Score: 3

"I don't get your argument."

submission: Colege grls r smrt,Kawaii

date: April 24, 2007

I really didn't understand where you were going with this. Were you trying to argue that being a slut gives some women an unfair advantage at getting into college or securing a degree? The text on the first two screens was kinda hard for me to follow, and believe me, I am a man who enjoys him some long, rambling tirades.

You seem to be saying "college chicks are dumb sluts, just look at all these pictures!" But I couldn't tell where you were going with it, from there. Were you criticizing colleges for failing to live up to the stallwart "Ivory Tower" image of generations past? Because trying to blame inclusion of women into colleges for the precieved differences between modern-day Michigan University and Victorian-era Yale is not an apples-to-apples comparison.

You seemed to be trying to counterpoint some vague feminist ideology that you seem to think is the driving force behind all female college students. If anything, the current social climate only demonstrates that die-hard feminists do not speak for the majority of women.

The truth is, there are women out there who are serious about their grades. There are smart women out there who do attend colleges. And there are women out there (I.E. feminists) who strongly believe that, because women are of equivilent value to men, they should be given the same equcational opprotunities as men, and that smart women should be taken seriously.

Your argument (apparently targeted against feminist logic) does not take into account the "smart women" the feminists are talking about. Instead you've showcased the bimbos, sluts, and airheads of the academic world.

These are not the "smart women." These are not the paragon of the feminine species. These are the girls who are pretty enough to get their picture on the internet, smart enough to attend some sort of college (or at least have thier picture posted on a website that has "college" in the URL,) and bored enough, drunk enough, or just plain uninhibited enough to go through with it. (And if they were drunk, you pretty much have to blame the guy who got them drunk and took their picture.)

I would also argue that your presentation entirely ignores the male side of the equation. For every bimbo attending college, there's an asshole jock or a listless male stoner. Sure, some women are dumb. But there's plenty of dumb men out there, too. There's also plenty of men out there who sleep with everything that moves.

For every cheerleader who sleeps with an entire football team, there's 13 man-whores to one slutty bimbo. It's just that nobody goes around using their cell phone to take pictures of drunk naked men.

As for the three famous guys who made it big despite "not making the cut," which I assume means "didn't finish college," two of them lived in a time when college was actually hard to get into. It doesn't mean sluts get unfairly rewarded with a free ride into college, or whatever you were trying to argue with this piece, it just means that the bar has been lowered to the point where young people more interested in partying than studying (of both genders) can get in.

If that's the message you were trying to get across, I guess I can agree with you, but you expressed it pretty poorly. More likely, though, I think you had a much more mysoginistic intent.

I suppose you were inspired to make this as a response to certian hypocritical college girls you might know who hide under the umbrellas of feminism and acedemia while living a hedonistic lifestyle. If so, that's fine, but you should have framed your oppoent's argument a little better to provide a context for your statements. If you just drop an average person into this flash, raw, they're going to think you're just trying to brush all college women everywhere off as dumb whores.

Worse, they might assume you're hiding behind avant-garde activism art as an excuse to post pictures of some titties.

Score: 8

"Novel Concept. Flawless Execution."

submission: - Circlo -

date: April 22, 2007

Graphics were weak and unimaginative, except for the background which was kinda cool when it changed. The gameplay and overall fun factor more than made up for the lackluster bubbles, though I liked the various types of puzzles, I loved how smoothly the game reset itself after a critical loss, but what really floored me was the high quality of the scripting job.

I was amazed at how bulletproof the game mechanics seemed. After that final bubble was popped at the hub level, that was it. Game over, man. Nothin's gonna screw this up, now. The cannons hold their fire, the timer stops counting down, and I win. As it should be! You almost never see a Flash game that had that much care/forethought/testing put into it.

The puzzle designs were varied and interesting, and the speacial shots and cannons all added to the fun factor. I got stuck at some of the faster puzzles with tinier holes, but I have a relatively slow computer, and I'm not a bust-a-move veteren or anything, so I can't be trusted to appreciate this game's later levels. If anything, the fact that the game eventually wore me down proves it's a solid title with decently scaling difficulty.

