Score: 7

"Playable, attractive, and perhaps even original."

submission: nice demon bad angel

date: August 11, 2008

After all the so-called adult so-called games I've seen on Newgrounds, i have to say, It's refreshing to see something that's worth more than a 2. Don't let the linear interface fool you, this is a surprisingly deep game. Each ball constitutes its own risk/reward schedule. I'm sure this has been done before, but this is the first time I've seen a game like this, so to me, it was new. It was easy to learn, and as the number of balls increase, the difficulty increases geometrically. In other words, it's everything good gameplay should be.

The graphics are indeed surprisingly clean. I don't recognize them, so I guess it's even possible they aren't stolen. I know, I know, it's unlikely that there's any kind of budget behind a game like this, but I'm willing to give Mastif the bennefit of the doubt until I see evidence to the contrary. In any case, they look good, and with both manga and photography packed into one screen, there's something for everyone.

So, it succeeds as a game, and as porn. So what keeps it from getting a ten? Well, I felt there was room for improvement. It doesn't really feel like a video game... more like some kinda carnival game with a sleazy strip club motif.

The time limit is annoying, and I question its relevance. Each time you let the wrong color ball through, or you deflect a ball that you should have let though, in theory you're accidently moving further away from your goal. Was it really necessary to add a lose state to a game like that?

When I got to the 4th stage or so, the women were as naked as they were ever gonna get, the gameplay was pretty much the same, and I had the general gameplay down pat. An important thing to remember in game design is that when the player stops learning, the game stops being fun and becomes work. Even so, this game was fun for a little while and about as erotic as could be expected from still images, which makes it a huge step forward for NG adult content in general and Mastif in particular.

Here's hoping future adult games on Newgrounds are not more boring than this.

Score: 8

"Sloppy, rough, and shoddy, like a used tank."

submission: Blueshift

date: August 7, 2008

I think I get what the author was going for, here. First of all, ignore the fast, light-armored fighter. She's a waste of skin. What you want is the big honkin' tank.

This isn't a curtain-fire game about weaving between enemy shots. It's not even a game like Einhander where your ability to grab, wield, and maintain the right weapons loadout is key to success. This is just a balls-to-the-wall merc run. Your objective is to dish out more damage than you receive, so you can auger your pock-marked, smoking gunship into a health powerup just before your hull comes apart at the seams.

Unfortunately, it's very difficult to get into that mindset, although the rough & gritty graphics and sounds are a hint. The risk/reward schedules here are quite different from the shooters you may be used to. Getting shot all to hell isn't a risk so much as a fact of life.

I suppose if you can master the fiddly little split-second shield, you could block a lot of shots, but if you don't have great timing skills, you'll need to develop them. I'm not a DDR or Guitar Hero player, myself, so I couldn't hack it, and this game *really* put me in the mood for a standard sh'mup.

I might come back to this later if I'm bored and take another crack at it. But really, it's just a totally different game than the genre conventions would suggest. This is not a traditional Sh'mup. This is a damage-soaking sh'mup. You're flying a tank in every respect. Try to keep that in mind.

Score: 7

"Illogical is right..."

submission: Don't Deport Me Scotty

date: August 7, 2008

If it's intended as a PSA, it doesn't really work, because like Schlock said, he's a permanent resident, and (as far as I know) permanent residency is unrelated to the current controversy surrounding illegal immigration.

If it's intended as a pure entertainment cartoon (which I doubt, based on the link at the end,) it doesn't work either because it's just not that funny.

I suppose it's thought-provoking, but only if the viewer falls for the straw-man argument that Schlock's situation is analogous to illegal immigration. If you take this movie as-is, it has no real bearing on the issues discussed at the website promoted at the end.

I've seen better arguments for human rights buried in episodes of ACTUAL Star Trek, particularly in TNG, DS9, and Voyager. A more directly analogous story would involve, I dunno, a Cardassian or something, stowing away onboard the ship. Maybe he's tricked the computer into rotating him into work shifts as some sort of minor engineer, even though Starfleet has no record of him and doesn't know he exists.

You could tell the story from the guy's point of view. Why he came to the ship and what's waiting for him back home. Demonstrate why it would be so inhumane to send him back. Maybe he does a good job and everyone likes him, but then he gets discovered and the captain has to deport him. And like everyone's all torn up about it and they want to appeal the ruling, but Starfleet says its hands are tied.

Actually, you know what? Voyager would be the perfect backdrop for a story like that.

That's how I'd do it, anyway.

