Phantosanucca's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dad 'n Me]

"The gameplay mechanics need more tuning" [6.5/10]

For my 300th archived review, I've decided to review Tom and Dan's latest project, Dad 'n Me. Now, I had before expressed my disconcern with the concept during it's Alpha stage. However, I go into this review without bias, as I feel it's only fair that everyone get a fair review, and I wouldn't be much of a reviewer if I didn't give everyone a fair shot. Regardless of how much I dislike the idea of what's being presented.

During the load-up, we're treated to some very nice button links to buy Alien Hominid. I already own AH myself, so it's just a pretty marketing ploy until the game loads up. At which point we're treated to more pretty logos and backgrounds and buttons. Which is nice, but that's the high point for the graphics here. As soon as the game begins, the visuals become much less flashy and detailed. They have a cartoony flair, not unlike something on Nickelodeon. I for one never thought of Synj to be all that great an artist anyway, but as an animator, which are almost 2 completely different things, Dan has always impressed me... Until now... It's not that I hate the visuals in this game, it's just that they're pretty much the same stuff we've seen time and time again. The same pseudo-square kids with the flat heads, dot eyes and lines for mouths walking around, except outfitted with afro's and t-shirts and junk to show that they represent specific members of the Newgrounds community. That's fine and all, but it's not that realy deserves a *high* score in the graphics category. Hell, most of the animation isn't as fluid as the Alien Hominid DEMO. I had this thing on low and medium, and both times, only when there's only 2 characters on screen, and when the backgrounds and foreground stop moving, will there be anything close to fluidity. Motion tweens were used a bit too much here as well. The backgrounds themselves are not horrible to look at, but Dan has made better looking games than this.

The nick-esque environments are a +1 in style, but that's as far as style goes for this game. And again, what is up with the concept to this game? "Kill Defenseless Children?" You know why Final Fight used street thugs and evil corporate business ninjas as enemies? Because there's more incentive to kill them than to kill a harmless child. Specifically that almost none of the kids in this game are even bothering you, let alone trying to harm you, while generic street thugs and ninjas are out to kill you in other sidescrollers. Self-Defense is the basis for 2-D sidescrollers, and when you lose that aspect, you lose all incentive to bring virtual harm to the characters onscreen. I know it's just supposed to be twisted and fun, but I don't even think it's either of those things. It's not all that violent, and it's not very exciting. Punching kids does get boring, and the pacing of the game is rather unbalanced.

That's not even the worst part of Dad 'n Me. I can tell you two went out of your way to make this a fun sidescroller game, and I can give you that much credit. You even tried to implement some combo system in there, but with only 2 buttons for attacks, and very little, almost randomly decided control over when and how you can combo the kids, it just seems like a broken system. In that sense, it feels like this game is not finished. Many times combos simply didn't work, and even punching sometimes failed for no clear reason, even if standing exactly perpendicular to your opponent. Was this game tested enough? I don't know, but the gameplay mechanics need more tuning.

The music fits the game nicely, and I like the sound effects too. Although the car sound effects were a bit too loud...

Don't get me wrong. I don't hate this game, per ce. I am a fan of Tom and Dan's work. I'm still playing AH to this day, and I don't regret that purchase. But this game in particular, has some pretty obvious flaws to it, that prevent it from reaching the same level of enjoyment as AH. I just think this game should've spent a little more time in development.

~Phantos

DanPaladin responds:

i'll address stuff.

the logos and ads are there because this file will be stolen and put on sites without our permission, so it's only fair to point people back to where we'd like to be showing our work from.

i'm sorry you don't like the animation but if you think my animating skills from several years ago is more fluid than my current skill, you're absolutely weird. maybe you're confusing something in there.

as far as flatheads go, you may just have to get used to it. artists have a thing called a "style". perhaps you've heard of it. Nobody told Monet to stop painting the way he did. Nobody told Dali that they can tell that a painting is his and that's bad. It's a GOOD thing, and I hope you smell a fart soon.

This is stand-up arcade violence and you're going to love it. Storyline Shmoryline.

