sqykly's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Chibi Knight]

Inefficient use of system resources

I actually liked this game - until it slowed my processor to a crawl on the map screen. My *whole screen*, not just the flash or the Firefox window, took literally seconds to redraw every frame. Taskman reported a big huge spike in PF and memory use by Firefox simultaneously. Oddly enough, it didn't look like I was shredding between RAM & disc, but the computer was busy as hell doing something, and it was mightily unproductive.

Yes, I tried it again, with the same results. It's happened reliably with other flash games. I don't know a lot about flash, but my suggestion is to find a way to selectively omit images and other processing tasks when they're outside the viewable area. It was worst on the map screen, where there appeared to be a lot of monsters running around over a big area.

[Killing Grounds]

Bland, slow paced, and bugged

I did like the camera rotate and zoom - all shooters should have that. Otherwise, you need to do a lot more design and a little more engineering. The move speeds are very slow, the enemies are all vanilla, and there's just not much strategy or skill to it.

Also, there's a big glaring bug. The last combo of a level always failed to deposit its xp in my score, which really sucked when I had a 40x combo or killed a boss and got zero xp.

[Infectonator : World Dom]

good, but lag --> money problems

I liked this game. The additions to the design of the series made it stand out and were all improvements. Having a world map, more time, and saves lend to the sense of progress. The ability to reinforce the initial inoculation of zombies with special hero zombies keeps the player involved; the earlier Infectonators were fun, but the point, click, pick up money routine got old.

Speaking of picking up money, whenever the game started lagging, it became impossible to do so. Bringing the cursor near caused it to oscillate back and forth around it in a big swirling cloud of currency. Presumably, the frames during which the cash should have hit my cursor were lagged out, so it just kept flying. When the lag got worse, or if the cursor was moved within its halo of legal tender, the monetary items were flung (presumably just kept going) elsewhere, usually off the screen.

[Tower Defence War]

Solid engine, bland design

The engine is solid, in that I didn't see any bugs, and everything was smooth.

However, you need to put a lot more time into this game. The enemies are all about the same (at least make them LOOK different!). The towers are about the same six towers we've been putting along the sides of roads since the first TD game was made. They all look about the same as one another. Most people will play and love an unoriginal game if it has great art, but there's nothing awe-inspiring about circles and recolors.

This is basically Another Tower Defense Game. Either add some jaw dropping bells and whistles or an original twist or feature.

Also, make it more difficult. I won on my first try with a $12000 surplus and a whole block of level 5 towers that had never fired a shot.

iovo responds:

Now we have final releace. Please recommend my game for a collectionection.

Thanks!

[Mecharon]

An excellent... plagiarism?

First of all, let me say that the game was very well done. The enemies were mostly original and had a good variety, and there were weapons that were new & different. There was plenty of polish, and I could tell that a lot of time had been put into the implementation. For those points, you get one star.

However, the game borrows *EXTENSIVELY* from CrimsonLand by 10Tons Entertainment in its design. I make the comparison a lot with other top down Smash TV style shooters, but a few new weapons and enemies are the only things that keep this from being a straight up port of CrimsonLand to Flash. The format (kill things in a featureless open playing field while collecting pickups and experience to gain a perk at each level) is identical. Most of the perks gained at level up are identical, many in name: Bonus Magnet, Unstoppable, Dodge = Dodger/Ninja, [X Weapon Type] Master, Bonus Warden = Bonus Economist, Cunning Reloader = Angry Reloader, Scientist = Bloody Mess, Instant Repair = Bandage, Radioactive bullets = Poison bullets, Boost Attack Speed = Fastshot, Repair droid = Regeneration (just to name a few). The only pickup that isn't in Crimsonland is the quad damage upgrade.

The bonuses ARE very common in games, but some aren't, and the fact that Crimsonland perks are Mecharon perks, Crimsonland pickups are Mecharon pickups, and in the context of the identical flow of gameplay, this is clearly plagiarism. I wouldn't believe you if you said that you had never played (and loved) Crimsonland, that the design similarities were coincidence.

episodeent responds:

I like Crimsonland and I wanted to make Flash Crimsonland. It was very very hard because flash gives much much LESS performance.
There are a lot of thing that aren't present in Crimsonland: Black hole, Bonus Rocket launcher (2 weapons at the same time), bosses, units which fight by your side etc.

[Dragonrage]

old school =D

What this game brings to the table is clearly old hat - 8 bit synths, a protagonist that can't turn or stop running, enemies whose weapon of choice is contact, power-up items that appear randomly and confer only temporary benefit - but I must say that it's damn good at it. Nowadays, you can level up and hoard your achievements and upgrades and train in skills of your choice and pick your character's eye color just about anywhere, and it's nice to see that somebody still knows how to do the basics right. The difficulty slope was well balanced; a level or two to see what the buttons and items do, then the number and variety of monsters begin to build up until, finally, complete chaos ensues. That's pretty much how it should be.

