Score: 7

"A Mix Bag..."

submission: Maganic Wars Final

date: December 16, 2004

In short: while the game mechanics are slightly broken, the game itself is visually appealing, which largely makes up for the lack of strategy thereof involved in the actual gameplay.

I love the blood splatters, the sound effects, the little animations, and the opponent comments. Those are the strong points of the game.

My biggest gripe is with the card system itself: it's too dependent on luck, too situational, and strategy doesn't take you very far.

For example, there are cards that are obviously worst than another one (heal+<heal+, asp+<asp++). It's excusable in a TCG when availbility is the balance factor, but here it's painfully broken as there's no good counter when your opponent, say, has a hand of 5 Dmg+18 cards.

The card set itself is strangely short of chainable cards (there's only crit. strike). The rest of the game boils down to a buff and debuff game that's strangely reminiscent of RPG fight mechanics. Rune buffing is especially unnerving since there's a card that simply max a level and the only counter is a rune-20, which you may or may not have (there's no library manipulation, meaning you take your chances on what you can have).

Give some thought to why each card exists and why, despite of all other cards in the set, the card you hold is still useful. When a card game is devoid of a resource system, all cards should have qualities that makes it uniquely useful, and that should remove people's gripes about the card mechanics.

Give it some thought. Your next work maybe your greatest yet.

Score: 8

"I love reflections..."

submission: Fairy Sorrow

date: June 15, 2004

I was awed by some of the visual effects that you've achieved in this short movie. The reflections of the water in the opening scene, the reflection in the buildings in the top down street scene, and the distortions of the water droplet over the city background are all very nicely done. I think that I've learned quite a few good lessons on new flash techniques to use by watching this video alone.

Score: 9

"Now that you have the publicity you needed..."

submission: Freak : Prelude (Ep. 1)

date: September 3, 2003

Replace that annoying voice for the main character! It really stands in my way of enjoyment when a highly educated FBI agent would sound like a mentally challenged patient with speech impairment problems. It really hurts the mood and pacing of the story since his narration was basically half of the story (the other half being the 3D rendered graphics, which nobody can really complain about).

As far as animation is concerned, it's mostly fluid, but some of the cutting can seem awkward (the tentacle-tongue man somehow stood around for a second before grabbing the main character) and classic anticipation techniques are lacking (the main character knocked off a gun and punch a guy out while standing perfectly still; even if he's perfectly trained in martial arts, that was hardly convincing)... but we ARE talking about 3D animations here. The effort alone are worth the props, but the critiques are there in case you're ready to move on to the next step.

You can probably lose the character portrait on the subtitles to give the movie a more cinametic feel.

Kudos!

Score: 10

"By personal request."

submission: Hyrule High

date: June 24, 2003

Scores given because of an anonymous request.

Score: 6

"Getting there..."

submission: Pico's Cousin

date: May 13, 2003

Hey, it's a good start. True homage to Pico's School. Take your time on your next project, refine some elements, and you'll get yourself a smashing hit next time.

I agree with some comments about the guns, the candy, and the IR security - I admit, the IR security is a smart quirk, but casual flash viewers usually don't know about the right-click/zoom in option. Perhaps if one of your post-its has some hints about right clicking... it should help.

Giving the player more freedoms to move around helps too. I like to see places that are not part of the story- shooting things randomly is a nice touch; if the candy store is not an essential part of the story, it would have been a fun addition. Or, if you shoot out the lights in a room and later your enemy has a disadvantage because you blew out the lights earlier (or similar things), it would have been great.

My greatest gripes would have to be sound effects- a lot of essential sounds are missing from the game, it shows especially around the credits, when it's just absolute silence. Hint: download tons of game demos. Especially ones from cheap ass companies that you've never heard of.

Still, kudos, man. This game really captured the pico spirit.

Score: 7

"......"

submission: Stardust

date: May 5, 2003

So much good materials, and not enough content to show it.

Tracing drawings like those are pretty tire-some and labor intensive; I can well imagine most of the production time going into that part of the game. Sadly, the eye candy warps from one to the other in a matter of seconds, leaving some well paid effort unnoticed.

Of course, a more sensible story would be nice. But you alredy know that, right?

The music are rather chaotic... they cut in from mid-song and cut out in mid-song. If you're going to start the sound track midway through, try employing some fade-in techniques.

The clean layout, the short combat sequence, and the overall presentation of the game all shows that you have a lot of potential to create something really great. Now that you've had a first taste of success, just sit back, and take your time on your next project.

I am more than willing to collaborate if you need some programming help, by the way.

Score: 8

"Getting there..."

submission: Spindle: Character Beta

date: April 25, 2003

The basic engine seems to be doing well. Most of my recommendations will come in the form of game tweeks.

In the traditional fighting game the player usually has a better vertical reach while the computer enemies has a better horizontal reach (see: Angry Domo-Kun Smash Fest FAQ). I don't feel that this is present in the game; but of course it'll be up to you to decide if you want to stick with the classics or try something innovative.

It's most probably because you're placing dark characters in a deep blue background, but the animation cels are hard to tell apart - and some people may get frustrated to memorize combos involving 6-7 keys. I would recommend breaking it down to a combination of two smaller sets (i.e. there'd be two sets, AAA and SAS, then you'd have combinations of AAAAAA, SASAAA, SASSAS, etc.) It's easier to remember combinations that way.

It's a bad idea to have AIs all gang up on the player, although that's what happens in real life. Have some idle states for the AI so some would stand around for a bit before attacking, and some would walk away then run back and tackle, etc. You can also consider having some enemies intentionally moving around the player toward his back too, for more variety and challenge.

Try punching random objects in the house, record them and amplify the sound. You'll be surprised at the interesting sound effects that you'd get.

I'm a little worried about the frame rate though - your characters might be a little too detailed, especially the enemy characters. When it starts to lag with 4 characters and no background, you should start worrying about the frame rate...

Best of luck. It's looking good.

Score: 10

"Can it get any better?"

submission: Hentai ~ SimGirls (beta)

date: April 20, 2002

With 129 reviews ahead of mine, I'm sure that all the good words are taken, so let me just say that I'm a big fan of Masakazu Katsura... are you going to make a Special Edition with Iori (from I"S) instead of Tomoko?

As for the suggestion for the final version: you can make an R rated version for NG and a NC-17 version for newdgrounds.com . I'm sure that this kind of materials is just what they need to boost the site. I'm not sure if that's legal, though...

Score: 9

"Better than my own game."

submission: Flash Flash Revolution

date: June 13, 2001

This is an example of what I wanted to do in my original game, but never got the time (or effort) to actually go about doing it. Great job... this is way better than my original!