WarpZone's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Goliath The Soothsayer]

"Based on" a "true" story...

Wow, there's nothing scarier than spectral effigies of The Buddy Jesus fleeing like cockroaches every time you turn on a light. No, seriously, I can think of about a dozen "true stories" about religion that are both scarier and more plausible than this load of bull. Oooh, the scary ghosts are going to kill everybody. Whatever.

Anyway, boo for invisible/obscure/tiny buttons! You could have easily put the metal hook laying against the wall in plain sight. Why hide it with some obscure tiny invisible "I can't see what's here" button on top of the drawer? The light switch on the floor was also obscure. Maybe add a softly strobing light there or something.

Anyway, once I realized the whole game was a button-hunt, and that my actions were in no way connected to what I thought they were, I started mousing everywhere randomly and that helped me discover other things like the mirror ghost and stuff. The clock and safe puzzles were very nicely done.

I just feel like it kinda insults the audience's intelligence by saying "based on a true story." I mean, I can do that, too. Here's a story based on "the true story" of me playing this game:

Once upon a time, WarpZone logged onto Newgrounds and played Goliath The Soothsayer. He found the gameplay amiable and the ambiance scary, but the fact that it was alledgedly based on a true story kind of pissed him off. Then, all of a sudden, spikes came out of his back and he started floating and glowing. His righteous indignation had transformed him into a minifestation of pure hatred! His soul now bound to goliaththesoothsayer.swf, his tortured soul spread across the internet like wildfire, virally occupying 70% of the world's computers before Norton and McAffee even knew what hit them. Not even macs were safe, since WarpZone was not actually a computer virus but could affect the souls of the living. He contacted the president and demanded better broadband penetration, by which he meant better internet access in the United States, but people thought he meant porn. Thus appeased, he basically sat around on his fat incoporeal ass for a few decades, haunting program after program as people deleted the old ones, until finally one day there was enough information floating around on the internet for him to develop technologies that solved all the world's problems. He commissioned a body to be built, and led humanity into a golden age of plenty. A bunch of dumbass ghosts from like ancient times took exception to this, but Humanity 2.0 kicked their asses using post-singularity technology. Then monkeys flew out of my ass. BASED ON A TRUE STORY!

ZOMG! See how plausible that sounds!? That's what your title screen sounded like.

But yeah, other than that, great game.

Oh and by the way, Leffler Web Design, nice swirly logo intro thingy.

LefflerWebDesign responds:

Believe it or not, the game is based on an interpretation of what is supposedly a true story... may I suggest you shift your gaze temporarily to an explanation of the original story of what the Mars Volta's latest album is about at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bedl am_in_Goliath ... and make it quick before said intelligence becomes so infused with insult that you go on a semi-coherant rant... oh wait... too late... ;)

No hard feelings buddy :)

[Submachine 05: the root]

Now with 50% more urban decay! :D

Grab your preemptive Tetanus Shot, and don't question where the food comes from; it's time for another installment in everyone's favorite mysterious urban spelunking sim! The rotting infastructure of the Submachine network beckons once again, but this time you're apparently a trained professional, tasked with rebooting an ancient "Mover" to reconnoiter "the far side of the submachine net." Or maybe you're some punk kid crashing the lab and reading his e-mail, I'm not sure. But that ambiguity is a hallmark of the Submachine series, and it only adds to the mystery.

If time has any meaning when portals are involved, it's years after the events of the previous Submachine games, and you'll find yourself trolling through the rubble which at one point comprised the earlier adventures. The more you learn, the less you know, and it's not until you unlock the final author's comment with the last Secret that you even begin to suspect what this latest outing might have meant.

I love the addition of the auto-notes, which track vital information and offer tantalizing hints into the mentality of the explorer, as always without giving too much away.

There are a few caveats, but this is Submachine. If you've played the other games, you know damned well what you're signing up for. There's more button-hunting, which can sometimes involve some incredibly tiny and obscure details in the environment. Make sure you know what part of the Cipher Plates you're clicking on, because that point becomes your cursor position. You're not lining the plate up with the slot. You're clicking on the slot with your (now invisible) mouse cursor.

I thought the author's attempt at a 3D puzzle was cool, even though my brain refused to process it as a 3D puzzle, treating it instead as an awkwardly designed button-clicking puzzle. Still, it was an interesting change of pace.

I was disappointed that the dangling pipes didn't do anything. I would have liked to see more inexplicable weirdness like tone-sensitive blocks of stone or metal gizmos that spin and twirl in response to the mouse cursor's position, but the method of locomotion employed by the "Mover" just about makes up for the lack of weird alien physics throughout the rest of the game.

