Even as the global economy remains in shambles, the Waligie economy remains stronger than ever, as not one but two new Waligie titles have been released in a single day!

Pros
+ Does a pretty good job of capturing the classic Waligie feel
+ Includes branching paths with multiple endings
+ The graphics are bad

Cons
- One of the cat levels is overly difficult
- Doesn't offer anything revolutionary that non-Waligie fans will find interesting
- The graphics are bad

Gameplay: 6/10
Waligie & the Political Machine is a direct sequel to the 2009 game Waligie and the Credit Crunc. The opening explains the backstory in a thoroughly Waligie-ish way:



I won't spoil anything much past this, except that you'll meet up with a dastardly-sounding character named Glenn Bleck (who happens to look a lot like Glenn Beck), who wants to change everyone's hearts to the way they were on September 12, 2001. One shouldn't construe this game as left-wing propaganda, however, since other everything from organic foods to global warming gets the Waligie treatment in this game!

The levels themselves aren't that much different from previous Waligie games - you'll see as many fake platforms than ever, as well as ridiculous enemies and crazy bosses and the mandatory level with the broken camera. There's a bit more Mario than previous games, with mixed results, although the SMB level was epic. I don't think this game captures the greatness of the original Waligie DX - a nearly impossible feat - but it still succeeds in being pretty fun in its own Waligie-ish way.

Graphics: 7/10
It's a Waligie game, so a lot of the graphics are intentionally ugly or clash spectacularly, and most of them are ripped straight out of Google Images. This makes it very difficult to give any kind of objective grade to the graphics. However, I do wonder if Techokami realized I used the same picture of Glenn Beck in my loading screen in this game...

Sound: 7/10
As with the graphics, it's hard to judge the score for sound and music in a Waligie game, considering that many of the MIDIs are selected with the express purpose of being ridiculous. As usual, some of the musical selections are absolutely hilarious - for some reason I found the Olympic fanfare to be particularly funny. The sound effects aren't as brilliant as some of the Waligie games, but there's still some that are pretty clever, and there are plenty of nods to the previous games, including the inclusion of the legendary "BLAHST" sound.

Replay: 8/10
The latest entry in the Waligie series has arguably the best replay value of the series, thanks to its branching storylines right after the Angry Birds level. The main road is longer but easier and provides a more decisive ending, while the alternate path is shorter, harder, and even zanier. Even if you don't have the patience to fight your way through the Nyan Cat Castle - one of the hardest levels I've seen in any Waligie game - to get to the alternate ending, this game is still funny enough to be worth a lifelong rent-free lease in my downloaded games folder (even if I'm realizing now that my hard drive isn't of unlimited size!).

Final Score: 7/10
Blimey! The American political scene will never be the same after the invasion of the Waligie Bros. and Glenn Bleck.
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Edited by: Bibby, Jul 14th, 2011 @ 10:31 pm

Also, a few screenshots:

Maybe I should check this series out some time...

How long have you been able to use [spoiler] on Jaxboards btw?

That's been there as long as I've been using JaxBoards, I think. I'd really like it if there both SPOILER and ISPOILER tags, but the hover-over-the-spoilers-with-the-mouse work in a pinch, even with images.