WarpZone's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[ABunchofNESsedUpCrap 2]

Wait for it...

I thought the jokes were a little thin, especially near the beginning, but the Luigi Shoryuken Overkill made it all worthwhile. :D Definitely make moar!

The Easter Eggs were hilarious, but... how can I put this? The difficulty on them is broken. StrongBad only makes you wait like 20 seconds to see an easter egg, you know? They were both awesome scenes, though. I just wish they were a little more accessible.

Believe it or not, I've actually heard of Metal Storm! When I was a goddamned little boy, like twelve or some shit, I had a subscription to Nintendo Power magazine. I used to get all excited when the new issue would arrive. I'd spend a couple days digesting every article and dream of all the cool games I knew my parents couldn't afford to get me. Anywho, one month the cover was Metal Storm.

It wasn't until years later I actually got to play it on an emulator. So they do those on a website now, huh? Interesting.

Anyway, good flash. Keep 'em coming. :) It's nice to see the younger generation taking an interest in all the oldschool shit.

Gunstar-X responds:

Sorry. I'll shorten the wait time. And yeah, I was brought up with the SNES, but I still love the NES! Even though I have to emulate it. :(
But I do plan to get me an NES one day!

[Alucard vs Richter: SOTN - Rhapsody of Ruin]

Ahh, fresh, locally-grown nostalgia...

In general, I like sprite movies more the less they break with the established mechanics of the original game. So the swordplay and whip-play was perfect, grabbing Richter was great, throwing the shield, less-so. Though, I suppose SOTN makes liberal use of rotation so it's not *too* jarring. Overall I was impressed with some of the special effects here. You really nailed the blood, holy water, and statue break-out, I felt like.

In terms of scripting and staging, it was a great success. You used the limited (and somewhat questionable) sound bytes from the original game to fairly decent effect. In any case, it felt slightly less forced than it sounds when you're playing the game. It's those pauses for player input, I think. They really do break the flow.

I thought the choreography was pretty good, actually, the one exception being Richter's knife attack when it hits Alucard. That and I might have made him crouch while riding the chunk of masonry down into the pit below, because then you could have made his cape pillow in the wind. :)

But yeah, most of the choreography actually made me think this is the way the characters from the game would fight. I liked the close-up combat the best, because without any cheap tricks like rotating the characters unnaturally, you managed to make it look like a real close-up rapid-fire kung-fu fest.

Granted, it wasn't the single most awesome sprite combat sequence I've ever seen on Newgrounds, no, but it did manage to avoid a lot of the really stupid cheap hacks (vector blood, constant character rotation for no reason, general fake-ness,) that ruin 90% of sprite movies for me.

So yeah. Good effort, good production values, reasonably like the game to fulfill nostalgia purposes without breaking the fourth wall too often, yet decently more involved and integrated than actual video game footage. Overall, nice work, and if we are indeed at the forefront of another sprite movement, I look forward to seeing more works at least this good.

RopeDrink responds:

Now THATS a well constructed review, one I really appreciate - Thank you very much for the depth and points - Really glad you liked it :)

[War of Da suitcases]

Way better than it has any right to be.

For some reason I found this hilarious. Probably just as a byproduct of the automatic timing. Some frames, it was a bit of a strain to read the text that quickly, but hey, it worked for Yahtzee.

Even though I have no idea who these characters are and there's not much we (the audience) could learn about them in the space of a few seconds, the drawings allowed a bit of personality to shine through, and there's a certain "party of four" element introduced by giving each of the characters equal screen time and probably reenforced by the big band music playing in the background.

Hastily-scribbled stick figures usually won't get you much here on Newgrounds, but for some reason, I'm seeing quite a few good ones today. Hmm. Budding artistic movement? Or reviewer just in a good mood? YOU DECIDE!

One suggestion, don't try to animate things like the missiles impacting one by one. At one frame per second, it'll never look like real animation. Just treat it like a comic book, showing one panel of the shot firing and one panel from a completely different angle of the shot hitting. If you absolutely *must* show a sequence of several frames, make sure the cloud of smoke from the initial explosion looks much different from the pillar of smoke rising from the dead tank.

Keep up the good work. I'm looking forward to the next one. :)

Mrpink135 responds:

DUDE your invited to my birthday party and
the way these look the way they do is cause they're based on comics me and my bud draw thats why it's not fluent animation and more slideshow esque.....yaaaaaaaa thanks for the review dude
you should check out my other one Fun Wit Suitcases but has the same problem as this one

[Twatlight]

Short but funny. Totally worth the loading time.

Don't let the fact that it's short fool ya. This is a solid, enjoyable 60 seconds of irreverent web-humor.

The art is done in a reasonably clean and consistent hand-drawn style that achieves decent frame-by-frame, but stops well short of the roughness of Awesome territory. I also loved the background, which looks like it must have had a lot of work put into it.

The voice actors are good at what they do, keeping the delivery very natural and casual. The jokes are decent. There's not many of them (how many one-liners can you expect them to pack into 60 seconds, anyway?) but the timing is impeccable, and that's 90% of humor anyway.

Best of all, there's no stupid bullshit here. No 5 minute intro to a 60 seconds toon. No third-party music bloating the file size just because the author had the ability to include it. Just a quick download, a funny short, and a good parody.

Just2Pale? Keep up the good work. :)

[Boogley Bus Stop]

It's less creepy if you forget it's on Newgrounds.

