WarpZone's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[Bullet Dodge]

Frustrating, dull, awkward, and boring.

Graphics: Sticks.

Style: The Lametrix.

Sound: Pfft.

Violence: red lines.

Interactivity: Would it kill you to give me SOME margin of error when I jump? Also, mouse menu + keyboard gameplay = I have to look down and switch my hands twice in order to play again. Either use a keyboard menu or clickable buttons in-game.

Humor: fails.

Overall: Boring.Your animation is slightly better than most noobs' stick animation, and this gameplay formula is fairly fresh, but your execution of it is boring and hard to control. Adding a life meter just makes it less realistic. When people complained "IT's too hard I keep dying," you should have made the jump more effective and gave the player a better feel for which move corresponds to which shot. Adding a life meter is not the solustion here, just like adding a time limit to Adventure Island does not make a boring game fun.

[Fun Hats]

Give the guy an A for effort, it's just not fun.

Graphics: Poorly drawn, cheeseily animated intro, followed by levels that are nice and long and vaguely depict a western enviornment. Your poorly drawn western robot chugs along, its rotating limbs clearly clipped together with chards. No visual style at all, just a mishmash of textures, vextors, and scribbles. Try going for a more cartoony, stylized look next time. Also, to make a train approach the camera realistically, try squaring itssize every frame instead of multiplying it by a steady number. If it was a motion tween, not AS, try easing out of the tween by about 90%.

Style: Firefly has style. The HalfLife mod Gunmen has syle. Wild Guns had style. This... this is a ramshackle collection of clipart, JPEGs, and Circles. The breakable glasses and the exploding vending machine swere nice touches, the buzzsaw and the train seemed like interesting changes of pace, the spinning poles that serve no useful purpose other than to kill you by touching your gun are a work of the devil and need to die forever. Try adopting a simple cartoon style next time, dude. Something simple like Bonus Stage or something. The trick is to make every part of your world seem like it was born from the same womb as every other part of your world.

Violence: Cheesey, crappy blood randomly spigots out of enemy cowboys as you shoot them in the head over and over again, waiting for them to finally die.

Interactivity: I've rated movies higher than this when they had a really, really nice menu. It's not your actionscript. It's your damn annoying game design choices. I have nothing wrong with the mouse control, it's the awkward, useless jumping (adding something that kills you if you DON'T jump does NOT make it "useful") and the sheer pointlessness of clicking on a bad guy as fast as your reload rate will allow you to while you crawl towards the right side of the screen just isn't FUN. By the time I reachecd the spinning poles on the train, I just quit rather than try again when it killed me. Your game is not fun. It does not grip me, sir. It has a few interesting twists, but nothing awesome enough to make me put up with your boring, inspid gameplay. Try making targets that appear and you can SEE them and you actually have a CHANCE at shooting them before they shoot you. THAT would be a game. This? This is a linear, slow-paced, boring tedious click-fest. Also, here's a hint. If your game is slowing down to a grinding halt because you used way too much detail and a bunch of sprites and gradients, and your game still looks like crap anyway, it's time to try a simpler style.

Humor: Educational Egg teaches us about business ethics! In other news, SouthPark's creators sue and the New York Times votes circular gradients the "Worth thing you could possibly put on a nose, 2005." But the funniest part had to be when the creator submitted this game to Newgrounds and... no... no, I'm sorry. That's going too far. You honestly tried really hard here, I can tell, and I shouldn't dismiss the package as a whole. But really, it wasn't that exciting or funny at all.

Overall: Below average game. It's sad, because you kind of tried to be innovative in a number of ways. It's just that the gameplay is no fun and the graphics slow down the computer but don't look good. I hope you keep trying, but please, look up some articles on the internet about gameplay theory, and develop a simple artistic style that uses simple Flash vector shapes, deformed and curved to look stylish, and see how much you can do with just colors and shapes.

CorkySurprise responds:

Woah, long review. I will take some of your points into account the next time I make a game. I know what you mean by "It's not fun". By the time I had submitted this game I had come to hate it, because I was so sick of fixing glitches and crap. And the lag I was aware of, however I played it in low quality, so that wasnt a problem for me.

*several years later*

your review is still damn right! take a look at my newer stuff; I think you'll see improvement :)

Thanks for the review
Mike

[Doom: The Traitor ( old )]

Not bad for a first game.

Graphics: Ripped Doom sprites on simple vector backgrounds. Moving gun and crosshairs like that ad banner at the top of this page. Would be better with original graphics or some juicy smoke, sparks, and debris where the user clicks, and blood if they sucessfully click an enemy. This would involve some pretty advanced AS, though. Spawning multiple objects isn't very intuitive in Flash.

