113420's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Particle Wars Extreme]

Very polished!

Very sparkly. seems like everything gives off particles! maybe that's why it seemed to run a bit slow?

The gameplay was pretty solid, but fighting wave after wave of enemies can get a little repetitive- especially when there's no real reward for taking them out, and there's no particular hurry to do so. one of the appeals of most shooters is the franticness of them, where you rush to defeat as many of the enemies as possible either for an achievement or for upgrades. i suppose there's an appeal to getting your multiplier high, but it was just too easy. on every level i'd surpass the goal by so much it was laughable. Also, i find it a bit baffling that the only weapon that makes any noise is the spreadshot...

Anyway, I didn't play all the way through the game, but i blame my own impatience, not you. It's an excellent game, and you did very well.

ZEGMAN responds:

Thank you, you brought up some good points.
Thanks for the 9 :D

[Madness: Premeditation]

Excellent concept, comptetent execution.

I've never quite seen this particular take on a madness-like game. I find it immensely refreshing and quite fun to boot. What i would recommend making user-defined checkpoints, so that after performing one action they have time to think about the next. Perhaps make a minimum time between checkpoints, so that players can't abuse it. Next, as the down key has no real function, i would take out the rather annoying feature of having the timer run even when standing still, and replace it with the ability to advance time (while holding still) by pressing the down key. Even more, make it so that while you do this, you can dodge a few shots fired from an enemy (but not a salvo). This would work particularly well if you could combine this with the ability to predict enemy actions, even if only vaguely.

More ideas... hand to hand combat, for both the player and the enemy. Make it so that it seemed like a last resort, which it is. Maybe engineer it so that you can only take out an enemy after they try to attack you, as hank usually does in the movies. And add in enemies that spawn as the battle progresses, instead of having them all on the screen ahead of time.

All these ideas spinning through my head... i wish i could make them a reality myself.

BoMToons responds:

I like your ideas!

[Turn Based Battle!]

ooh, it's that time again.

well now, another turn based game, obviously a parody judging by the title and, subsequentally, the title screen.
i also guessed- accurately- that the game would only consist of... ONE battle. and that became more glaringly obvious as i saw that there is no map system, only a joke of a movement system.
now, predictability aside, i can say that the game was entertaining and had a few chuckles involved, but it really didnt have much strategy. start, follow the dotted lines, unlock a new feature, try it out, rely on it, build on it a little bit, game ends. like the shop. as soon as you have money, you buy potions. as soon as you have excess money, you buy a cure spell. you use that until the caster is out of mana, and by that point the boss is on his last two digits of HP. i also found that there was no need to buy weak things. ever. you could stock up and go on a major store binge when a new character joined. as such, i wound up purchasing the multi-hit spell and the cure spell, as well as one JRPG sword. and i really didn't need anything else. the JRPG sword did more damage than the rest of my party combined (except the earth spell) so i'm tempted to bypass spells entirely and equip my party with nothing but buster swords.
too late, game's over. not much point in replaying now.
you never got to know the characters. i LIKED that. because it fit with the parody. there was the obvious selection. balanced main character, caster, brawler, and that other guy that joins too late to be characterized. standard stuff.
as of yet, i havent found any of the secrets, and i don't particularly care, because someone is just going to tell me eventually. and i also like the fact that nothing is TOO LONG. except maybe the action scenes. wouldnt it be nice if you could actually command characters to attack and they did it without a two second delay. and it's worse with magic... but that doesnt need saying.
all in all, it's just a little distraction for a few minutes. some thought went into the engine, some work went into the graphics, but it really wasn't all that well made. i still enjoyed it, but i would probably appreciate the upcoming epic battle fantasy more. shame, most reviews on that go unread.
ah well. i look forward to more time-wasters from you. and... try to find out what your specialty is. i enjoyed the indestructotank games, and the shift series, but as you know, they are getting a little... overhyped. so you might try working a little less on fantastic concepts or old fantastic concepts and start working a little more on gameplay. because, after all, you have the concept part down.

The-EXP responds:

Your powers of perception truly are VAST in number.

