back to its source: World of Warcraft. You get items, armor, and spells. You complete quests. You gain cash, and levels. The game is a side-scroller, and actually leads to some of my favorite humor from the game. (Jumps, deaths, and respawns all pay homage to the most legendary of sidescroll heroes: Mario.) The controls are easy enough that you'll pick them up without having to read through too much of the tutorial.The game itself warns you: they're playing with bleeding-edge Flash stuff in this game. It can be laggy on a weaker machine, and the developers offer you a few tips on how to mitigate poor performance. The graphics are pretty cool. They did a lot of clever costume design (I'm a fan of Sigmund's outfit, and wish I could raid Karazhan in it.) "Effin' Forest" is your starting area, and the textures and images come straight from WoW. It was pretty cool to look at, and I was impressed by the style.
That being said, WTF?! confuses me. On one hand, it's got a lot of toilet humor, and toilet-humor's close cousin "sophomore sex humor." That shouldn't be a shock -- the main, default character is named Phallicity. Freud's appearance in the game aside, the double-entendre is reinforced when you get a holy spell to orally blow an enemy away. This style humor and reference doesn't seem to go away, and I found it distracting from an otherwise pretty fun game. I guess it could just be me getting old, but that kind of thing isn't my style anymore.On the other hand, my confusion comes about because of the much higher-brow references and humor that litter WTF?! Like I've said, the plot of the game is focused around ideaological conflicts. The idea that Karl Marx is turning Sheep into People is a pretty fun concept to play with. I found myself reading the quest-giver's text very closely, and it was pretty easy to see him being the Man trying to keep the Worker Down. His name is Hegemon, after all, which is a pretty straightforward reference.
I can't tell you whether you'd like the game. I enjoyed it on one level, even if the more crass jokes really distracted me from otherwise fun things on another level. It's hard not to compare WTF?! to the Murloc RPG that went around a few years ago. I think, for my money, WTF?! is probably more advanced and detailed, but Murloc RPG is smoother without the toilet-humor distraction.It should be noted, in addition, that the authors of WTF?! makes the tools they used freely available to other aspiring game makers. The "!" suite of Flash Tools (formerly known as "WoW inspired side-scrolling Flash-based, RPG, SDK") are readily available for download from WTF?!'s website. I thought that was an incredibly generous, awesome touch. I'm no programmer, but I admit -- I've downloaded the files to see what there is to play with.
All in all, WTF?! is definitely worth the play-through. If you find the vulgar humor more distracting than even I did, you might not make it far. But the graphics, and philosophical jokes, definitely ended up redeeming it for me. I'd recommend it for the next time your waiting for your server come back up. It'll keep you in the WoW-mind while you're waiting to get back in the game for real.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-03-2008 @ 6:12PM
Blake said...
WTF?!
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6-03-2008 @ 6:57PM
Ametrine said...
I assume this might be a fun game, if I could play it.
However, every key I press just flashes the map and my toon uncontrollably runs right.
So I don't know.
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6-03-2008 @ 7:27PM
Ametrine said...
Found the problem. if you have an anti-keylogger "scrambler" browser plugin, the game can't read your keyboard.
Suspicious.
6-03-2008 @ 7:04PM
Zakk said...
Tried it a few weeks ago. Didn't get past the first screen without pressing the StumbleUpon button and navigating away from the game. Maybe it'd be fun if I gave it a chance, but I don't have the time to spend on an unsure thing when there's so much WoW to play!
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6-03-2008 @ 7:05PM
-_- Zzz said...
I tried this a few days ago when i saw it in the upcoming games on digg (never made it to the front page) - its actually not bad, and that B maps to your bags, C to character, L to logs, etc is pretty cool. The humor is pretty good too (There are two guys in the Goldshire-esque town, one named Marx, the other named Freud)
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6-03-2008 @ 8:25PM
Introit said...
I just found my new fave flash game to play while at work!
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6-03-2008 @ 8:54PM
Charlie said...
Holy Load Times Batman!
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6-03-2008 @ 9:54PM
Schadow said...