Normally I'm all about story, especially on Newgrounds, but I'll settle for characterization as long as the execution's good. Almost anything FBF is good, as long as it's not dots and lines bouncing around, splashes, and explosions. Thankfully, this cartoon has actual cartoon in it.

More than anything it reminds me of those very early Mickey Mouse cartoons, where walking and smiling were enough because animation itself was an amazing new innovation. You'd think that would make it too derivative to be relevant, but we seriously see so little of this oldschool stuff on NG, and it takes so much more work than what we normally see on NG, that everything old is new again. This toon gains relevance simply by rediscovering and reinventing an archaic form.

To those who don't get it: it ain't rocket science. There's a pissed-off guy and a happy guy. The happy guy wants to cheer the pissed-off guy up. The pissed-off guy isn't having any of it, on account of bein' pissed off. Happy guy pranks pissed-off guy. Pissed-off takes the bait, then gets hurt reacting to the prank. Happy guy goes "ohshitohshitohshit" and bugs out. Pissed-off guy recovers from his spill, realizes he got pranked, and laughs it off. He turns pink because now he's happy, too. Happy guy realizes he not only accomplished his mission of cheering pissed-off-guy up, but also pissed-off-guy will not kick his ass for the prank that got him hurt. "Whew."

Yeah, I was rubbed the wrong way at first just like everybody else. I thought he was gonna be ghey, or the blue guy was gonna murder him in a shower of blood, or it was just crazy random abstract weirdness and the suitcase was gonna start eating people, then turn into a bird, then the bird would splash against the floor, rendering everything we'd seen up till that point completely irrelevant. That's the cynicism of the modern internet talking.

What really makes this film uplifting is, when it's over, -and I mean *only* when it's over- you realize that there wasn't anything dark or pithy about it after all, it's just the story of a dude trying to cheer up a stranger. It's an isle of child-like innocence in a sea of dick jokes.

That's my interpretation of it, anyway. That's the nice thing about mood pieces, everyone can interpret them however they like. Don't get it? Erase your assumptions and expectations and watch it again. Try to look at it from an outsider's point of view. Even just read other peoples' interpretations and try them on to see if they work for you. But never take anyone's word for it, what a piece means, not even the original artist. Art *always* has something hidden to teach us.

Okay so you get some pork chops from the store. These are real thick pork chops that have been cut most of the way through the middle, like little raw pork sandwiches. You need a big, deep skillet with a glass lid that locks in most of the steam. Heat the skillet up to high, throw a little butter in the pan, and put the pork chops in (still folded like little sandwiches,) and sizzle them on both sides for 1-2 minutes. Just enough to get the outside golden-brown. Put these on a plate when they're done and set aside. DON'T eat 'em yet, raw pork is BAD for you!

Now you make a cup of chicken stock from bullion in one pot and some stove top stuffing in another. (Chicken stock from the store works, too.) Stuff each of the butterflied pork chops with stuffing, like little inside-out sandwiches. Stick a toothpick through all the way through each sandwich to hold it together while cooking.

Now you put the leftover stuffing in the skillet, put the stuffed porkchops on top of that, and pour the chicken broth over the whole thing. (Hope your skillet is big enough to hold all this shit.) Now put the lid on, and steam the porkchops for like an hour on medium-low heat. Steaming not only cooks the insides of the pork chops, but it softens up all that golden-brown char so you get the taste but not the toughness. Cut through the pork to make *absolutely sure* it's cooked all the way through. Serve.

TheBoogley responds:

Dear god! I love your reviews... Makes it all worth while.
But I love you recepes even more... nom nom nom! :U

[School 13 - Street Magic]

Heh. Awesome. XD

I loved this one. The animation was good, but the layout was awesome, especially the use of dramatic camera angles. It reminded me of anime a lot, too. I'm not sure why. Probably because I don't understand Japanese or Russian when I hear it, and you used a lot of epic imagery. Good shit. :D Make moar!

[Obama Vs. Mccain]

It's super-effective!

Heh. That was friggin' awesome. Kinda reminds me of that old Final Fantasy 6 parody where everyone was an 8-bit system fighting against the next-gen systems.

Anyway, I liked the attacks and their names. Even though this wasn't quite the order in which the blows were exchanged IRL, you got the right idea.

Keep up the good work. :)

[Scarlet Veronica Animated]

Blink and you'll miss it...

Not bad. :D I gotta give you credit for compressing the entire premise into eight seconds. Can't blame you for foregoing the highlights and shadows, either. The only complaint I had was "why did it have to be xombies?" I'm sorry, I meant to say zombies.

Heckling aside, I wish I could draw this good with any consistency. What's your process? Do you build the characters directly in Flash? Or do you have a whole art asset pipeline?

[The Lonely Castle Crasher]

Way too much buildup, not enough punchline.

Telling a story is always worth extra points, but in this case there is no story. Just a gay joke with a narrator tacked on. Animation-wise, I'd say it's about on par with Homestar Runner. Interpret that how you like. There's nothing really bad about it, the story just lacks substance. I'm gonna have to dig through Lavagasm's flashes now and see what else he's capable of, but this shows promise.

Arms would be nice.

LAVAGASM responds:

Meh don't bother, they all suck lol. This is about the best I've got. Arms were originally intended (floating hands), but blue's arms were glitching and I couldn't figure it out. I found it weird to have everybody but blue with hands, so I took out everybody's hand but green (I felt it was vital to the story, whatever that may be.) Flash is crazy sometimes. Thanks for the review!