Asandir's Reviews

[-NemesiS-]

Not a flash, but still pretty good!

The first tought I had was "this is not a flash". But I will review it fairly as video.

~ Special Effects/Visual presentation ~
I like the overall dark and gritty style of this teaser - the mysterious look of the invisible man, the surrounding darkness that only highlights the most important things, the closer look at the gun and the expiry of the flame of the candle, caused by the wind. The whole visual presentation looks incredibly professial to me. Especially the black-and-white presentation, which makes the appearence of the blood even more shocking. You also managed to convert the video into a flash without much loss of quality.

~ /Story/Content ~
We don't learn much about the invisible killer- which is completely intentional. The viewer sees enough to get interested in the story of the killer. Who is he? And why is he invisible? Did he lose his face or identity? "Who am I - you're sure you wanna know?" explains it perfectly - I want to know more but on the other hand I get frightened by the dark and mystic appearence of the invisible killer - a faceless danger, whose abilities obviously surpass the ones of a normal being.

~ Audio/Voice Acting ~

The background sounds are truly scary - I had a unpleasent feeling throughout the whole movie - the feeling that something dangerous is about to appear. The voice acting is perfectly done - the deep voice doesn't seem to have a specific source which helps to make the invisible killer appear more strange and different from a normal person. The loud sound when he fires the gun is the perfect end for the increasing tension of the video.

~ Overall ~
Definitely one of the best videos that I have seen here - and also something that can compete with some of the best videos on Youtube. The story, the visuals and the sound setting all flow well together into something that I would describe as wonderful short movie. Some would take away points, since it isn't a flash but I won't do that - there are other videos here on Newgrounds and this one stands out to me. 10 points for an amazing work.

[Babies]

Simply awesome

What do we have here? The product, when two of Newgrounds most well known artists decide to work together, and it worked out better than I would have imagined.
First on the music from Weebl:
The music is nothing else but an extreme ear worm, I can't say much about the beats and stuff, but it surely sounds good and brings the typical humour from Weebl with it.
The animation from Sexual-Lobster:
Obviously underlines the music from Weebl very well, and was filled with nice little details, like the old man, who catched one of the babies.
All in all a very good teamwork, that deserves all the praise it gets.

[Africa Dudes]

Good, but very long

The first thing I want to say that I quite enjoyed watching this movie 3 three times, although I paid less attention to it in the second and third run, obviously.
The animation style looks pretty good in all scenes and they match pretty well, so that is a good thing.
The humour is good, but the length makes it difficult to keep the entertainment value up the whole time, although that could be intentional.
Making the ones who want the three medals watching the movie three times is a nice move, and it became a famous competition to get those medals.
So all in all, I think that this flash deserves the 10 starts, since a lot of work was put into it.

[Underwater+]

I played the first one and after playing this one I felt like writing a review about the problems of this game:

Graphics/Animation : 1/5

The water is just a one-coloured surface, the swimming animation consists of only a few frames, the jellyfishes are just a moving, unanimated sprite. The attack animation is also not good.

Audio: 3/5

The song is well chosen but you could add an option to choose between more songs. It would be also good to add sounds for : getting a coin, attacking a jellyfish, getting a bubble, etc.

Content/Gameplay: 0/5

That may seem harsh but I will explain why you get no points in this category. While there are some much needed improvements over the last game, it is still too difficult to get coins and an overall unenjoyable experience.

I upgraded everything to a point where the upgrades cost 40$ and there are still multiple rounds in a row where I see nothing, no coins, no enemies, nada. Since it becomes more and more costy to get an upgrade, the game becomes more tedious the more upgrades you have. The one-time upgrades help a bit to counter this problem but it is not enough.

In other upgrade games you feel more powerful as you keep on playing - in this one you will feel more and more unlucky.

The spawn rate for everything apart from the jellyfishes is way too low. Why bother to upgrade bubbles when I see one in 10 rounds? Upgrading bubbles should make them more efficient and increase their spawn rate. I also found the attack to be absolutely useless. The jellyfishes get barely knocked back and most times you will just crash into them when you attack. The hitbox of those monsters is also insane, they are cleary far away and the still hit me, tone it down a bit.

