WarpZone's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Hungry Hungry Wiggies]

Is one player meant to control this?

Or is it intended for like, 6 kids, all sitting at the same keyboard?

I have to admit this isn't quite what I expected. It doesn't really teach the kids anything (other than "eat the food that falls from the sky if it's the same color as you,") I suppose it could be a metaphor for "eating right," but I don't think most kids will think about it that deeply.

Also, if it's intended for multiple players, you should be aware that it emphesizes competition more than teamwork. I'm just saying.

Great surface, though. Nice thick line work. I can do that. :)

BoMToons responds:

Ha ha, no it's meant for one player, but it really does stretch your mind to play. As for the educational aspect, I think that somehow that part got over-emphasized, I'd much prefer an entertaining non-educational game, to a boring educational one. But entertaining AND educational would be the ultimate combo. Besides, this game teaches rhythm skills, which is a valuable tool for youngsters :P

[TimeScape2]

Not bad!

Hey, nice to see that you added more levels & music. I died at the level with the 2 extremely fast enemies and no walls... not quite sure how you win that one, lol. Seems impossible. But yeah, overall this is a big improvement. Good job.

The only suggestion I can make would be to do a "press enter to continue" screen instead of a "click here" screen between levels. Why? Well, taking my right hand off the arrow keys and reaching for the mouse is a problem. It breaks the flow of the gameplay and costs me a split-second of action at the start of each ambush. Just tapping enter would be quicker & easier from the player's point of view.

I realize that from the programmer's perspective, capturing keyboard events can be tricky. Sometimes a key pressed on one screen can read as "still pressed" on the next frame or whatever. But as long as the key you use to change levels (enter, space, etc,) has no effect on general gameplay, you should be okay.

[Panik in Suburbia]

It%u2019s not as good as it could be.

What we have here is your typical "commissioned" flash game. All the earmarks are here: Lots of effort poured into the artwork. "Inoffensive" corporate-approved characters. The simplest game engine ever ripped from Flashkit. No more than two moving objects on the screen at a time (Gotta make sure the 1% of the audience playing this on a 486 can enjoy it, dontcha know.) No scrolling whatsoever. Constant dying through no fault of your own. And of course, ads all over the place. It%u2019s a real winner, all right!

I would normally temper my response because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but somehow I doubt the publisher of this game has any intention of maintaining the game or responding to feedback. When you can't even be bothered to take the broken unicode characters out of your promotional text, that's a pretty sure sign of apathy.

All of that said... well, they tried. It's long. The art is pretty. C minus.

kerb responds:

if you think we wont reply then check the responses to all of our other games.

[-TRAPPED-]

Another great puzzler. I love the intrigue.

I liked the storytelling in this one a lot. The shooting stage was a nice twist, and it was well-executed, balanced, and easy to comtrol even though I was unexpectedly thrust into it.

Dialogue was great. I especially enjoyed the quote when he first looked in the mirror. Finding the matches was pretty annoying, though. I assumed since I couldn't see them after they fell to the floor, that they no longer existed in the game. Had to read the FAQ for that one.

I'm begining to sense that all of your point & click adventures will involve clicking the edges of furniture to find neccessary, hideen stuff. I guess I'll just have to get used to it.

[Monster Basement]

Great game... A little slippery in places.

A powerfully compelling opening theme is followed by some relatively simple puzzles in a tiny, 3-room environment. The graphics were good, including some very detailed (if stiffly-animated) monsters. The flickering of the overhead light added a nice touch of ambiance, though of course that ended as soon as you solved the lightbulb puzzle.

Text descriptions help carry the story, but detract slightly from immersion. (Compared to, say, the Machine series, or Myst, which rely almost solely on point & click and graphics to communicate with the player.) I felt the journal writing was a little drab... like it didn't really give me much insight into the character of the villian, but maybe that's because I was expecting something simmilar to what I've seen before in other horror games.

Music was very well done, and always used to add ambiance and mood to various scenes. Sound effects were a little sparse, and occasionally repetitive, but nothing seemed like a sound was missing, and none of the sounds he did use felt out of place.

I ended up using the walkthrough, and I'll tell you why: some of the puzzles involve just magically knowing where to click. There's no indication, for example, that there's anything worth clicking over there on the left hand side of the bookcase. Yet you absolutely must click there in order to find a golden piece. Random clicking doesn't work either, because you're liable to click yourself back or into another room while searching for the hidden buttons.

Some sort of glimmer on the floor on the side of the bookcase and refrigerator, or a more visible hiding spot for these pieces, might have made the game more managable by providing a unified gameplay paradigm.

Also, I didn't like the key hidden behind the Godlimations ad. The reason is, having clicked on the ArmorGames ad, I figured that clicking any part of the Godlimations ad would just open up that website an interrupt my game. It took me a long time to get desperate enough to try clicking there. Again, consistancy in your game mechanics is a must.

