Happy Tree Friends: False Alarm

Happy Tree Friends: False Alarm is a 2008 video game based on Flash cartoon series mh:besttvshows:Happy Tree Friends. It was developed by Stainless Games and published by Sega for mh:awesomegames:Microsoft Windows and mh:awesomegames:Xbox 360.

Why It's a False Alarm

 * 1) The game is completely unfaithful to the episode False Alarm, and the Happy Tree Friends series as a whole. The game follows the episode terribly by just doing a "saving the talking animals" levels, which is not how the show got popular in the first place.
 * 2) You cannot control the characters in this game, it forces you to point and click the dangerous objects to keep them safe from getting injured, or killed.
 * 3) False advertising: There are Cuddles, Disco Bear and Handy on the cover of the game, but along with Sniffles, Pop, Cub, Petunia, Splendid, Lifty and Shifty, Cro-Marmot, and Mime, they do not appear during the gameplay, but only in cutscenes.
 * 4) Only uses eight of a main cast of twenty characters (at the time) in actual gameplay, Lumpy, Giggles, Toothy, Nutty, Flippy, Flaky, Russell and The Mole. Cuddles' absence is notable because he's the series mascot.
 * 5) The concept of Lemmings but with elements instead of skills, sounds kind of cool, but the four elements are kind of confusing to use;
 * 6) The Hand is your basic interaction skill, used for levers & switches.
 * 7) The Fire element is used to make the Happy Tree Friends go faster in some occasions, and you can also kill the Happy Tree Friends with it as well.
 * 8) The Ice element is used to freeze waters and disable air vents.
 * 9) The Blast element is the most confusing element, where it makes things explode, which you have to try trial and error to see which obstacle is disabled via this or that element or simply put; the hand/interaction.
 * 10) The characters move slow, and are programmed like they're animated frame-by-frame which doesn't sync up with the game running at 60fps. Sometimes, they can even disobey by going in reverse if you use the fire element to move them faster.
 * 11) Very clunky controls, making aiming a chore. The fact that this game is designed like a 2.5D version of Lemmings where you have to precisely aim at things via a joystick doesn't help.
 * 12) Annoying and laughable soundtrack, which consists of a 10-second loop on every single level in the game. Same is even with the main menu that plays the main theme song.
 * 13) The reward for beating the game, is just the 2nd half of the False Alarm episode of the Happy Tree Friends show, which was then uploaded to YouTube sometime later.
 * 14) The characters never shut up! Their screams when they are in pain or dying also get annoying pretty quickly.
 * 15) The game and the levels are too short, you can beat each level in two minutes, and the whole game can be beaten in almost two hours.
 * 16) The game does not run on Windows 8 or higher.

Reception
The game got mixed-to-negative reviews from critics, On Metacritic, the Xbox 360 version received a 51/100 "mixed or average reviews".

GamesRadar gave a 1/5 stars.

GameSpot gave the game a 4.5/10 rating, while IGN somewhat gave a game a 6.2/10 "Okay" rating.

The game was criticized for being short, only taking almost 2 hours to complete.

Trivia

 * The game was pulled from Steam and Xbox Marketplace for unknown reasons. Most likely due to the end of the license contract, coped with low sales and bad reception. However the game was put back onto the Xbox Marketplace in January 2019.
 * Mondo Media had plans for the Nintendo GameCube version, though they did not consider at first that GameCube was a last-gen console and most importantly, that it was discontinued in 2007.
 * Cuddles and Handy were going to appear in gameplay, but were cut for unknown reasons.