Hrm, a flash game comes out targeting the WoW audience shortly after the announced security vulnerabilities of Flash. And it doesn't run properly if you have an anti-keylogger enabled.
Is it just the cynic in me or is this one to be wary of?
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6-03-2008 @ 10:40PM
Kaljin said...
Its actually older than the flash fiasco, about a week or two. Kotaku posted on it a while ago. It still is, however, good to update flash anyway.
6-03-2008 @ 10:07PM
Jay said...
Good think I updated flash then eh.
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6-03-2008 @ 11:14PM
schroey said...
Yeah the whole being a Flash game, I'm not going to play it.
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6-04-2008 @ 12:32AM
Badger said...
I wonder how long it will be before this shows up on eBaumsWorld with all of the copyright info removed.
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6-04-2008 @ 2:40AM
Fast said...
Die plz
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6-04-2008 @ 5:18AM
ErsatzPotato said...
At the end I rave about the game. Skip to there if you don't want to read me telling the columnist he needs to have his eyes and ears checked before a quality afternoon yelling, get off my lawn!
"it's got a lot of toilet humor, and toilet-humor's close cousin "sophomore sex humor.""
It does not. You listed half of that content in your description. I was expecting non-stop boob, fart, and penis jokes. None of which is there. Yes, the game sometimes plays broad (mostly on the Freud character) but I think you are badly misleading the readers.
The character name, the spell description. There's a cat named Pootie, not exactly a high class gag. There's the castration (not shown, bits removed not shown--it's not even played for laughs; the quest giver is grossed out and doesn't want to see the proof she requested) quests. After that I'm struggling to think of the type of content you warned people about. No toilet humor at all I can remember.
WoW itself on the succubus pet alone is at least as crass. Enslaved girl in leather bikini who tells suggestive jokes, seduces people, and cracks a whip > one reference to blow jobs on the Crass-o-Meter. [I took that as a gag about smite priests sucking, which is actually kinda funny.] WoW also, let us not forget, has a quest chain of nothing but toilet jokes.
blah blah blah...this game is amazingly clever.
While the play it self is a little tedious--too darn much running one end to the other and back--they NAILED everything else. The jokes range from the low brow ones mentioned above to nifty gags about Marxist ideals, economics, you name it. The merchants enrage by getting drunk and mutter about guilds only leading to jobs being offshored.
The purely WoW gags are nice as well. In a quest chain to decipher the secret code of the bad guys, it turns out it was slabs of warrior theory crafting numbers they were saying. Those same mobs open combat with "Must gain aggro", followed by "sunder...sunder...devestate". Near death they yell "This is my last stand!" and then they actually cast last stand.
If you kill the quest giving NPCs they drop fantastic loot (purple, natch). Gear has stats like weapon speed, spirit, etc--and they matter.
In my favorite moment Mary Daly gives a speech denouncing the classist ideas of both Marx & Hegemon 2.0 (the Big Bad Guy) and proved her point by...teaching my priest Curse of Agony. Couldn't stop giggling.
Mario is thoroughly sick of being called on to save the day and doesn't bother to fight back if you attack him. Instead he mopes and complains about being "weary...so weary". Einstein is an Area 52 gnome and another character tells you to go find something "beside that crazy postal clerk" (which was one of Einstein's real jobs).
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6-04-2008 @ 11:11AM
Stavmar said...
Love the moon Patrol reference, that was a very cool game.
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6-04-2008 @ 11:36AM
Oilof said...
Lol, April fools WoWInsider readers! ...Crap, it's June.
Reply
6-04-2008 @ 1:53PM
pumeler said...
diaf
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6-04-2008 @ 5:20PM
Bert said...
Anyone else beat this game yet? I got all of Mario's equipment but there's nothing else to do really. I've been killing all of the high level quest givers just to see what happens. I killed the guy in Tanaris and the Paladin chick and both of them dropped their heads. I can't seem to beat the little gnome or the warrior in the effin forrest. Anyone else having any luck?
Great game by the way:)
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