[NINJA Brawl]

excellent!

well now, an enjoyable game and a creator who replies! time to go to work!

in summary, this game was lots of fun and castle-crasher like. now let's skip all the praise and get down to the nit-picking.
one of the first things i noticed is that there is no difference between one attack and another. there's no option to "whack things harder" and "whack things faster", there's just "whack things". combos are given later on, of course, but most of them are useless. run attack, windmill blade, grinding charge- they all pale in comparison to kicking the opponent and then stabbing him in the chest. if there's ever an occasion where you really need to dish out damage without knocking the opponent anywhere, you can just press one button over and over and it will dish out damage at the maximum rate. i also noticed that no amount of upgrading can ever make a significant difference when it comes to whacking things. it just determined how long you would have to whack things- if it wasnt for the fact that you could do a simple knockdown-and-stab kill, i'd probably be much more enthusiastic about the power of my whacking.
however, i still like the mechanics of it. enemies often use the same attacks you use, and do the same damage you do, but of course, they're a wee bit slow in the everything.
i noticed that i could throw shurikens, but i didnt.
i noticed that i could throw bombs, but i didnt.
i noticed that i could reflect shurikens back at the enemy, but i didnt.
i noticed that i could jump over ranged attacks, but i didnt.
all of that gone to waste by the fact that there's an insta-kill and a cost for weapons.
i bought all the weapons, and i got all the characters. i could've used them, but i didnt. restarting with no goal in mind isn't exactly as fun as reviewing the game.
it seemed to be quite a bit like castle crashers, but with less interesting skills and more memorizing attack patterns. the bosses were simple. all you ever have to do is take a few whacks at them and move before they get the chance to retaliate. that goes for the heavy enemies, the bog monster, the cave monster, AND the endboss. needless to say, it wasnt as challenging as much as it was annoying.

but despite all this, it was still a REALLY GREAT GAME. it made me want to kill everything and create chaos amongst enemies that use large explosives. and finding out the differences between enemies was satisfying, too. i saved up money and tried every weapon i could buy. i had fun. and despite the pathetic bosses, the weak combo system, and the expensive cost of items, i really liked playing it.

however, you've got a ways to go until you're at the level of castle crashers.

SeethingSwarm responds:

You are so right with your last comment :)
However, I don't think the combos are useless at all. If you know when and how to use them properly, then they can be deadly, especially when they're combined with other moes as well. Also, how did you notice that list of 4 things you could do without doing them? No, just kidding, I know what you mean :)

Thanks for the great review and the nine!

[Notepad Drawing Collab 2009]

no one's posted the achievement locations?

well, i'll have to fix that.
8th picture, two black and white people with funny faces, click the face of the one on the right.
batman picture, click his face.
(there's a bit of a glitch as you move from the guy in a volcano to the persia and ness picture)
fist holding the pencil, right in the middle.
two strange humanoids, click in the middle.
wormish thing wearing a bloody helmet, the button follows the bridge of his nose.
and for the last, click until you reach the credits.

personal thoughts, it was fun to look at, but a lot of it seemed out of place by being profane, juvenile or dark.
it's fun trying to guess just how these things are put together.

JKAmovies responds:

Thanks, I really wish people wouldn't post where awards are as they're supposed to be hidden and found on the person(s) self.

[William and Sly]

simply excellent.

hmm... so many in-depth reviews already. i'll have to work hard to outdo them.
my first thoughts in entering the game were a little biased, granted that this game had only nine reviews and was already on the banner on the frontpage. my curiosity peaked while looking at the blissfully simplistic and yet beautiful environment which was only a minute into the game. the ambient noise and soft, mysterious music went flawlessly with the sprawling, nonlinear environment filled with fantastic sights and mysteries. that being the case, i took it upon myself to not only complete the game, but discover all of the hidden intricacies- not so much for the badges, but for the thrill of finding every detail the game had to offer.
everything i say is bound to be reiterated at one point or another- in fact, it's probably already been said. but quite simply, i find this game fascinating and involving. it made me ponder just what was on the other side of each rainy, tree-dotted hill. i found out the formula for secret areas- most of them are underneath a rock wall or hidden in a corner that you're likely to jump over without a second thought. but the complexity of the pathways and the winding, exploratory freedom made them seem not so much secrets, but shortcuts through the expansive woods that any experienced traveler would use frequently.
my only problems with this game are the enemies. while i found them to be rather surprising and frustrating at first, i soon realized their formula as well. all enemies are hidden in low-walled pits that extend a relatively long width- and they only appear relatively close to warp runes. this feature gives me the impression that to complete it extensively, you need to play through twice. and i, for one, do not like that. i would like it better if you could trade fairyflies again to get another chance at the brown slug beasts.
as for the final boss, i would have to say that while it was difficult and frustrating, it was also... average. not especially hard, you are given plenty of room to succeed... but it was never really as invigorating as trying to find the hidden nuances on the path to it.

a fantastic game overall. i love it. thank you!