Score: 7

"Lacks sufficient feedback mechanisms."

submission: Pandemic II

date: August 7, 2008

This is a really cool sim and all, and as an Edutainment title, it sure teaches the player a lot of symptom terminology. But it's not very much fun to play as a game.

The main problem is, the game lacks proper feedback mechanisms to inform the player as to what's going on. This stuff could be happening at random, and a lot of it probably is, but if I don't have any way of knowing it. I have no clue why I earn evolution points at a given rate or how a low visibility rating helps me.

Is low visibility only good at preventing the initial detection? Infection seems straightforward enough, but does "the government started killing rats" mean rats no longer work as a vector in that country? Or do one or two rats still slip through, as in real-life, and bite someone, regardless of the government's best efforts?

Abstracting complex real-world events down to numbers is fine, all computer games need to do that. But further abstracting the numbers into colorful textual descriptions just makes the interface too nebulous. I understand how to click all the buttons, that part of the interface is super. It's just that I have no clue what clicking any particular button will DO. I mean, what they REALLY do, in terms of gameplay.

What does "Almost undetectable mean?" Is "Spotted in America" different from "Comes to America?" How deadly is "Very deadly?" I chose every deadly-sounding teir III and IV attribute I could afford, but it still only filled the meter 1/3 of the way up. If they would just show me the XP cost and the ammount of Visibility and Lethality, as *raw numbers,* maybe I'd have a chance as a gamer. But as things are, there's not enough feedback to develop a successful strategy.

Even with zero visible symptoms, they still notice me on the third day. Even with zero deaths, they still seal up their borders and pour their GNP into developing a vaccine for me. WTF?

I tried being highly infectious and resistant and spreading only through obscure vectors like rats and air. I was able to turn the whole world red in this manner, and I even developed immunity to the vaccine, but then I stopped getting evolution points, so I couldn't evolve any deadly symptoms. After watching my 1ep sit there motionless for a few weeks, I quit the game and tried again.

I tried being as deadly as possible and as stealthy as possible, but that led to what seemed like slower evolution (or maybe it just felt slower because the other build path was cheaper, I dunno,) and I did mannage to kill some people, but then the vaccine worked and I couldn't spread any further. They don't say Game Over or anything, they just tell you that you're pwned and the game keeps running.

(Madagascar is fucking cheap, BTW. They close their borders at the drop of a hat, and even Moisture Resistance IV + Waterborne isn't enough to get you across the ocean.)

As intriguing as this concept is, I just don't feel motivated to play the game, because I have no idea what I'm doing. Some kinda particles or other effect would be nice to show how exactly our virus is spreading from nation to nation. This would make it easier to see at a glance which tactics work better than others.

I also don't understand why the tutorial had to be on YouTube, which means it's "No Longer Availible" for some reason. Which is odd, because you can still play it and you get sound, but the screen is too dark to really see what's going on. Would it kill Blips to type all that up and put it on a website? Or better yet, directly into the swf?

Ultimately, playing the game feels pointless. Much like the original Sim City, you'll think you are doing well, but then all of a sudden, player growth drops off with no real visible cause, so you can't see your glorious plan through to completion. Maybe the "realistic" mode is better, but I've seen the "fast" version of the game lock itself up into unwinnable states, so why would I want to try playing the game even slower?

Great concept. But the gameplay just isn't fun. It needs better feedback to the player.

Score: 10

"Now THIS is how you make a mouse-driven shmup!"

submission: AlphaBounty

date: August 6, 2008

Just yesterday I complained about a shooter here on Flash because the mouse movements neccessary to dodge the enemy fire caused me to move my mouse off-screen. Well, there's no such issue with this game, because it was built from the ground up with mouse-movement in mind. Your craft actually swings or pivots as it moves, which causes your line-of-fire to sway and bob with you. This has a thousand tiny subtle impacts on gameplay which I can't really get into, but the end result is that the game's risk/reward schedules are uniquely geared towards the game's unique play-control.

The game works very well, and everything about the game just screams Newgrounds. The graphics are dirty (but well-animated) Wacom scribbles, the music sounds like Metal straight from the Audio Portal, and there's just a ton of little details in the debris as you blow the shit out of alien scum.

I did feel like the shop prices were just slightly beyond the ammount of dammage I could realistically do in a level, which made it difficult to keep pace with each stage's escallation. But I suppose that gives me incentive to keep trying. I'm normally not a huge fan of games whose overarching risk/reward schedule is a pass-or-fail based on cumulative performance. (This game, Xeno Tactic, etc.) But the game's quality as a whole is excellent. I think I'm willing to put in the time required to master this one.