Style: Not bad. Considering that this is all done with buttons and some VERY simple life meter AS, it comes surprisngly close to capturing the feel of an old FPS. Some low-key music would have been nice, as well as moving enemies, projectiles, or pretty much anything else you don't know how to do yet.

Sound: BOOM! *ka-chick* BOOM! *ca-chick* Sounds from doom are used to good effect. The shotgun reload sound actually is a good indicator of when you can fire next.

Violence: Fleshy beings explode into piles of gore when shot. It doesn't get much more violent than that... oh, waith, this isn't 1991. This is Newgrounds, Circa 2005. OF COURSE it could be more violent.

Interactivity: Not bad, for a button game. Pretty darn decent. This kid known how to imply gameplay where you would think there is none. Here's hoping he works hard to learn AS and keeps getting more advanced as he goes.

Humor: The easter eggs were kinda funny. Also, the crappy text on the title screens add a humorous overtone that probabaly wasn't intentional.

Overall: Even though this is a first game, and it's nothing we haven't seen before, it's decent. Average decent. Now watch fifty thousand tards release poor imitations of this already mediocre game, and we'll have to blam them all. Oh well. We'll burn that bridge while we're crossing it. You done good, kid. Now close the damn wad file and start making monsters out of Flash squares and triangles!

I look forward to your future submissions because this simple, short game didn't suck, and things will only get better as you grow.

[Ultimate Battle Version 1]

Mellee Attack is broken. Also, it's a joke game.

Yeah don't ever use mellee attack because if your second attack is a poke, the game will freeze after the next magic spell misses you. The whole first battle is staged so it's basically a waste of time to play through, especially since the game is liable to lock up if you choose the wrong of two commands (50% chance of failure.) Fix and resubmit. No, I take that back. Fix and add content and a reason to give a damn and resubmit. The whole point of an RPG is the feeling of "Oooh! Look! New toys! More STUFF! I'm acquiring money, power and respect that I could never hope to achieve in real life!" Skipping from level 0 to level 100 defeats the purpose of this. Try making a real game next time instead of an interactive movie with one bad joke in it. It pains me to see this much actionscript and work going to waste like this on a non-game.

MercuryLime responds:

I fixed the bug. Sorry if you don't like the game but it's supposed to be a joke.

[Shitemon]

NO! DEMOS!!!

Would it kill you people to finish your shit before you flush it down the portal? I mean, seriously. I am so sick of getting ready to play something or watch something and then I find out the author quit halfway through and decided to release it anyway. Stop DOING that! PLEASE!

[Deluxe pacman]

Absolutely nothing original.

Graphics: Pac-Man's sprite simply gets rotated. Why the author felt the need to give him a linear gradient that would be painfully obviously not caused by light sources when he turns is beyond me. Everything looks just like every other version of Pac-man you've ever played, except the background is inexplicably white. The next time PacMan's croporate owners decide to sue the crap outy of everybody again like they did in the 90's, they will have an airtight case when attacking this game.

Style: Just like the arcade! Which came out aproximately at THE DAWN OF TIME, so graphical standards have improved somewhat since then.

Sound: The most annoying use of square waves you've ever heard. I mean, seriously, why couldn't you be bothered to at least throw some music in there from the audio portal? We'll take anything man, ANYTHING to make this pac-man clone somewhat interesting or unique.

Violence: Low. A man runs around taking pills and eating the dead, who are then reborn from their disembodied eyeballs.

Interactivity: Seems to work properly with the arrow keys.

Humor: *sounds of crickets chirping*

Overall: Below average. Come on, man! I appreciate that you went to all the trouble of working through this tutorial in a Flash book you got, but can't you PLEASE be bothered to change the name and characters to something original before submitting it? And then you have the audacity to promote your own website from the menu. Why? Why would anybody try this? Or wait... did Atari or Mattell or whoever owns 'The Man' hire you to set a big, juicy precedent for their next wave of lawsuits directed at small games developers? That's it, isn't it. Well, great job, dickface, now we're all gonna need to pool our money and create a defense fund...

If I'm wrong about the conspiracy theory, kindly excuse the dickface remark. In short your game is very good, please make one that's actually your game.

[Raiden-City Assault]

Another crappy broken noob game.

Okay, this is just like that crappy Metal Sonic game released the other day, except that the author had the common sense to make things move a little slower, and make the enemy ships smaller, so you actually have a chance of lasting more than two seconds.

Since this is basically just a distortion of the Balloon demo from Flash Game Design Demystified, I'm gonna go ahead and suggest that you read chapters 2-6 and then write a game with REAL collision detection instead of this box crap.

PhoenixRizen responds:

Flash... Game... Design.. Demystified?

ME HAVE TWO LEGS!