Bird Vs Camel

Bird vs Camel Review

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Published: July 8, 2015 9:00 AM

Not every game has to have a box office budget to draw out powerful raw emotions. We at TechRaptor are treating everyone to a lighthearted review of the heart tugging tale of a bird named Jacques and his love for owner Jon Jafari. This game is called Bird vs Camel. To understand the reference of why this game exists outside of "Internet," the following video will put things into context ... hopefully. Yes, an entire fan game was spawned based off of one lyric in an auto-tuned video featuring popular YouTube personality Jon Jafari, aka Jontron.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9DKoMSiDc4

If that didn't help any, no worries. Bird vs Camel's mechanics have nothing to do with a badly written Titanic title on the Nintendo Famicom. Apologies in advance if the above song gets stuck in your head—it does that. Normally we wouldn't review a fan made game created solely off of a line in a video that exists as flash game on Newgrounds, but there is an exception to everything. Our story begins with Jontron playing the damsel in distress in need of a hero. Not any hero, a hero in shiny armor green feathers. Enter Jacques, our protagonist of the story. He's a man eating robotic bird of fury with laser eyes—not an ordinary conure parrot with special effects, trust us. His laser eyes are real! Look at Jon blissfully unaware playing video games. Little does he know, wave after wave of camels are out for his blood.

Bird Vs Camel Start
You are Jon's only hope from the camel horde.

Sometimes, a bird has to do what a bird has to do. It's up to you to protect the man with the glorious beard. For if you fail, Jon will fade out of existence with a mini explosion, "Ech!" being his parting words from this sweet Earth. And you're a bird. It's kind of difficult to open up bags of bird food gracefully. It takes around 45 seconds of idling for anyone curious how long it takes to witness the horrific event of camel on man violence. Destroy them before they destroy you! You can't start an important life or death mission without a cool battle song. Every hero needs a battle song to get them pumped and Bird vs Camel doesn't disappoint. As soon as you start the game, you hear a familiar tune. Fans of the Jontron Show will immediately recognize the musical score that loops throughout this epic adventure. It's none other than a remix of the main theme. After a while, having the same song loop may get tiring, but it's good for motivating the player none the less. Another motivator for competitive players is the leader board. Prove you want to be the very best that no one ever was. Earn bragging rights on who can slaughter camels in droves the fastest. Unfortunately, what you see is what you get. There are no cool charge shots Metroid style or power ups. You're restricted to a single spammable attack. While this may be seen as a negative, it isn't necessary.  You don't need no stinkin' power-ups, you're Jacques! All you need is your drive to protect Jon, the power that comes from within! Power-ups would have been nice, though. Oh well, it doesn't detract from the game, it would have been a cool extra is all.

Bird Vs Camel ShieldMob
Shields do not protect from butt shots!

The gameplay itself is pretty straight forward. Be a bird. Shoot lasers. Destroy waves of camels. Protect Jon. You start off with 5 hearts that represent your health and only have 5 hits before you die. There are no half hits or hits that take off only a quarter of your health. One direct hit from camel spit will knock out an entire heart. Camel fire is dodged either flying up, down or all around. Don't worry about the ground, it doesn't harm you. You're able to fly under enemies to get behind them just as you would flying over them. I can't stress enough that having quick reaction time is crucial to your survival. One thing you don't have to worry about are spawn rates. Unlike RPGs, you don't have random encounters to worry about in Bird Vs Camel. On the bottom of your UI, you'll find a bar that represents the distance between your relative distance to Jon as well as any incoming camels. Depending on the type of camel, the icon for them will change. Standard camel mobs are represented with a triangle. Other camel types include swat team camels represented by shields, freaky cyborg looking camels that fire lasers with their mouths represented by lightning bolts, and militaristic camels that both spit and fire rockets at you from their back being represented by X's. Oh. Death. That sort of happens when you first get started. Actually, it's not that unusual to let the basic camels get a hit on you if you're not paying attention. It's a good thing you're a robotic parrot capable of infinite respawns after dying 1 or 20 times. A few practice runs and you'll be button mashing like a pro. Once you get the mechanics out of the way, it essentially becomes a speed run. Your first victory time probably isn't going to be all that spectacular, but you gotta start somewhere.

Get used to this screen, you're gonna see it a lot at first.
Get used to this screen, you're gonna see it a lot at first.

Uh, let's try that again!

Not the fastest time, but first victory capped for posterity!
Not the fastest time, but first victory capped for posterity!

Better. Overall Score - Sound: Ech/10 Gameplay: Ech/10 Story: Ech/10 Re-playability: Ech/10 On a serious note, if you're into games that require high precision akin to arcade shooters of days past, you'll enjoy this, especially if you're a Jontron fan. Jacques even says things whenever you die/re-spawn to try again. For a flash game on Newgrounds, it was surprisingly fun. Well, for the user, less so on your keyboard. Controls are standard with WASD to move and spacebar to attack with those special birdie eyes of yours. I hope there will be a sequel in the future courtesy of Schmoyoho reminding us why the Internet is amazing. Fans of Jontron, this review is for you guys. The game isn't perfect by any means, but it is what it is—a fan made game for a funny guy. Scoring was based off of the criteria of it being a fan made flash game rather than pitting it up against giant game studios to keep things fair. And on that bombshell, I close with the one thing on Jontron fans minds. Ech

Review Summary

6

You're a bird that shoots lasers out of their eyes while fighting off hordes of camels, what more could you want? Better than Flappy Bird.

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Gamer since the NES era, computer nerd since 2001. Happily in a loving relationship with a happa who has been a gamer since the Sega Genesis era. Who says… More about Anthony