As I learned last night, I'm not the only one who has a love/hate relationship with the Adult Swim website. For example: it's the only place to see the third season of Moral Orel (since no DVD has been released), but they'll only put up a handful of out of sequence episodes at a time. I can watch all The Boondocks clips I want, but only one full episode a week. There are clips of all the shows, but the new video display page is awful. Adult Swim's website also has interesting game concepts, but very buggy execution.
5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself) Wedding Day is the newest game on Adult Swim and is easily one of the best outputs on the site. It is a sequel to the original 5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself), a welcome guilty pleasure with a darkly humorous streak to indulge work rage and despair in a safe environment. The goal, unsurprisingly, was to kill yourself in five minutes or face a horrible, boring meeting. The first sequel was a rehash with new locations and did nothing to address the bugs that plagued the original, like broken buttons and horrible lag on all but the fastest computers.
5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself) Wedding Day is a breath of fresh air for the series. The graphics are larger and cleaner. The violence is presented in funny cut scenes that greatly speed up the game. The screen doesn't jerk along for 15 seconds in real time to have an aerosol can catch fire in less than 2 seconds of game time. While the tools in the game are more limited than in the past, the execution is near flawless.
A welcome (but buggy) inclusion is multiplayer mode. You can play as a bride or groom (same-sex marriage is legal at Adult Swim), trying to off yourself before your betrothed. Once one player has used an interactive element, the other player cannot. It's a race against the clock and your opponent to escape the bondage of a poorly thought out marriage. Unfortunately, like all of their multiplayer games, there is unbelievable lag. Your opponent will not move for two minutes from the altar and then be declared the winner because the game can't handle both players at once. The game tends to freeze when your opponent quits and freeze if your opponent comes in contact with your player. The principle draw of the series is still single player until they resolve these online issues.
If there is a criticism to be levied, it is the limited arsenal of interactive elements. There are points in the game that clearly look like you are supposed to be able to interact with - the obese office worker from the original, a cleric at a desk, rotten children in the rectory - but cannot. Adult Swim has a bad habit of releasing a "sequel" to a game that is actual the original game redone with all the unfinished elements. Like Zombie Hooker Nightmare and Twirl & Hurl before it, 5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself) Wedding Day will probably have a 2 added to it in three weeks and be the same game, just less buggy and more option filled. I'd rather see a completed game on the site than play a shell of what it could be a few weeks early. This was almost certainly rushed through production because a trailer for the game was posted two months ago. If they held off, they probably could have released a more polished game.
5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself) Wedding Day is a welcome distraction game. The novelty may wear off quicker than normal because of the limited arsenal of destructive ends, but it does fine for a brief break from the doldrums of everyday life.
