Bezman's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[alien invasion!]

drops when an enemy gets too close

+++ Fairly well drawn, clean, graphics.

+++ Cool tune.

---- Though the tune takes up more filesize than appropriate for a 'game' like this.

--- No risk of a loss.

--- No variation in the animations.

==
Shot one. Let the next two come at me until I was confident I wouldn't die. Shot maybe 12. Closed.

It's really not much of a game as the only thing 'success' indicates is how long we waste. No skill, tactics, good choices, reactions, hand-eye co-ordination or anything necessary.

I personally don't find shooting stuff in games stress-relieving.

I think this could actually make for a decent game if you just added in some energy that drops when an enemy gets too close, playtested and tweaked a few numbers.

king-ben responds:

errrrrrmmmmmmmmm............. .......'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE MOVIE' 'LINERIDER THE

[Which Clock are You?]

entertained, what

+++ Cool tune. Kept me amused.

++ Questions were interesting in creating a point of view on the clocks.

++ Fairly good ending.

--- The background/text colour/style combo kinda hurt my eyes. I'm not sure, but I think you need more tonal contrast. Like have the bg be a much darker red and the text almost white, or viceversa.

-- I, too found the buttons a bit fiddly. Enlarge the hitboxes!
Also, keep them in the same place.

- 'strawberries' is misspelt. Don't have apostrophes when using plurals. 'Pineapple' should be made plural.

==
I wouldn't have known your secret had you not written it in the comments! (I made a point of reading it after.) I suppose it just worked out that I was clicking mostly straw/orange and the end coincided with that. Otherwise, I'd have wondered...

Kept me entertained, what with the crazy music and everything.

Frenzy responds:

Thanks!

~ Z

Great review, and that secret is basically because this was a submission that was kind of just an idea that popped into my head; and I wanted to make it for Clock Day!

Thanks again for the great review!

~ Z

[Start Hack Interactive]

risk all my work

++++ Informative.

+++ Following the commands in the 'virtual environment' made me feel more confident that if I dl the program, I could maybe do the hack.

- Not getting us to type the name seems needlessly cheap, when everything else is really flawless.

!!!--- When you convert 'start' into an input box, you keep the quotes as part of the input string. But when you show it on the start menu, you fail to strip the quotes.

==
Great tutorial! This is pretty much how it should be done!

I'm not gonna try it though. I'd rather not risk all my work and stuff and spend 20-30mins dling and following instructions, just for the sake of a (n addmittedly groovy) mod.

jpoke89 responds:

I will take your requests into consideration, I understand where your coming from. Check back later to see if there are updates. :-D Thanks for the review! Oh, and thats the point of the tutorial, to try it before you actually compromise your system, to see if your comfortable doing it or not.

[Santa's Rubix]

RNG, with the 2 tricky bastards

+++ Great main-game tune.

+++ Upbeat theme, of present-making.

++ Spangly stars

+ Fairly impressive transition animation.

+ Drawing and dragging provides some variation...

---------- RNG plays way too big a role in determining difficulty. Most games take 4-9s to complete (generally 5-7). Green dude and thing we need to buff take around 25s though. So success is mainly caused by the RNG not picking those games.
The difference between having to drag 2 pieces (mouse), drag 7 pieces or do the buffing/green man guantlet is too much.
Either have them all uniform difficulty, or ensure they come up an equal amount.
Also, when draggable pieces pop up, they sometimes come into existence already in place.

---- When drawing the limbs for the green figure, doing it or not seemed overly hit and miss.

---- Buffing game is too hard to work out. Everything else is fairly uniform, only requiring dragging or 'drawing'. In this game, I knew I must have to use the rubber-majigie somehow, and it was only after a while of waving it about, to see what it reacted with, that I noticed the slight change in brightness.
What's that thing meant to be, anyway?

--- The way the games are presented in the practice session, I thought there'd be 27. Disappointed to see so few.

-- The custom cursor seems a tiny bit silly when most the games centre around dragging.

