WarpZone's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Sin Harvest]

Just like Zelda but with bad control and design.

Graphics: A couple of nice effects on the title screen, and some pretty parchment in the menus are the only good things you'll find here. Monsters are animated but horribly generic. Link... I mean, Androgynous Hero-Type Person... only faces 4 directions ever and has no depth at all to him/her. The pathetic little sword wiggle looks absolutely nothing like an attack.

Style: The form of Zelda's dungeons is ripped off, only without the charm and with only half the gameplay. Angsty emo/metal/goth/whatever blood logos and some seriously overdone voice acting clash to make you wonder what the hell this game's designers were thinking. Is it supposed to be cute? Is it supposed to be serious? Whatever they were going for, it doesn't really work.

Sound: MUAHAHAHAHA! I AM A DEEP BOOMIG VOICE! THAT AUTOMATICALLY MAKES ME EDGY AND HIP! MWA HA HA HA HA! MENU! AHH HA HA HA! SWORD! HA HA HA HA! Arrrrrgh! I am a generic male action hero who has taken damage! Auuughh! I am still male, and have taken more dammage! Uhhhhnnn! Now I'm dying, and for no apparent reason, I'm suddenly a moaning breathless woman. *swoon*

Volence: You kind of barely wiggle a sword at some spinning spiked thingies. That's... kind of violent-ish. The real gore comes when you slam the keyboard into the monitor and electrocute yourself because you're so mad at the shitty hit detection. But I digress...

Interactivity: Immagine if Zelda had deliberately frustrating play control, due to it being made in Flash and using the sloppiest, loosest collision detection methods immaginable. Now, pretend that the designer decided it wasn't hard enough, and added a totally useless "stamina" meter to limit how often you could make one of your slow, impotent attacks. Now immagine that your movement is limited when you attack but your enemies can keep up with business as usual. Now immagine that said enemies are retarded. Now make it so every time you try to walk past an emey, you get hurt, and your attacks miss half the time. Kind of frustrating, isn't it? This game is about like that.

Humor: GOD, I just can't get enough of how dark and edgy the title screen and voice-vers are trying to be! LOL! It's comedy gold! :D

Overall: An ambitious attempt at copying a classic, failed because of poor implementation, no original ideas, and downright frustrating gameplay. The sin-themed level names and melodramatic basement-dweller voices only make the game as a whole that much more pathetic.

Suggestions: Okay, style-wise, do ONE of the following: Either make the whole game gory and violent, with dark, shiny stone dungeons, or else make the level names and title screen bouncy, happy anime cheerful pastel-colored fun. This "split the difference" mish-mash of themes ain't cutting it. And no, this is not ironic use of contrasting elements. I know that shit when I see it. I was raised on Accursed Toys, yo!

Gameplay-wise, you DESPERATELY need better collision detection. Try using simple trigonometry to do circle-based collision detection slightly SMALLER than the outer edge of your characters. (Books on using Trig in Flash are readily availible from your local public library.) And either make the screen bigger or the objects smaller, so that the player has a chance of maneuvering around enemies and obstacles. Your job as game designer is to make the player feel in control. Not to thwart him at every oprotunity!

I can't help but respect how hard this game was to make. I'm sad that it did not turn out better than this, though. :(

[Unusual Side Scroller]

WTF mate

Graphics: All we've eaten, mate, for the last four bleeding weeks is lupin soup, roast lupin, steamed lupin, braised lupin in lupin sauce, lupin in the basket with sauteed lupins, lupin meringue pie, lupin sorbet!

Style: ...and the Spanish Tourist Board promises you that the raging choloera epidemic is mearly a case of mild Spanish tummy, like the last outbreak of Spanish tummy in 1660 which killed half London and descimated Europe, and meanwhile the bloody Guardia are busy arresting 16-year-olds for kissing in the streets and shooting anyone under 19 who doesn't like Franco...

