Mp3Durahell's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Sonny]

To be fair

This game deserves a definite 10 to be honest. Too bad it's VERY short... The only thing I didn't like is that you MUST respec and build specific builds against the last bosses... I'd love to see something else instead to solve the "difficulty problem". To maby use the right combination of allies, or make sure they use the right spells at the right times. The thing with RPG's and skill trees is often that you want to keep your skills that you have worked so hard for to get. And it ain't fun when your plan is ruined in the end since whatever you have doesn't work since you need the right build against the boss. You have to scrap your whole skill branch.

This definitly needs more battles. And it ain't really fun to fight the SAME enemies over and over in the end either :/ I'd say it needs more RANDOM BATTLES. And at least 10 different super hard enemies in the end to keep some form of end-game open at least. Maby even an option to fight randomized enemies with random skills and so on.

Yeah I can't wait for the sequal! I think if you make that one even more epic and most important LONGER it will knock everybody out cold. Since now, it ain't nothing more than a little fun experience that is over too fast.

[Gamma Bros]

A cool game!

Although I really liked it I felt like it was a interactive blueprint of something huge.

This game has alot and lacks alot in my opinion. You have done a really great job overall, a nice intro to the game where the space ship leaves the hangar ship and go out to the open space. Enough to make you get that "ok let's ROCK" feeling!

... but I never experienced that feeling fully. The first thing I reacted upon was that the game was pretty slow overall. Not that that is something negative but I would absolutely LOVE it 10 times more if it was a game of which tested your MICRO skills above any other skills. The top priority.

I don't know if you COULD get extra speed of something. Either way I think it was too hard to reach it even when you did. Make speed boost permanent and more easy to reach. Then when you die you lose them (kind of like Gradius).

One thing that disturbed me with the controls was that you could not shoot in any other angles than linear and upwads/downards. I so wanted to shoot up the corners. And that combined with the slow shuttle speed made the overall fluency pretty uninteresting.

The graphics... well, they were indeed interesting and retro. BUT!!! They made it pretty annoying after a while to see what you actually crashed into when you did crash into something. The small enemies and the metroids was almost like invisible to me. And did huge chunks of damage to you when you hit them.

The health overall should be easier to track. Since when I died I was almost not aware of what happened when I did die. Which felt pretty unfair.

The sounds were though the part I liked the most. Definitly nice retro and "shouty" sounds like old Commodore 64 sounds. The explotion sounds felt nice and they made it feel like the enemies really died violently.

To that you get a slight score of humor since It's always a little funny with retro sounds and retro-like graphics.

It's a good game definitly, but like I said it feels a bit uncompleted. Perhaps you could add more spice into the powerups aswell. With a time-period buff to your ship. Makes you alot stronger for a short while, then you will really FEEL the power of the powerups.

Thanks for the gaming experience overall, it's always good when peope make simple to play games which you can enjoy over and over again!

A vote of: 3

pixeljamgames responds:

thanks for the in-depth review.

some of the issues you brought up (speed of game, size of enemies) could probably be resolved by downloading the home version, which plays faster and bigger (fullscreen if you want it). this is pixeljam's first big game and future versions of gamma bros will definitely be much more feature-rich. overall i think we did the best with what we had (which was not much time and no money)

[Master Tutorial 2]

Reeeeal poor.

This is perhaps one of the most poor Tutorials as I have ever seen. It takes up things that are so randomly put that Monty Python seems logical.

If you vote for a save here you must be really new around here. If so you must learn to discover the "Where is/how to" section of the Forums where you will find Tons of tutorials that cover everything from the most simple things like making a symbol to motion tween with style. So this one isn't needed at all. Vote: 1

[Zombie Hunter II]

Aww come on!

This is a very nice idea, this could have been perhaps one of the funnier games on this site. But the programming and artworks are not properly working out at all.

First of all the movements are EXTREMELY choppy! I am talking about when you are turning your character, it goes about as smooth as it would if you tried to shred rocks in a mixing machine. Making it kinda hard to aim at your enemies most times. When you walked forward into a object such as a wall for an example the character just chopped back and forth all the time. Then the enemies movements were also very weird, they could be walking towards you walking sideways because the animations to what angle you are facing isn't working properly. So mostly I shot enemies in the sides when they were supposed to walk with their torso towards me...

