Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[! Fishy !]

Amazing game, I always loved Fishy and I'm glad I came back to play this and write a review. I played this back in 2003 and it's just as great as I remember - much more charming than later permutations which were divided into levels. The music is almost trance-like and relaxing, the graphics are incredibly pleasing to the eye for something so old, and the gameplay just feels RIGHT. Now that I'm older and more patient I was able to beat this on my first try, though I remember my impatience getting me killed when I was younger.

Nonetheless this is an outstanding game. Sometimes I wish there were more to it but I'm glad it's as simple as it is. Though, there should be something that allows players to have different scores after beating the game - perhaps restarting it with the fish moving faster? Otherwise anyone that beats the game has the same score more or less.

[A Dance of Fire and Ice]

A little gimmicky. I've always hated one-button rhythm games (is that even a genre?) because it's really all about eyes and memory rather than brains or reflexes. Certainly this is fun and addictive, mainly due to the music chosen, but it gets old and quickly begins to rely on an unforgiving intolerance for mistakes to facilitate its difficulty. Personally, I prefer games with difficult tasks but many checkpoints to one with easy tasks assigned in large quantities, and because of that I would have preferred shorter levels with more confusing visuals (perhaps a hex grid) and complex rhythms (alternating or odd meters).

The layout and presentation is nice, but its simplicity is also its downfall as people are repeatedly faced with a very plain screen telling them that they have failed. I would have liked some kind of system that judged how close you were to hitting on the beat, as many other rhythm games do (Perfect, Great, Good, Almost, Boo).

fizzd responds:

Sorry you didn't enjoy it! It is by design meant to be a game of rhythmic endurance just as much as rhythmic gymnastics, and is meant to train the ability to keep a consistent beat throughout a song, so I'm not going to switch the design to exclusively short hard levels anytime soon. Definitely isn't for everyone!

[The Awakening RPG]

I don't think anyone would argue that this isn't a flawed game, but it certainly has a charm to it. The graphics are very intricate and give this game an uncanny sense of magnitude on par with the Epic Battle Fantasy series. The music is somewhat dull and repetitive but is quite well done, though still a far cry from the Sonny soundtrack. The gameplay is overall really well-done and keeps players engaged with the active battle system, though I would have liked to see things played around with more, for instance attacks where you can hold down a button and consume extra stamina to deal extra damage, attacks that damaged an enemy's stamina, or enemies that feigned attacks or had certain conditions for which you made them unable to dodge.

This game suffers from several major pitfalls. First is that I noticed it lagged a lot. At the beginning of the game I recalled reading something about setting the quality to low, but skipped past it too quickly and wasn't able to find that information again. I pulled up every menu I could find and didn't manage to adjust the quality, which was a real pain since you walk SO slowly on the world map... If you wanted it to be atmospheric, you could have at least made the character smaller on the world map, like Chrono Trigger does.

That said, you balanced this out really well. I liked how you moved away from the grindier aspects of the game, allowing players to grind but not really making it necessary, especially when there were only a few pieces of equipment to be gotten. I got the Twin Serpent Blade and instantly fell in love with its massive damage bonus, and though I played this game for three hours only to change weapons once, I felt it actually worked out fine.

Also, the storyline was pretty lame, in all honesty. There were a lot of tropes... Waking up and not knowing anything, befriending a random magic user that seems to know anything (this was a very close parallel to Sonny and Luis...) and then the battle with the Golden Demon that was impossible to win... Which really annoyed me since I was really kicking his ass but ended up being funneled into the plot dialogue anyway. You use a lot of tropes and it's bad enough to the point of me not being able to take the narrative seriously at all. Thankfully there were a few moments of comic relief that broke it up, and the huge number of civilians in the towns also gave this game a sense of realness, even if the main plotline wasn't interesting.

Final verdict? Good game, though it was a bit slow and buggy at times. I would be interested in seeing the conclusion to the story, as well as what you had planned for the rest of the game. It would have been nice to have some kind of arcade or Colosseum mode where players could engage in battles and unlock story sequences without doing fetch quests and stuff - it would have been a nice easy way to wrap up this game without it feeling completely unfinished.

RockLou responds:

Thank you for the review and your input!
During the development of the game, I experimented with the attacking where you held down the attack button and a seperate bar would appear and fill up as you held the button. The longer you held it, the more damage your attack would take. It was an interested idea but one thing I like about the current battle system is how fast your attacks seem whenever you press the attack button. It happens instantly and you feel badass. :P
I also experimented with the spells. Whenever you made a spell you'd have to press a combination of numbers quickly and depending on how you performed, the spell took more or less damage. But that also took away the instant and fast-paced feel of the battle.

I can agree with you that the story is kind of lame. :P Most of it wasn't really thought out much. The future of the story (not in the game) is more thought out, if I ever would continue.
I didn't want to include any crystals or anything because it IS very cliché, but I really needed something to boost the plot.
I have thought of a colosseum in Savina city, but it seemed a bit out of place and would've been even more work... and I'm already tired of this goddamn game. -.-

[Raise to Review Mod]

This is so damn buggy. I ban one user, then the ban button is stuck down and I ban a bunch more involuntarily. There's no button to close the Flash that you vote on and flag - I had to use the Tab button to press something off-screen.