!!!!!--- After playing a game, if we try to replay, it just takes us to the end screen, where we may resubmit our score (hence my two identical 300-something scores). So, if I was so inclined, could have submitted the same score 11 times, just for the sake of it.
Surprised no-one mentioned this and it wasn't spotted before submission. Has no-one else tried to replay it?

==
Played 3 times, got a score of 300-ish. Played a few times, quitting if I got the 2 difficult pieces too often. Eventually got 500-something, with the tricky bastards only appearing twice (once as I was finishing).

How many games are there? I saw 8. Mouse, Red soldier, train, jack-in-box, gameboy, pop-gun, green guy with hard-to-draw limbs, thing we buff.

It's good to see the microgame format changed around, with a focus on thematic consistency and the switcharound of no actual time limits (replaced by an overall one).

I did enjoy working out the gamerules after the buffing thing, but the difficulty being so affected by the RNG, with the 2 tricky bastards, just seems game-breaking to me.

Jindo responds:

Heh, awesome review :P.

The green dude was supposedly an elf, but yet it kinda messed up.

The arms and legs are really about which order you go (star closest to body first or star furthest from body first?), it's tricky, but you have to get both stars i the right order with no more of a delay than half a second (I didn't program to do that at all, that's pretty much how it turned out :P).

As for the buffer thingy, I was confused as to what you meant, until you referred to the pink thing (which I admit was way to basic for anyone to figure out), was a sponge and the end product was a sleigh (sp?).

There were no bugs on the file I finished, but I uploaded the wrong one and when I went back and uploaded the right one, some freak bugs that weren't there before start happening >_<.

Thanks for the incredible review >_<!

[LvBomb's PTP&3D tutorial]

elsewhere on the internet

+++ You pick good subjects to teach. Perspective isn't really shown in any tuts on NG.

--- I think your tutorial doesn't really teach the concepts well enough. Any monkey can follow instructions to copy a simply picture, but we want to learn how to use those principles for our own ends!

---- Dodgy bottom lines in 2-point perspective end and wonky-looking example of 'what you can do' make me think that maybe you don't know the subject well enough to teach it.

--- Zooming in revealed that your 3d text uses quite a few instances at the lighter shade - whereas your text suggested we should use one for the same effect.

+ Some fairly pleasant tune.

==
I don't think you should teach stuff unless you're able to fully implement and explain the principles properly.

Better tutorials exist elsewhere on the internet, created by accomplished artists.

++ Some nice music.

GlueyMcGee responds:

This tut isn't for advanced people, more fore noobs, and at the "what you can do" example at the bottom it's written"and much more"
Your not supposed to some in.

Thanks anyways!

[Skirmish - Game]

progression, may

++++ Controls work fairly well. I like the double-jump.

--- Sword-play seemed a little too much like random wanton clicking.

? Maybe requiring a bit more minimum power to do any real damage would make it a bit more strategic?

--- Not enough stats given in-game. I'd like to know at least the total kills. Also, maybe our progress. Also, time played?
I'd really like to know how much ammo I have for things without having to switch. And know if the cannon has any ammo.

?? Maybe a bit red screen-filling flash for when we're hit?

--- Music got repetitive. No 'off' button I could find.

+++ Graphics fairly cute. I like the different designs.

==
I played and got a rank of 'general', I think. Got 'fragile bodies/super SMG' bonuses. Started again, but after 30s decided I shouldn't bother.

It got boring the first time.

More variation, maybe faster progression, may help.

Sceptz responds:

Your total kills and in-game time are displayed when you die.
I did add a notice when you get hit but I guess it was too small, and use 'N' to disable in-game music.

[Impossible Puzzle]

bit of fun

Completed when timer reached 22s. But in wrong place - didn't see rectangle until 2nd play-through. One 2nd play-through, I got the congrats screen before all pieces were down. I'd been moving and replacing if that helps you locate th bug. On 3rd, it took all pieces to complete the game. Played a 4th time and it never went to the win screen, even after all pieces were fitted.

