Happy Tree Friends: False Alarm

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Happy Tree Friends: False Alarm
We got a not-so-happy feeling about this game.
Genre(s): Puzzle Rating(s): ESRB: M PEGI: 12 OFLC: M (the equivalent of Teen/PG-13) Platform(s): Microsoft Windows Xbox 360 Release Date: June 25, 2008 Developer(s): Stainless Games Publisher(s): Sega Series: Happy Tree Friends

Happy Tree Friends: False Alarm is a 2008 video game based on Flash cartoon series Happy Tree Friends. It was developed by Stainless Games and published by Sega for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360.

Why It's a False Alarm and Needs to Get Killed

1. The game is completely unfaithful to the episode "False Alarm", and the Happy Tree Friends series as a whole. The game follows the episode terribly by just doing a "saving the talking animals" level, which is not how the show got popular in the first place.
2. You cannot control the characters in this game. It forces you to point and click the dangerous objects to keep them safe from getting injured or killed.
3. False advertising: There are Cuddles, Disco Bear, and Handy on the cover of the game, but along with Sniffles, Pop, Cub, Petunia, Splendid, Lifty and Shifty, Cro-Marmot, and Mime, they do not appear during the gameplay, but only in cutscenes.
4. It only uses eight of the main cast of the twenty characters at the time in actual gameplay: Lumpy, Giggles, Toothy, Nutty, Flippy, Flaky, Russell, and The Mole. Cuddles' absence is notable because he's the series' mascot.
5. The concept of Lemmings but with elements instead of skills sounds kind of cool, but the four elements are kind of confusing to use:
   • The hand is your basic interaction skill, used for levers & switches.
   • The fire element is used to make the Happy Tree Friends go faster on some occasions, and you can also kill the Happy Tree Friends with it as well.
   • The ice element is used to freeze water and disable air vents.
   • The blast element is the most confusing element, where it makes things explode, and you have to try trial and error to see which obstacle is disabled via this or that element or simply put; the hand/interaction.
6. The characters move slowly and are programmed like they're animated frame-by-frame which doesn't sync up with the game running at 60fps, not just the camera but everything else in-game, including hazards which all run at 60fps. Sometimes, they can even disobey by going in reverse if you use the fire element to move them faster.
7. Very clunky controls, making aiming a chore. The fact that this game is designed like a 2.5D version of Lemmings where you have to precisely aim at things via a joystick doesn't help.
8. Annoying and laughable soundtrack which consists of a 10-second loop on every single level in the game. The same can also apply even with the main menu that plays the main theme song.
9. The graphics are outdated and feel like something you'd see in a 3D Windows desktop game in the 2000s, or at best, a 3D Adobe Shockwave game on websites. This factor, combined with the low licensing costs at the time, gave both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 a reputation for having an increased number of low-budget mediocre games than previous generations in their early years, mainly from 2006 to 2008.
10. The reward for beating the game is just the 2nd half of the False Alarm episode of the show, which was then uploaded to YouTube sometime later.
11. The characters never shut up! Their screams when they are in pain or dying also get annoying pretty quickly.
12. The game and the levels are too short. You can beat each level in two minutes, and the whole game can be beaten in almost two hours.

The Only Redeeming Quality

1. Albeit confusing, the concept of Lemmings but with elements sounds pretty cool.

Reception

The game got mixed-to-negative reviews from critics, On Metacritic, the Xbox 360 version received a 51/100 "mixed or average reviews".

GamesRadar gave a 1/5 stars.

GameSpot gave the game a 4.5/10 rating, while IGN somewhat gave the game a 6.2/10 "Okay" rating.

The game was criticized for being short, only taking almost 2 hours to complete.

Trivia

• The game was pulled from Steam and Xbox Marketplace for unknown reasons. Most likely due to the end of the license contract, coped with low sales and bad reception. However, the game was put back onto the Xbox Marketplace in January 2019.
• Mondo Media had plans for the Nintendo GameCube version, though they did not consider at first that the GameCube was a last-gen console and most importantly, that it was discontinued in 2007.
• Cuddles and Handy were going to appear in gameplay, but were cut for unknown reasons.

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