If you’re like me — having completed 100% of Grand Theft Auto V but waiting for Christmas for an Xbox One and copy of Destiny — you’re in need of something else to plug into temporarily. Save yourself from having to engage in conversation with people and instead indulge a hankering for old-school side-scrollers with a new Flash game from The Thermals. Or, just go ahead and play Angry Birds or Candy Crush Saga for the 5,328th time.
Based on the titular Desperate Ground standout, “The Sword by My Side” lets players control a winged Kathy Foster, who looks like the love child of Archangel and Samus Aran. The bare-bones game play sees players control Foster’s journey across a strange and otherworldly dimension, ducking giant beams of ectoplasmic fire while obliterating ghostly ink blots. Like most truly effective gaming scores/soundtracks, the rip-roaring track jump-starts some primal part of the brain that makes all the chaos and rampant murder so utterly engrossing.
Play the game here. And if anyone beats my high score of 400,000 in just under six minutes, I’ll give you my Nintendo 3Ds.
