He Angyang

In someone’s eyes Dad ‘n Me may be seen as an inappropriate game owing to its violent
nature. It is a fighting flash game created by Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin and uploaded on July 27,
2005 (Fandom). A creature with a purple body, whose name is Rage, is the protagonist of the game,
he is more chunky than other children presented in this game, and that could be one of the reasons
for which he is committing bullying. It is more of a goal-driven game, and the main objective of the
game is to kill, or in other words, to bully. Players have to kill all the children in a scene in order to
move on to the next scene. After killing all the children the player will reach the final scene, and
there will be a boss-like guy with pistol whose name is Sunchips, it is worthwhile to mention that he
is the most difficult one to defeat. Objects that appeared in each scene can be used by players, for
example, there are litter bin, gas cylinder, football, basketball, lawnmower and so forth; after
picking up some of the objects, such as the gas cylinder or lawnmower, they will explode and hurt
those children, thus in this way those objects can be categorised as weapons.
With regards to the control of the game, it is rather simple. Players merely need to use arrow
button the control Rage’s move, the A key is to apply a light jab, and the S key is to make a heavy
attack (Fandom). Among other things, there are actually some potential combo moves, for instance,
when players press right arrow twice Rage will move faster than usual, it will be of help when they
need to avoid attacks like Jame’s plungers, ninjas’ ninjutsu or Sunchips’ bullets and his break
dancing move. If players press A and S together they can trigger a stab with a small knife, which
costs more damage. Pressing A twice plus one S will apply a whack; pressing left arrow or right
arrow then A, then Rage will leap; when A is pressed once, Rage can grab a child in his hand, then
if players press A again, he will apply a headbutt to the child (Zen-Zinxe: 2005), to name but a few.
Upon achieving several combos, Rage will be in the state of “Rage,” the eponymous mode of Rage,
when the “Rage” mode is triggered he will be suffused with devilish purple haze effect, as a result,
Rage’s move will be relatively quickened, and attacks will be strengthened as well.
When it comes to the scenes of Dad ‘n Me, there are 11 scenes overall, which are: the entry
of a playground, the inside of the playground, a site in the neighbourhood with a swing in it, a
football pitch, a side street, another side of the street, basketball pitch, the front of a drug store,
apartments, then the penultimate scene — the end of the neighbourhood, which encompasses
repulsive ninjas in it, and finally, a scrapyard with the final gangsta boss. At the beginning of the
game, Rage’s dad drove him to the first scene — the playground, a kid named Marcus, also the very
first victim in this game, if players move Rage to Marcus’ sandcastle he will destroy that,
consequently, Marcus burst into tears, then players can do whatever they wish Rage to do. Moving
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on to the second scene, Rage will encounter the first guy — Wilbur, who looks as ripped as Rage
and has the strength to fight back, what is more, who is also bullying another child. As players
move on, in the third scene there is a guy called Jose who is also capable of fight back, with his red
helmet, if a player is new to the game, they may lose much Health in this scene due to Jose’s
continuous attack. When it comes to the next scene, the football pitch, those children may not fight
back unless Rage sacks their football. Interestingly enough, Rage can actually kick the football into
the goal, which enhances the playability of the game. In the fifth scene, there are a group of children
in uniform waiting for their school bus, they cannot actually move, it is worth noting that there are
cars passing by every two seconds, whoever on the street will be crashed by the cars and Health will
be lowered.
As he moves on, he will meet the first repugnant guy in the neighbourhood, namely, James.
He is a guy with a toy pistol that shoots small plungers, accompanied by a rather chipper sound
effect. However, as mentioned above, James’ quite annoying, he “fires” his toy pistol continuously
as long as he hits Rage once, that is to say, if one got shot by James they may lose a great deal of
Health. Then, in the basketball pitch scene, Rage will see Matt, Afro ninja and Farter playing
basketball there, Afro ninja is the cartooned image of Afro ninja in the film, and he has the potential
to fight back. Similar to the football pitch scene, Rage can throw the basketball with A key being
pressed. It should be stressed that if players take the ball with them the difficulty in the rest of the
whole game will be relatively lowered, and in the next scene for example, balls will be critical
“weapons” for destroying a car. In the eighth scene the second troublesome guy — Dewey, appears,
he is driving a veritable desert patrol car in that scene, which reduces Rage’s Health to a great
extent. Dewey’s car cannot be destroy by Rage’s move, thus players may make use of a litter bin or
the above-mentioned balls, each ball will work in this context. A group of teenagers named Herbert,
Roger, Simon are having fun in the ninth scene, from their appearance it can be infer red that they
might be rugby players, nevertheless, they do no harm for Rage. At the same time, Ilwill, Shok,
Edmond appear, they look as if they were dangerous, however, their punky look and dreadlocks are
merely their facade, they do not attack Rage, their existence can be possibly seen as a preparation
for the “Rage” mode, as in the penultimate scene is the very showcase of ninjas.
Moving on to the tenth scene, Flip D, the ninja who is driving the same make of car as
Dewey drove before, appears, meanwhile Gunrio also shows up, they look identical and both of
them can cause great harm to Rage by using their legs, Before using the Jutsu, they usually
disappear for a second and then unexpectedly come from nowhere which make defeating them
really hard, whilst applying the Jutsu, there are shadows behind them. And finally, the last scene,
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Sunchips’ sidekicks Brandon and Beef, do not seem to have any function as they do not attack, but
if they really need to have any function to be there, it might be that they are there to play Rage’s
ball, as it is suggested that taking a ball with Rage can decrease the difficulty of defeating Sunchips.
Every time when players use the ball as a “weapon,” Brandon and Beef are prone to pick up the ball
and play it. It to some extent make the final scene more tricky and fighting with Sunchips is
demanding enough, players need to not only attack but also dodge, it seems that Sunchips is an
assemblage of all those who are capable of attacking, by way of example, he shoots as James does,
and after hitting once he continues; what is more, he has the same shadow effect when using his
break dancing move, this move also tracks Rage, so it is better to move after in order not be beaten
by his move.
It is sensitive for the developer to place a first-aid case in the final scene, as to overcome
Sunchips can be hard even for an experienced player. But that is not to say having an object which
can recover the Health means everyone will manage to win the fight, it can by no means be
assumed that Sunchips is not a character, many efforts still need to be put in order to defeat
Sunchips. In the end, Sunchips dies in a pool of blood, Rage stares at him with his knife, and just in
a heartbeat, Rage’s dad comes to pick him up, it can also be sensed that his dad feels proud that his
son has killed so many children just now, the whole game ends here.
In summary, it seems that Dad ‘n Me does not have a story to tell, in this game players only
need to press keys and kill every child they encounter, and at the end, kill the final boss. It was
uploaded in 2005 and got a review of 9.5 out of 10 (Fandom), many of those were teenagers back in
2005, The high rating of the game can be ghastly in a way, even though the game was designed in
cartoon characters and had warnings, such as “child murder,” “crime,” it got played extensively and
won several awards, it can be argued that people do love to play gore games to some degree, or in
other words, humans are predisposed to kill. Having said that, it might somehow be an outlet when
one feels stressed, if they just want to jab someone and throw a gas cylinder at them, Dad ‘n Me
will suffice.

Internet sources:
https://newgrounds.fandom.com/wiki/Dad_%27n_Me
https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/315802

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