Shadowii2's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Derpy's Story]

"Derpy will no walk into any harm on her own"
If only this rule applied better when Derpy gets hit by anything (most notably happened to me in the stage with the log you had to time to walk over it), because despite some of the invulnerabilities (as I presume there is some time window for that), Derpy becomes a tad too hard to control, and I managed to lose three lives for one mistake because I couldn't her to behave properly before she bumped into something again.

Also I'd criticize the choice to move camera in accordance to the mouse's position. Because of this it takes a couple of seconds to locate Derpy when a stage starts, and it gets slightly irritating in any tighter area where you need to be careful. I'd suggest to centralize the camera on Derpy when a new stage starts (if it's already supposed to, then it's not working right), and make the camera move only at the edges of the screen. Perhaps make it an option to decide between the two camera types?

Biggest gripe for me however is the decision to throw the player all the way to the beginning upon game over. In a simple nature of a game like this, it only becomes tiresome to go through the levels again, even more so if you just did one simple mistake that then lead to three-four hit combo and game over, like what happened to me a couple of times. Players may outright just quit and not finish it because of this. it's only superficially padding extra length for the game.

Other than those, it seems to be a fairly good game with some nice looking in-game environment graphics to boot. Music fits quite nicely, and Derpy feels pretty lively. The cutscene animations aren't too bad either.

All in all, I'd say it's a fairly simple artsy game, with some rather minor, albeit annoying, flaws. Solid 3/5 for presentation alone.

[Dangerous Christmas]

Simple platformer with very little to offer

First thing first, this game is unplayable on Mac OS X or at least on my Mac (OS X Leopard, newest Flash player, didn't work in either Chrome or Firefox), because the controls do not respond to input. Whatever code you may be using with Stencyl to get the controls down, get/code something better. Get a play tester with a Mac to see if similiar issues arise in future games of yours.

Well then, what's the good stuff in here? The controls (when they work) are nice and responsive, and you've got nice control over the character's movement. The collision detection works pretty nicely too, so it's player's fault when they mess up, rather than the game breaking down. Also, the graphical style is nicely simplistic, so there's little to complain about.

But the bad thing is... That's pretty much it. The game itself is a textbook example of how to make a generic platformer. There's next to nothing new here, and this kind of game simply has been made before sometimes even better than what's shown here. While it works for what it is, Newgrounds gets introduced to games like this pretty much daily so it's harder to find anything that sets it apart from others. This is one of those games that you easily forget right after you're done with it, or even while you're playing it. The only more "fun" part was the boss battle at the end (which felt kinda rushed given how lazily the Santa bot seemed to be animated, and how it simply walked through things and then randomly fell to oblivion), but that doesn't win it over. The soundtrack works to the game's disadventage, as it feels just about as generic as the gameplay itself. The music loops so much and it's so boring to listen to, that by end of the game I was getting sick of it. More variety on that ground, aswell as gameplay, would be very much appreciated. Also the cutscenes are boring to watch, so one could simply skip 'em because they don't miss anything notable for doing so.

When I happened to stumble upon your Twitter (and from there play this game), I noticed you said that the reception here on Newgrounds has been kind of slow because "people don't like challenge these days". It's not that, because this isn't a challenging in a way or another as it's just a boring blend of trial and error.

I decided to give you four stars. Three of which are for the graphics, and one for the technical aspects. I could have given you more, but with the inability to play it on Macs and the fact it's made with Stencyl (in other words, you had to do less yourself) I decided to only give one. The soundtrack doesn't win a single point in my book for its repetitiveness, and the used sound effects don't make me give it any extra points either.

I'm not familiar with Stencyl, so I'm not sure what it allows you to do and what kind of limitations it has, but I'd really suggest you to pair up with a competent programmer and/or learn Flash programming yourself. I'm saying this because you've got promise, but you'll need to step up your game and make something more interesting or fun if you want to make a bigger impact.

Don't mind it if this review stands out as a big speech of hate to you. What I'm trying to say here is that you should try and experiment with something more complex (and possibly more fun) things to create something more noteworthy or enjoyable.

Ps. One thing that irks me is that the jumping animation is the same as the used for running.

[3D Fighting:Bloody Rage 2]

Hadoken!... Did Spiderman say that?

I do have to say this is technically impressive when it comes to the concept:
Never seen a 3D fighting game made with Flash before.