I also recommend that you add some upgrades that make the game easier and more enjoyable:

- Hearts upgrade: Each point gives you one more heart. That will prevent rounds where you suddenly crash into a jellyfish and gain nothing. Once you get hit, you will be immortal for 2 seconds, so that you have time to move away from the jellyfish.

- More treasures! upgrade: that will improve the chance to spawn gems that give more than just one dollar. That will help to keep high priced upgrades obtainable without playing several years.

- Improved weapon: instead of knocking the jellyfishes back, they will now get damaged and slowed down. The jellyfishes will have 5 hitpoints, once you have upgraded weapon 5 times, only the amount of shots gets improved.

I am so lucky! Upgrade: The most costy upgrade, starting with 10, and increasing by the same amount, can be upgraded 5 times to increase the spawn rate of bubbles, coins and gems a bit.

Apart from that, once you got rid of those flaws it would be nice to see more content:
- first would be a high score for how long you survived, one for how many coins you earned in a round and another one for how many challenges you cleared
- a challenge mode: you get quests that you have to solve, with incrasing difficulty, for example "obtain 3 coins in one round", one of the later ones being "defeat 3 jellyfishes within one minute", etc. The higher the difficulty of the challenge, the higher the reward will be, giving the player an optional way to gain enough money for the upgrades
- unlocking skins for the player, and skins that add more monsters than just jellyfishes

Overall: 1/5

As it stands now, the only good thing is the relaxing song - which stands in a strong contrast to a gameplay that is in most aspects simply annoying - you don't look forward to upgrades and more often than not unfair jellyfishes spawn directly before you without a chance to react. The game in its current state simply is no fun to play and the one point is only given to put it in perspective to the first one. I hope that you don't get discouraged by my honest rating - I also recommend that you play some of the upgrade games here on Newgrounds to get a better feeling what that kind of games need to be fun - steadily more upgrades that make you feel more and more powerful.

PakoYea responds:

Thanks for your review and ideas!

[Dungeon of Genesis]

I stumbled upon this game earlier today. It left an impression to me and I felt that I should write a review. Truth be told, the impression that I got from this game is overwhelmingly bad:

Graphics/Animation: 0.5/5

Even for this kind of game, they are too simple. Nothing against a simple style but this doesn't even look good. The colour scheme of both the background in the main menu and the levels (atleast for Level 1,2 and 3, I was unable to play the others but that's another point) is horrid. Enemies shoot grey projectiles in front of a grey background - that is not a good idea. It almost feels like you made it look bad on purpose. Atleast the characters look somewhat decent. Work on this and get rid of colour combinations that create a horrible contrast. It would be great if you would also use another font that doesn't look that basic.

Audio: 0/5

I wondered why the sound was turned off by default - then I turned the sound on and got my answer. Not only is the music a short loop, the music itself is of such a bad quality (due to compression, I guess) that I can only wonder how you didn't notice this problem. We have an excellent audio portal and you can upload flashes to dumpggounds to test flashes - there is no excuse to dish out such bad audio quality in a flash game - where audio can help to elevate the athmoshpere. Would have been helpful since the game doesn't deliver in other parts either. Fix the quality of the song, or preferably choose another AND longer song. The current one is maybe 30 seconds long, way too short. It would be perfect if you could implent more than one song, though. Maybe a new one every 5 levels.

Content/Gameplay: 0/5

I can give you no points in this regard. I said it previously, you can test flashes in dumpgrounds. To me, it seems like you never tried this game out even once - the errors appear too frequent and there are way too many issues with the gameplay. The most important one being that the game will freeze up after some time - yet again, such a MAJOR bug is not acceptable upon releasing the game to the portal. The controls are clunky and the hero gets stuck very often.
The leveling system doesn't work at all - you wouldn't be able to get to Max Level anyways with the game-crashing bugs.
Long story short, most medals are unattainable and the game itself is unplayable and beyond that clunky.