Oh, and ramming clouds of traffic when you've got that sheild power-up on the second planet is just plain FUN. :)

Score: 10

"Quirky. Sterotypical. Over-the-top. Good stuff!"

submission: Mindy Learns a Moral

date: August 6, 2008

There's no question that this turned out exactly how Andy intended it. :) For better or worse, you've got a quirky, overexagerrated drawing style, extremely labored writng, annoying valley-girl voice acting, and, to quote one Babs Bunny, "plot-holes big enough to drive a mac truck through!" And to be honest, I don't know that I'd have it any other way.

The visuals range from minimal-tweening, a little light FBF, and lots of stationary shots of blinking cell-phones, but after the first scene you won't be thinking about the art anymore. Somehow, even though the story itself might be crap, the way it which it is told dominates the viewing experience. You will care about this vapid sterotype, oh yes. You will also care about her damn phone. I'm not sure why. It just happens.

This is what all those traditional animation books are talking about, between sets of ghey little storyboards of Jetsons-era characters prancing awkwardly about. This is the power of traditional animation. This is the magic.

I do take exception to the phrase "today's teenagers" in the author's description, though. You saw almost EXACTLY this same story back on Tiny Toons in the 1990's. A lot of these memes date back to the Cosby Show in the 80's. And perhaps to a lesser extent, these same themes have been with us since Happy Days. (Or maybe teenagers have always been like this, and we just didn't start recording it accurately until we invented TV.)

The theme may or may not be timeless, but it sure feels that way. Regardless, Mindy manages to breathe new life into these tired memes, and while there may be room for improvement, it's very watchable and easy to digest.

I'm tempted to recommend that the artist waste less time on totally obvious plot twists and exposition, replacing it with more banter and one-liners for a quicker, snappier show... but if he did that, I guess it wouldn't really be Mindy anymore. Someone has picked up the torch, for better or worse, of a bygone era of cartoons. I think it's Tiny Toons, but someone older than me might say Bugs Bunny and someone younger than me might say Animaniacs. Could it be that this cheesy cell-phone drama really is timeless?

Man. I feel really old now. :P All reminiscing about the 90's. Heh.

Score: 10

"Woah."

submission: Dining with the Devil

date: August 6, 2008

Wow. Just wow. That has to be one of the deepest, most emotionally-involved stories I have ever seen on Newgrounds. And I realize that's not saying much, but still. Incredible film, very moving. The art's detailed in some ways and simplistic in others, but I wouldn't change a thing. It's simply awesome.

And it was even something having to do with assasins, normally the most emotionally boring topic on NG! Great job!

Score: 10

"Quite possibly better than Fear Hole."

submission: I.E.S. ep.1

date: August 6, 2008

The writing is decent, the voices are solid, and the art is pretty good. Somehow, though, all these only-slightly-above-average components unite to form a whole that feels VERY fun to watch. I'm not sure why. It's just good. Better than it should be, anyway.

One theory: it's a cheesy stupid sitcom plot, but the artist narrowly manages to avert expectations roughly every 3rd joke. If all the jokes were predictable, it'd be Small Wonder. If all of the jokes were surprising, it'd be The Simpsons or Family Guy back when it was good.

(If they were all non-sequitirs, it'd be Space Tree.)

So what you've got here is like 1/3 The Simpsons and 2/3 Small Wonder, but the third that's good is so awesome it makes up for the moments that flop.

That's one theory, anyway. I do realize he had a lot of plot to get through in this episode. Here's hoping the humor improves in future episodes.

I've got a good feeling about this one... :)

Score: 10

"A great, if short, curtian-fire/collecting shmup."

submission: Space Wing

date: August 5, 2008

I'm not sure what is meant by "90's sensibilities." The graphics and music all feel reminiscient of the 80's, except for the fact that it's all vector and not pixelly. Perhaps it refers to shmups that came out in the 90's and weren't availible to American audiences right away.

In any case, this flash sucessfully marries curtian-fire gameplay with cheesy retro ambiance, with the ever-popular "level-up your weapons systems between levels by spending experience points" dynamic that's become so popular with the Flash format.

Collecting the little score chips that drop when enemies die is important because that's how you level-up. It took me a while to figure out that multipliers come from collecting so many chips in a row with no misses. Levelling up automatically funnels all nearby chips into your ship, but this doesn't happen often enough for you to really plan to make strategic use of it. It might be a good reason to max speed first, though, since this makes it easier to collect chips.

