Score: 7

"Completely accurate Troll sim."

submission: Troll's Rage

date: September 1, 2009

...in the sense that trolls are stupid, have no control, and never do what you tell them, this game succeeds in being the ultimate troll brawler. Basically it suffers from the same design problems that plague every 2.5d beat 'em up-- vertical movement and attack collision are stacked against the player.

Presumably this is because when they tried testing the game with reasonably wide player attacks, it was "too easy," so they artificially increased the difficulty level by making your attacks never hit when it looks like they should, adding a delay to all your attacks, and giving the AI ranged attacks. The result is a constant struggle, not against intriguing tactical combinations of enemies (though it has those,) but against the game's own internal stupid bullshit.

Maybe I'm being too hard on the big blue Trogg. After all, he has plenty of health, an omnipresent healing mechanic, a variety of attack moves which fill different roles, gorgeous (if delightfully brutish) graphics, a hilarious special attack, plenty of variety as you make your way from left to right, an unobtrusive built-in tutorial, and a perfectly consistent look & feel.

Despite all these good points, though, the muscles in the back of my neck tightened up from the constant frustration of my attacks missing, being too far from the enemy when my attack when off, being too CLOSE to the enemy when my attack went off, having my attack animations canceled by enemy attacks, archers and shamans harassing me with their CHEAP TRICKS while I was trying to EAT...

...

Huh. Maybe the poor control really IS an attempt to make the player feel like a brutish, enraged troll. Frustrating control for artistic reasons? I'm not sure I buy it. Even if that's the case, though, it detracted from my enjoyment of the game, didn't add to it, so I'm not going to reward the developer for it.

Intentional attempt at immersion or not, it just doesn't do it for me. There are better ways to achieve Troll Immersion than by tying one arm behind my back and forcing me to fumble in the dirt, trying to crush fire ants with my awkward, clublike fingers.

Overall, good game, with great production values, but slightly frustrating when it comes to the core mechanics. It gives you a troll's blunted tools, and then asks you to engage in a dance which rewards finesse and fine control. You just don't have what you need to manage the game's environment. I'm sure it's probably beatable, I just don't feel like getting constantly webbed and pelted in the back of the head with arrows for the next five levels to find out.

Score: 9

"2D game, 1D graphics."

submission: One Dimensional Quest

date: August 18, 2009

Very intriguing experimental game. However, I would argue that the "jumping" constitutes a simulation of a second axis of movement, just at a very low resolution. I've pondered something like this before, but it turned out better than I ever had any reason to expect it would. Nice job!

Score: 10

"That was AMAZING!"

submission: The Impossible Magic Tric

date: August 10, 2009

Holy shit! I couldn't believe my eyes when the movie finished loading and it knew I was logged in as WarpZone! That was incredible! I've never seen anything like it. I know a magician doesn't reveal his secrets, but I'd really love to see the code for this. Simply incredible. Easily the best trick I've ever seen on Newgrounds!

Oh, and there was some card stuff after it...

Score: 8

"Much improved pacing... but I saw it coming. :P"

submission: BlownOutOfProportion4(3)

date: August 8, 2009

After a slow start in Act 1, and a sudden twist in Act 2, the final act is almost nonstop action! It's kinda like a traditional 3-act play... if the play were about kinky sex acts.

The writing and pacing are a huge improvement over part 4-2. I don't think the writing's actually improved that much (all three parts were made pretty much at the same time, remember,) it's more like all the good stuff happens in part 3.

Maybe if I'd watched it all at once, the continuity would have tied it all together... or maybe I'd have gotten bored and quit watching it a third of the way through. It's tough to say. But I don't think splitting it into three parts helped it. I think if Pavel had condensed all the good material into one episode, perhaps by simply cutting or abstracting away everything in act 1 and 2 that didn't directly advance the plot, it might have strengthened it as a whole.

