Web-based games are seemingly the marketing wave of the future when it comes to attracting the vital 13- to 28-year-old male demographic.
The latest entry in the advergame arena: Ambush, a web-based MMO that promotes Fox Broadcasting's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the surprisingly enjoyable side story to the wildly successful film series.
Ambush is a hybrid of traditional online shooters and persistent-world MMO titles. Players choose a side (either the human resistance or deadly Terminator robots), and set out across a two-dimensional game board on a quest to kill as many members of the opposing faction as possible.
Sound simple? It is, very much so, and that may be the game's greatest flaw.
I wish I could offer you some hint as to a deeper nuance behind the game, but the above two-sentence description of the title reveals absolutely everything there is to it.
Each side gains points for kills made by one of its members. Aside from pushing the score counter ever higher, and the bragging rights that come from dominating your foes, there is seemingly no end goal in sight.
Combat, too, is dreadfully simple. Most MMOs can be boiled down to clicking on enemies until they die, and Ambush takes that idea to the extreme: All you do in the game is click on your foes and watch them fall, as another tally is added to your score.
The graphics and audio do set an enjoyable mood for the game, but even hard-core fans of the television series or the films will find themselves bored of the hyper-repetitive gaming mechanism almost instantly.
I forced myself to sit through an hour of this clickfest last night in the hope that some alternate mode of play or new objective would reveal itself, but sadly it never happened. Our score rose about a hundred points during that time span, which did fill my avatar's cybernetic heart with cruel glee, but the flesh-and-blood person controlling Cyberdyne's latest and greatest found himself – myself – bored to death.
Then again, that was at 3 a.m. Hoping that maybe the game becomes a bit more enjoyable during daylight hours when more foes are present to catch my hail of bullets, I waited until this afternoon to give it another shot. Sadly, the game seems to have disappeared in the interim, only to be replaced by a "404, File Not Found" error.
I've e-mailed Fox to see what happened to its marketing effort, but have yet to receive a response. Perhaps the company has taken down the game to add some additional depth, but believe me when I say you aren't missing much.
Thankfully, the iPhone iteration of Ambush is still available for download from the show's official site, though aside from shrinking the game for the smaller screen and adding portability, it's exactly the same as the web offering.
If you've got time to kill, rent Terminator 2 or watch a few episodes of The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Either would be far more enjoyable than this lackluster marketing effort.
Correction: It seems that Ambush was not actually down, but that Fox changed the URL after sending out the original press release. The link below has been updated with the new URL, for those of you who would like to experience the web-based MMO for yourselves. We apologize for any confusion.
Image courtesy Fox
Ambush [Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Official Site]
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