Overall: 0/5

There is one good thing that I can say about this game : there are tons of ways to improve it. Making it playable is a good start. Then fixing problems with the gameplay like the not working leveling system. Some medals like the 25 death medals are also not working but that is at the moment a minor issue.
I strongly recommend that you test your games in the future before you release them. Newgrounds offers you enough possibilities to do so.

[Burrito Bison Revenge]

Graphics/Animation: 10/10
I love the graphic style of the Burrito Bison series, both the hero and the gummies are given character by it. The different areas bring in enough variety. It would be cool when the survival mode would also have multiple areas, though. Visual presentation is on such a high level that it could be very well a game that is developed by a company.
Animations are perfect and make it fun to squash the gummies time and time again. I noticed that the game slows down sometimes a bit but I can't say for sure if that is caused by my internet connection, so I won't take away points for it. The game runs much more fluid on Chrome than on Firefox, though.

Audio: 10/10
The music is well chosen and doesn't become too repetitive, which is a must for such a tossing game, that is normally played for a long time. In comparison to Burrito Bison, I find this soundtrack less appealing. The last soundtrack gave me more the feeling of an epic journey.Sound effects are perfect too, especially the impact when Burrito Bison hits the ground with his rocket slam ability . All in all helps to create a nice, action paced athmosphere.

Content/Gameplay: 8/10
There are many things that I like. For one, the uge amount of upgrades, they help to keep me occupied for many hours. But some of the later upgrades are too expensive and it takes a lot of time to get them. I find it also sad that some items are exclusive for people who pay money, I can remember that the tacos were normally unlockable on the Adultswim version. Especially since the tacos make a huge difference in the survival mode.
Special gummies are much needed. They bring in the activity that is otherwise missing in a tossing game, the minigames are shortly and well explained. However, reaching high distances/high speed depends a little bit too much on luck in my opinion. Nyan Bison is awesome!
The new mission system is also a nice addition. Some of those missions are almost impossible, thankfully they can be skipped for ingame money.
Gaining upgrades, fullfilling missions - all those keep the game interesting. It is good that the saving function is finally fixed because it pretty much ruined the gaming experience. Playing for multiple hours to find the savefile vanished was not cool.
I would also like to mention the last unlockable opponent (I won't mention who he is, so that I don't spoil anything), but it is nice to see references to other flash games. It would be good to see more of them, Goin' Up is a good example for implenting them well.

Overall: 10/10
The things that I found negative are pretty minor and I would lie if I would say that I didn't wait for the sequel of Burrito Bison. It is one of, if not the best Tossing games that we have on Newgrounds and improved the original one in many aspects.

[Road Rash - Grass Valley]

That turned out pretty awesome, it's a fantastic remix, thank you for making it ^^

Kreyowitz responds:

Phew, i'm just glad you liked it! It was definitely one of the most interesting tracks i've had to do thus far, and i'm happy it worked out in the end! :D

[Majin Boo]

So scary : o

[jeo flys 3]

Nice improvement

Well, since this is a re-design of an older picture, I will compare it by reviewing:

The shading is greatly improved and looks more natural to be, which helps the aimed 3D effect. The light effects are also looking good and give me the feeling that the spaceship is travelling at a high speed.

The perspective is also done way better than in your previous work, it actually looks like a room now, in comparison to the rather flat looking old picture.

Overally drawing style: Positive that you improved the look of the ship and the things like the green screen, altough the chair looked better and more 3D sytle in the old picture. in my opinion.

Additional notes: I would give the older picture 8 stars and this one improved it in a lot of aspects, so 10 stars are well deserved.

Rennis5 responds:

sweet i'm glad you like it
you might be right about the chair, i think the far side is rised a bit too high.
thanks heeps for you'r review dude
:)

[Strawberry Clock]

Very good

I like the use of light colours, it adds to the funny and light- hearted character of Strawberry clock, I would have chosen another colour for the background, so that he stands out more.
What makes this art also great are the small details, like the yellow pips, and the wrinkle under the eye, that adds to the whole character.
All in all it is a great piece of art and I am looking forward to see more of you.