Graphics and music are nice but this needs to be fixed so I can actually play without guessing.

[NG Review Game #2]

The game is okay, I like how you made so many animations to put into this. Sounds get old fast and you didn't use great ones for the in-game animations, but this isn't unusual for such old games. The gameplay was pretty simple and there were no games in the synthesized portal - only movies. At times the reviews seemed pretty neck and neck with each other, which I thought made it a little too tough since it is a matter of opinion after all.

Fun game but nothing to write home about.

[Depict1]

It's okay, I suppose. The gameplay is pretty tight and I especially liked the spike throwing mechanic added in - it really gave the game a nice puzzle twist to it. That aside, this is basically a rage game that's been tuned down for it to actually be enjoyable, with a thinly veiled story cloned from Portal. While the game had potential, the graphics and level design don't bring enough to the table and ultimately it ends up being another Pretentious Game, only this one takes itself seriously.

[Level Up!]

WOW. After seeing all of the awards this got I finally sat down and played it, and holy shit, this is really awesome stuff.

It's gotten to the point where pixel games are a little too common, and now it seems there are more pixel games that are made to have a retro feel than there are actually retro games. It definitely is grating dealing with samey, generic graphics and 8-bit chiptunes. The gameplay, however...

I originally thought that resetting stats upon each day was going to drive me batty, but it didn't. I mean, it did for the first few days, but when I realized how the game worked and went and bought the upgrades, the double jump and regeneration were a godsend and it lead for this to be a very balanced game. Collecting all of the gems had a very Castlevania-like feel to it, as the map wasn't huge and was mainly explored in a non-linear fashion. As a whole the stats which continually increased seemed balanced and were neither too generous nor too grindy, and the dialogue was entertaining. Being what it was, I felt like the difficulty was also pretty balanced too. While the platforming was a little dull, I felt motivated to find new "non-ghosted" gems and to beat that damned boss. The boss was difficult, but also a fun fight (albeit repetitive). The only thing I didn't like was that it was obscenely difficult to properly get the boulders to crush the nightmare - I think almost every time I managed to wallop him came from pure chance rather than me premeditating it.

I found the story to be quite fascinating as well. There were a few bits of humor and hints at breaking the fourth wall, but what got me more was the whole thing about the characters' memories being wiped and that nightmare that just kept coming back. I knew there was going to be something different when I bested the nightmare and retained my memories, and I was especially interested when I realized I was going to go to the computer to have the memories recovered. Let me get this clear though:

YOUR ENDING SUCKS!! I really didn't like how the male character was randomly turned into the antagonist. I get that it was supposed to be a plot twist, but seeing as he doesn't have a very large role in the game, I felt more like "Aw, damn it." than actually shitting bricks when I found out. Ultimately this game has the setup for a great fiction title - sci-fi, fantasy, or otherwise - but ultimately turns into a generic Bleach superhero-type thing with a 'to be continued' cliffhanger. I (accurately) guessed that even though this game was released six years ago, no actual sequel existed, and honestly, what with lost memories being such a pivotal part of this game, I don't think a second game would really make sense.

So, to recap... You took a shaky gameplay concept and salvaged it with awesome level design, and set up a great story, but you failed to wrap it up nicely. I would still say this is easily worth a 4.5/5, in spite of the things that bothered me.

[FPA: World 2]

Damn it. I've always loved Fancy Pants and I'm really not sure what I can say that hasn't been said already. The physics are impeccable. The animation is impeccable. This game is eye candy and finger candy - the controls are incredibly responsive and are polished to the point that they reflect more light than the moon. Grabbing, sliding, rolling - this game has all of it, and for every little thing is a seamless animation.

Now, that aside, there are a ton of problems with level design. It's not so much that there's anything wrong with the levels themselves, but more that the environment isn't challenging. You can waste a lot of time exploring, and the boss can prove to be a challenge due to only being able to take three hits, but the game doesn't really incorporate the fast-paced potential of this game into actual gameplay. You can look in the trophy room to see your fastest completion and that's literally it. The terrain is fairly boring if you're not interested in exploration and in the end it feels like one really long first level to a game. I'm still giving this full marks mainly because of what I stated in the first paragraph, but I think the principle still stands.

For everything it has going for it, Fancy Pants is ultimately brought down by its own simplicity. The bonus levels and snail shell objectives give this game quite a lot of replay value, but there isn't really much to challenge the player in a more high-octane environment, and that's really the direction a game like this should be going in. I would like to see time trials, and perhaps some puzzle elements or powerups to make the game a little bit more challenging. The hop-and-bop combat mechanics are fine, but the enemies are redundant. This definitely needs more.

[Madness Descent (Demo)]

Is there something I'm not getting here? This is really, really bad. There are no textures or environments - just black platforms. The characters are all the same - the basic Madness character with varying weapons. I tried a gun and it seemed useless. I tried the starting knife weapon and it killed most enemies in one hit. Ultimately I did a pretty decent runthrough of the game rushing past enemies and allowing my knife to collide with enemies as I got close enough to them. When I got low on health, I cleared out a room, camped in a corner and waited for my health to recover. This is ridiculous, there has to be a better way to make a game than this. Even for a demo, this lacks foundation.