That said, not every instance where this game broke its own mold was neccessarily a bad thing. When I turned on the lights and found the mud monster coming at me, I knew what I had to do. It was the last thing I expected in a puzzler, too, so it was a good surprise.

So yeah, while it may be a little obtuse in places, overall it's a great game. I was really surprised by that twist ending... and unless I miss my guess, I think the weird design of the screwdriver and the voices on the phone may have been a metaphor hinting at the perspective implied by the ending. (Heh, I think I managed to express that idea with no spoilers. ^.^)

Great job, Patrick. I'm gonna go play your other games now. Keep up the good work! :)

[Pizza Passion]

Best dating sim evar.

Graphics: Intro and start/end of level looks pretty decent, and carries a theme consistantly. Unfortunately the endless oven or flu or whatever that metal and brick tunnel is supposed to be is the most boring sight ever to grace a video game screen.

Style: Okay, I admit it. The theme got my attention. But the middle of the game... you know, the most important part? The part I spend 99% of my game experience on? Yeah, that part is tasteless and dull, like a crust with no toppings.

Sound: Doo doo duh duh. Dun da da duhh! Dun a doodle da dun doodle dun da doo dun. MAKE IT STOP!

Interactivity: A competently executed rip-off of the most trite game ever, keepy-uppy.

Overall: Let me get this straight. You expect me to play keepy-uppy for like, ten hours, just so I can get what I already saw on the title screen? And this is fun to you?

[Detective Grimoire]

A nice detective game with a decent story. :)

Graphics: The artists went to a lot of trouble on this one. Surface is excellent for a pure vector flash. Could have been improved by photoshopping at least the main background locations. The cartoon characters are nice and toony with and anime style but strongly western character designs. The opening and ending sequences are very nicely done, employing a variety of techniques from vectors to bluring to 3D.

Style: One thing I have to say about this game is that it just oozes style. From the opening shot of the murder scene, to the way the detective presents his case against the murderer at the end, it unfolds exactly the way a murder show on TV does. You see all the pieces, you have an inkling of suspiscion, you pressure them and get them to spill their guts. Then at the end you tie the whole glorious package together in one long explaination. I wasn't entirely sure what each clue meant, at the time I was gathering them, but whenever a question was asked during the endgame, I was always like "of course!" and picked the right answer. It all tied together very nicely.

Sound: This is my only real complaint. Don't get me wrong, the music was great. But I chose to kill the sound anyway because all the "Errr... hmmmmm.... *cough cough* Erm!" embaresingly bad voice samples got real annoying, real fast. If you'd had an option to turn off voice samples during interrogation while keeping the music and maybe the movie sound effects intact, Sound, Style, and Overall would have all been 10. That's how much it spoiled the experience for me. Think about it for your next game.

Violence: You call that a gristly murder? This is newgrounds. Red blurs don't even register on our calloused, de-sensitized brains.

Interactivity: Great control, great menu. There were a few things that bothered me, though they were all relatively minor:

-In Eye Contact Interrogation sequences, looking at the right time equals not being able to read what the lie is, so you're a little fuzzy on why you're objecting to them.

-Sometimes when you uncover intriguing evidence, such as the piece of paper in the vic's notebook with stuff written on it in green ink, you don't get a chance to read it because it gets whisked away so quickly. While it doesn't break the gameplay, it does thwart the player's curiosity-- never a good movie in a murder mystery.

-I didn't know how to use the items at first. I kept expecting "Ask her about the books" to appear on the conversation menu. Eventually I figured it out, but it took a while.

As you can see, all my interface issues are minor and don't prevent me from finishing the game. They do, however, distract me from immersion, so you might want to think about how you could make the transitions a bit less abrupt, next time.

Humor: Meh. Hat. Whatever.

Story: It didn't quite *feel* like a murder mystery to me, but I'm sure that's probably because your motives, secrets, and lies were all more akin to Scooby Doo than CSI.

Perhaps TV murder shows have unfairly trained me to expect briefcases full of money, drug addictions, kinky sex acts and bitter, jealous rivalries to be waiting in the wings behind every murder.

While playing the game, a lot of times I was like "He's lying about what? That's it?" I seriously didn't find it plausible that one man would murder another just so his niece could get a stupid maintinence job.

In the end it seemed he had 3 motives after all instead of the one I sussed during play, but even one good excuse would be better IMHO than three lame, silly ones. You do not fuck around with a murder rap so your relative can get a $8/hour maintience job. At least, *I* wouldn't.

Overall: Nicely done! Gameplay captures the essence of a murder mystery very well, and even goes a step further by letting the player tie all the loose ends together himself! You never get that sense of accomplishment with TV shows or novels. The suspects' dirty little secrets were kind of lame, and you should have cut the awkward voice samples from the conversations.

