Bezman's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Garbage (version 3.1)]

so many guises

++ Interesting scenario.

+++ Great windows-style presentation.

++ Juggle option was a fun game in its own right.

++ 'kill' was also fun for a few goes. Managed to get over 300.

---- Tired game mechanics.

-- It annoyed me when 2 or 3 items 'landed' right at the same time, meaning we had to use the height of our bin.

--- Limited.

==
Maybe if there were alternate movement patterns, or something, this might be really worth playing. As it is, it's just another skin for a game available in so many guises.

It is an ingenious skin though. Gotta love that mute button.

[all around tutorial]

ching, quality of info

+++ Large number of subjects.

-- Lot of spelling mistakes.

-- Sexist reviews not allowed? I'm sure that's not a rule...

--- For code, I think you really should EXPLAIN it - not just hand it out.

--- Your link code opens stuff in the flash window. set target='blank' for it to open a new one, as you'd generally want.

-- The gradients are terribly explained. If I didn't already know that stuff, I don't think I'd be any wiser after this tutorial.

--- Music got annoying after a while.

--- Custom cursor messed up at times - sometimes disappearing.

- Sometimes there was no 'back' button or it didn't work.

==
I think you just need to work on explaining things better and not rush into doing so much. When teaching, quality of information is paramount. Specially when so much material already exists.

yodd responds:

I suck at teaching, and I was a noob when making this, I am quite sad looking at my flash on NG, especially this.

[cursor gallerie 1]

all of these

+++ Some great effects. Specially: On An Angle, Halo or Hollow, Pwhurplete, 2-D 3-D?

? Particle smoke - taller. As it is, we see the top when we pull it down and that looks like a mistake.

-- No 'music off' button.

- Algerian bucks was kinda boring.

- some seemed to be too similar to previous ones. Like 'death to daddy long legs'.

??? A selection menu nav-bar, maybe at the bottom?
Having little icons of the effects would maybe be classy.

==
Some effects were better than others, but as we can just skip through the ones we don't love, it's no biggie.

Enjoyed playing with all of these for quite a while. Kept me entranced, working out each mc. I'd like to make one of these things myself sometime.

yodd responds:

Always happy to get a review from you ;)

I agree, features missing, and such, but meh made wuickly and bored.

Thanks for the review!

[Monster munchies]

find the choices

++ Great splash screen.

++ Good instructions.

+++ Some tactics required.

!!!- Why have music starting straight away?

-- The tactics are fairly simple - after a couple of games, it should always be obvious what the optimum move is.

--- Due to random selections, we can sometimes do nothing to stop an enemy for a while, if they keep getting pumpkins (for example) whilst we get sludge.

- scoring never explained.

-- Having to keep pumping the space bar when I'd decided my move irritated me.

==
Played easy, easy, hard, medium, winning all but my first game.

At first I thought we needed to deal with each row seperately, so that confused. Maybe explain that?

I'd like to see this idea - of having RPS synonyms progress through a row of others - expanded and further experimented with.

Maybe have an endless mode where just getting creatures to the end gives points? or maybe some sort of puzzle mode with limited 'pieces' to clear a bunch of rows that are all already advancing, ultra-slowly?

Maybe you give us pieces that are connected - e.g. sludge, with a bat below. We place this in 2 fields simultaneously. Or maybe we could rotate them too?

Or maybe - limited number of pieces, no rotation, but they're all already on the board to see and we drag them onto the play area in the position/order we think is right.

Multiple levels.

That would be a game I'd love to see made!

Maybe with an endless mode involving pieces appearing in the stock every 5s, we place them whenever, we need to get as many of ours as we can to the end, survive as long as we can, without x getting over to our side?

But yeah, as it is, it's fun but way too limited. Just as we learn the rules, we find the choices we make practically made for us.

[Halloween Reprisal]

one of 4

++ I like the stylised lines of blood.

++ Varied kills.

+++ Lovely font. What is it? Looks very Tim Burton-esque with the crazy curled serifs.

- In 'how to play', we should be able to move forward screens if we want.

------ Exceedingly repetitive.

==
You could have maybe allowed us to just walk past the children? I felt bad for hurting them mercilessly.

The 'game' basically just involves walking to identical targets, wherupon we activate one of 4 'kill animations'. No risk of loss. No tactics. Just activating the same animations over and over and over...

I was quite relieved when it was over.

Really, to even qualify as a real game, this needed a rethink.

Rammer responds:

): a 3? it might be repetitive, but i don't think this deserves a 3.

i do understand where you're getting at, and me and Blaze did have better plans for this, but we ran out of time and had to take out certain features that would have given this any challenge.

also, if you had read the "how to play" section a little better, you'd know there were 7 "kill animations", which probably would have made this slightly less repetitive for you. 'up + z', 'up + x', and 'z' when the kids are walking away from you.

[Make A Halloween Monster]

the point of these

++ Some nicely drawn pieces. (mainly the 'whole' monsters)

+++ Cool rotate/size functions.

++ Appealing bg

- size functions change position. Sort your centre-points.

---- Most of these objects can't really be put together. Just the green stuff, hat, pumpkin and claws. So not much scope for fitting on, say, alternate torsos or whatever. There's no point in having the full-body folk.

