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Recent Movie Reviews

2 Movie Reviews

I get it.

That's really beautiful, man. Thank you for making that.

Well done...

The only problem I had with it was that it should have been a game - something like a squad-based Thing-Thing.

Recent Game Reviews

68 Game Reviews

Cool idea, but the implementation of weapon swapping in-battle is just painful to play. The culprit seems to me to be few under-thought misfeatures that may have sounded okay on paper or even tested in isolation of each other:

- Only one key controls the transition from style to style, and it only cycles in its fixed order (yellow->blue->green). This alone, I think, is just an inexplicable handicap that I could have gotten over with some practice, but not if...

- Style automatically cycles if you overheat your current style; this can happen mid-combo, while blocking, really any time unless you cycle every other key or so. Of course, that will never work because...

- Being green is a terrible idea if you were recently blue. The only way the long-range style can avoid damage is to be far away, and her back-step just isn't quick enough to outrun any of the enemies when they are attacking. Thus, you have to gain a lot of distance with yellow's E evade before you double-tap space to switch to green. This is a maneuver fraught with complications for the above two reasons. If you have been using your yellow style for anything else, you might not have enough left to get to the other side, and poof! you are unexpectedly a blue sitting duck mid-screen, and that double-space turns you back to yellow, which has no more energy. Even if you have planned a cautious, slow retreat covered by blue style's E block, enemies cover that distance so quickly that green style still isn't safe to stand still - which is her only move. In addition to being a death trap in most cases, green doesn't do much damage OR heal very efficiently, so I would use her VERY sparingly if at all.

So the control scheme is unusable, and I cannot figure out why you intentionally went off the beaten path to accomplish this. I would be happier with:

- Nine keys, one for each possible action, e.g. QWE = yellow QWE, ASD = blue QWE, ZXC = green QWE. No independent cycling keys; never cycle unless I ask for it by pressing an action outside of my current style. If I don't have the energy for the corresponding style, do nothing, instead of something I didn't intend.

- Two cycle keys, let's say right and left shift. One obviously goes in the reverse order, so that if I want to go blue->yellow->blue, I would press right-shift, left-shift, right-shift. At least give me the option to turn auto-cycling for lack of energy off, and if I leave it on, have it go in the opposite direction of the last intentional shift.

- One default style, two shifted styles. Again suppose, assuming blue is default, that holding left shift will cause me to use yellow style and holding right shift will cause me to use green style. Whether or not I have the option to configure which style is default, I would still like it better this way because it eliminates all uncertainty about what style I will be in at any given moment. Forget about auto-cycling here, just have the action fail if I don't have the corresponding energy.

- The classic 1 = turn yellow, 2 = turn blue, 3 = turn green. We've been doing this for weapon selection for ages and it works just fine. Again, please let me opt-out of automatically cycling when I run out of energy.

Apart from the battle system, while the presentation and story are not terrible, there is not much integration between the mechanics I went through (battles, walking right / cut scene, upgrading) and in every case it felt barely hacked together. As if it was originally planned as entirely cinematic, but someone decided it had to be merged with some other game project about a color-coded morphing ninja, and rather than spend time on designing maps and levels to explore, the devs just forced me to hold the right arrow key while the original cinematic played. Between cutscenes, I play the game about the color ninja, and if I win, Talia goes on with her movie.

When I upgraded, it was not only very unclear what the upgrades were supposed to be doing precisely, but it was also unpredictable where in the level I would be when I left the upgrade screen. Sometimes I started the room over, sometimes I skipped ahead. Again this feels like a half-baked feature tacked on by a third party who had little passion for the project but knew that every game has to have upgrades now, so the 4 most bland, indistinct improvements were put together in a dialog over a lunch break.

Okay, now the good points. The animations and art are pretty good quality. Story is not terrible. Enemies in battles have good variety of tactics. The mechanics of the combat system itself, if it could be controlled in a way that wasn't so irritating, are cool ideas that deserve more exploration than the control scheme and upgrade system currently allow.

Guys, how many times do I have to tell you to play your games all the way through at least once on every release? Everything goes too fast in battle. Enemies tend to walk through walls. Instructions are not very clear. Forget it, I'm not playing your games anymore.

Oh cool, another third party browser plugin with a closed standard. Hey, I broke it! I didn't and will not ever install Unity. Don't makes games for Unity if you want me to play and review and rate them. The same goes for any closed-standard zero-interoperability platform. We've been down this road countless times and it has never either failed due to a previous plugin with overlapping features, or introduced security risks that no one but the Unity author can solve (slowly, if ever).

AustinLabarbera responds:

I didn't realize our target audience was specifically you. This is the only place we can host it online for the public TO TEST! If you don't want to play, that's fine. Don't play then. Or wait until we have the game done and on Steam or somewhere. I know the Unity plug-in is weird, but it is what we have. It's a 3D game, we have no other option. Unity is allowed on NewGrounds.

Recent Audio Reviews

4 Audio Reviews

Decent, but repetitive

The lead riff is pretty good, and the drums definitely shine. The whole thing is catchy. My advice for your next song is as follows: tone down the bass in the final mix and turn down the distortion on the lead guitar so it can maintain more dynamics. Also, if you don't have vocals to keep the song structure fresh, you need more leads and more dramatic changes in melody to keep things interesting. I've written a lot of songs that had that problem. Aside from that, good job. Be happy with it, and if you've got a minute, a review/rate on my "For the Last Time!" would be super appreciated.

Very, very professional

The sound quality here is really, really good! The musicians are all talented, the recording is well done, and the mix sounds great on my headphones. It's a more serious song than I get into, which isn't a bad thing necessarily. I can tell it sounds exactly like it was intended to sound, for which, as a self-produced musician, I give you mad props.

Satoris responds:

Thanks so much for the review, it means a lot. I can only hope we'll be able to put NG reviews like this on our promo package for press! lol thanks again!

Pretty good!

I like it. It sounds very, very clean, and it has a good mix of funk and rock guitars. The intro riff is good the first four or five times it loops; the repetition, though, makes it sound like stock. The drums also sound like stock at a few places, but I could be totally wrong, and it sounds good regardless.

Overall, this is a great one for ambiance (and perhaps, thus, Flash artists), but I don't think I could listen to it again as a "main course" if you know what I mean. More variation would be good and might make it hold my attention better. My earlier songs were guilty of sounding loopy, too, because I had planned to add vocals, so don't feel too bad about that.

Drokou responds:

Thanks a lot man.

I'm looking for flash-savvy people to make videos to my songs. If you like them, drop me an e-mail (sqykly@gmail.com).

Age 39, Male

Biochemist

Indiana University of PA

Indiana, PA

Joined on 1/5/06

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