Sound: Well, er, yes, Mr Anchovy, but you see your report here says that you are an extremely dull person. You see, our experts describe you as an appallingly dull fellow, unimaginative, timid, lacking in initiative, spineless, easily dominated, no sense of humour, tedious company and irrepressibly drab and awful. And whereas in most professions these would be considerable drawbacks, in Chartered Accountancy they are a positive boon.

Violence: Dear Sir, how splendid it is to see the flower of British manhood wiping itself out with such pluck and tenacity. Britain need have no fear with leaders of this calibre. If only a few of the so-called working class would destroy themselves so sportingly. Yours etc., Brigadier Mainwaring Smith Smith Smith etc. Deceased etc. PS etc. Come on other ranks, show your stuff.

Interactivity: This is a 12-story block combining classical neo-Georgian features with the efficiency of modern techniques. The tenants arrive here and are carried along the corridor on a conveyor belt in extreme comfort, past murals depicting Mediterranean scenes, towards the rotating knives. The last twenty feet of the corridor are heavily soundproofed. The blood pours down these chutes and the mangled flesh slurps into these...

Humor: This morning, shortly after eleven o'clock, comedy struck this little house in Dibley Road. Sudden... violent... comedy.

Overall: Tonight 'Spectrum' looks at one of the major problems in the world today - that old vexed question of what is going on. Is there still time to confront it, let alone solve it, or is it too late? What are the figures, what are the facts, what do people mean when they talk about things?

[Galaxy Stingray]

Hope you like shooting the same ship over and over

Graphics: Exquisite menus, nice-looking vector ships. Smooth scrolling stars that are nothing new, but feel very polished, and compliment the smooth, peaceful music nicely.

Style: Everything about the look and feel of this game is near perfection. No story at all, though, and the "missions" are just quick dogfights, so it's not like this is an epic universe to explore. Gotta give the author props for all the polish, though.

Sound: Nothing I didn't like, and a whole lot I loved. Like the graphics, the sounds and music in this game simply exude class. Peaceful, serene newage music completes the mood.

Violence: You blow up spaceships. Nothin' wrong wiht that. But the frustrating gameplay may move you to real-world violence...

Interactivity: The controls are decent, okay? The real problem here is that the gameplay sucks, despite competent controls. How can a game with good controls have bad gameplay? Well, let me walk you through it:

First, you start with a tiny little pea shooter that can't do shit. You are then given a small ammount of omeny and told to purchase upgrades. No matter what you pick, it barely increases your combat abilities at all, but it's a token gesture on behalf of the author to create something that CMG will sponsor. All the new Flash games are using purchasable powerups, dontchaknow.

Next you embark upon "mission 1" Mission 1 features you clicking the mouse on a menu button and then INSTANTLY dying because, SURPRISE! There's an enemy shooting at you and you have to hurry up and put your hand on the arrow keys!

But the challenge doesn't stop just because you've defeated the deadly control scheme! No, now you find yourself firing very slow bullets at an enemy that then blankets a random half of the screen with missile fire! FUN! When you finally take this fucker down (don't purchase "shoot spee" powerups because the only way to do it is to fire a shot that will connect after he goes off the bottom of the screen and comes back on from the top!) you have to quicky get under the scrap metal that drops (half the time overlapping a string of last-second missiles) and you'd bvetter be quick, or else this run was ALL FOR NOTHING and you earn 0$ for your troubles!

Do this same damn mission three times sucessfully, and you've got enough to buy another insignificant powerup! But that rarely happens because if you die once, your money gets halved. So basically, you're gambling, and the odds are against you.

Mission 2 features two of these ships, which means they blanket the entire screen with missiles. They launch randomly (after sitting perfectly still for several seconds for your benefit) so you will have a couple of waves before they will definitely kill you. But at this point, your weapons are so weak, you have almost no hope of destroying them.

I guess in order to make the game actually be PLAYABLE you need to buy the chaingun, which costs thousands of dollars. Good luck with that.

Humor: None.

Overall: Yeah, you know what? Gameplay is everything, fucker. The challenge is too random, the player's options are too limited, progress is too unpredictable, and the goal is too unattainable.