==
You seem to have missed the point of these things. Don't just put in stuff for us to drag, drop etc. Make it so the objects fit together in a large variety of ways, allowing us some creativity.

As it stands, this just doesn't seem worth 'playing' at all.

[Unusual Side Scroller]

enough to remember

Played with 100 health. Died at L2 mid-level boss 3-4 times.

Restarted with 200 health and completed.

+++ Great style for cutscenes. You look ugly, but kinda cute and funny! Ugly in a stylish way!

+++ Imaginative boss creatures. My favourite is the 2nd one (baby-making worm).

--- Final boss was a let-down - slightly unimaginative design.

-- 3rd boss seemed disproportionately hard compared to other 3. Jumping dolphins have little warning and if there's a pattern to the dolphins, it's a complex one.

!!- When we click on a number of energy units, the meter will switch between that and another number.

++ Buses give form good extra game mechanic.

+++ Photo-collage lends a fresh look to it all.

+++ Great soundbytes. Nice nods to classic gaming.

==
2nd time I'd played, though somehow, I'd forgotten the specifics.

Certainly memorable enough to remember it from the first screen!

[SwapPop]

kept making chains

++++ Great game mechanice - exactly like Tetris Attack/Panel de Pon!

+++ cute characters. Nice animations.

++ cute, clean presentation.

- Why bitmap-based graphics?

-- text too small.

-- unoriginal

--- limited.

---- Too few blocks/too slow in rising. Not hard enough. Should get harder faster.

==
Played for a while as first character, got a few combos, kept making chains until got bored, tried others... quickly bored.

If you're gonna copy a game, make sure you see into its soul and try and emulate that too. This is but a pale imitation - not fun in your version.

["Newgrounds Tutorial"]

many other places

Not much to say. When I started this up, I was kinda curious to see how it panned out.

++++ Great loading bar. Did you do that yourself? Is it with a 100-clip mc and a gotoAndPlay(percentageLoaded)code? I just love the masks/gradient combo. Though on the left, there seems to be a tiny glitch with the rectangular edge.

+++ Love that intro for 'That's Life'.

-- Was annoyed when it suddenly stopped.

+++ Great bg.

---- Intro was way too slow.

-- Why not have all the icons for the whistle/blam/protect/levels?

--- Messed up grammar in 'levels', paragraph 1, sentence 3.

------ Incorrect info: Batting average is your top 3 submissions/3. Not all.

---- For 'Batting Average', you could have had a much more relevant pic. Maybe a screenshot and an arrow pointing to the BA?

--- No music credits outside your comments. Why none in-game or via the submission form?

++ I do like the style and layout generally. The dashed lines goes well with the font. Is the in-'game' font courier? You've used it nicely. Looks good spaced out like that, with room to breathe.

==
Personally, I'm not too sure whether a tutorial like this is too useful. I suppose it's always good to have more info, but it's just that there's already so many other places folk can turn to for help. I don't foresee a lot of newbies seeing this.

I was thinking - what might be kinda cool would be if you started a collab with all your WI/Ht buddies and made a NG Glossary/Dictionary. Like a list of all the words: Flash, Blam, Protect, Experience, Voting Power, MP3, Tom Fulp... and for each one you could have a short description, maybe a link to a longer description/any related words/maybe a pic.

And maybe you could have links to relevant parts of the site or the exp calculator or whatever?

A bigger undertaking, but in the end, maybe that'd be a great resource for all?

Although that may be better done as a Wiki.

Anyway, it's something to think about mebbe.

Stay funky,
- Bez

I had an idea - how about a sorta

Frenzy responds:

Wow, great greview, first of all! I enjoyed reading that!

About the pictures, it was hard to find a relevant picture for battign average... maybe a baseball bat, now that I think about it!

About your idea, that doesn't sound to bad, although it sounds like A LOT of work, it might be kind of fun. :)

Thanks!

~Z~

[redot2]

have had

Played 3-4 times. Completed it in the end!

This is what it says:

====================
====================
nice!

you can get a prize for finishing the game by sending the password "<censored>" to my e-mail:

sps26@<censored>.com
====================
====================

I e-mailed you from my gmail account. Can I get a picture of an elephant? Or is there something specific you had in mind?

++++ Groovy music.

+++ Liked the tree in the 'walk in a park' level. You should have made it stand out more though!

+++ I like how the game doesn't really expect us to finish in a way. We get points and a score after losing.

++ Whilst reading instructions, I right-clicked straight away to see what would happen. Made me grin.

--- I didn't like the 'use your head' level. After playing that, I decided, I'd just cheat through other levels where I can. In case you're wondering, there are 2 methods I know of. I'll explain if you ask.
Seriously, I've been trying to tell people when they ask on the Flash forum - like John FN says, all you need to do is interpolate from the previous to the current mouse position! That'll stop all cheating automatically! I did it for my unreleased current Skears 2 project and 5 interpolations seems to work well.

-- Not too keen on the 'boxed in' level.

-- no highscores? At least tell us our own.

+++Good custom pointer.

==
Had fun here. Made me smile. In a way, I had fun 'beating the system'. Although I'd probably have had more fun had the levels been slightly easier, with maybe infinite lives, but no possible cheating. You could have had 2 modes maybe - one with lives, one without.

Anyway, some good parts and I look forward to seeing your future stuff.

Stay funky,
- Bez