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.

[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

[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.

[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!

[Make Obesity History]

Funny Joke. Hardly a game.

Graphics: *shudder...*

Style: Great fun until I realized that there was no possible way to lose. I guess I could beat my own score if I really wanted to, but the game wasn't that interesting the first time through.

Sound: Hey, I LIKE Weird Al. You got a problem with that?

Violence: none

Interactivity: clinging on stuff works. Some of the targets are a little tough to click, but there's plenty more where they came from.

Humor: Website was the funniest part. THIS IS NOT AJOKE! Yes it is, who do you think you're kidding? LOLs.

Overall: Say, you've got some moderate skill, there. Next time, try making a game.

FLiXD responds:

I bet you like to wear pink shirts

[G.N. ARCADE vol2]

Bad control = GAME SUCKS

Graphics: Stick figure fights alien spaceships on stylish op-art backgrounds. Good color, adequate spaceship, crappy stick figure. Title screen looks great for a 2001 X-box ad.

Style: I think the author was going for some sort of vague amaricana sci-fi feel. Various elements feel like they came from the 60s through 80s of european and american pulp and low-budget sci-fi. The result is a glimpse of what is either an elaborate and inspired fictional world mirroring the grittiest and cheesiest of our extraterrestrial fantasies, or a poor attempt to slap a bunch of random photographs and visual elements together and get something vaguely sci-fi. I can't tell which. All I know is, my gut is telling me Jazz + sunset + photograph of an ugly guy = artistic. Too bad the execution was so shoddy.

Sound: Nice Jazz music. Tired, crappy BEE-DOOW laser sound effects we've all heard before.

Violence: Stuff blows up other stuff. Individual hits are shown only by a shrinking life meter. No blood or gore, just abstract guns that make a laser sound but fire little black bullets.

Interactivty: NO! WRONG! DAMMIT! The noob platformer physics, I can live with. The slowdown, I can live with. He's probabaly new to ActionScript, okay? Over time, he'll get better. But you do NOT put platforms at the apex of your player's jumpaing ability. You do NOT make ammo that the player desperately needs appear at the top of the god damn screen where he couldn't possibly reach it if his life depended on it. These two things were INTENTIONAL GAMEPLAY CHOICES, and the author ought to be shot for introducing them to his already buggy game. Forget the controls, all right? The GAMEPLAY sucks. Even the carrots have sticks.

Humor: It's. Not. FUNNY.

Overall: ZEROED. You know those people who say that "Gameplay is everything?" Well I'm one of them. The gameplay here is crap. Even though the art and the style do have some merit, it is a HORRIBLE game.

After this gets blammed, I suggest re-releasing it with the ammo appearing on the ground, and all the platforms lowered by about the player's height. You might find it survives for a few seconds.

MahonenNiko responds:

ooookayyy :P. You surely took your time wroteing that didn't you. Wise words, but strike missed targed ones in a while. It sounded that the game was too hard for you, and you got angry whit the game play just bacause your computer is too slow to work it right. I didn't notice anything when I test played it during and after the process (about 50 times). Some wined about game play too saying that some of the platforms couldn't be reached, I am telling you now, you have to jump from the lower to higher, I designed the scenes carefully and I personally think that the gameplay is the best thing in the whole game. You have to dodge the attacs and survive when you jump around the scene hunting ammo, the places that ammo appears were also carefullu thought that it wouldn't be just walkeing on one level and hideing under one platform allthetime, that obiously was what you were looking for. I continue working on whit this to get it work right whit your lazy computer too. Maby this time I make a big sign that the dude moves more slowly backwards than forwards, just for them that are stupid enouh not noticeing it right away, don't worry I don't mean you whit this. Correct me if I'm wrong whit anything here, let's make an angry discussion, it always makes my day.

[Chief's Customs V.1]

Broken menu + lame music = *yawn*

Graphics: Nice vector warthog. Decent menu. Some interesting mods.

Style: Ehh, nothing spectacular. Music drags it down a notch. Hiding the menu doesn't actually hade the menu options, just the frame, so what's the point of hiding it? It's not like you get to look at your warthog all by itself, or anything.

Sound: I thought the music was lame. I'll admit it was thematically apropriate for a modding game, though, so I gave it a 5 instead of a 0. THANK GOD he put in a button to make it stop.

Violence: none.

Interactivity: Well if the menus made more sense, and if you could tell what clicking somewhere was actually gonna do before you clicked it, and if painting the car different colors made more sense instead of making it look like the whole car's gonna be red and then, all of a sudden, just the hood turns red when you confirm the color change, I wouldn't have any complaints about the controls. As it is, I guess my only complaint about the menu is that it is a broken piece of crap and desperately needs to be fixed. Other that that minor detail, the controls are great.

Humor: OMG the song is so FUNNY! He's trying to sound bad-ass by singing HIP-HOP! LOL!!! Hillarious!

Overall: This is the best broken mod game I've ever started to play and then realized it was broken.

the-disturbed responds:

HAHAHA! REading this just made me crack up!

Anyhow, thanks for pointing out the bugs to me. I'll fix em, and add more music into the game thats not rap (because flash was being a prick and wouldnt let me import any other fitting song).

Thanks,

~JC