Like 90% of Flash s'mups I've seen, you've got the weapon speeds bass-ackwards. Enemy shots should be slow enough that the player can dodge between them, and player shots should be fast enough that the player knows how to hit the enemy predictably. That's called putting the player in control.

There's more to control than getting the buttons to work. I need to be able to plan my attack and react to the enemy's. I can't do that if I have no idea where the fuck the enemy is going to be by the time my shots reach him.

I'm sorry I'm so pissed off, this is just a really frustrating and pointless game. It's a shame because you put so much style and pizzazz into it, but you ruined it. You dropped the ball in playability. I want you to go play Raiden for an hour and think about what you've done.

[Castle defenders (alpha1)]

Disapointing lack of variety. ADD STUFF TO IT!

Graphics: Decent. The grass is kinda nice, but I've seen better. Everything else is the bare minimum. I like how you can see the slots on the walls archers go into.

Style: Lackluster. It needs some more varieties of enemies, such as giants that take multiple hits. SOMETHING that can get past the archers and require some sort of effort to kill. Also, I don't like that wizards aren't implemented yet. If the feature wasn't ready yet, why put the school building there? I do like how the buildings inside the walls were buttons. Very intuitive. Catapaults are fun but not too useful.

Sound: Not since Decline's mention of a special resident evil soundtrack by The Crows, have you heard anything like this!

Violence: Thousands of rampaging soldiers get smashed to bloody pulps on the battlefield. But since this is Newgrounds, that's only a 5.

Interactivity: This game is off to a good start. There is no time wasted between the time you click and when the next level starts. Buying stuff is quick and easy. It is perhaps a little bit difficult to click on one of these tiny soldiers, but it won't cost you the game if you miss once.

Humor: Beyond the sheer heinous absurdity of thousands of screams while soldiers who haven't even come onto the screen die rapdily, there's nothing.

Overall: This is a good preview. Now add some twists and excitement!

[Drakojan Skies Mission 1]

I really wanted to love this game. :(

Looks and plays like a beautiful, epic 2D version of Einhander, except in Einhander you can fucking DODGE stuff. I loved the look and feel of this game. The smoke and clouds. The way the tanks roll along the ground. The enemy fighters breaking apart looked a little weird and fake... I kinda think a cluster of explosions would have looked more realistic, but whatever. The gameplay kills the experience, though.

There's no combat, here. Oh, sure, there's guns and explosions and stuff, but this is not skill-based fighting. This is memorizing the one exact pattern you can use to make it through the level in one piece. This is standing in exactly the right spot so that the enemy who hasn't even come onto the screen yet will get destroyed by your gunfire before he can fire off a shot. If you actually see an enemy and THEN react to him, you're sure to get shot up. And you definitely don't have enough of a life meter to be able to afford to experiment.

So it all comes down to the 90's shooter syndrome: Die over and over again, until you memorize the pattern. Then do it exactly right the same way every time. It's boring and annoying and not fun at all. And worst of all, every time you die, you have to reach over and grab the mouse, click a bunch of stuff, wait 5 extra seconds for the mission screen to fade, and click skip again. Not since Fear Effect has a game made me wait that long to try again. (Okay, I'm lying. Lots of Flash games make you go through that crap, but that doesn't make it okay!)

Suggestions:
-Player shots should travel faster than enemy ships: if the player shoots at an enemy, he needs to KNOW it's going to hit.
-Enemy ships should make themselves visible and wait a moment before they attack: The player should see it coming!
-Enemy shots should travel slower than the player's ship: The player NEEDS to be able to dodge enemy fire.
-Missiles SUCK. They always MISS. If you're only going to give me five of these things, I need to be able to RELY on them to SAVE MY ASS in a bad situation. Make them home in on enemies. Replace them with a bomb that nukes everything on the screen. ANYTHING but an attack that fires the same way as your main gun, only a little wavy.

I guess you feel like you're done with Drakojan Skies and you probabaly don't feel like coding and balancing the whole game all over again just to make it fun. But please consider the above suggestions for whatever game you do next. These are fundamental concepts for a shoot 'em up, and just about every single Flash shooter I see gets them wrong.

