Thundra

It is not often in life when I am rendered totally and absolutely speechless. There I was, sitting in front of my computer and answering the hundreds of emails that had been sitting on my harddrive, when I came upon a seemingly innocent looking message from somebody named "Jeremy Sorensen." The email went as follows:

From: Jeremy Sorensen
Subject: Something really Awful (game demo so bad, you have to review it)

I love your site and came across a game that is perfect for review on SomethingAwful. The game is called Thundra, it is beyond belief how "good" this game is. JeffK would be proud to call this game his :)

Check it out:

ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/3dfiles/games/thundemo.exe

Your readers deserve to hear it from you man!

Sorny

Since the email didn't really go into too much description regarding the game, I decided to head over to the download site and check it out. I have to admit, I was really expecting much. Then I made the mistake of staring directly at the screenshots (make sure to click them to see the full, vile shot).

Two "promotional" screens showing off "Thundra". Remember the fact that these are supposed to sell the game, not cause you to run away, screaming from it. Click for a bigger, more awful picture.

"Holy moly," I muttered to myself. "This looks like a map good ol' Cranky Steve would reject on the grounds that it would cause his eyes to spontaneously combust, showering the monitor with a fine spray of blood and eye-juice." Well, I said that while typing in what directory I wanted the file to be saved into, because something this awful just can't be passed up. Half a year ago, I made it my mission to ensure the public is warned of every sweltering mound of feces that clogs up the Internet, and so help me God, I was going to give "Thundra" a shot. After all, it couldn't be any worse than "Daikatana", could it?

Yes. So much worse. Playing this game took me to new pain levels, summoning up enough bile and stomach acid to dissolve a medium sized truck. I was feeling nauseous after playing for a mere two minutes; after five I had to literally stop playing because I was so sick to my stomach. Rumor has it that scientists at MIT are dissecting and studying the basic code from this game because they believe the author has achieved the first pure form of raw, concentrated digital pain. If they are ever able to reconstruct the tightly woven threads of torture that compose this game, the US government will soon have a weapon of mass destruction, a weapon so powerful that all opposing countries will instantly submit to the will of America rather than face this pixelated lump of ass.

Folks, it's that bad, and oh so worse.