Since the comparison to Kevin Smith is unavoidable, I should consider the possibility that this wasn't written for me. Maybe if I'd been drunk or stoned I would have been more easily amused by it. But Kevin Smith (in my opinion anyway) writes his filler dialogue much more colorfully. His characters are larger than life, and everything is peppered with these geeky moments of logic and obscure pop-culture references... I'm not saying Pavel needs to go that way if that's not his style, but he needs to do something. If it's not a moment of either suspense or payoff, either cut it out or spice it up.

But that's more a criticism of parts 1 and 2. Part 3 was great and terrible. Basically everything Pavel's trained us to expect. I also recognized the blonde chick from one of the things I reviewed before, which was a nice touch.

My only complaint about the writing is, the Leslie joke was kinda obvious. I've seen a movie before that did that. And it's the kinda gag that, once you've seen it one time, you'll always see it coming from that moment on.

But *after* the big moment of denouement, that's when it started to get good. The kid's drunk father suddenly takes on the role of responsible parental figure, which is surprising considering he's drunk as a skunk by that point. Then the writing goes off the rails (finally!) right at the end. I can't describe it without ruining it, but the last two minutes are very SouthParkian, in a good way.

So yeah. The fucking king of gross-out humor flexes his chops, and after three months of remarkable effort, we find a half-hour cartoon that probably could have been told better in five minutes. But the ending was worth it, and I wish the author the best as he continues to hone his craft.

I'm still kinda disturbed by the teen sex thing... if Clock Suckers was creepy, this is about 100 times creepier... but what can you expect? This is NewGrounds. This is Junk Yard Animations. This is the way hormone-addled boys think, for better or worse, and if the options are to hide it or discuss it, I'll always support the people who have the balls to start with the awkward truth, then stretch it and make fun of it.

Though he might wanna start using a clever alias if he hopes to one day make a name for himself in the American animation industry.

Score: 10

"Isn't the point kinda "I made a surrealist film?""

submission: L'Amour de Rasputin

date: August 8, 2009

This actually reminded me of that "Independent Film" music video on HomestarRunner dotcom. You should check it out if you're into surrealism. Although technically I guess it has a point, it basically tells the story of StrongSad trying to make a mind-blowing surreal film using a variety of no-budget filmmaking techniques so it's technically not itself surrealist. But it includes several nods to Dziga Vertov and Salvador Dali, so you can see the influence there.

This brings me to my point, though. Isn't it impossible to make a surrealist film if all you're doing is copying previous surrealist films, down to the limitations of the technologies used at the time? (Black and white, sepia tone, simulated film artifacts.) In my mind, it's too iconic... people look at this, they are reminded of Salvador Dali, even if they're only passingly familiar with the reference.

Basically Salvador Dali is too much of a cultural icon for a derivative work to still be surrealist. For a *truly* surrealist flash cartoon, you'd want one of those looping songs by TheWeebl, or maybe one of those gibberish random cartoons griefers change their submission to after it passes judgement. Those cartoons are more random and nonsensical than this.

The point of this is obvious: copying Dali.

Ceci n'est pas une caricature surréaliste, as it were.

I hope you get a good grade. It's obvious you learned a lot about surrealism in your class. I just feel like the way you went about it kinda misses the mark. You should try applying the *concept* of surrealism to a flash cartoon using modern techniques and imagery.

Copy the *spirit* of surrealism, not just the look & feel.

That said, you put work into this and it shows. Good job on your project; good luck with your future works. :D

Score: 7

"If Kevin Smith were a 12 year old boy..."

submission: BlownOutOfProportion4 (2)

date: August 7, 2009

I was prepared to write this off as just 2 minutes of jokes strung together with 20 minutes worth of f-bombs, until the sex scene. Now I have to acknowledge that, if nothing else, this series is pretty fucked up!

Pavel starts off in familiar SouthPark-esque territory of kids telling each other "fuck shit damn cock," but then it turns out they're not screwing around. They don't just talk the talk; Apparently the kids in the BOOP universe actually *do* the shit teenagers talk about. And then some!

