Bezman's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Zwill v1.2 (game)]

Played an earlier version ageeeeees ago...

I remember playing this years ago.

- The fact that enemies respawn is slightly annoying.

- Some enemies are poorly placed, starting right at the edge of the screen. When combined with the above point, this means you can be hit by enemies before you have a chance to see them. (i.e. if you return to the first screen from the right)

- The level design is really horrible. You require us to regularly back-track through parts we've been through before for starters.

- The graphics are OK. Could be a lot better though.

- The character design is horrible.

- Sound is atrocious, getting really irritating.

Charging money for 26 of these levels is a fucking joke. You'd really have to brush up your presentation, and throw in a lot more ideas and better design.

[Downhill Skiing]

Not really enough 'feedback'

It seemed a nicely made game and though you've progressed far beyond this yourself, I'm still probably below this level in coding anyway.

I did think the game needed more instant feedback of how we were doing. Maybe some noise, or a message popping up when we passed a gate correctly, with another noise or message when we missed one. Or maybe an on-screen tally of the gates passed.

I wasn't really too keen on the way the level repeated itself.

It wasn't anything great by today's standards but still... nicely done.

[Catch A Crab 2]

Flawed, but fun for the most part.

If you go to sleep with full energy, you may never wake up. Seems that shouldn't be. Maybe say you can't get to sleep or something.

Also, I spotted a spelling mistake in there, and evening seems to be always called morning.

It would be nice if the crab races started easier, maybe getting harder after each so we could win one? But I suppose that's really subjective...

Anyway, I do like the general gist of the game.

It's kept pretty simple with no tedius wandering around maps (an aspect of Frank's Adventure I hated). The game is kept fairly simple, but choices are clearly presented and enough scope for strategy-forming.

The core gameplay is fairly enjoyable. I could complain that from the graphical representation it looks as if we should catch crabs we don't (those that are simply in the path of the net) but it's still fairly intuitive.

Graphics are pleasing, bold and the colour change and music changes are well handled.

The time limit's well judged. Short enough for the game to be replayed and not eat up half an hour, long enough for strategies to become a possibility.

I was surprised the first time I found there were no more crabs in a lake and I always enjoyed the clown's game.

Overall, rather good fun with high production values.

I'd have preferred it if there was more onus on variety and less on getting a high score, but that's again purely personal.

[Acrid war 2]

Not bad. Nothing new.

Some quick suggestions/criticisms:

- I was surprised to find someone who could make an energy bar go down and make a 'dead' thing appear couldn't make the game go back to the last checkpoint itself.

- the stage shouldn't end when there are still enemies on-screen.

- The black terrorists moved too fast. Remember that there's a bit of 'lag' even with the mouse click detection itself in Flash and brains take a bit of time to react. It seemed more down to luck than anything, so harsh were those time 'windows'

- a couple of spelling mistakes. Pistol, not 'pistle'.

Stuff I liked:

- the joke at the end 'sorry about that'

- the music for the clown level

- the effort.

Good luck with future stuff. Keep improving.

Stay funky,
Bez

[Quantum Foam]

What is this world coming to?

Gavin Shapiro's 'Squares 2' sits at 3.66 and never won any award.

This gets daily 2nd and sits at 3.79 when it's a blatant copy of all the ideas used in that game.

Even the bonuses/penalties are exactly the same!

Just the player now has 9 lives and the square has been switched for the cat, operated with keyboard controls.

Personally, I don't think the keyboard control suits the game as well and 9 lives are far too many for a game of this sort. The frantic 1-life games of Squares 2 have much more onus on a decent performance and feel far more 'pure' an arcade experience.

The cat's nice looking, I suppose.

But I think it's terrible copying ideas like that and pifering them for commercial products.

[The Bill Cosby Fun Game]

Rather twisted

At first I thought there was no way to win, thanks to getting 2s and 3s a few times with the girl, thinking it was totally random and just hitting everyone.

Then, I read a few reviews, did it again focusing on the girl and beat it.

Beyond the twisted premise and slightly disturbing game mechanics, there's little to see.

I mean, it's amusing for the first couple of times you hit someone after luring them with pudding, but after that it was just me completing it in order to be able to rate it fairly.

Still, the animutation is fairly decent and the concept is a crazy hypothetical situation.

Next time though, either make the game shorter, with no pretences of an ending or whater, or actually try to make it varied.

It seems to pretend to be more of a game than it is I think.

[Metal Freaks Xtreme]

Not as good with guitars.

Your game is awesome with brilliant presentation, mechanics and nice general game flow.

However, I just feel it's not as satisfying hitting buttons with a guitar as it is to keyboard-based music.

You've got a good number of tunes here though and there's plenty to do and see. The graphics are fairly nice. Well, the buttons and such and the pictures after each song.

I like the way stuff 'buttons' and stuff move too.

Also, I like the way you have the volume decrease.

Really slick, but I just don't like the basic concept.

[Online Balloon Park]

Unoriginal idea, poor presentation.

The idea is a rip-off of Rocketmania (another online/downloadable shareware game). That had colourful graphics, explosions and instant and understandable rewards for doing combos.

This only seems to have one game mode and even for an online version, the presentation could be a lot better.

The basic idea is sound, and it's better than I could program, but considering what it claims to be (a professional-level game worthy of our money) it just strikes me as overly audacious.

Get Rocketmania if you like this.

[Jungle Master]

Some nice level design.

I liked the way the 4 levels were constructed. They were fun to play and fairly simple, with good progression of difficulty.

The first level was maybe a bit too hard though, with the top turtles on such a thin ledge, and players naturally impatient breeds...

I found the boss incredibly hard, so in the end I beat it using what is probably an 'alternative' method. I let a load of turtles appear, so I could kill them all in one go, thus not giving him time to hit me.

Emergent gameplay!

The title screen music did get slightly irritating when losing, but pretty much everything about this game is excellent apart from its length.

Considering the fact that you point out the dude had only seen turtles and refer to other dangers, I was expecting more than just the birds.

Seriously, you should make another, longer, platform game as I enjoyed this one so much and so did many others.

I played through it a 2nd time (with the 1st and last levels proving most troublesome) and enjoyed it still.

The boss could maybe be a bit easier though...

[Hypothetical Death]

Gets dull soon.

A big problem with this game as I see it is that it's doomed to have a choppy framerate.

True, the speed of the trekkies does increase (to mad sugar-rush levels) but you've chosen to differentiate the levels largely by increasing the number of pedestrians.

After level 20, I had to turn the quality down and after 24, it started to be choppy again until some were killed off.

By the way, the number of trekkies seemed to jump down around level 5. May be a mistake.

It's an interesting proposition at first, but it stopped being interesting after a couple of levels for me.

When I read the instructions, it sounded as if the police car would result in a mad-cap chase, but the size of the cars compared to the play area means that you'd be lucky to earn 5 seconds of time.

Running over pedestrians whilst getting chased by the cops - that could have more potential for variation and fun.

As it is, it's the same moves each time - work a path through, then clear the few last survivors - and lacks either a fast enough pace for this to not be a problem, or any way of emergent - or at least varied - challenges arising.

It's a nicely made game and a nice idea.

Graphics are excellent and the backstory seemed mildly amusing.

The game just didn't entertain though.