Orchestrated Death

The Good
The premise is rather interested and when I read about it on Mobygames (while looking up Red Orchestra) I went to Armorgames immediately to check it out. Setting up a complex series of traps to end somebody's life, Final Destination style, sounded pretty cool on paper and it probably deserves to be translated into a big name title or at least a decent indie game.

The animation is pretty good compared to most other flash games on the internet. There is also a lot of blood in the game which actually surprised me when I first noticed it. The characters reactions to your shenanigans are also often interesting to watch and they help you solve the puzzles sometimes.

The puzzles aren't really that bad either, you have to make use of clever timing and combine multiple items to trick the targets into making dumb mistakes that allow you to strike. It's rather short, but the little puzzles offer a nice little challenge the first time you play them, so it's alright to play during a coffee-break or commercial block.

The Bad
The game claims it has you setting up complex traps, but while that is sometimes the case, such moments are rare. More often then not the game just abandons all subtlety, like when I tricked a chef into cutting off his hand with a blender, but the only option after that was to make saucepans fly up into the air and beat him to death before throwing him into the oven. That is not an accident, that is just simple murder and I have done that quite often already.

There is zero connectivity between the victims and settings, you just go around killing some random people for no apparent reason. Once you notice the subtlety has been thrown out of the window it starts making you wonder why Death doesn't just shrug the whole business and cause some spontaneous combustion.

There is not really any feeling of satisfaction after you successfully completed a mission and killed somebody. There is little to no reason to hurry or give it your best because there is no timer or score and the act of murder is rather dull. Imagine playing Mario, but instead of seeing enemies retreating in their shells or splattered, they just vanish into thing air. Would that feel satisfying? Yeah, that's what I mean.

The Bottom Line
It may seem unfair to demand such high quality from a simple flash game, but even by looking at it from a milder perspective you will notice the rocky mistakes in the presentation and gameplay. You might be glad to have it around during a boring brainstorm session, but there are better games you can run from a browser (and no, I am not counting Minecraft).

There is not really a specific audience for this game, it's not dark enough to play towards the edgy crowd and it's not funny enough to appeal to the kids who still enjoy flash games. Somebody ought to have pointed that out somewhere during development, but no.