Who the hell are you to say self-defense is the basis for 2D brawlers? You are a moron if you think that. 2D brawlers are not self defense. They are a tool in which you can slay hundreds of enemies and scream YEAHHHH EAT THAT. In DoubleDragon you might be saving a girl, but you're beating the living shit out of people by bashing your knee into their mouth over and over. Who do you think the cops would arrest first? The guy with the teeth marks in his knee or the 100000 people laying on the floor dead?

Anyway, better luck next time. I think you are over-analyzing.

[Megaman PX - Time Trial]

Patience is a virtue

I don't know why everyone else seems to be whining so much about this. "Is too hard!! WWAAAAHHHHHH-yur stupid omglol" "Da conrtols r 2 complicted for my small dino brain vote 0", and so on abound in the reviews here... Personally, I had my troubles at first, and was just as ready to pout and whine after not even a minute of gameplay because I didn't get the highest score as soon as I started playing. Which would then be followed by voting zero and leaving a review which would blame all of my inadequicies on a flash game.

But unlike most people here at Newgrounds, I had a thought.

"Why not play through it a little more than 5 SECONDS, so as to form a VALID opinion on this game?" And now I've got one of the high scores for the hardest level. ^_^

I mean, come on. You invested the time to MAKE this game, the least we should do is is invest some time to PLAY it. Right? The controls are pretty good, though the wall-jumping feature seemed a bit clumsy and unpredictable, though it does add a bit of rush to the whole thing...

Megaman X, overall, is alright. Though he skids a lot, and he's a bit slower than the other characters. Not a good mix. But, I managed. Zero is probably the best out of all of the choices. Fast and responsive. The recipe for success. His only drawback is that his weapon is short-ranged... But that's Capcom's fault, not yours. :P

Bass, however, due to his lack of a wall-climbing ability, is useless in all levels except the "hard" level, where his double-jump comes in real handy when jumping across pits. But I still used X to get through that stage, so maybe he's entirely useless altogether... Especially since he doesn't fit in with the Megaman X game setting, being a 20XX Wily Bot...

Though it has the common little... er... shortcomings, that most Megaman Flash re-enactments have, in terms of controls, and graphical thingeys, but it's not offensive to the eyes. The use of layering is really well done, hell, the levels are nicely arranged from bits and pieces of stages from Megaman X5(a good choice, considering there aren't any Burn Dinorex background sprites on the internet to my knowledge, so that must've been hard to arrange).

The music and sound effects are what you'd expect from a Megaman game. Blast, explode, die, explode, die, rinse and repeat.

Overall, I think this was very well-designed game. It's nice to see that it got itself some Front Page time. Good job. :)

-Phantos

Andrew-Traviss responds:

Thanks :-)

Yeah, I think people have gotten to used to Flash games being dirt simple little things that you master in 5 minutes. Truth be told, I expected the reactions I've gotten, there are a lot of short attention spans at NG, I've noticed.

Bass is actually incredibly useful once you learn how to use him (he is the hardest to use), but because his double jump allows him to move up much faster than wall clinging, he can be the most competitive.

It's nice that someone recognized all the effort that went into this. I had to use ePSXe and my copy of Megaman X5, ripping all the level tiles myself, there's over 400 of them in the game, it took forever.

[Alloy: Arena]

It's lookin' good so far...

However, this is clearly an unfinished product. Certain things really need to be added, removed, or just tweaked before making a final... whatever kind of media you plan to make the finished product in...

The enemies, I take it, are meant to start off easy and then gradually get more challenging. As is evident in any well-made game. But considering how much damage you recieve from the punier attacks, and how quick-to-react they can sometimes be, it feels like you're starting at a medium level, then going to hard, then going up to needlessly hard. While this isn't a bad thing, it makes the whole flow of the game somewhat awkward. Simply taking off just a TINY BIT of the percent of damage you recieve from the rats, or even the first level Pitz would even things out. Since there's no visible difference besides the colour scheme between the 2 forms of rat people, then perhaps this can be the difference necessary to make these 2 different forms of enemy.

Or, you could just put in a small health powerfup after every "round" of enemies, and leave everything else as it is... But seriously, put health power-ups in for the final product.