Overall: Great job! If you'd drawn the bubbles to be some of those anime glass-bead-lookin' jewel thingies, and given it some characters of some sort watching the puzzle unfold, it could have gotten huge points for graphics. At it stands it's sorta like the old game Zoop for the PS1. Great fun, new puzzle twist, great design, music you can tolerate for a long time, but very dull graphics despite nice color and style.

Score: 5

"Simple. Too Short. Nice crisp style. Not bad."

submission: Trigger!

date: April 22, 2007

Graphics: Nice colors, crisp lines, and iconic shapes make for decent visuals. The whole maze has a nice machine-like sense of purpose. Boring character, but hey, can't have everything.

Style: Uhhh... See Graphics. :)

Sound: Add sound please. Google it. It's not that hard, sir.

Interactivity: I hate these mouse maze games. But yours was nicely done. The boulder was uber-cheap cuz I wasn't expecting it. (Maybe if you'd shown it there, attached to one wall, and then when I hit the button maybe it would wiggle a little, come out of its socket, and slowly roll out before following the path it did, the noob player would have had more of a chance to react to it. Instead this is on-the-job-training, which kinda sucks.)

Overall: A nice little game. You used a lot of good ideas that made this more than the typical mouse-maze. Too short, and needs sound, but other than that, good job! :) For your next project, try something a little more original.

Score: 5

"The action synched up with the music saved it."

submission: Sonic Saga Season 8 OP

date: April 22, 2007

Graphics:Sprites, and not particularly good ones at that. Slow FPS frame rate and Sonic do not mix, my friend. The camera-work was ambitious, but the execution fell short in some places.

Style: It actually tells a (very simple) story and does so with a bit of pizzaz. Unfortunately, poor production quality really hurt the piece as a whole. See Overall, below, for a partial list...

Sound: Okay, I can respect you for re-using a professional Sonic soundtrack. But why, oh why did you have to pick the one that's a relic from the 90's preserved only on home-recorded VHS tapes? Other songs, you could have found a decent MP3 to use. This song, there IS no clean copy of it. (Or if there was, and you had a copy of it, your compression settings ruined it.) Also, the soundtrack reminds me of the old TV show, not the games, which picks fights with the sprite graphics. Personally, I woulda gone with Sonic Boom.

Overall: A good idea, but it had lots of little flaws which detracted from the whole:
-Poor choice of soundtrack.
-The title screen was kind of dull and long. (But at least you didn't submit JUST the title screen...)
-The distant background kept scrolling by even when sonic slowed down in the loops.
-There was nothing happening visually when some of the explosions were going off in the airship part of the soundtrack.
-The airship generally looked bad from the outside, like a big metal bananna with vents in it. (Surely there's some cool egg carrier establishing shot from some sprite game you could have used? If not, you should have made one up, or heck, I'd have settled for the airship from kirby with an Eggman logo slapped on the side.)
-The final explosion looked VERY cheap and lame and fake.

All that said, I liked it for some reason. Probabaly because it told a story and had some good ideas buried underneath the crappy execution. I look forward to your future submissions. Keep practicing, and keep trying to do better. :)

Score: 10

"I enjoyed this more than any man should."

submission: Dog Daze of Boredom

date: April 22, 2007

Graphics: Attention: Rest of Newgrounds. This is what a flash looks like when you use EFFORT! Take notes. Not stick figures + a few distinct frames of animation - tweens of any sort + moderately funny writing = quality. And best of all, they didn't even have to suck any part of Walt Disney in order to get there.

Style: Not quite polished enough to be a distinct style, but at least it was unique. Ambitious animation concepts such as 3D perspective shots and complex animation were attempted. Execution was a little rough, especially in the "surface" department, but this is still hands-down better than any of the "we think it's funny to not try" crap that clogs the portal on a daily basis.

Sound: "Your voice HURTS!" Well, actually, it doesn't. At least not as much as most NG flashes do. The voices were distinct and understandable, but felt a little soft around the edges. If your microphone is more than a few years old, or if it was included with the computer, buy a new "noise-cancelling" one for like 20 bucks; you'll hear a big improvement.

Humor: Spike pretty much stole the show. The humans were pretty boring. In retrospect, I probably should give this a 7 in humor... the 9 was cuz I watched this, watched the bonus features, watched it again, and was grinning from ear to ear by the end of it, but I think some of that grin was just you restoring my faith in America's youth by not deliberately sucking.

