Reviewed by Matt Burkett

Attempts to artistically interpret the 3DMM community usually don’t come in any shades of gray. They’re usually positive visions of a thriving Hollywood-like metropolis where all things are bright and cheery or horrible nightmares that are clouded with an impenetrable curtain of negativity. Of course, the idea of exactly what the 3DMM community is all about differs from member to member, but the latter seems to have more truth than any. The community is definitely an ugly place.

Hand Made Character of Mario Saga fame realized this idea, more or less, in Regime of Terror, a 64 scene short about the community in the year 2010. Nothing has really changed much in six years, people are as crazed as ever and board moderators crack down on problematic situations, but their enforcement has no effect in a place of bleakness and disrespect. A stranger to the ways of the 3DMM community inadvertently stumbles across this dark place only to find once he has entered, he has entrapped himself. He find answers at a bar (where various hand made characters have sought refuge, presumably to get away from their warring creators) that “once you enter the community you will never leave.”

Of course, this just won’t do.

Arming himself, the unnamed hero descends upon the stronghold of those who run the bulletin board in an effort to end the misery. It’s the painfully simple climax that severely harms the rather pleasant experience that Regime was up to that point. Despite Hand Made Character’s animating skills being noteworthy (even if he questionably “borrowed” an animation or two from Redwampa Meets Pikios), the point of Regime just is never realized. Its answer to ending the community’s problems is with the flip of a switch.

If only it were really that easy.

60 out of 100