But as this being BETA version, I'll give you some pointers on what to work on:

-Needs more attack buttons, probably something like different buttons for regular and special attacks would be nice

-Needs more variation with character models. All of them are the same, just with different textures.

-Music is really missing here, which is a let down for a typical fighting game.

-All of the characters need more personalized attack move sets. Even you have to admit SpiderMan doing the hadoken is really odd.

-Character fighting stances are all the same, because they are the same models just with different textures. Try fixing that.

-Jumping is somewhat akward and executing attacks while jumping is clumsy

-Although not something you need to take attention in to, the game would probably work better with 2D enviroment, as you cannot really move all that well around. Plus the 3D enviroment makes the game slower, because it consumes more CPU to play properly.

-Hitbox response is random at times and sometimes when the character clearly hits the opponent, the opponent doesn't seem to even budge.

-Try giving some different voices to the characters. All of them doing the same voice clips tends to be boring, rather than decent or anything.

But you still have my kudos on making a 3D fighting game with Flash and that it actually works. Maybe not perfectly, but still. I'll make sure to check the full version whenever you get it done.

[Mastermind: World Conqueror]

Played it all way through in one sitting

Heck, playing this through was really fun to do, took aproximately about an hour to do because I liked messing around with the world.

Really well done RTS game and by that I really mean it, it gets little bit easier when you get the hang of it, but before that this game can literally kick your butt if you aren't sharp enough to think what to do next.

The way how the technology and all got developed all way through was nice touch and the world events gave nice differences to it too, but if you are good enough with the usage of minions you don't really need 2 hand henchmen, which quite disapointed me.

What I really liked in this were the visuals, I really liked how it was just like the Mastermind series artwork way and then some parts like enemy units stood out for the different colors or so.

I was truly amazed at first that you really went through all that trouble to make the different scenes where you get to see did you fail or not, really nice and unique touch it has.

Plus, the good cast of voice actors was spot on, really fun to listen to and enjoyable. Nothing worth complaining in that part of the game.

Only thing that bugged me was that maybe you could have bought some tanks or so, just using minions and henchmen was little bit boring when enemies attacked with tanks and all that in the later phases of the game. I kinda cheated and escaped to the moon for the 1/3 of the game, which made the game really easy. Probably if someone wants some better challenge should stick to the starting base or so.

Overally it was fun, had a lot of customisation work to do, it didn't get buggy or laggy (for me that is), voices were great, amazing visuals and it gave you the real feeling of a RTS game.

Best game I have ever played on Newgrounds -- Must play for everyone!

10/10

~Shadowii2

[SHIFT 3]

Great work

I do gotta say I loved the first and second Shift games and you did it again, you always seem to keep my interest up towards this game (series), keep up the good work and gotta see what you bring us with the Shift 4!

[Gates vs. Jobs: The Game!]

Haha, great game.

I remember watching the Gates vs Jobbs episode sometime back and boy how I loved playing this game then, really well done although it was lil' frustrating to control the saber with mouse.

Great graphics, well animated and pretty funny too.

Simply just a great job here.

10/10

~Shadowii2

[Epsilon]

Amazing and addictive

Amazing and addictive game same time, the graphics, music and idea were all simply great. Loved the way how it was like "Portal" with a new twist.
Some of the tests were really hard to understand sometimes, but after playing through this and learning the tricks it was nothing.

Also loved how it had the "technical" feeling in it.

I'm amazed how it went so smoothly, I have nothing to complain here.

Great game, nothing else.

10/10

~Shadowii2

[Sushi-Go-Round]

And...?

What was that?
There was only that one clip that's supposed to be linked to miniclip.com(?).
Sorry but newgrounds isnt for just image submissions.

0/5, sorry.

~Shadowii2

[[Borealis]]

Nice game

Nice game with simple graphics and good fitting music.
It was really addictive but the bad thing it is that when you create too many balls it starts to lag and the gameplay becomes somewhat harder.
If this problem could be solved it would be much better.

Anyway, it was a great game, 4/5.

~Shadowii2

icarus responds:

Thanks man

[Tower Bloxx]

Darn addictive game!

This game is so darn addictive, keeps me playing all the time.
This is something that is worth of daily award and front page!

I cant think of any bad things, great job on this.

5/5