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  Member Reviews - Target v1.01

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Clearly I’m getting worse at predicting things. When I played “Target” – an entry in the ADRIFT Spring Comp 2005 (it was the first game I played) – I remember thinking "hmmm… this is going to come last". It actually came first. While there’s nothing terrible about the game, there’s nothing particularly great about it either. Or so I thought anyway. But as it came first, I’m clearly in a minority.

”Target” is a game about a hit man hired to assassinate someone. It starts with you, the hit man, on the rooftop of a building. You’ve got a rifle and a description of your target. All you have to do is find him… and kill him.

That’s essentially the game in a nutshell. One nice feature is that the identity of the hit man you play, as well as the identity of your victim, change each time you play the game. I discovered this after dying several times and finding myself with a different target each time. Heck, one time the hit man was even yours truly! But while identities may change each time, it’s still pretty much the same game. The layout of the rooftop remains the same and as you start with a description of your victim, it’s a simple task to wander about the rooftop, match up the description and shoot the guy in question. There are no added complications depending upon which victim you are assigned to kill: it’s just a case of find ’em and shoot ’em.

I played “Target” through three times before figuring out the basics behind identifying my victim and dealing with him, and disposing of the undercover cop and the sniper as well, and it seemed like a remarkably short game. Strangely enough, when I opened it in the Generator, I was surprised to see a whopping 1084 tasks (!), which was about 20 times as many as I expected to see. On the surface, “Target” seems like a simple game indeed; but a closer look reveals that there’s actually been a considerable amount of work expended on it. Just a pity I didn’t like it more.

Logic doesn’t play a large part in this game. My hit man character wanders around the rooftop of the building with his rifle in hand, yet the tramp (actually an undercover cop) makes no effort to arrest me until I’ve actually gone and shot someone. (For that matter, why is there even a tramp on top of the building?) The tramp makes several inane comments as I stand there, toting my rifle, about the rooftop, a neon sign and the like, yet doesn’t bother asking me about said rifle. He provides information about every subject under the sun – almost literally – but I found his constant comments, every two or three moves, to be so distracting that before long I was itching to kill him just to get a bit of peace and quiet.

Yet despite all its failings, “Target” won the ADRIFT Summer Comp 2005 and proved surprisingly popular with lots of people. I just wish I could see its appeal myself.

2 out of 10