Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Inquisitive Dave]

100% Amazing

By the time I saw Crazy Monkey Games, I knew it was going to be good. CMG, along with Armor Games, is one of the few sponsors for Flash games that I swear by.

The graphics are really good, and the animation really blew me away. While the whole 8-bit thing has been redone several times too many,the game still looks good and feels good.

The sound is decent, although it got somewhat repetitive after a while, especially if you ran back and forth between two areas with different music, confused, the way I did.

The gameplay felt really good as well. The basic wild goose chase thing was implemented better than I've seen it in any other game; I was never stuck for long, and everything seemed to make sense. The game played very quickly and didn't get tedious once. The only criticism I have is the improbability of knowing to put cake mix in a lake. That, and the boss battle, which I felt was frustrating due to the fact that you have to time the mirror flipping JUST right in order to hit him.

The storyline was absolutely phenomenal, although the writing for it should have been better. The satire at the beginning was amusing and kept me playing more than anything, and the statements about generic video games reminded me a lot of Half-Minute Hero. In fact, the 45-second dash to the castle had me thinking that, too.

When the Wizard at the tower started talking about the system, I was reminded slightly of The Matrix and its amazing storyline. The idea of the protagonist operating inside of a system was interesting, but I feel that the Wizard's jibes and taunts should have been written a lot better. Conceptually it was brilliant, but for something like that, you need an EXTREMELY talented writer... Someone who's pursuing an advanced degree in literature, writing or theater, for sure.

The final final battle was interesting, although it only took me about 30 seconds to realize that all you had to do was abstain from the system. The epilogue was pretty well written as well, although I found it pretty frustrating that Dave never even says anything. I understand the tones of freedom and determinism in the game, and I get that Dave is supposed to be a silent protagonist, but you could have at least had him talk to emphasize his newly-acquired freedom.

Overall, I thought this game was done very, very well! It seems like you thought this idea was a little more clever than it actually was, judging by the dialogue that takes place, but overall I think this is one of the best plotlines of anything found on Newgrounds. You, sir, have earned a 5, a favorite, and a new fan.

[Madness: Premeditation]

Fair

The graphics look good and the audio is high quality and fitting. All in all the presentation and looks are good, as is the layout. The game lags horribly, though, so I really think you should have simplified the graphics. Really, nobody would have minded if the game would just run smoother. Or at least you could have added a Quality option.

For the graphic layout of the nodes system, it might have been easier to use the arrow keys to navigate a dot on the path rather than clicking on it to create a node, as I regularly clicked a path I didn't mean to when it overlapped. On top of that, I got frustrated if a replay didn't allow me to go back to the menu and I knew it was bound to fail.

The gameplay is where it runs into serious issues, though. For one, while I like the style of movement, it gets frustrating when you get killed simply because you mapped out the patterns incorrectly. The way avoiding fire works simply constitutes that you look at the timer as an enemy attacks... Which you can't do until you've already mapped out an attack pattern first. But basically all you have to do is look at where the enemy is and when, and make sure to avoid this hit at this time.

The node system was frustrating for the reasons I listed above, but overall I really liked the system and thought it was a cool concept. Again, my biggest issue was that the 'strategy' consisted of watching where enemies moved and when; the way it's so static and formulaic takes the strategy out of a strategy game.

One last thing I'll mention is the arsenal system. Since it takes so long to get a point, I found the grenade thing to be horribly useless, as you only get one for the next round, so after I bought and used my first one, I never once thought to get another. Second, the whole gun thing was explained rather poorly and it was quite a while before I understood how it worked. Some kind of better explanation would have been nice.

One thing I'll say I did like was the ability to watch other peoples' replays. That was really cool, and obviously it gave a game surprising cinematic value. Kudos on that!

The concept is really cool, but seeing as you only lose if you map out a number wrong, I found it to get tedious and decided to grind after getting to the final boss, as it just isn't worth the trouble otherwise.

[Builder 3D]

Confusing

I didn't like the control scheme at all, and the controls were given very quickly and with little explanation. Personally, I would have made it so you could rotate the blocks with ASD and adjusted the view with SHIFT+WASD, to give the player full keyboard control. Also, making the blocks transparent and giving a zoom option would have been helpful.

As it is, I was struggling to figure out how to rotate something this way or that way... And yet, the shapes were so small I wasn't even struggling a little! One last criticism is that I couldn't stand the fact that you can't make the blocks fall any faster! This made the gameplay extremely slow.

Other than that, great job! I love the 3D concept!

[Hallow's Scars]

Grawr

I think most of the problems came between us having different versions of Flash. My engine played great on its own, and your graphics look amazing... Sadly it seems something was lost in translation when you plugged in everything. Still, a good step forward.

[Age of Delaware]

Wow What is This?

I'm pretty sure it's broken, since I have windows spawning half off-screen in the corners, and errors when I try to quit or adjust anything with the sound. Not to mention I had to wait half a minute while staring at a blank screen to even start the game.