[sycolux]

Why purposely sabotage your own play control?

Sorry, but you lost me when the screen started zooming in and out. That's like shaking my PSP while I'm trying to play it. It was fun to play up until that point. After the zooming started, playing the edges with the mouse became impossible. Or at least more frustrating than it was worth.

[Zombieland]

Great design, ruined by unresponsive weapons.

Graphics: Hand-drawn, apparently original graphics that rival anything in Metal Slug. This is some truly excellent sprite work. I hope your day-job is making sprites for GBA and Cell Phone games, because if not your talent is going to waste.

Style: Sk8torboi battles Metal Slug zombies on Main Street. It's cooler than it sounds, really. Everything is colored, stylized, and animated to sick, lush extremes.

Sound: The music is excellent for a loop as short as it is. The sound effects get a little repetitive, though. Maybe next time go Half-Life style and put in 4 different sound effects for each possible impact?

Violence: Those fat guys really do go pop when they die. Sick stuff. Could have been worse, though.

Interactivity: I had issues with the interactivity. Mostly the problem was, there'd be a zombie in front of me, and I'd decide I want to kill him as players are wont to do, so I'd push the "kill the zombie who's right in front of you" button, and then this long-ass animation would start playing, and then I'd get hit before the animation finished. You see how long and uneccessary that run-on sentance was? That's what the weapon animations are like in this game. Once I got wise to this problem, I started trying to plan my shots strategically. But then, by the time I moved into a position to fire my rocket launcher into a crowd, the powerup would expire and I'd be firing my useless pea-shooter into an unstoppable wall of undead flesh. Based on the reviews for Battlemachy, it seems that Urban Squall's policy when players complain about the controls is to say "The controls are perfect! Buy a $4000 computer!" so I don't know why I bothered saying anything.

Overall: Great characters. Great graphics. Nice sounds. Great levels. Great gameplay paradigm... in theory. Execution falls flat on its face because the weapons fire too slowly, reload too slowly, or wear off when you least expect it. It's sh'mup meets survival horror. I realize that the whole point of survival horror is that your weapons barely do anything to the zombies, but in this case it totally ruins my sh'mup.

[-= Surrounded=-]

Adheres a little too strictly to formula.

Graphics: Cool glowy neon ships. Kinda dull generic starfield. Shop menu looks cool, but that curve-slider, while cool, is annoying to use repeatedly while window-shopping.

Style: Classic arcade gameplay meets contemporary flash design! Actually, that's a polite way of saying they remade an old Atari game with vector graphics and added a levelling mechanic. Oh well, it still presents itself with pizzaz.

Sound: Understated shooting, check. Meaty explosions when you kill an enemy off-screen, check. Pulse-pumping techno soundtrack? Ch... hey... where'd the music go? Enjoy it while it lasts. It doesn't loop, for some reason.

Violence: Wow, I remember when blowing up spaceships was the most horrific thing a 12-year-old could do with his time.

Interactivity: This is where it goes straight down the tubes. Those stationary turret games offer more diverse gameplay than this. I would have prefered mouse aiming and directional movement controls (including diagonal movement.) But instead we get racecar steering and a straight shot turret.

The problem with this control scheme is, all gameplay essentially boils down to "fly really fast in one direction until all the ships have spawned, then turn 180 degrees and shoot parallel to your exhaust stream." Absolutely any other action you take will either get you rammed by a mine-ship that just spawned or shot up by gunships at point-blank before you can turn and face them.

The tacked on shopping menu neccessary before Armor Games will even consider sponsoring you these days looks pretty, but that novelty curve slider gets old REAL fast, because after the first few levels, everything you could even consider buying is off-screen when you enter the shop. If it just removed bought items from the list, the next thing you're gonna buy would ALWAYS be on top, and the slider could be an interesting but little-used diversion for oggling the stuff you can't buy yet. As it is, the further you advance, the more annoying it is to try and window-shop.

I can't speak to the overall powerup VS enemies balance, because I got tired of shooting my own exhaust smoke after a few levels. Don't get me wrong, I am willing to perform the same stupid task over and over again for hours in order to level up. But the stupid task has to be something fun. Defend Your Castle was fun because the stupid task was fun. Shooting my own exhaust just doesn't do it for me.

Overall: Another pretty flash game brought to its knees by boring gameplay. It sure gives a good first impression, though. Maybe it just wasn't for me. Thanks for making it, though. I look forward to seeing what else you can make.

A game should be challenging, fair, and complex. This game isn't fair if you're flying slow enough to actually see the enemy, and it's not challenging if you're flying fast enough to stay outside the perimeter. It certianly has complex components, but these get simplified when they are abstracted away to tiny dots on your radar 90% of the time.

Maybe I was playing it wrong. But when I tried playing it any other way, I would always lose 90% of my shield in one hit from a mine-ship.