I'm... not sure how I'm supposed to feel about that, actually. If this were live-action movie like American Pie, it would be totally fine because 16 is legal in some states and they're all played by 25 year old actors and actresses, anyway. (And the nudity would actually be titillating.) The fact that it looks like it was drawn, voiced, and written by a 12 year old boy only makes things creepier. I have no idea what an audience of actual 12 year olds would make of this, but speaking as an adult, I feel confused and violated. Maybe that was the intention.

This movie stomps mah ta-meters!

It's hard for me to dismiss the movie as a whole, though, because right at the end, there, it managed to do something rare these days and rarer still on Newgrounds-- it actually pushes the envelope further than society's used to. And it does so un-self-consciously, as if just putting something disgusting on the screen wasn't even the main goal, but just a side-note in a much larger narrative.

Holy shit. Something on Newgrounds was actually edgy! (As opposed to just tossing around the word edgy to mean "we copied something that was offensive in 1985 and popular in 1990 but is now trite and cliche'," which is what most of the "edgy" content on Newgrounds does.)

As disturbing as the sex scene was, though, it's hard to know what to make of it. Absolutely nothing about the sex scene was actually portrayed as sexy, and without knowing the true limits of this artist's skill, I think this was intentional. The writing supports it. This wasn't intended to titillate. The sex scene does not share the same brain space as porn or erotica. It's awkward, gross, and weird, even putting aside the fact that the participants are apparently underage.

Was this a clever device to force the viewer into a mental state as uncomfortable and awkward as one's actual puberty? Or just an attempt to one-up the usual NG dick and fart jokes? Or, god help us, maybe this is the unabashed literal truth of our nation's public school system, extrapolated to its logical conclusion. I hope it hasn't come to this. Hope it never will. But what the fuck would I know? It's been years since high school.

There are different levels of exaggeration. Different places you take an audience depending on whether your goal is to inform, entertain, shock, mock, titillate, or persuade. I'm not sure where the author is going with this, but it feels like mostly pure shock with just a hint of social satire.

But after a long, slow, boring 35-minute start, it suddenly goes absolutely batshit insane in the last five minutes. Episode 2 ends in a very fucked-up place. I find myself actually curious as to where it goes next. But at the same time, I don't wanna over-analyze Episode 2 too much, because I think the writers are still discovering what they want to do with this series. Episode 1 was pretty boring, once you get over the sheer level of consistent effort it must have taken to put together... but what's next?

This is something strange. A tired old formula which unexpectedly veers into territory so unfamiliar, so utterly wrong, yet at the same time so true to itself, it's hard to shake the feeling that there's something deeper going on under the surface. I want to wait for this series to blossom before I dismiss it entirely. Because it might just have something to teach us. About the teenage experience, about life itself, about what it means to be human.

That or it'll be replaced with a picture of a clown with a rotating dick tomorrow.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Score: 8

"Casual aesthetics. Hardcore sensibilities. Why? :/"

submission: Bullet Chaos

date: August 4, 2009

Start with another permutation of simple geometrical vector graphics, add some nice bloom effects and quirky techno muzzak, and a shop full of viable upgrades, and you've got the next great casual defense game, right?

Well, not *quite.*

Spend some time with Bullet Chaos, and you'll see that under the surface, it's got hardcore arcade-style roots, and not in the good way. A good action game rewards skillful gameplay. *THIS* game instead *punishes* certian upgrade combinations.

For example, you could buy different weapons and switch between them, *or* you could install homing auto-turrets in those slots which stack with your current weapon. Sounds like a good idea, right?

Well, not really. Lots of levels have targets you're not supposed to hit. The best auto-turret releases shrapnel when they hit an enemy, which you had better believe cooks off every friendly target on the screen. Then when you blast through the enemy ships spawned DOOM-style from the friendly fire kills, you get a 5 star rating for that level. What? Was I supposed to not shoot them or was that really what you expected me to do all along?

I'm not saying the game is impossible to beat with this strategy, but it *is* impossible to get a good score in some levels with this loadout. And since the penalty for selling weapons is 25% of the price, and it takes about five levels before you really have enough money to buy anything interesting, experimentation is a long, slow, frustrating process.

