Score: 10

"Finally, a tower defense game with some finesse!"

submission: GemCraft

date: July 7, 2008

Every now and then, someone makes a game that's actually deep and well-balanced. It doesn't happen often. Entire genres can rise and be fun and sell a million copies without such a game occurring.

This is easily the best tower defense game I have ever played. I'm not sure it will ever be this good again. The reason is the incredible ammount of depth packed into the game. I don't know where to begin describing the ridiculous number of reward schedules built into the game and the different the ways they fit together, but you can't just breeze through the game oing one thing.

I thought gem-matching was critical until I discovered that it was cheaper to just spawn them whole. Then I couldn't progress, until I noticed how powerful gem-bombs could be when you put some skill points into it. Then I went back and got glowing frames in the first few stages, only to discover that that shelling the enemy into oblivion is too costly in the later stages. The first epic stage Boss kicked my ass over and over again until I learned the foresight to max my Mana Pool early and the patience not to build anything during the last few waves. And when you finally start maxing those top-teir skills, everything else fades into the background as you focus on building a ludicrous arsenal of grade 7 gems. From that point on, it's pure Tower Defense, but the route there is delightfully diverse.

My one complaint was that the most interesting play mechanic (matching gems) goes under-used, since you can buy gems cheaper than you can make them. Don't think of this game as a hybrid between gem-matching Puzzle Game and Tower Defense. Instead, think of the gem combos as a way of optimizing your inventory. It's a means of buffering and condensing your offensive power into a few key towers.

There's also some Amulets, which are pretty much like achievements, except they boost your score, which helps you level up, which means that if you want to learn the techniques you'll need to survive some of the tougher stages in the middle, you'll need to spend a few rounds doing stupid bullshit like building towers you have no intention of using, or using the hotkeys to create and combine a bunch of low-grade gems and gem-bomb them all in the corner, once you're confident your REAL defenses can handle the mobs. So, it's kinda stupid, but it's a layer of the complexity. Remove it and the whole game might fail.

Basically what this game does is give you plenty of options, and then force you to experiment with them, since the optimal technique changes as you level up. I happily invite sequals and rip-offs, because I think there's so much diversity here, further experimentation couldn't dammage the overall quality.

I've played a lot of defense games. Some were fun right off the bat, but got boring once you discovered the "best tower." Others used gimicks to impose challenge artifically. There's none of that here. Oh, sure, there's a few annoyances. Lime looks almost exactly the same as Green. All your best gems might be Red, and then you get a wave of Red enemies. Ctrl+Combine Gems is pretty much pointless unless you're going for an Amulet, in which case it takes all the effort out of it. But the game a whole is so great, I'll gladly work around these problems as I continue to play.

I'm only about 2/3 of the way through, but I can't immagine there being any way for them to screw up the endgame. I mean, the final level could turn out to be some kinda Xeno Tactic bullshit where you need to pick the exact best combination in order to win, but even if they pull that, I'd forgive 'em. The middle of the game is just that good.

(And long!)

Score: 7

"I think you coulda done more with this."

submission: Watch Out Obama

date: June 7, 2008

I guess it's pretty decent in terms of raw animation quality, but I was a little disappointed with the writing and overall premise.

There was only really one joke. A single reference from some mafia movie that takes like twenty minutes to go through, and you already get the joke right from the begining so you're wondering where it's gonna go from there, but it doesn't go anywhere. It just plays out the routine. Judging by some of these reviews, it looks like some people didn't even get the reference.

Oh well. Even if it's just one joke padded for time, that still beats lazy animator syndrome any day.

(I didn't actually see this until June 07 and it feels a bit dated by now, but I guess there's not much you can do about that, so I didn't factor it into the score.)

Score: 10

""No fun!" Heh. No, seriously..."

submission: Fanta Dash

date: April 9, 2008

'Lo Weeb. Great cartoon. If you're gonna shill, shill sarcastically. I loved everything about the cartoon. The humor, characters designs and voices were all excellent, and the art was great by flash standards. And of course the timing was excellent. But the game at the end is no fun for a couple of reasons:

First of all, the shake-up seems a lot harder than it should be. It's difficult for me to shake it up because the flash window only occupies like 1/12th of my screen and any vigorous mouse movement puts my cursor outside the window. I suppose that's beyond your control, but I don't see why snapping the cursor from one end of the screen to the other in the space of a single screen refresh doesn't shake it up more than... err, none at all. (I have a sneaking suspicion that the countdown timer is based on milliseconds while the shake-up is directly tied to the flash game's refresh rate, which would mean that if Flash starts dropping frames, you lose shake-up time faster than Flash acknowleges mouse cursor position updates. But that's conjecture.) I have pretty good reflexes and the way I've got my mouse set up lets me move the cursor really quickly, but I can never get the meter above 2/3 or so. Every time Flash acknowleges a mouse movement, the bar goes up, then it slowly goes down and then shoots up again, despite the fact that I NEVER stop shaking. In other words, I'm shaking as fast as I can, but Flash is only picking up the shakes occasionally. Seems really bugged. Let's move on.