I'll give you three stars because the user interface looks very pretty and the music is good. The presentation looks good and the graphic style shows that you have good aesthetic taste and a lot of potential.

[SCRUMPER]

Bad

Really repetitive music, no sound effects, very simplistic graphics (although nice particle effects and I enjoyed the black-and-white scheme), and the gameplay was just awful. The bombs lag horribly and all you do is rush at stuff while holding down the mouse button.

[Modern Medieval 2]

Mediocre

I kept hearing this old voice in my head that I hadn't heard in years, saying, "Oh man you died..." and so eventually I decided to come back to this game, even though I remembered not liking it.

This is a game obviously made by an amateur. I'll admit I like the simplistic art style, which is very nice to look at visually, but there are a bunch of other problems with the graphic scheme... For instance, the poor animation and the fact that really long bits of ground can make you feel entirely lost or almost as if you're walking in place! Adding simple tick marks on the ground would help relieve this odd feeling. As it is, I guess you could shoot arrows to give yourself something to look at. Not only that, but the thick lines looked bad on the small moving platforms. That's definitely something to change.

The sound is amazing... The music sounds great and the voice acting is hilarious! The sound effects were pretty minimalistic but all in all sounded good as well, if unremarkable.

The gameplay is where most of my complaints are. First of all, the lack of a moving background (or anything to fix your gaze upon, really) makes it exceedingly difficult to time jumps. Throughout the entire time I played, I only lost one or two lives out of about seven or eight by losing all of my health... The instant death pits aren't bad, per se, but you need to give the player some visual input to prevent them from killing themselves. Not only was the plainness of the graphics a problem, but also the fact that the platforms were very unpredictable. Having some kind of line to show the limits of how far they went, or even easing to make platforms slow down before turning around, would have saved me a lot of unnecessary trouble. And when you have to restart the entire game when you lose, that is a LOT of unnecessary trouble.

In addition, I felt that the game gave the player very little instructions and had a lot of unnecessary doodads. I ended up cycling through the sword and spear multiple times looking for the bomb or bow because those were the only good weapons! The enemies also tended to be rather bland, with all of the difficulty coming from frustrating jumps that were difficult for the wrong reasons.

I do like what you have here, but the graphics need a little more detail, even if for utilitarian purposes, and the entire thing needs to be a little more polished.

[Meat Boy]

A Good Start

I really like where this game is going. The graphics are very pretty, the soundtrack is badass, and the gameplay is challenging and simple, yet still feels fresh, probably due to the fact that very few platformers are this fast-paced.

My biggest concern is how slippery the controls are and how fast the player accelerates with a button. Really, it's ridiculous and it caused me to quit after trying levels 16-20.

[Exit Path]

Excellent

I loved the black and white graphic design, as well as pretty much everything to do with the presentation and looks. The storyline made the game pretty appealing and reminded me somewhat of Portal. The animation, especially with the rotary displays, looked top-notch, and the rewinding was a very cool effect. My only real complaint is how plain the signs looked. Scratches on them and signs of wear would have made it look much better. All in all, though, the game looked and sounded great.

The gameplay was nice as well, and I loved the super difficult parts near the end, even if they did frustrate me. All of the checkpoints were in the right places and kept the game nice and fair. Admittedly, after beating it, I didn't feel motivated to play it again, due to the massive headache the super hard parts gave me. Even so, I really enjoyed playing.

[Rebuild 2]

All By Your Lonesome?!

Well, let me first say that this is more of an expansion pack than a sequel to Rebuild. The graphics are largely the same,although the music and sounds are different. What things are new are done very well, however: I'm digging the new characters and music! However, the animation is still as bland as ever, and the plot points were minimalistic to the point of not noticing anything.

In terms of the gameplay, I think the stat system is really cool, and I'm glad that now you can send people with no combat training into battle and they will still reduce the danger level to an extent while simultaneously GAINING combat training. The subway and addition of more missions is nice, as are the 'Yes' and 'No' plot points, too. However, I hear a lot of people complaining about this religion that kills people off... I haven't encountered this in-game, but it seems unbalanced, which is unfortunate, as it looks like you spent time trying to make the sequel MORE balanced this time around. The jobs, like tending crops and preaching, add a little bit of flair, which I like.

Here's where you slipped up: For one, when you came to the forums asking for help, you mentioned something about a shooting minigame during zombie attacks. This was never implemented, and it took away from the game. Having a shooter/strategy hybrid would have gotten you really far, but what more can I say? You failed to deliver. Additionally, the fact that there is now no longer any risk in reclaiming land or scouting makes the game frustratingly easy. Sure, you can still play on Impossible difficulty and get your ass handed to you by huge numbers of zombies, but honestly it's better when you're pressured from all directions, because it makes you THINK MORE.

You did a good job with the sequel, but it's just TOO SIMILAR to the original. Not enough has changed.