What more is there to say? It's more Submachine! Play it. Beat it. Ferret out every last secret. Tell the author you liked it, and dream about playing the next one!

Most ARGs aren't this deep and spooky!

[Super Mutant Eating Fish]

Not bad.

Considering the hi-score table was hacked before this game could even get into the portal, I think you should seriously consider adding some kind of encryption and validation to the hi-score system. The gameplay was okay, with every object on the screen providing its own risk-reward schedule, and a diminishing returns curve to the scoring system no less fair than your typical MMO's levelling mechanism.

If you want to move this from being a decent game to a great game, consider working in some sort of powerups, especially if it means you can specialize your fish's abilities.

I would like to add that I think it was the music that kept me playing for as long as I did. Even when nothing new was happening after a while. Somehow I think the suspenseful music kept me psychologically convinced that something cool might happen any second now, so I kept playing longer than I probably would have otherwise. I should point out that if the controls were unresponsive or the gameplay was frustrating or unfair, the music wouldn't have saved it. But the controls were decent, and the gameplay left enough wiggle room for me to plan my moves the way I wanted to.

The character designs were quirky, but since nobody talked or had any apparent goals, they didn't really interest me at all. Maybe next time try to add a narrative of some sort. Just a thought.

Overall, good job!

[FPA: World 2]

Hey Mista Fancy Pants!

Man, I never thought I would trust the controls in a Flash game. I never thought I would care about a stick figure. I never thought I'd see a decent 2D side-scroller action-platform game after the year 2000 or so, unless it was yet another Mario 3 port on the new new new Gameboy.

FPA 1 shattered all these preconceptions. FPA 2 does something I never thought I'd see a sequal do, which is it actually surpasses FPA 1.

This is literally the best action game possible. It's got the loops, slopes and speed of Sonic, the platforms of Mario, the sliding of Megaman... it might have been cool to see more boucning or chain reactions like in some of the later Mario games, or a gun or punch of some sort might have been a cool gimick, but ultimately these are play mechanics for a different game.

For pure platforming fun, it doesn't get much better than Fancy-Pants Adventures. Let's hope Brad commercializes the game after he gets a few worlds under his belt. I could see this doing quite well on the Wii or Xbox Live.

[SOL: Dawn]

Excellent pacing, decent interface

Well, if you ever wanted to play Zelda as a turn-based game, here you go. The limited inventory is surprisingly well thought-out, as you'll end up consuming healing items at almost exactly the rate you need them. Then the stat-boosters start to appear, and you need to start making some tactical choices with your five precious spaces.

The game is non-linear which is nice, though it took me a couple trips through the first dungeon to realize that what I thought of as a fence was actually a locked door! I played to the point where you get the deed to the house, and by then the map screen really starts to open up. Maybe I'll come back to it later and play some more.

The only things I can think of to complain about (anyone who's read my reviews on NG knows I loves to dish out the brutal C&C) were that I would have liked to run around the dungeons instead of walk, and I didn't see the need for you to split up the interface between the mouse, spacebar, and shift key when you could have just as easily made everything only use the arrow keys and spacebar (Dragon Warrior) or just used the mouse for everything including movement (Diablo II).

Other than that, though, this seems like a long and solid game, especially by Flash standards. I can't speak to progression in the later stages. The creator warns that it gets really hard in the advanced stages, so maybe there's a lot of tedious grinding later on. You might want to check with the reviews of people who have beaten it to find that out. All I know is, I've played the beginning, and the beginning is excellent!

[Mystic Circle]

Brilliant idea; clumsy execution

This game had the potential to be a cross between Diablo II and Legend of Mana. Unfortunately, it ends up playing more like a really broken version of zelda. Awkward controls make it painful to even face the right direction during combat. Each level is a tiny arena full of randomly spawning enemies with huge aggro ranges. This means any battle could suddenly turn into total cluster-fuck. Grinding yields less XP the higher level you are. There is a mechanism whereby a player may refrain from leveling up, thus earning XP at the lower-level rate, but since you can only see your XP goal for the next level, it's difficult to use this to your advantage. Eventually you will clear every stage and be about level 25-30, but still have hours and hours of grinding ahead of you, because guess what-- the dragon at the end can kill you with one hit!

A lot of the best ideas stolen from Diablo seem strangely implemented here. Gambling is weird, with the price of an item having literally no correlation with its power level. You might as well buy the cheapest item over and over again until you get one that's good. The chest also serves no purpose, since gold placed in it is still subject to the death tax, and any money you dump in there, you must manually go and get before you can spend it!

