400+ positive Steam reviews and counting, though.
InfoWars host Alex Jones now has a game on Steam—the same Alex Jones who fundraised for and attended the January 6 protests that led to the storming of the US Capitol building and who owes $1.5 billion to the families of murdered children over defamation.
It won’t surprise you to hear that Alex Jones: NWO Wars is not a good game, but its warmed over meme jokes have accrued over 400 positive reviews in just a few days. Reading them is awesome—they have the energy of those commenters on Reddit all trying to be the funniest guy in the room by saying the same thing, and AJ:NWOW seems to be cresting a wave of memetic popularity, yucking it up on the platform after a more limited release last November.
The best thing I can say about the Alex Jones game is that it took me about 36 minutes to beat, well within Steam’s two-hour refund window. Also, fair is fair, the pixel art is bafflingly competent—it has a kind of «corporate indie» look, something you might see in the okayest Steam releases of the mid-2010s. Otherwise? It’s kind of a piece of dogshit, and quality aside, it’s an embarrassment for the platform.I guess we’re reviewing this thing
AJ:NWOW is a low-effort riff on Metal Slug. You can only aim directly up and down or side to side despite the game only supporting analogue stick movement and no d-pad controls—it has a fiddly imprecision leaving you flailing about like somebody having a Garry’s Mod freakout. Add in some persistent input lag alongside mysterious and ineffable hitboxes and you’ve got a real sloppy piece of work. Thankfully it’s so easy and generous with lives you can just choke it down like you’re dry-swallowing one of InfoWars’ dubious nootropics.
The real draw is meant to be the Alex Jones-themed «anti-woke» comedy, but it struck me as this slavish, capering routine running through the greatest hits of Jones’ decade plus of internet virality, just as dated and feeble as the platforming.
