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A Bit of Ultraviolence

• Warning Forever

There are occasions--such as when your Internet connection has broken for the fifth time, or when the stupidest person in the office has gotten your promotion--when nothing will do but a good, noisy, fiery ka-BOOM! Like what you get with Warning Forever.

The great thing about Warning Forever--I have no idea what the title means--is its simplicity. If you have at least three fingers spread over two hands and a passing familiarity with arcade games of the '70s, you have everything you need to play. You're at the bottom of the screen, moving warily back and forth, as you shoot gracefully wavy streams of--oh, let's call them "vortex torpedoes"--at a mother of a mothership.

Right off the bat, you've got a fighting chance. But it diminishes rapidly with each new level, which of course brings a form of new spectacular weaponry that the mothership uses to kick your butt in a new spectacular way. The retro graphics are primitive compared to those of most games, but so what? You didn't launch Warning Forever because it's Art Appreciation Day. You needed it to vent some of your inner killer before you take it out on the next person who wishes you a "nice day."

• Rrootage

What's that you say? Oh, it is Art Appreciation Day? In that case you should launch Rrootage. It's essentially the same type of game play as Warning Forever. You scoot back and forth at the bottom the screen firing off lasers and bombs to take out the enemy ship, which is half dreadnought, half work of art.

The action is more intense than in Warning Forever, but better still are the amorphous, semi-abstract artwork and the high-energy techno background music. You could run Rrootage, and then not touch a key until your ship disintegrates, and your body would be running on pure adrenalin. If you're the type who needs a midafternoon pick-me-up, Rrootage will pick you up and throw you out the window.

• Astro Battle 2

If you think the spaceships in Warning Forever or Rrootage aren't good enough, why not just build your own? You can, with Astro Battle 2, a game where skill in assembling a deadly fighting machine from power generators, thrusters, cannons, and cockpits is equally as important as your skill with a joy stick. To test your theories of weaponry, the game features constantly raging fights on Astro Battle's home page. The fighting itself is top-down 2D, which is generally lame but works well for testing the strength of armaments and munitions instead of a person's fighting skill.

• Scorched 3D

One of the best games of the olden days was Worms, which really wasn't about worms unless the worms you know are capable of calculating bomb trajectories and elevating cannons to try to take each other out. Scorched 3D is the ultimate extension of Worms. You're still lobbing shots at each other, but the game's full-color 3D extends to the rippling ocean waves and the gently falling snow. Full camera movement, zoom, and rotation let you scope out the enemy and catch all the action--and, of course, the magnificent, billowing fireballs. Scorched 3D begs you to modify it by allowing you to create custom battlefields and cities just so you can blow them up. But best of all, cannon balls have evolved into missiles that screech toward their targets on tails of flame. The armament even includes multiple warhead rockets to spread the explosions over a bigger territory. In true Worms tradition you can play by taking polite turns, sweating it out as your enemy takes his time calculating range and wind. But you can also engage other players over a network in a real-time, catch-as-catch-can battle. Who said the apocalypse won't be fun?

• Frantic Killer

No one is going to argue with the aesthetic and therapeutic effects of huge balls of fire accompanied by a satisfying blow to the eardrums. But explosions are so impersonal. If the reason you're turning to ammunitional therapy involves a single person--that brownnoser who made you look bad at the last department meeting--that's when you want a game that gives killing a more personal touch, something like Frantic Killer.

The instructions for Frantic Killer are short and to the point: "Shoot in the head. Shoot the grenade. Don't waste bullets." Ah, the sheer essence of all the very best games. Like the instructions, the artwork in this Java shooter is equally devoid of frills. Stoner rock loops playing in the background add an intensity that belies the fact that the characters you're shooting at are only slightly more developed than stick figures. The characters' heads are nothing more than circles, but their plainness does make it easier to imagine the impact of your choice. Even dead stick men tell no tales, or get brownie points, especially when they're shot in the face.

• Every Extend

Don't play this one unless you're willing to alienate all your coworkers. The music is head-pounding electro rock. It alone will get your blood stirring and HR calling. The music somehow commandeers a PC's sound card, so there is no way, that I could detect, to turn it down or off.

Then comes the game itself, one that contradicts a gamer's every noble instinct for survival. The enemy is a formation of squares that move in tight groups. Instead of trying to off the enemy while protecting yourself, you try to put yourself in the best position to blow yourself up and take as many of the enemy with you as you can. You're a suicide bomber. I played looking for some irony, some commentary on this particularly dreary form of violence. I didn't find it. It's suicide bombing for the sake of suicide bombing.