I really like your graphics and style, and the world you've developed for this game really rocks. I just wish the gameplay wasn't so painful and tedious. You can fix that, but it will require you to forget about balance and the technology that both sides possess, and instead start thinking about how you can put fun challenges in front of the player. Instead of constantly threatening the player with immenent death.

You are beating the player with a stick. Try dangling a few carrots in front of the player's nose instead.

[Tower Constructor]

Ignore the critics. This is a good logic game.

Graphics: Pretty good representations of little lego people. I know most of the people reviewing this submission want everything on Newgrounds to be hentai games and movies with gore splattering everywhere, but clearly the designers set out to create something cute, simplistic, and childish, and I think they succeeded. My only complaint is that the lego guys on the map look a little fake, somehow. I think it's the eye and the heads. They're 3D-shaped, but they don't look 3D, they look like lineart. Maybe try making the lines thiner on them? I'm not really sure how to correct this, but it's the only visual flaw I could find.

Style: Congradulations, guys, you REALLY pulled off the style you were going for, as evidence by all the whiney emos giving this submission bad graphics and style scores. I'm not sure what the Bob the Builder clone in the submission icon has to do with anything. Isn't that mixing your merchendisable 4-year old demographic borderline copyright infringement metaphors?

Sound: none. Huh-huh! We have to PAY for sound! *DOINK!*

Violence: none. Heaven help us. They released a kids' game on nergrounds.

Interactivity: Like I said in the summary, it's just a well-made, simple little logic puzzle. Big bricks go on bottom. Little bricks go on top. You can work with what they give you, or take your chances with the mystery block. If you manage to line up several numbers in order, you get bonuses. I wish there were a few other kinds of combos you could make. Or better still, I wish this was a building stuff game, and not a number game. But then again I am a huge dork who loved to play with legos when he was little. I'm not sure who would want to buy this, but I'm guessing it's being marketed to parents. If the sound has people counting off numbers when the kid picks a block or makes a match, maybe this could be a great learning tool for kids who can use a mouse but can't count yet? I dunno.

Humor: none.

Overall: Pretty good. I think it's a neat little game, Newgrounds just isn't the best crowd to showcase it to. But I'm guessing you submitted it here for free beta-testing, not to attract our demographic. On that note, this demo has nice graphics. Get it? Demographics? Okay, I'll shut up now.

[HUNGA Basic Needs]

VERY good game.

Graphics: Everything looks great. The aboveground and belowground sections give this game a real sense of place, instead of just being a box made out of bamboo a puzzle game is happening in. The CG caveman is finally starting to look at home in his hand-drawn surroundings. I can't think of anything to criticize about the visuals. Everything just sort of worked for me.

Style: The caveman theme FINALLY pays off! Stacking dinosuar stickers wasn't for me, but the theme in this game makes much more sense! You feel like you're actually doing somehting, not just playing a puzzle game.

Sound: All the sound effects sound good, squeely little twists and pops that remind one of plumbing. The "level clear" beat is really starting to grow on me. Music buring the level might have been nice. On the other hand, for a Flash game with short loops, maybe less music is better. Hmmm.

Violence: none.

Interactivity: Once I figured out how to play, I couldn't detect any problems with the controls. The author must have a very logical methodology to be able to keep track of which pipes are connected. It's the kind of thing that I couldn't even conceptualize the code for. This author clearly knows his code. It bugged me a little bit that some of the bonuses (such as double splash) seemed random and based on what new blocks appeared to fill the empty spaces. But hey, at least it's random bonuses and not random death! This is what I'm talking about with the carrot and the stick. If there's going to be something unexpected in your game, make it an unexpected bonus! Not an unexpected YOU LOSE. Good job!

