Review | Zero Security
Format: PC | Genre: “Hacking” | Publisher: UnFun Games | Developer: UnFun Games | Release date: 19/06/09 | RRP: $22 [link]
By J.D. Richardson
The first thing you see in Zero Security is the name ‘UnFun Games’ appearing on-screen in big, shiny, green letters. Aside from the question of why the hell you would call your company ‘UnFun Games’, the letters prove to be prophetic.
After this, you’re presented with an intro which consists of some white text appearing on a black background describing the story so far, in the style of a thirteen-year-old’s creative writing class submission. Along with this you get some depressing synth music like something out of a crappy, early 90s American TV movie about a boy whose dog has cancer.
After all this is finally over with, you’re presented with a game that looks like it was made in 1995, and then suddenly nothing makes sense. The premise of the game is that you’re a hacker who’s been caught and sent to prison, given a deal, blah blah, now working for the government, blah.
Eventually, you get to hack things by battling other hackers in the most incomprehensibly shit hacking game ever. Since when was hacking like playing a bizarre version of Magic: The Gathering, with no redeeming features or sense of fun whatsoever? When did hacking involve rangers, druids and healers? I don’t know about you, but if I want to play a game about hacking then I’d like it to actually be like hacking. If I want to play Magic: The Gathering, then I’ll play that, because it’s far superior to this nonsense.
//Hacked to pieces
So you create a selection of fantasy stereotypes – I mean, ‘programs’ – and then start a battle with a hacker. After that you’ll probably want to kill yourself, or at least commit yourself to an asylum. Here’s how hacking works in Zero Security: you and your opponent take it in turns to drop boxes containing your ‘programs’ from the top of the screen into different rows, like Connect Four. These programs then start attacking each other randomly without any input from yourself apart from the positioning. Once your or an opponent’s programs have all been killed, the ‘hacking’ is over, folks, and if you have the audacity to lose you’re presented with a fake blue screen of death telling you to stop being such a ‘n00b’. Christ, the hilarity is literally killing me. The irony of this game insulting you for being rubbish is so profound it actually hurts.
If you get bored of the hacking, which you will after the first go, there’s some arcade games that you can load up from your fake hi-tech Windows 3.1 desktop that include – and I’m really not making this up – a game where donkey heads fall from the top of the screen, and you have to click your mouse button to make two boxing gloves come together and punch the donkeys, making them explode. It’s called Donkey Punch.
It’s a game that’s not recommendable to anyone, apart from maybe serial killers or the clinically insane. It’s so bad it actually made me feel quite sad. I looked out of the window trying to make sense of a world in which such a thing as Zero Security could exist. Anyone passing in the street would not have been able to tell there were tears spilling down my cheeks through the rain drizzling down the window.
1/10