The other thing is that I can't seem to figure out the gameplay. Once I'm launched, going for raw distance is boring, and the close-to-the-ground game is hard to pick up. The problem is, I can't really EXPERIMENT close to the ground because every time I lose, I need to wait like ten seconds for the stupid "game over" music to play, which if you're trying to experiment with the close-to-the-ground handling, is often longer than it takes to play the actual game. PLEASE, let the player click to skip the game over music.

there should be none of this waiting for a button to appear or lining the cursor up with the button, just a quick lauch, die, restart, launch, die, restart. What it adds in style it more than takes away from gameplay. I realize it may seem really petty for me to bitch and moan about ten seconds of wasted time, and it IS really petty, but since the ammount of gameplay offered here is equally petty I feel I'm entitled to restart at my own pace while grappling with the learning curve. The controls seem quicky and unfamiliar compared to other games of this genre, and I'm finding picking them up more tedious than fun.

Of course everyone else is giving it tens so who am I to argue. Certianly I have no room to talk about form over function after that halloween thing I did. I'll just give this review a rating of 10 and hopefully the evil corporate drones who decide whether or not to invest in one of these virally-marketed flash game dealies won't bother to read all this fine print and will only see the unbroken string of perfect tens. Just between you and me, I figure it's worth about a eight. If I could play it with any degree of precision, or at least practice more than 50% of the time the game is running, it could easily become a nine or a ten. As it is, the cartoon is good enough and long enough that the game basically doesn't matter.

Score: 10

"LULZ!"

submission: Pickleman Begins Betatest

date: April 7, 2008

This game neatly splits the NG userbase into two camps:

People who gave it a 10: Savvy (or ancient) gamers. These folks get the reference, or at least are smart enough to recognize a parody when they see one.

People who gave it a low score: Effing nubz.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I expect the people who visit this website to have ever actually seen a working Atari 2600, but you'd have to be living under a rock not to have read any of those "Worst Games Evar" articles, blog posts, and podcasts that are all over the internet.

What's that? You say you came to NG for the toons, not the games? You're not some gaming geek who can be bothered to research tedious minutea of gaming history just in case it would help you get a joke someday? Okay, then. You're off the hook... that's what I'd say if this wasn't posted on Apirl 1st.

I guess I was able to get two Secret Collects before dying. In the glorious abscence of any sort of feedback or interface whatsoever, I'm going to pretend that means I won the game somehow.

Oooh! For your next game, do Custer's Revenge versus Manos: The Hands of Fate!

Score: 10

"Heh."

submission: Pico 2

date: April 2, 2008

You know, I just realized, PowerPuff Girls kinda works better as a straight superheroes show than Teen Titans.

Happy Liar's Day, everybody! :D

Score: 6

"I don't understand the thinking behind this."

submission: Easter Blonde - Extended

date: March 27, 2008

Okay, personally, I've always thought Betty was kinda hackneyed, but at least it was nice to know someone west of Japan was at least TRYING to create an adult cartoon franchise. Betty was even kinda fun to watch every now and then in a campy retro way.

But I can't figure out why you would bother creating a remake if you're just going to neuter the whole affair. Frankly the explicit-ness was the only thing Betty had going for her.

If there's an ad at the end for some kinda uncensored DVD (which I assume was the goal of making it widescreen,) you really need to consider putting that FIRST. I went "oh, fuck this," and closed the window when I saw the Censorship Egg appear.

Basically, if you're trying to pimp a DVD or a paysite, the least you can do is be straightforward about it. And if there is no DVD or paysite... why.... just why?

Censorship is the exact opposite of adding juicy new content, which I thought was the whole point of Director's Cuts.

This Flash just seems really self-defeating to me. Maybe you can shed some light on the thought process, here? Brickhouse Betty was kinda lame before, but now you've taken the Lame and neutered it. Seriously. Why?

Score: 7

"Not bad. :D"

submission: *Hyperanimation! Pilot

date: March 26, 2008

I don't know that I'd call it "Hyperanimation." I mean, I've seen much more high-quality animation by other Flash artists. It's certianly better than the average fare around here, but that's not really saying much.

What you've got here is a basic meshing of sitcom and comedy cartoon, with a small dose of irreverant web humor (zombie!) and a few novel visual jokes. I liked the bomb-shaped cereal, in particular.