Humor: Potty humor. Not even gross potty humor, just childish toilet silliness. Replace the shit power-up with a clog power-up, and this could be suitible for children. I mean, you know, American children. I guess in places like europe where the parents aren't lazy and everybody's not in denial, maybe they can show a picture of cartoon shit to children and everybody just laughs and thinks it's a funny picture of shit. Here in the good ol' U.S. of A, however, shit and childrens graphics are considered so opposite that their use together is a humorous contrast. Maybe that's why Newgrounds is so popular? Not because the stuff on it is necessarily funny, but because it does stuff you're not allowed to do on television. Hmmm. Well, anyway, yeah. This is extremely tame, for potty humor. More cute than funny, really.

Overall: AWESOME GAME! Great, engaging gameplay and the caveman theme is starting to grow on me. I can't wait to see what you make next!

[Simple Shooter X]

Beautiful Bullets! Wish it was a regular shooter.

Graphics: Most of this is due to the way the word Play scatters and the beautiful, glowing bullets and flashes. The ships looked good too, but could have been better. Maybe CG sprites would have looked cooler? There was just something a little "off" about the gradients or something on the ships. The asteroids were boring.

Style: Perfect! Awesome! I want to see more! Well, wait. The end of the level was kinda lackluster. Try something flashier. Maybe some fireworks or something when the LEVEL COMPLETE message appears.

Sound: none. GIVE IT SOUND!!!

Interactivity: Drives like a dream! Can't complain about the controls at all! Can I have your baby AND your source files? Actually, there IS one thing I'd change. Nobody wants to risk falling behind, even experienced players, so... why make us press the boost key at all? Why not just assume that we always want to go as fast as possible? It's not like having the button there will make us THINK the gameplay is deeper.

Humor: None, it's serious. Or just... devoid of meaning. I don't care, it still looks cool and plays good. I won't replay it much though because pressing up until I get 1000 points just doesn't amuse me so much.

Overall: Only slightly above average. Great graphics, effects, and execution. It's just that the premise just kinda sucks. Blasting enemy ships that don't shoot back while racing towards the top of the screen? Yeah, Spy Hunter called. They say thanks for not stealing any of the fun while you were cleaning out their gameplay. Admit it, this is just a beta test of your AS code. The REAL game probably won't be released for months now, and on a different site. Boo.

[Throw It! (KB Game)]

Limited concept, but well-executed.

Graphics: This is the best use of simple Flash shapes and gradients I've seen in a long time. I wish there had been characters or something more interesting than just a ball. Still, it's a nice ball, so far as balls go.

Style: The mountains and grass are about as stylish as mountains and grass can be. It's just too bad mountains and grass aren't stylish at all to begin with.

Sound: NEEDS MUSIC! Or at least a little "boing" when the ball hits the ground and some sort of boost noise when it hits a powerup. Go to Flashkit dot com.

Violence: none

Interactivity: You throw the ball and hope it goes far. Everybody loved Nanaca Crash but this isn't quite the same thing. First of all, that game had a more precise way of choosing your angle and velocity. Secondly, although there wasn't MUCH chance of you using it strategically unless you were slwoing down and right by a powerup, there was a boost down button which would thrust you towards the ground, and a boost up button that could be pressed three times, plus occasional "quick, hit the button NOW!" moments. All of these things added to the gameplay and made it more of a game and less of a toy. This thing, as far as I can tell, you get one throw and then, GG, wait and see what score you got.

Humor: none. Which is ANOTHER thing that was great about Nanaca Crash, it was funy as hell watching that poor guy get the shit kicked out of him by every shojo contrivance at your disposal.

Overall: This game was pretty well done. I only wish the author had been a little bit more creative and ambitious in designing the gameplay and characters. I definitely look forward to future games by this author.

FLiXD responds:

It was pure code. No graphic symbols, images, sound, movie clips or buttons in the Library. I'll probably be releasing another version WITH sound etc at some point soon, but I put this out as a tester.
Thanks for the in-depth review, it'll be very helpful for future upgrades.

[Exaggerated Perspective]

Great tutorial, covers a simple topic simply.

Yes but not everyone who submits to NG is a serious Flash artist. Many can't even draw. That's what these tutorials are for, to help the noobs turn in something decent instead of stick figures shooting each other.