Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[A Driving Game]

By today's standards, simple. By 2001 standards, amazing. All of the cinematics have the trademark style to them of awesome angles and slow motion. You were early on the lens flare craze, and back then people didn't make fun of it as much.

More importantly, the game is just fun. There's a significant difference between the right lane and left lane, which makes the gameplay fairly realistic. I also like that the one level is the same each time - it gives players a chance to experiment with trial and error, and the really tough move at the end is a perfect little kicker to screw people up.

It would have been nice if this had an arcade mode with randomly placed cars, but that's really the only thing that would have made this better. Great game.

[Vector Killer]

Way too simple. I liked the concept. I liked the 3D vectors. I liked the physics and bouncing projectiles. The rest was just simple beyond belief. Easy, too - I only took damage in the last three levels, and never got close to actually losing.

The scoring system is a joke - either you hit the enemies or you don't. The multipliers can go up with a bit of luck, but with a laser penetrating the barriers you can falsely get a multiplier higher than it should be.

The barriers themselves were a bit of an issue too. The big red projectiles tended to get stuck on them permanently and vanish, and they were too small to really stop you from hitting a target. The enemies themselves never attack, nor do they even have unique movement patterns - the satellites move sideways, the rest just blindly rush you. Why couldn't enemies multiply upon dying, or dodge attacks? There should have been a boss that could only take damage from ricochet shots, too. That would be cool.

The shots were cool, but didn't hand enough control to the player. Powerups occur automatically, which can be disorienting and rather rude if you're working well with the powerup you already have. It would be nice if the player had some control over powerups, such as the ability to suppress a powerup to postpone its expiration, or to cancel it outright. I also felt like the controls were rather redundant, just shooting over and over. Some kind of stamina or power gauge would have given the game more depth.

You have a nice working game but it needs a lot of work to make it really pop.

[Jump Quest]

I tried. I really did. Even though this game has no menu, presentation, or instructions at all, I went ahead and tried to score a single point in this damned game. Actually, that wasn't the hard part. The hard part is landing safely, which by rights should award you 10 points considering how damn hard it is. The squares you're supposed to avoid are way too slow; even with the jumping animation, it's very unlikely for you to be able to clear the square by the time you land. Worse, the squares come in groups and frequently it's IMPOSSIBLE to jump over them when they come together. On top of that, the game does not keep track of your score or really do anything other than stick you with one game over after another. The game isn't even decent enough to give you a game over screen, it just resets.

It might be your first game, but did you not even consider making it a little more balanced or skill-based?

kosiak97 responds:

An apology, I forgot to add to the description that there was a double jump. I fixed it now so maybe it will be a little bit easier. Although I did not think of adding a game over screen, but if it is that important, I'll have no problem adding it. Thanks.

[Stick Beard]

Pretty good. This is a little more showy in terms of graphics than it is smooth in terms of animation, but ultimately it's still really damn good. The game is colorful, the gems are really fucking hard to get, and the soundtrack is well done. I liked that the choices were varied but simple, however on replay I realized that there's really only one path to the end (Natives and Forest simply don't have routes) and that kind of left a sour taste in my mouth, since it tamped down the replay value considerably.

Factoring in that you can replay the dead-end routes like Natives and Forest for infinite gems, and that the gems are really only useful for upgrading your ship in the final level (why do you collect gems during that level, anyway?) it just seemed like this was a little lacking as a game. It makes up for these shortcomings by being very attractive, though.

Solid submission, but not really worth more than one playthrough.

Stone-Steven responds:

wow, I appreciate the solid and lengthy review!

[Just Button]

I don't see why people got stuck so early in this game - I made it to level 22 before I had any problems at all. The issue here is just that the game is not motivating at all. Everything from the graphics, sound, and gameplay all scream generic to the point where I can't understand why anyone would bother making this. Maybe you created a nice functional platform engine and decided to release it on its own? I don't know.

I stopped trying for stars at around level 8. I quit at level 22 because I had to make a jump between a floating crate and a robot in midair and I kept dying in midair even though it was plainly obvious I hadn't collided with anything at all. Boo.