And if that weren't bad enough, Bullet Chaos likes to hold out on you until the last wave, meaning the first wave in a level is something that all weapon combinations will take out without much trouble, but the final wave reveals that you're not doing enough damage fast enough. It's just one more way Bullet Chaos lets you think you're doing fine, then comes out of nowhere with something you didn't see coming, couldn't prepare for, and now you have to start all the way over from the beginning so you can buy a different weapons loadout. Strategy is developed incrementally over the course of the whole game, but challenges are presented only at the last moment.

It's a time-sink combined with on-the-job training and plenty of failure. I consider this the worst possible way to artificially extend gameplay.

The sad part is, this game has a ton of quality and nuanced gameplay. It's a great engine, with interesting variety to the levels and a ton of unique weapons. The final boss is awesome (once you figure out how to spawn it,) and not too hard. But the bullshit "Nintendo-Hard" difficulty curve ruins it. It could have been much more fun.

I'd like to see this game, same gameplay, only with *casual* scoring rules and failure states. Make it possible to sell weapons at no penalty; at least the un-upgraded ones, so the player can experiment freely. Make it possible to re-play earlier stages for a better score. Put a progress bar at the top so players can see how much longer the current stage is, and spread the difficulty out a bit more over the course of the stage. (Climactic endings are good, but not when they ending is so hard that my success in the beginning is misleading.) Counting down green dots to a true Game Over is pointless, because if you fail once level once, you probably need to start over from the beginning anyway and buy different weapons.

Bottom line: Replace the pass-or-fail surprises with stages that are easy to beat, but challenging to master. Encourage players to re-play earlier levels to suck more points out of them, perhaps with increasing difficulty levels (and score values) every time they beat the stage. Make experimentation easier and reward long-term progress, rather than punishing rookie mistakes.

This is a great game engine, but with poor meta-game planning choices on the part of the developer. By meta-game I mean menus, shops, and everything but the levels. I recommend gamezhero take some lessons from GemCraft and The Space Game, which had great meta-game rules and scoring systems.

Good game... Coulda been great. :/

Score: 2

"Insert coin not to die."

submission: Splitty Adventures 1

date: July 29, 2009

This is basically not a game, but a very elaborate donation button. You'll get as far as stage 3, then you need to get an account and convert your real money into some kinda fake money in order to buy the *entirely necessary* double-split power-up in order to advance. You can't turn 180 degrees with 8 splits. You just can't.

I guess everyone wants to invent the next new business model that looks free but secretly wrings money out of you. I don't think this approach is the next big thing, though. It basically combines all the "surprise you don't actually have the whole game" annoyingess of shareware with the nickel-and-dime-you-to-death annoyingness of MMORPGs, without the positive value-to-the-consumer of either business model. (Making a one-time payment to own the whole game, and being able to show off your lewt to other players, respectively.)

Anyway, there's an actual game lurking underneath the horrible business model. It seems like a novel, but simple casual game with adequate vector graphics, inspired design, and a single innovative and elegant core mechanic. Basically everything a good Flash game could aspire to... and basically what you get for free constantly every day here on Newgrounds anyway. It's just too bad the gamersafe bullshit killed it for me.

I get that the author needs to make money somehow. I can appreciate that it's a balancing act of trying to wring fifty bucks out of a Mochi ad here and there. I get that a combined business model of click-throughs, donations, ads, and optional extras makes sense. I just don't appreciate a game that pretends it's free and then asks for my credit card info part way through.

No, I take that back. Even shareware is fine, as long as it says on the title screen, "this is shareware." What I have a problem with is throwing an impossible challenge at the player, and then burying a menu with the power-up in it, as if to say "Oh by the way if you want to not fail, you'll need 100 GamerGold." I don't even know how much 100 GamerGold costs, and frankly, I don't want to know. This business model frustrates and infuriates me to the point where I'd rather spend $20 on a game whose creators have the guts to just TELL me up front that it's for sale, than to spend fifty cents worth of GamerGold and risk encouraging more of this crap in the future.