++ Pleasing wood texture.

+ Mildly interesting pic

--- timer over timer looks messy.

- Kinda unoriginal picture. Maybe draw or paint a pic yourself?

--- sound got annoying.

??? Have pieces snap in place?

!!!- 'completion' bug (see top)

==
Not the worst jigsaw on NG, but could be improved severerly.

A tiny bit of fun (replayed mainly to try and work out the bug, that I couldn't).

ToLet responds:

Sorry i lost the fla.

[Fantasy Female 8]

particularly

+++ Splitting up the colour/shape editors is a great idea!

+++ Not many dress-ups for folk in armour.

--- without shading, the clothes look very flat.

--- kinda rough lines.

-- When wearing full body armour, weapons go behind leg armour.

-- I found the click to go to #1 annoying.

?? Make numbers wraparound. (If we're on the max version of something and press forward, goto #1 and vice versa)

??? Allow us to change companion colour.

!! hair #8 is the same as hair #13.

!!! Edit the start. change it to say your NG name and permit use on Newgrounds. Looks dodgy atm.

==
Not a bad dress-up. Codes and all the options do give it a lot of potential. Still looking rough around the edges though and nothing I generated looked particularly appealing.

The art's ok, but when that's all we have, it should be slicker yet.

Syrsly responds:

I'm working on a new dress-up with better drawings. The next one will have more interaction with your created character, so you create the character and he or she talks to you.

[Viral Vendetta]

felt in danger

Played until level 10, 3130pts.

++ intuitive game mechanic.

--- Although in the context of the scenario, I don't think it makes much sense.

-- No explanation for what the power-ups will do. Saw no change in speed after selecting that. Didn't understand what the 3rd option did. Didn't understand the difference between option 4 and 1.

??? on(rollOver){displayTooltips() ?}

--- No pause function. Would let us head off, or just take time to spawn some stuff.

--- Intro too slow.

------ Gameplay lacks variety.

- the thing we control doesn't look organic.

- I assume we would die when green things are all gone. Never clearly stated though.

==
Fairly competent in coding, but it all felt so slow to increase in difficulty. I never felt in danger and just wondered when the game would start getting interesting.

Asvegren responds:

One click on speed won't make a difference, several upgrades are needed. Macrophage makes the organism you control ingest phagocytes quicker. The Megakaryocytes are larger versions of the microbes and produce more RNA.

The thing about your review that bothers me the most is that you claim that there is no pause function. There is :( It says in the bottom right corner, "Press P to pause".

[Bad-Man-Inc Quiz!]

right on first

Got to final question, lost, beat on attempt #3.

+++ Nice to have quizzes that don't continually send us to the back.

++++ Great tunes. Author seems deserving of a quiz.

---- Really obscure.

!!!-- In the last question, nothing is playing.

!!-- It'd let us hear more of his stuff if when we got a question wrong, the tune just carried on rather than restarting.

??? Maybe keep score somehow? Maybe of how many wrong answers we've given? Give a rank at end.

??? Maybe engineer the quiz somehow to ask more than one question about each tune, so we listen to them for longer?

==
I think I got very few of them right on first attempt. Never listened to this dude before, but will check him out sometime for sure.

Good job on introducing him to folk!

Billy-Bean responds:

Good job on making it in three tries. I was thinking about making it go back to the back each time, but I decided to fuck that idea and give people a chance, and only do it for the last one. I am glad you like Bad-Man-Incorporated, and hopefully this quiz will hope him get more of the credit he deserves. I'm going to fix that problem don't worry I just can't now 'cause I'm not at home! In the second one I'll use those ideas, don't worry. I take all reviews into careful consideration. :-) As soon as I can figure out how to work a tallying system I will, I'm just not that talented yet! :-( I'm SOO glad you're going to check his music out!! That's why I made the quiz! To help him get the credit he deserves.
Thanks a bunch for the honest review. :-)

~Billy-Bean