I managed to get through the game upgrading vulcans, speed, missiles, bombs, and HP in roughly that order. I'm not sure if a bomb-centric levelup strategy is viable or not. Playing the game is great fun, tactically, with waves of enemies that require different tactics. Some foes require you to pull back so your spread vulcans get maximum coverage. Some work best if you pull in close to maximize dammage to a single large target. And some simply require you to stop firing and concentrate on dodging.

The bosses are also great, and every bit worthy of the moniker "curtian-fire." The generous health meter gives you plenty of wiggle room, especially if you choose to level it up. Hardcore shooter fans, of course, will try to get through the game without ever taking a hit, and from what I could tell, that is in fact possible. Just not easy.

The only things I could possibly ask for would be more stages, perhaps some sort of Achivements (especially clearing stages without taking a hit,) better graphics, or some sort of story. All of these things are unneccessary, though. I had more fun with this romp than with Drakojian Skies and Star Serpent Sigma put together. This is pure shooter bliss. CLOUND knows his genre well, (he had me at "Touhou",) and I can't wait for his next game! :)

Score: 8

"I would have prefered keyboard controls."

submission: Star Serpent Sigma

date: August 5, 2008

I loves me a good sh'mup. :) And this game has a lot of the neccessary ingredients to make a great classic shooter. It features great, epic music, sleek CG spaceships, and collectible power-ups. Unfortunately, it makes some compromises between classic shmup gameplay and Flash expectations, and this ends up spoiling the experience.

It starts off very nicely. You choose your ship's weapons loadout from a menu that reminds me of one of my favorite shooters of all time, Axelay. After that, it's a single very classy pane of backstory in the form of a mission briefing, including the most epic description of a black hole I've ever encountered. One click from there, and you're into battle.

And throughout most of the stage, the gameplay stays good. A few sweeping mouse gestures are sufficient to dodge enemy fire, then dart back into position to fire at the enemy drones. Ships come at you in waves and feature various movement patterns. A few enemies fire back (from off-screen, even!) but I'm happy to report that enemy shots travel slower than your ship, and enemy ships travel slower than your shots, so there's no "that's not fair" drama.

In fact, this game smartly avoids most of the mistakes you will often see with sh'mups implemented in Flash. Collision seemed perfect, the first stage was easy but not too easy, and the handfull of overlapping risk/reward schedules (powerups, enemies, and bullets) were intuitive and responsive, with the sheilds giving you *just* enough leeway to make a few mistakes without having to start over. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with the invisible line you can't cross in the middle of the screen, but it wasn't a deal-breaker. (And I know from expeirence that proper collision detection with a full-screen boss is be a non-trivial problem to tackle in Actionscript, so I can see how a half-screen approach like this would be a tempting shortcut.)

Unfortunately, Star Serpent Sigma drops the ball when it comes to the first boss, for a couple of reasons.

First of all, when the boss kills you, all your powerups disappear. So one hit pretty much wipes out your chances. I would have liked to see the powerups scatter from your ship so you can re-collect them, or perhaps a "memory" system that keeps track of your maximum power level accumulated during the stage, and when you take hits, it reduces your weaponry, but when you die, you would respawn with the ship fully powered-up again to the level you were at. This is a matter of taste and varies from shmup to shmup, and it wasn't the main issue here so I won't say much more about it.

Another minor quibble was that the boss's charge-up effect for the beam weapon was very subtle. I didn't notice it until it hit me the first time, and after I did notice it, it was hard to tell just by looking at it how close to full-charged the beam was. Some other games have had very explicit visual cues for this, in the past... but I was able to get the hang of it, after a while.

The most urgent issue I had with the boss was, when dodging the cross-fire from those mini-turrets, I would usually move the mouse off the edge of the flash window and click on the web page. :( I quit playing then, because it kept happening, and I realized the game would probably be full of places where my instinct would be to dodge quickly, and the delayed-reaction mouse interface would cause the same thing to happen again and again.

Ultimately, I think it was a bad idea to use the mouse at all. I realize menus in Flash are much easier to do with a mouse, and that going froma mouse-menu to a WASD game is awkward. However, a more graceful solution would be to make everything, even the menu, keyboard-driven. It's hard to do, but I've done it before in a game, and the cohesion and classic feel to the control was worth it IMHO.

Also, the boss would have been AWESOME, if instead of the invincible arms over the core, it had lots of parts you could break one by one.

It's probably too late to implement all of this NOW, but consider it for future games. :)