You buy into this crap now, a year from now every single game on Newgrounds is gonna have some impossible bullshit level you can't get past without spending money. Think about that.

Based on graphics, gameplay, and length, this game actually is worth a lot more than the 2/10 I gave it. How much more? In order to find out, the author of this game needs to send me 100 GamerGold, 500 GamerPoints, and an apology for wasting my time. Then we can talk real scores for a real game.

Score: 10

"Wait, which part was supposed to be ironic?"

submission: Culture Clubbing

date: July 20, 2009

Gotta love that opening sequence. :D I've always been a little confused by this series, though. First you make fun of anime, then you make fun of some kinda cold-war era propaganda the like of which nobody actually produces anymore, but that part's so badly done, it's almost like you're making fun of newgrounds parodies for being outdated, full of bad info, and culturally irrelevant.

I mean, don't American corporations make a lot of money off of repackaging and marketing those anime shows? Don't we censor, mis-translate, and mutilate most of them until they're a mostly-homogenized post-melting-pot American rendition of the original show? Don't a lot of the OAVs which are big sellers in America tend to come from Japanese studios whose main market and target audience is the U.S.?

It's like the author picked a random point of view that sounded bad and ascribed it to "Capitalism," without any real clear idea of what he was trying to say. It's like a straw man argument of a straw man argument. I'm not defending the vaguely-defined corporate interests the show seems to be arguing against, I'm just trying to figure out why Captain Capitalism seems to favor the interests of a few American corporations over the interests of a few *other* American corporations.

It *feels* like a politically-charged parody, but there's no substance to it. It's basically the artist rubbing two Straw Men together. The stuff said by the title character has no value. I don't mean he's wrong, I mean it is of null value. It's not good or bad, it's just... floog. So it's hard to either agree with or disagree with any of the participants or with the outcome of the show itself.

A good parody makes you feel either outrage or gleeful vindication, depending on whether or not you agree with the thing being mocked. This parody didn't really do that for me, because I can't imagine anyone making those arguments and seriously meaning them. Maybe a time traveller from like 1975, or something. But how would that guy have even heard of anime, and why would modern kids take him seriously?

Why would modern audiences find him funny?

I ask myself that a lot when a new episode of this series comes out.

Or maybe that's the whole point. Maybe it's supposed to be one of those fish-out-of-water cartoons, like Office Spider, or Warbot in Accounting. But since the kids act like he belongs there, it doesn't quite work on that level, either. There's no point of reference... no "normal" point of view to compare the wacky ones against.

Heh. "Dear Captain Capitalism, your show desperately needs a straight man. Love WarpZone." That would go over well.

You can't deny the obvious quality here, I just wish I could follow the writing, because it would be a lot more fun if it were funny. Oooh. A horrifying thought occurs... maybe Brad lives somewhere where people actually make arguments like this and mean them... Is that even possible? Does such a place still exist in America? Hell, these days, even Texas knows better... right?

Score: 8

"Wait for it..."

submission: ABunchofNESsedUpCrap 2

date: March 4, 2009

I thought the jokes were a little thin, especially near the beginning, but the Luigi Shoryuken Overkill made it all worthwhile. :D Definitely make moar!

The Easter Eggs were hilarious, but... how can I put this? The difficulty on them is broken. StrongBad only makes you wait like 20 seconds to see an easter egg, you know? They were both awesome scenes, though. I just wish they were a little more accessible.

Believe it or not, I've actually heard of Metal Storm! When I was a goddamned little boy, like twelve or some shit, I had a subscription to Nintendo Power magazine. I used to get all excited when the new issue would arrive. I'd spend a couple days digesting every article and dream of all the cool games I knew my parents couldn't afford to get me. Anywho, one month the cover was Metal Storm.

It wasn't until years later I actually got to play it on an emulator. So they do those on a website now, huh? Interesting.

Anyway, good flash. Keep 'em coming. :) It's nice to see the younger generation taking an interest in all the oldschool shit.