There are two things that bug me about the game. First of all, the simple joys of the old-school smash TV genre aside, the game doesn't really bring anything new to the table. I'm going to get bored with it within 15 minutes, and most people don't have my superhuman patience. If there's all sorts of new items and monsters (perhaps a differently shaped room?), you may want to bring them in sooner next time. Second, I haven't figured out how I lose my items. If they aren't on a timer, it would be nice to know how to avoid that situation. If they are on a timer, that would be nice to see anyway.

[Ultimate Tactics]

Bland game with very lazy coding

The art was good. That's a plus.

The rest of the game was pretty much lacking, though. The characters had no dialogue and the plot was a superficial pretense, akin to the currently popular MMO "RPG" genre. The AI was really terrible and refused to use what little tactical advantage was available. There really isn't much to say about the gameplay aside from its blandness.

Oh, except the bugs, which are very newbie mistakes. The ones I'm talking about primarily are with movement pathing and priority. The movement path badness is new to this game, but the priority bugs have been a feature of each of the "Ultimate Defense" games, so double the lazy factor on that one. I'm assuming it was intended for certain tiles to not only prevent a unit from moving onto them, but also to block movement through them as well. The game simply fails at that; you can walk through trees, rocks, enemy units, water, whatever you please. The character sprite generally chose a path correctly, avoiding such things, which makes the move bug quite puzzling. A unit with three move could be ordered to a space blocked behind a rock and two enemies, and he'd take like a twelve tile walk around them. In at least one case where the tile was completely blocked, as in there was actually no way to get to the tile from anywhere on the map without crossing forbidden terrain, he started walking in the opposite direction, then just stopped. That was interesting.

I'm sure you've noticed the priority bugs in previous installments of the series, but I'll go ahead and describe it for those of us just tuning in. Often, for no particular reason, a tile or sprite hidden behind another graphical feature would appear in front, which just looks awkward. I know writing algorithms for isometric views can get a little hairy, but it isn't brain surgery, and you've had like three games to fix it. The other aspect of priority that I found irritating is that I couldn't click a tile that was visually hidden behind a character sprite. That's really amateur, man.

[The irRegularGame of Life]

Faithful adaptation, very logical extension

I did a seminar on cellular automata in college, and judging from the blank expressions I got from my peers there (non-science majors are a drag), I am surprised to see this faithful adaptation of Conway's "game" on the front page of Newgrounds, which is typically (no offense, everybody) not a haunt of MENSA regulars. There used to be a java applet somewhere out there that could run this with customized rules, and now I miss it.

If you're planning to do another of these, that's what I'd like to see. Also, copy-n-paste or templates would be fun, such that you could bombard something boring with gliders, or mess around with a long period iterator you discovered by accident without destroying it. One more thing: being able to alter the grid's topology would be new and exciting (to nerds like me).

Congrats, you've made the "game" of life into... the game of life!

[Oiligarchy]

Solid, sardonic, and fun

I like this! The tongue-in-cheek news and laws were a perk, and the simulation aspect of the game had very few flaws. I think my favorite part was that it caused me to think the following as I repeatedly pushed more troops into Iraq: "Wait a second, does this have a point?".... haha!

My only complaint is that it was a little bit easy. The only thing I did that got the stockholders pissed was also my key strategy: increase production only after it is exceeded by demand such that the price per barrel goes up. The price takes a few years to reach its minimum again, so if you increase production slowly enough, you can keep that barrel hovering around 15-20 dollars even while meeting demand 90% of the time.

[Andagel]

The good is really good, the bad is pretty ugly

I've given some pretty vicious reviews today, so don't feel too bad.

The one thing that sticks out about this, to me, is Andagel herself. She's really well rendered, and the way she shifts her weight as you aim up or down is really very fluid. I also liked the idea of using a grappling hook type mechanic in a 3D FPS, and I don't think I've really seen such since Quake 2. Also, kudos for building a 3D engine in flash. It isn't attempted all that often, and when it is, it's generally stuck in the Wolfenstein era of level floors and ceilings. The floaty medical bot was hard to hit, as has been pointed out, but this was a good balancing move, I think, since it never really ran out of juice. It had more personality than the ubiquitous medikit.

The frustrating thing about this game is that it if all of these elements had been implemented more smoothly, it would be a really good game. Unfortunately, aside from Andagel's bending realistically, the graphical presentation just felt... half-assed. I know there's supposed to be a grappling hook, but it looks like I just shot a pole with a bullet, and I'm suddenly over there. I know Andagel's walking or shooting in third person view, but she looks like she's just standing there. I know I'm riding on some sort of ship, but I can walk right off the side and still somehow keep up with it. Beyond that, perhaps hundreds of trees passed effortlessly through said ship without event.

The game's concept and gameplay show a lot of promise, enough to convince me that you could have implemented it smoothly, but didn't. Next time around (and there should be, I think), don't rush to release; take the time to polish up your ideas.