Button Men Online

Beat up people you've never even met.

Overall score:

Someone decided that Button Men was going to be a fun game to play online against all kinds of random opponents. And they decided they were going to make that a reality. And they were going to make it free. To them, I'd offer you my first born son, if my first born had been a son, which she isn't.

And they did a good job.

But there are drawbacks, so let's get those out of the way.

Frankly, the site is ugly. The only graphics are of the buttons, which are fun to see, though you can't see closeups and not all the buttons even have graphics. Perhaps you think I'm being too harsh on a site that, after all, has already provided me with hours of free content, but I'd like to remind you to look at how many clocks I gave the site (5.5--that's right, more than the game itself earned) and keep in mind that this is something that has to be brought up first, as it's the first thing anyone will ever see. The color scheme of the site isn't annoying, but the layout isn't exactly easy. The topside menu gets on my nerves, especially since it doesn't have to follow any sort of organizational pattern. And the information isn't easy to assimilate. I had been playing for a week before I saw my friend had challenged me to a game. The post was at the bottom of the news.

Once you organize everything and clear up your profile and other useful pages (you can remove nearly all of the information you don't care about, and learn how to read around/ignore the rest), the site is amazingly utilitarian. You can activate a monitor which will automatically refresh ever 5 minutes to see if your turn is up in a game (and many of these people play around 50 games at once, though I usually stick to around a half dozen), or you can look at a handy grid of all the games you're in. This grid will give you all the information on who you're battling, how well you're doing in terms of rounds (most games are played to three wins), which games you need to take your turn in, and which Button Men are being used, including handy links to all player profiles and Button Men descriptions.

There are two ways to display the actual battle. The initial, default view is almost a tutorial and will help you know what decisions and dice you can pick. Then, when you feel comfortable, you can choose an abbreviated view which will allow you to take your turns much faster. Both views contain links to player profiles and Button Men descriptions. They also both allow you to send a message along with your move, so you can have an on-going chat, message board style, as you play.

The play options are numerous. You can play tournament, standard, or "for fun" games. For Fun games don't count toward player rankings, but it keeps track of your w/l/t anyway.

The site also boasts a healthy message board, a betting "arena," a video poker area (imaginary tokens only!), and a game called Pirelli.

But their real triumph is in defining the rules. You can read the rules if you want. In fact, if you haven't played before, you should read the first part of the rules. But don't read the descriptions of all the different types of dice. Just so you know, there are 42 different kinds of abilities for dice to have, with 437 characters (less than half of which are tournament legal). You won't remember what they all do at first, so just pick it up as you go.

The secret is to play individual games. Do it for fun, unless you don't care about your ranking. Then, learn the abilities involved in that game. After a while, you don't necessarily know what an Ornery Chaotic Poison Speed die does, but it stops interfering with the flow of the game, and you'll remember at least as long as you're using/playing against that particular Button Man.

The site is great. There's never lag, though unless you play several dozen games you'll almost always be waiting for someone to take their turn (sometimes you do get someone who's paying a lot of attention. I played two games against a guy and as soon as I finished a move in one game, he finished his in the other, so we finished those games pretty quick).

Note, however, that it's addictive. Stay away from it at work.

If you want to play me, my user id is thelemur.

Written by SaintEhlers on September 08th, 2003