I also liked the way he subverted expectations by actually buying the cereal. (Though I notice you didn't actually draw him paying for it... don't tell me Hyperanimation skimped on the animation because it was too much work?)

Mr. Oven Mitts was funny for exactly three seconds, and now that those three seconds are up he will NEVER be funny again, so I hope you have something else lined up for him besides Straight Man + Sight Gag.

Overall, you managed to make ti through the show with decent visuals, adequate sound, and mildly amusing writing. The speed of the show is definitely an asset, here. When you can't produce great content, at least you can get to the point quickly. I look forward to seeing what you do with this series. You're off to a good start. Just keep it up and nobody will be disappointed until you start running out of ideas. Who knows, maybe you'll even do something awesome with it.

Score: 6

"I guess this really IS high-quality spam..."

submission: RWD: 010 Mario12

date: March 26, 2008

Okay, first go back and read the description to RWD's first few movies. Then you'll get a clue and realize that they're not making actual movies. They're just making spam. But they're making the best spam they possibly can.

Apparently, at some point they decided that lying in the Author Comments is an essential part of the medium. It makes about as much sense as anything else spammers do around here, I guess. At least this has some effort in it. It's actually pretty funny and it works fairly well as a deconstruction.

At least do your author research before you spazz out and give it a 0. It's not horrible ENOUGH to earn a zero, and it certianly doesn't merit the kind of kneejerk reaction you guys are giving it. Some work went into it, and no ammount of spammer trappings can gloss over that quality. At worst, it's worth maybe a 4. Higher if it made you chuckle a little. Save your zeros for the no-effort spam that deserves it.

Score: 2

"Another typical so-called adult so-called game."

submission: Pervert Adventure

date: March 25, 2008

If there had been any thought or effort put into this at all, I might have been able to tell myself it was a deconstruction of the hentai genre. But the artist (bafflingly) seems to take this game seriously, and (even more incredibly) some company decided to sponsor this game.

I don't know whose pockets were deep enough to sponsor this garbage, because the ad that got served is in Asianese. That's right. The big company using fancy technology to sponsor this game using rotating ads isn't smart enough to at least serve relevant ads based on what part of the world the request comes from.

Clumsy attempts at commercialism aside, though, this is just a terrible game. The graphics are poor, which means the visual experience isn't titillating, which means it fails as an actual attempt at porn.

As a game, it fails, because it's not fun. Exactly ONE risk/reward schedule which other games have done far better, and the ugly graphics and annoying sound make it impossible to play for more than five seconds.

What bugs me the most about this game is, I can't fathom a motive. I don't mean a motive for the main character to follow as he goes about his para-ogling. I mean I can't figure out what motive the artist had for creating and releasing a game this crappy. Who thinks this game would be a good idea?

(Surely alcohol played a role, but in order to think this game would be a good idea, you'd need to be much too drunk to launch Flash, let alone program in ActionScript.)

The only thing I can think is, unless this was meant as a parody (and it was just such a joyless, bland, and generic parody that I missed this intent,) then it must be the product of an artist desperate to "create adult games" because "adult games are big moneymakers," but so jaded and burned-out that both video games and naked women no longer excite him. If such a man exists, he has my eternal pity.

I can only hope that this game started out as a good idea, but was then killed in committe by executive meddling. Maybe it's even the result of a wild frat party at FullSail, with everyone involved in its production was totally wasted at the time.

I'm pretty sure it's not a "look what shit I can make pass" experiment like the crap Kitty Krew churns out, because you can tell time and effort went into this. I just don't understand WHY time and effort went into it. It would be nice to get a response from the author, but I doubt the speak English. Or any language. Seriously, this is the kind of game a small lizard or frog would write, if they had only a vague understanding of what the human concepts of "porn" and "game" are.

Score: 8

"Did I win or lose?"

submission: Join The Army!

date: March 14, 2008

I think I missed like the very last guy, no one else, because it cut away too fast for me to click on him. But then I didn't die, I just had a bunch of bad guys standing behind me. Was that the good ending or the bad ending? I kinda expected it to end with either death or glory, so the ending I got seemed kinda ambiguous.

I'm kinda confused on your message here. Were you trying to glorify war or make fun of it? Again, it was kinda ambiguous. Don't blame yourself, though. I'm just really dense. Subtlety goes over my head every time.

I liked the production values. Sure, you used tweening and loops, but st least everything was nice and consistant. I would have liked to see more character development if this is part 1 of an ongoing series. If it was a one-shot, well, like I said, it could have had more of a point to it. Either pro-millitary or anti-war, but give us something. This wasjust like... "War exists. Also, here's some monkeys. The End."

Good job, though. You show some nice solid animation principles here. Keep up the good work. Just, you might want to look for a writer or something to help you with the story a bit.