Developed by Arrogancy
Released for Xbox Live Indie Games (5/2009)
The developer's description of Angry Barry states that it's "a side-scrolling, political parody, 1-2 player 2D beat-'em-up in the tradition of many classic arcade games." The game did remind me of Bad Dudes initially, an old classic coin-op game where you beat down ninjas to save the president. In this game, you play as a dude that looks like Obama who is apparently trying to take over as President. The idea sounded wacky enough so I gave the trial a look. The first thing I noticed is the game is priced higher than your average indie game and the developer tells you in the initial splash screen he had to price it that high because they went over the file-size limit, forcing the developer to price the game higher than your standard $1 indie title.
The first stage has you beating up a bunch of old ladies that try to use pepper spray on you. You have several kinds of attacks but they all pretty much produce the same effect and seem to inflict the same amount of damage so what's the point? If you hold the punch button you throw a fireball and the game makes some very obnoxious noises that will make you not want to use that move anymore. To pass the stage, you must reach a point threshold and in order to reach that you have to keep beating up the same old lady. Over and over again. I know beat-'em-ups are not renowned for their incredibly deep game-play, but this game really set my boredom levels on fire in a hurry. You're pretty much stuck to one little area of the stage, there is an upper platform you can jump to and that's it. This was the first level you wanted people to play when they downloaded your trial? There are little bits of humor thrown in here and there and while it's appreciated it's just not enough to save this game and I could not muster the motivation to proceed even to the end of the first stage. The premise had potential but the game-play is just simply nowhere near as fun as any of the arcade classics that it's trying to emulate. For a good 2D beat 'em up, do yourself a favor and play some Kung-Fu Master, Altered Beast or Bad Dudes and leave this one alone.
Final Verdict: Angry Barry definitely ranks up there as one of the worst examples of the 2D beat-'em-up genre that I've played. Don't bother with this one!
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