Then the enemies AI is way off. They simply just walked forwards you all the time and every enemy moved the same. And if they faced an object on the way they simply kept going towards it witout trying to find a way around, they stuck. The enemies could also walk inside eachother witout any problems at all. They simply stack-attacked you which makes you able to take down several enemies. I like that idea that you could shoot miltiple enemies with one shot though, but that just feel so goddamn fake when they are stacked onto eachother!

Also the bullet system is way unsmooth... you cannot reload whenever you want to! That just sucks, since what that makes you do is to empty your magazine everytime you are supposed to walk into a new room. That just feel so ... SO - NO... But what I really HATED the most in this game that annoyed me like crazy were that there were no logical reasons whatsoever how you gaines damage from the enemies. They were like 5 dm from you and your health started to shrink with massive amounts. You should really think about adding animations for the enemies aswell when they attack otherwise it will just be so lame. And let there be feeling when they hit you so they don't stand way from you and still are able to kill you. Unless they have ranged attacks of course. Then when you killed the headless bigger zombies the blood puddle kept moving towards you when you had killed them.

I would definitly want to see some more variation in this game. I didn't really come far so I can't really tell whether there are enough variation enemies or variating weapons. But my guess so far would be that there simply are no such things.

The graphics are pretty ok. I personally don't like them though, mostly because you mixed pretty detailed backgrounds like the grass and such to simple colored items. That differs too much one to another. But they were ok.

The sounds were ... lame. They hade an intence glued-on feeling. You had like 2 sounds, the resident evil soundtrack and gunshot. No emeny sounds, no "hit target" sounds, no moanings, no sounds when you are hurt, no cocky comments from your character. I also found it very annoying when the RE song kept going over and over! I would strongly recommend that you cut out some pieces in the song so that it can loop witout that you can hear that it goes over and over again and make like a endless loop to the game.

I guess the story could work, but I say it was very brain spammed. Perhaps you don't want a super story to your game and that is ok. But we really don't know if you tried to make one or not since you didn't tell anything about how you came up with the story or how much you fought making it and so on. So we are just going to have to take it that you didn't want any real story.

Newgrounds has tons of games like these and I would recommend "Doomed" as one of them. This game is an unpolished diamond, this game genre is something you should continue working with. You might make a really good one some day! You have a long way to go but this was one good step in the right direction anyways. Vote: 1

[Zombie Horde!!]

Resident Evil !

Its a good survival "horror" game which reminds me of RE. Everything you kill zombies in is good to me. This is indeed a very nice game and at first I swore about how hard it was but when you learn how the reloading works with the clips and all that it suddenly gets easier. At first I didn't understand that the number below current clip ammo was a complete and full clip. So I reloaded often and lost 100'ds of bullets. Perhaps you should have made that part more clear and just don't wish us all death in the instructions.

The graphics are not too much to brag about but they work really well. Thought I would really want to see the enemies bigger and more colorful with more characteristicts or something.

As to the sound I really won't give you anything special since it was just lame sound effects that felt glued on. Neither did you have any theme songs or some action filled song in the game that you could turn off or on when you felt like it. Such things are appreciated.

I won't give super high Interactivity either eaven tho you don't do anything else than control the game. Partly because you can't chose music, you can't switch controls and partly because of the bugs. Oh... and then when you switched weapons it was reeeeally slow to do so! It could really use some faster weapon switching. Often you thought you had the right weapon because you pushed left 2 times but actually it only respond to one click.

Yes I have experienced bugs in this game and I will explain them.
First one is that when you are shooting with weapons, lets take the rocket louncher, I don't know if it only is to that one or if it goes to all weapons but, when you shoot the RL and the explosion spawns - when you move the cursor as it comes the explosion follows the cursor... basicly you can move around the explosion which doesn't look too good. Then the entire game bugged to me, I shot a spider with the flamethrower at the edge of the screen and the DoT started to kick in (Damage over time). Each time the spider got damage from the fire it fell back which lead to the spider falling out of the screen... then it never came back and the game stopped. The only thin that came in was the girls you can rescue. And you could hear the sound of the spider taking damage. Perhaps check that out.

The varifications of weapons were also very basic. You have the normal types of bullet weapons, pistol, machine gun, shotgun... yea that stuff. The only thing that stood out were the bricks. Funny little weapon! But I dunno if it would work with some more little creativity. Add molotov cocktails :)

The way you moved was also kinda restricted but also gave a little tactical thinking and saving on cash to fortify your little house. However I'd say it would have been funnier if you had more space to move at. Or if the garden were larger.