Kajenx responds:

Wow, great review! The game is definitely about finding secret pathways, and you're right that I wasn't expecting people to get all of the darklings on their first try. I wasn't expecting people to find all of the mushrooms right away either, though, so kudos on that!

[The Art of Shadow Legacy]

well ummm

interesting stuff nice concept art is kinda misplaced i thought it was gonna be an actual game i like the idea of it but a few of the things here dont make sense like the moss that takes water from you but gives you food because either way that would be bad for you and the energy balls that grow on trees because they wouldn't be living and would have no purpose so why would they be there but overall nice storytelling despite the fact that this really isn't a place to do that sort of thing someone stole my periods!

Artist-Lost responds:

Well I guess I have the time to explain. Parasites and Symbiotes aren't always all love and candy with their hosts, it's quite often that they will exchange one vital service for another.. We don't exactly have a healthy relationship with tapeworms now do we? As for the Life Blooms. The planet as mentioned previously is built around a massive ship. Energy from the ship leaks out up through the ground and into the roots of the tree's. The energy permeates the tree's however, when it finds branches it forces out. The sap from the tree helps keep the energy in kind of like bubblegum keeps air in when you blow a bubble.

K so its explained.. Perhaps you should study more. You might be able to keep people from stealing your punctuation that way.

[Platformer Tutorial]

oh, great, now i have to try all of this...

i'm relatively new to actionscript, so i figure this will be as good a place as any to start learning.
on a side note, i made a tutorial outlining some basic flash techniques. a lot of people found it more easy to comprehend than most of the tutorials on here, but it still hasnt been submitted.
oh, and about the music- you can make it loop by putting it in a movie clip with the music on the second frame. then add the actionscript stop();, click on the frame with the music, and set the sync in the lower right to event-loop. this prevents multiple copies of the music from playing if you go back a frame.

chunkycheese12 responds:

Yeah, I know about that. Plus i've tried that before on my animation for beginners, and when you click back it starts the music again even if the music's off. I need to have a good look at the code one day and fix it.

[HyperDrive X]

interesting gameplay.

i thought it was a great game overall, and the graphics had me always wanting to play the next level just to see what went whizzing by. but while it has nice gameplay, it has a really weird difficulty curve. for me, the hardest part i the whole game was unlocking level 3. then the game was significantly easier until i came up to the last level, and tried to at least qualify for the locked content to show that i had pretty much mastered the game. the last level was hard- making split decisions while traveling at 12000 MPH would leave just about anyone smashed into the nearest intergalactic lamp post. overall, the strangest thing about the entire game was the controls. okay, moving the mouse to control where you are is about as complicated as tetris, but when you throw in the fact that you cant SEE the mouse and the change between where you are and where you want to be is gradual, split decisions will often end up throwing you off the track permanently. which brings me to my next point- it's a little hard to define what will take you INSIDE a shape and what will send you glancing off the edge of it with hardly any speed boost at all. i guess that comes with having the camera stapled to the front of a starship that's breaking every speed law that ever came into existence.
i guess the whole point im trying to make is this. its a good game and a cool concept with awesome visuals. but the one thing it lacks is accuracy. the game gives you a percentage of how accurate you were after every level, and even after qualifying for every track, i only got above 50% once. and that's for the rings i went through.

LongAnimals responds:

Very interesting comments, thanks!
If you watch the reticule at the centre of the screen you can effectively see your mouse position - it shows you (very subtly) the direction you are moving in.
We thought this worked better than showing the mouse on screen, having tried both ways.
I guess the unlock times could be harder, but the game was not really meant to be about that, it's about improving your race times. There is a lot which can be done to get increasingly good times.
However, points taken for Hyperdrive X2 :-)
Cheers,
LongAnimals