WarpZone's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Toast: Game]

Great engine! Decent game.

Graphics: Sprite graphics with original characters are always cool, and these characters are very nicely done! Unfortunately, some of the transitions like the "get ready" text break the player's suspense of disbelief by mixing pixels freely with vector shapes. It's almost always better to go either all pixel or all vector.

Style: The strongest part of this game was certianly it's original style, theme, and characters. Nice work! Combat works well enough, but the way enemies and the player die could be embellished a little bit if you really want to nail that classic 2D platformer look & feel. Think "fall off the screen when you die."

Sound: The music gets the blood pumping, but it seems to clash a bit with the characters and the world. Sound effects are good. Though you probably ought to replace that one mario sound effect with something more original. There's tons of free sound repositories out there.

Violence: Jump on the brightly colored toasters to, well, break them, I guess. No biggie. Jack Thompson has bigger fish to fail to fry.

Interactivity: A competently executed run n' jump (by Flash's standards, anyway.) The controls could be further improved by not allowing a held-down spacebar to equal bunny-hopping. It would be nice to collide with the sides of a block instead of just the top of it, but I know this is hard to code. If I were you, I'd make it easier to land on a single block by upping the horizontal decelleration if you're on solid ground, and perhaps capping the maximum fall speed so the player has a bit more time to react. (Or by making all the relevant platforms more than one block wide.) Collecting butter is easy and I could not impove upon it. Good work, there. Combat is decent, but could be further refined.

Humor: The cocnept of anthropomorphic toast is kinda goofy, but it would be even better if you'd add some sort of story with dialogue or even voice samples. Flash gives you an amazingly broad range of tools with whiche to tell a story. It's a shame not to use them. If you absolutely must stick to the pixels, at least add a little intro screen where a big evil toaster steals the bagel pricess or whatever. It would enchance the characters, which are already this game's strong suit, if you add a story to them in a way that engages the player.

Overall: You've done an excellent job of programming this game's engine, and a great job designing sprite characters. The control/gameplay could use a little tweaking, but the real missed opprotunity here is one of storytelling. I'm sure this game will score well, and it deserves to! But if you take it a step further, and really refine it, you could have one of the top 10 truly memorable Flash games of all time here, or a damn fine proof-of-concept for a GBA game. As it sits, you just have a competently executed flash platformer. If that's all you set out to accomplish, good job! :) But keep working on it and in another month or so, it could be SO much more!

Hacker12 responds:

Dude I wich I could reply back to you as well as you reviewed my game but. Thanks for the input ^^ and also the mario effect is the only sound I could which would fit the brick smashing effect.

[BattleMage]

A nice, long platformer with kinda dodgy gameplay.

Graphics: Yes, we do recognize rockman's walk when we see it. Backgrounds are nice-looking, everything's animated well, but a lot of the animations reminded me of other game sprites just traced using Flash's drawing tools. Because of this, different game elements each seem illustrated in a different drawing style.

Style: The opening theme and cinema scenes were done well, though a bit simplistic, it tells the story well. The characters don't look like they all came from or belong in the same world together, I suspect because they were all traced from different sprite sheets. Nothing really jumps out as being extremely well-done or original. I think a personal, unique drawing style (I.E. all characters drawn by the Flash artist from scratch,) might have made a lot of difference.

Gameplay: True to the Rockman/Megaman theme, there's lots of persnickety jumping where hitting your head on a ledge will make you start all over again if you don't do it exactly perfect. Enemies move a bit more like Castlevania, appearing far outside your attack range and then gravitating towards the ground where you are.

Unlike Castlevania, though, these bad guys aren't confined to their own limited areas, which means you're constantly surrounded and often have no choice but to take a hit in order to progress. They'll be swarming around on a ledge beneath you where you need to jump, and you have no way to hit them or take them out. If the enemies dropped random health powerups, maybe this wouldn't be an issue, but the way things stand, they only drop money, so every hit you take is permenent.

The boss moves in odd ways and you can't duck or stab upwards, so I was at a loss as to how to beat him. The only way I could ever hurt him was by trading hits when he cross the screen, and of course, I had been softened up by all the enemies underfoot in the first stage, so I died first. Maybe there's a trick to it. I dunno. You only get one life, then you have to start over, so I didn't have the patience to play through it again. That was a nice thing about Rockman. If you got to the boss with half health and then died, you could always call it a practice fight and try it again with FULL health.

Overall: I liked this game, but the gameplay was frustrating in some ways. I absolutely commend the author for actually telling a story! THAT aspect of the game RULED! I look forward to his next release. Hopefully something with more original graphics, and perhaps a more solid visual theme tying everything together. He's taking the gameplay in a good direction, and he's made a more competent action/platformer than I've seen in Flash. The health/lives mechanism kills it, though. A health meter is better than one hit, you're dead, yes, but a health meter with a limited number of lives that lets you continue right at the boss, is even better. That's just my opinion, though. There's a lot to like here, if you're not as easily frustrated as me.

To the author: Keep up the good work, and I hope to see more games of this caliber from you, perhaps with a bit more diversity and polish and a less severe margin of error.

Arclite83 responds:

Thanks for the great review; you make a lot of good points, and you've given me a lot to consider for BM2 in terms of mechanics. I did take shortcuts with the artwork, and while the originals were from different areas I feel the final style was my own (simplistic) interpretation of the sprites. It's hard to make something this bulky wihtout using more complex graphics, and I was seriously hindered to simplicity because of the engine (I already have a fix in mind for this).

All in all, you've made some great points, and I will definitely take some of this and run with it. I'm glad you like the story; I have the jyst of the next one complete, once I fill in the details and iron out all I hope to accomplish with my next engine revision, I should be on my way to making BM2.

[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