Stick Soldiers II

Similar in theme and focus to Unreal Tournament, but artistically much closer to Kingdom of Loathing, Stick Soldiers II evokes the charm of a grade-school doodle with relatively engaging action. You are a "stick" soldier who hops around, collecting weapons, ammunition, health rewards, and armor while shooting at other stick soldiers. The game's major issue is its lack of help file or in-game tutorial. By trial and error during testing we were able to figure out certain controls (spacebar for "shoot," CTRL for "crouch") but never could reload our weapons, for example. Perhaps we were having an off day, but we never managed to kill an enemy as we were more occupied with trying to piece together how to move our reluctant stick soldier. That said, those avid soldiers with plenty of patience may enjoy the basic action and charming design of this freeware shooter game.