Overall: If this is part of a series, I'll watch the other ones and let you know what I think. Spike was just fuckin' hillarious though. Once again, thank you for not deliberately sucking. I look forward to you continuing to not deliberately suck in the future. (Yes, that sentance parses. Shut up.)

Score: 6

"A new type of no-effort Flash! Yay!"

submission: Life During WARTIME

date: April 18, 2007

Man, this Flash has it all! Suspense! Romance! Famous Celebrities! And unlike the rest of NG's no-effort flashes, this one was actually interesting for a couple of minutes. Good job! Mussolini wins mustard!

Score: 5

"Thanks for being sincere about it."

submission: Virginia Tech Tribute

date: April 17, 2007

I kept expecting it to suddenly be a fake tribute at any given moment. Thanks for proving me wrong. I'm getting way too cynical.

Also, thanks for not blaming it all on video games and music.

Score: 3

"Lacks "pizzaz.""

submission: naruto and sasuke

date: April 16, 2007

Not bad for 4 days' work. I liked the strong colors and the sound effects timed with the attack animations. Unfortunately, they're tiny and they're fighting on a static background, so it's pretty boring. I recommend zooming and scrolling the camera around. It would make the fight more interesting. Music was inoffensive, but kind of dull and quiet, for a combat scene. Good luck. I'm looking forward to seeing some more original stuff from you.

Score: 8

"None of my usual critiques apply!"

submission: GW: "Burn Baby Burn!"

date: April 13, 2007

Graphics: Try using vector art with a thick line to create actual characters instead of crappy stick figures. No, wait, you did! Wow! Great job!

Style: You should try to tell a meaningful story instead of... no, wait, you did that, too.

Sound: Try recording some vo... wait, you did. You could get some sound effects from an online... shit, no, you have some already. Um, if you'd download audacity, you could alter your... damn. I got nothin'.

Overall: The only thing that could possibly be improved here is the animation. And I think you already know enough to realize where, too. (Mostly when folks were walkin'.)

Some of the writing and pacing felt kinda clumsy, too, but I can't call that criticism because that pretty much IS how an excahnge between a public school art teacher and a student who actually cares about something would probably go down. It just makes for a pretty dull cartoon, is all.

This was an easy fiven for you. I'll be checking out the rest of your work now. :D Keep it up!

Score: 5

"Meh... not bad."

submission: [FKU] VS eBaums World

date: April 11, 2007

Graphics: Another minimally-animated Madness. I never thought I'd say this, but this would be better if you added motion tweens to it. The whole reason anyone accepted Madness in the first place was because of the ridiculously detailed animation, fast action, and insane violence. This kinda falls short. I think you could do better with your own graphics, but that's just my opinion.

Style: On the one hand, this is Madness, and I'm pretty bored with Madness. On the other hand, I wholeheartedly support the gristly murder of Eric Bauman and everyone on his payroll. So, I'm kind of torn, here.

Sound: Decent music and meaty gunfire. No voices, not even compu-voice. But given the way most voicework turns out on NG, that's probably a blessing.

Violence: Lots of people get red lines drawn all over their faces. I mean, get shot.

Humor/Drama: Ehhh, the "biggest thief ever" was kinda funny. Just like the vowing revenge scene was kinda sad. A little. Or would be if we knew anything about these characters or had any reason to care about them. Uhh... I guess what I'm saying is, it's not much of a story. You did tell it with style, though. And I applaud you for at least putting a story IN there. That's more plot than most Madness flashes have in them. I know that if I had just watched my friend die over some free pizza parlour napkins, I would probably be questioning my life decisions at that point.

Overall: A pretty mediocre rip-off of Madness, but there was a bit of effort thrown into the storytelling, which always gets extra points in my book.

Seriously, it takes a sick framerate and a ton of ffort to get a Madness movie looking as good as, well, Madness. There are lots of things you could do to improve the look and feel of this and your subsequent movies, but really if you'd spent half an hour drawing your own heads with faces on them, or even just used photographs of your friends' heads or somehting, it would have been an improvement.

I get the sense that you don't have a ton of time and effort to spend on Flash, so I recommend moving away from Madness and developing your own low-effort art style. Somehting like Bonus Stage or Homestar Runner, or Dad's Home. You can do a lot with ovals and curved rectangles. You'd be surprised.

Good luck and I look forward to seeing what you can do in the future.