Score: 6

"Once upon a time, there was a ninja. The end!"

submission: Un Forgetable Son

date: February 18, 2005

Oh yes. Also, the ninja apparently had a childhood.

What there is, is actually pretty decent stick figure ninja action. The problem is, all you see is a ninja practicisng and then it jumps to some credits and sits there. No loading screen, no play button, no real story. I hope this artist submits something with some meat on the bones in the future, since he obviously has potential.

Score: 2

"Glitches make this nice-looking quiz unplayable."

submission: Family Guy test1

date: February 14, 2005

I messed up on round 1 a couple of times, and the music starts again and again each time you are dropped on the title screen. Too bad, because I like Family Guy and this has a nice, simple, clean style to it. Author needs to fix that overlapping music glitch, and maybe also add like a buzzer noise or a "WRONG!" screen just to let us know when we screwed up.

Score: 7

"Dunno. Disturbing white guy VS interracial family?"

submission: Rebecca

date: February 13, 2005

I really can't say I entirely get this. This is like one of those really awkward SNL routines that are kinda funny, but not ha-ha funny. Maybe my mind's just not operating on the same wavelength as the author. I could tell by the Family Guy-esque sense of timing where the jokes were, and they were kind of funny, they just didn't seem to make much sense as a cohesive unit, to me. Maybe the characters are taken from some show or something that I haven't seen. I dunno.

ART: Decent photographic BGs that blur the further back they are. Great animation, especially on Rebecca and on the black guy when he says hey. The anatomy is a little sloppy on the male characters, especially the adult guys when they're clothed. This guy need to learn how to make clothing drape. I dunno, maybe he traced pr0n pics and then colored sections to make the clothes. Good use of light and shadow.

STYLE: Good comedic timing and well-distinguished characters. No wasted time or obvious microphone mishaps. Mouths always match what the characters are saying. Whoever did this was a good animator and clearly had a plan for the comedy, it just didn't work too well with me. This guy has sleazy pick-up lines and initially-disturbed-but-easily-coerced rejoinders down to a tee. Makes me wonder what other projects he's done, or if he's just really a Quagmire in real life. If only I wasn't stuck with such a strong taste of "huh?" in my mouth, even after repeated viewings, I'd give him a 10 in style. The docked point is because it wasn't approachable enough for me to get it. The other 9 points are me giving him the benefit of the doubt.

SOUND: He really did all the voices himself? Impressive! They're all clean and well-recorded, and none of them sound at all like the same person. The footsteps seemed a little out of place for some reason, and there was just something a little off about the overall aural mood. I'm not sure how to describe it, other than to call it great, but not perfect.

Violence: The black guy shoots himself in the face. I'm sure many of the more easily disturbed audience members felt like doing the same thing when they realized the white guy was hitting on homophobes and almost seducing them. I figure 7 out of 10 is about right. We're rating how gory the movie is and not how "good" the violence is, right?

Interactivity: 0 It's a movie. You watch it.

Humor: 6 Which is the most generous I will ever be when the movie didn't make me laugh. You can tell the jokes meant something to someone, somewhere. They just didn't fly with me. Oh well.

Overall: 7. Pretty good cartoon. I just didn't get it. On technical merits along, I'd have given it an 8 or a 9. I'd have given it a 10 overall if it made me laugh and the guys' shirts didn't look both skintight and like their muscles were made of balloons. As it is, the art had some niggling little details and the sense of humor just didn't work for me. I hope this artist releases some more movies. If these were original characters, he should develop them more. If they were taken from something, he should have linked to it so the rest of the class can get the joke. Maybe, like most non-sequitir stuff, even the confused among us would start getting it after 10 episodes or something.

Score: 8

"All the fun of GTA, with no "mission" crap!"

submission: Hypothetical Death

date: February 10, 2005

Done: Stress-test Flash's OOP using an insane number of instances of the same object.

Pointless killfests. Gotta love 'em. This one is fairly well done, except for all the lag. The problem is, huge numbers of people running around don't actually make the game "harder" because the ship itself takes up 1/10th of the screen. You can scrape along the walls once and then spin in a figure 8 most levels and take out 90% of your targets within 10% of the time limit, but this takes 3 minutes in real life beyond level 20 because the computer is lagging so bad. I don't care WHAT you've got under the hood, this game will tax it eventually. Yes, I set it on low res. Didn't help past level 20 or 30 or so.

Levels 33, 37, 40, 42 and 43 gave me small numbers of opponents, for some reason. I think maybe an array didn't have time to clear all the way between levels, or something. I like how if you slam into a wall, you can gun it into reverse and maintain some of your speed, but it takes a little skill.

For some reason, I had to give this game an 8 overall. It's just better than the sum of its parts. Easily the most fun you've had playing god since that one with the magnifying glass. Not quite as good as Defend your castle, but that one was pretty hard to top in terms of sheer wrongness. :)

Suggestions for the developers: Next time, avoid the lag. In this case, it didn't actually make the later levels harder, though it did make them a bit funnier. Also, I don't know why, but the game froze up completely after the first collision detection on level 50. If you could make a remake of this game with a max of like 50 trekkies per level, and maybe make them faster or something, the scores would improve quite a bit because lag wouldn't make the gameplay so tedious.

Overall, though, good work. Well done for a game of its type. I hope you make more games.

Score: 8

"Cute, quick game. :) Reminds me of Point Blank."

submission: Sticks doing trix shooter

date: February 7, 2005

The thing I liked best about this game was the smooth, clean interface. Some Flash mouse-driven shooters, the whole game bogs down or lags or the framerate's so low you can't really hit anything, but that doesn't happen here. The graphics could have been better, but they get the job done. The music is very plain but it goes along with the Stick Figure theme, too, I guess. Another game that's better than the sum of its parts. :)

Score: 10

"So much worse than 8 bit theatre, it's awesome."

submission: 8-Bitch5: EvilOnTheAttack

date: January 26, 2005

I don't know why I like this! Honestly! It doesn't make any fucking sense! It grates on my nerves incredibly... yet I can't stop watching it and laughing every time things get worse. Betterworse than Platnuim Grit. Betterworse than Checkerboard Nightmare. I can not justify rating this movie a 10 overall, except that the whole is better than the sum of its parts somehow.