GAMES REVIEW – Happy Tree Friends: Deadeye Derby

It’s everyone’s favourite hyper violent sweethearts, The Happy Tree Friends, and today I’m playing another of their Free-To-Play games. The first I played was Run and Bun, a quirky little impossible running game, and my second being the first person shooter Deadeye Derby. The basic premise is that you play as one of 6 characters from the Happy Tree Friends (four out of the six have to be unlocked) and you ride in a little go-kart, firing rocks from a sling shot into your opponent’s face until they die in a hilariously gory fashion. Firstly, this game definitely lives up to the morbid nature of Happy Tree Friends. Flesh being baked off bodies, eye balls knocked out, arms and other limbs flying off, there is no denying, this is a Happy Tree Friends product.

But how does it play? On the right side of your screen you slide your finger up and down to ready your slingshot and fire. You move the actual iPhone around to aim your slingshot, namely at your opponent’s vital areas, namely their head and especially their eyeballs. You can also choose to fire flaming rocks, electrical charges or poison balls for extra damage but at the beginning you only get three of the fire ammo and after you use them all, it costs quite a bit of coin to get them back. There’s also treasure chests that float by which when you tap will reward you with money and depending on your accuracy you get money for just taking part in a match.

Now matches work like this, you select the lobby you want to play in (the only one available to you in the beginning is Camp Pokeneyeout), you enter the store by clicking “play” and this is where you can upgrade your cart (wheels, body and engine) by spending in game coins. After all that micromanaging is done you click “Start.” You are then paired up with a random Facebook account of a player and you battle the computer controlled version of them. The main goal is to win as many games in a row to score the highest streak.

I don’t give a crap about being the best, just having fun with a cool first person shooter game is enough for me and for the non-competitive gamer, Deadeye Derby is still a fun game. Although the challenge does become very stiff once you get out of Camp Pokeneyeout. For a more competitive gamer this is right up their alley but for me it’s just a strong reason to stop playing.

But the true name of the game is coins. This is a Free-to-Play game after all, so what can really obsessed gamers buy? In the store you buy diamonds to purchase all the other wares such as large amounts of coins, health packs, new slingshots, and different ammunition. The lowest amount of diamonds one can get is 10 diamonds for 99 cents, and the absolute highest is 750 diamonds for $49.99. Thankfully for the most part this isn’t a “Pay-To-Win” game where players are practically trained to spend money as that is the only way to beat the game. These micro transactions can be very addicting but for this game even if you’re like me, and have zero funds to waste on a new digital slingshot, the game is still balanced so that no players get an unfair advantage whether they bought new gear or not.

The bottom line of this deal is that, like Run and Bun, the game’s atmosphere oozes the Happy Tree Friends charm and on a gameplay side it’s a very unique first person shooting experience that feel fluent and natural. Although there are quite tedious micro transactions to look out for, and a steep competition, for the competitive gamer this can be a fun game for the waiting room. For the average schmo, it’s still a fun game but the competitive wall may leave you in its dust.