There are a few quests and keys to find, and exactly two puzzles (one logical, one mechanical) and some magic skills which might as well be Final Fantasy summons, they take so long to cast. I have no idea what the travelogue does; the Jenglish won that round. Guess I'd better go survive make my time. Oh, and there's smithing, but it's as pointless as the gambling, spending $4500 worth of components to make a $500 sword that has no special powers and is 5 levels too low for you.

I really wanted this game to be better. There is so much potential, here. When I first started to play I got excited at the prospect of Diablo's looting system married to Zelda's gameplay. Unfortunately, 9mine just couldn't deliver on the gameplay. The enemies demand perfect timing and execution, but the awkward controls do not empower the player to achieve this.

Oh well, maybe next time.

P.S. The graphics were good.

[Random 3D Ep 1]

Oh, it's 3D? Then it doesn't have to be fun.

I don't understand why programmers keep making these clumsy, awkward games with loose, floaty controls. I also don't understand why other gamers keep giving these games a high score. I can ponly assume there's a class of gamer who enjoys being thwarted at every turn by the controls. It's a good thing this type of person exists, I suppose, because otherwise we'd have nobody to work the manipulator arm on the space shuttle.

I guess it's great that you did something different, and the graphics are top-notch, but there are about a billion different things you could have done with a 3D sphereoid physics engine that would have been more fun than constantly dropping a ball.

[MAD]

Missile command clone with pseudo-depth.

It seems like a really deep game with tons of powerups and options, until you realize that 90% of your civilzation is doomed no matter what you do. Therefore it's a waste of time to spend money on the powerup buildings. If you're REALLY good, you MIGHT be able to protect your main building and one other one, but if you ever use the secondary building's power, its shield will drain and it'll die the next time something slips through. Better to cut your losses early and only protect the main building. If you wasted money on secondary building power-ups, it's impossible to stay ahead of the curve. Even with maxing only missile rate and shields, I didn't last long enough to decide if the game is actually winnable or not.

"How can you tell the difference between incoming and outgoing?"

"Well, soldier, incoming exists."

"Fuck."

[Kingdom of Machines]

Complex, fast game engine; weak gameplay.

Problem: Scrounging for ammo is annoying, mostly because you need a lot of it and the easiest enemy to kill (the blade-swingers) is also the most tedious because it takes 3 hits.

Solution: Make the blade-swingers weaker or make ammo more plentiful.

Problem: The special weapons use so much ammo, you're basically penalized for any experimentation at all. What could have been a fun and novel collections of gadgets ends up being one gun and three keys.

Solution: Make the special weapons cost less to fire. Double or even quadrupe the max ammo meter. Don't worry, we'll still want to keep finding extenders for it.

Problem: In theory, the infinite maps mean infinite replayability. In practice, they're just big confusing collections of rooms with no rhyme or reason.

Solution: Use a more advanced map generating algorithym. Many exist online. A mini-map would have done wonders for navigability. And if the different squares on the mini-map lit up as you explored them, it would be an extra incentive, especially if the game kept track of your progress.

Problem: General lack of human interest. Plot, characters, and setting are all extremely bland.

Solution: Add Music! More than one townsperson! Have grandma say things other than "Go," and "Stop." Maybe granny's a tinkerer and you need to take the boss cores to her in order to make a new gun attachment. Maybe the bad guy didn't kill everybody, but kidnapped them for some neferious purpose. Clearing dungeons could mean extra NPCs show up in town, and thank you with powerups. At least the boss talked to you, but even this could have been more made interesting by adding a few twists and turns to the dialogue.

Problem: Combat is BORING.

Solution: Maybe enemies that actually aim at you? And attempt to dodge your attacks somehow?

Problem: Player's tactical options are extremely limited.

Solution: Diagonal movement, the basic attack could slash in an arc instead of just hitting what's directly in front of the player. Combined with enemies that actually track and shoot at you, and a gun with plentiful enough ammo to actually be a formidible weapon, you could have had all kinds of nuaunced realtime combat going on here. You know how, in Halo, there are different "best guns" for different situations? There's no reason you couldn't do something like that, just because it's a 2D game.

Problem: You didn't realize it's not fun. =(

Solution: That hurts. I been there before. I made that terrible witch game. You should have done a nice long beta test on NG Alphas and gotten some feedback while you were still in the early prototype stages. People could have told you stuff to add, and complained about what they didn't like. If you had a deadline, or you were under NDA, then you can disregard this comment. But if you were making this game by yourself, for yourself, there's no excuse for a lack of beta testing! NG,MAG (at the top of this page, on the right side of the orange menu) makes it SO EASY!

[Defend Your Temple 2]

Good fun. Add golems! :D

Any game that could have had golems in it, would be greatly improved by the addition of golems, IMHO.