I can also say that I would want to see a sequel to this game, it is good as it is now but it will need modifications like them I explained to reach high. Vote: 4

[the NG Calculator]

Ehm... $76.76

Tho I don't get what batting avg is. Well what to say about this.
It's short, you don't really get much of it. More than that you can brag about how much your account rocks all elses. I liked the sound which is what Id say to be the most NG song there is.

This is though a fun idea for sure. Vote: 3

[Crisis in HFRC]

Not too good

Short... pointless... stupid story, yet ok.

The controls and movements of the character were out of style. When he jumped it was both weird and unsmooth. Took him the same time to get upwards, as downwards(?!). Then when fighting that boss it was very frustrating. Since you weren't really touched those times you were burnt by the fire. I didn't play on after that boss, i really felt like it wasn't something for me since the horrible programming.

Graphics were kinda charmful. But tons of mistakes and misses. His feet were under the ground most of the time and there were many gaps in the outlines of objects. The "forward" arrows that you pushed looked slinted. Also the window had a little gap, these are really not big mistakes but its the little things that counts, they still effect the overall feeling you get for the game.

The music choise was acceptable although I didn't think sonic was the number one thing I would choose to a platform game like this, the song was all too hectic too the tempo of the game and since it was kinda retro style it was a bit too loud aswell. Take good time on the music since music is what touches you more than anything else in a movie/game.

You are on your way to something, if you continue you might become something big. But I hope you know the challenge that lays ahead then. Vote: 2

joe-kangaroo responds:

good critisisms, thanks

[Shy Guy's Big Bird Chase]

:SWE: Ganska sådär :ENG: Average +

:SWE: Ett snyggt, snabbt och simpelt spel. Dock tycker jag det var lite för lite för mig. Det som störde mig mest var att efter varje spel så var man tvungen att se introt och sedan trycka på Play igen. Väldigt irriterande. Sedan tycker jag inte kontrollen var riktigt fungerande. Var det varannan (vänster höger vänster) eller båda samtidigt? Lyckades aldrig få upp den där grejen någonting oavsett hur mycket jag kämpade. Nja, nog har du gjort mycket bättre alltid. Röstar: 2

:ENG: A nice, fast and simple game. Though it was too little to satisfy me. What disturbed me most was that after every game you had to watch the intro and then push Play again, very annoying. Then i don't think that the controls were really responsive or working. Was it left, right left you were gonna push or both together? I really didn't get that thing up any far no matter how hard I fought. You have done much better than this. Vote: 2

[Super Mario Revived]

Average

This game really could use some huge amounts of speed to it. Sadly I find it all too slow and low of any substance.You should have at least add some time counter making it able for players to finish the game as fast as possible making us able to compete with eachother. The controlls respond, but it feels like mario is running on a ground made of glue... like he has to wade thru waist-high water. If its something Mario 2D games has, its speed.

Also i found enemy movement patterns and objects placings way off. I know your not trying to create mario but you could have used any graphics to this.

Overall graphics were pretty nice, eaven tho the character felt tiny since the screens moved on like sideshows. And to me it was kinda muddled. There are also some ... stupid things with the arts. Example, the extralife bar up to the left is partly hidden underneath the "Mario" text. The other numbers are moved slightly upwards from the places they shoulda been at. Since there is way much space that should not really be neccessarily. Then I didn't find it nice-looking with simple white numbers for all the bars up there. The simple white color would have looked like 10 times better if pixeled to a black shadow underneath. More retro like.

Sound, was fitting. But only to this kind of slowmotion type of game. If you are working on something with more adrenalin DO NOT add such music again.

Hmmm well it's nice with a kill counter allright, but for what? Perhaps that should have a meaning, since its kinda lame as it is now.

A game that could have been very much funnier, if Mario wasn't wearing concrete shoes... I look forward to another one though. Vote: 2

[Element Saga ch5 - DEMO]

Weell...

This is a great idea! This could have gone to top 3 easily! The graphics are brilliant, so are the tutorials and Devil May Cry like gameplay.

For a flash game this is really nice. But it just doesnt give me anything more than a OK. THe game is too messy, it doesn't feel like you are very interactive in your slaughtering. Sure there are some nice different attacks and so, but there is no feeling in the hits that you make, it all just feels like a big mess.

Also the movements of the character seems to hack at some points. And enemies move somehow too slow. Then its too easy, that gets real boring fast.

Perhaps add depths to the game, that you at least can move up and down. THen perhaps slow the tempo of the game, not the tempo in the adrenaline pumping action, but in the way you get things and so on...
Vote: 3