Second, fighting different variants of dogs does get rather bland. Even though they are magnificently coded, and make each round of gameplay more unique and challenging than the last, I'm sure you can think up something more innovative than "blue dog, red dog, green dog". As I recall, there were more than just dog's on Noah's Ark, I'm sure there's room for some other crazy critters in here as well. Of course, you already knew that, and, most likely have already put an entire zoo into this mysterious finished product, but since this is an incomplete, so to speak, flash I am judging, you can forgive me for having an incomplete view for now.

The sound is sort of offputting. There aren't that many discernable sound effects(at least that I can remember, of course that says it all right there), and the music doesn't seem to fit the overall mood of the game. Something with a little more rock, or industrial sound to it may be a more fitting soundtrack for a game like this.

However, those imperfections have failed to keep the addiction of this game from being overlooked. I'm hooked to this game, as is evident in the High Scores at the PsychoGoldfish site. And not only is it fun to play, but it's nice on the eyes too. Although in a perfect world, it would probably have one or two more frames for each character's actions, as it is, it's still very professionally animated. The background is immensly detailed, and the movements work just fine for this product. Although the framerate does come into play on more than one occassion, at least it gives a bit of a slow-mo effect... I just wish it were a smoother slow-mo effect... My only other complaint in this field, is that Alloy looks like he has boobs... I dunno about you, but maybe he should get some different armour, 'cause that is definitely a breast-plate he's got goin' on there... :/

Well, I await whatever final design for this game you have in store for us. Until then, I'm gonna try my damndest to get past 7th place...

-Phantos

PsychoGoldfish responds:

Thanks for the suggestions.. these really help, and we're taking notes on how to improve the final version..

[FinalFantasyFlash v1]

This is why they call it Beta

1. There's no story.

2. 75% of the time, his attacks miss. WTF is up with that?

3. Potions recover MORE than just 20. And since that stupid brown goblin thing's invisible attacks do 20 each time, potions are completely pointless.

4. There's no animations for the attacks when a monster does them.

5. Why does he start off with Ultima?

6. What was that battle music called?

A lot of improvements need to be made before this can be considered remotely playable. But, it's only a beta, so whaddaya expect?

-Phantos

chikara1 responds:

Well In earlier responces I already said that the script I used is stolen from Dungeons and Dragons... I always threw 1d20 lower than what I should so I missed... Even in the game I was creating. And I entered everything including Ultima because I didn't create a worldmap so learning or collecting it was out of the option.

[Rabbits An Weed]

I'm with Cykosis on this one.

Leave the crap off NG. There's already too much of it here as it is. And next time, make a game where the controls WORK PROPERLY.

-Phantos

MD-CHIS responds:

now come on kid we all know you cant do better wanksta

[Megaman - ProjectX(demo)]

This could've been a REALLY good flash...

If only the level design weren't designed to make you lose, with dozens of blind jumps, enemies that seem to move at normal or fast speed while Megaman X moves WAY too slowly. But the worst part is, there are no checkpoints. And THAT, is why this is sure to piss off hundreds of NG users, because of a simple problem that could've easily been fixed. Sad.

-Phantos

Andrew-Traviss responds:

Actually, you're wrong. Easily is just what it was not. I tried adding checkpoints, but the whole thing was programmed in such a way that it actually made adding them really tough (as I said, I was a n00b, and did things in a silly way sometimes.

Sorry about the blind jumps. This was actually designed more as a way to show off the engine rather than as a game of pure enjoyment. The level design was somewhat haphazard.

[Astro]

Epsio2012, shut it

This game is impossible to beat. It ends before it starts. There are like 15 giant asteroids, and the controls are aimed to make you crash into them, incinerating you instantly.

Maybe this game would have been AVERAGE. If only it wasn't designed to make you lose as much as possible.

And that's coming from a guy who beat Resident Evil 3 on hard, Kingdom Hearts in 20 hours, and Final Fantasy X over 30 times. So it doesn't chalk up to my video gamin' skillz, you can be sure of that.

-Phantos

yo-man-eh responds:

Wow. How can you die instantly? Did you change the options to impossible before you started? It's so very easy. I don't know what you're talking about.

[BANG!! Wheeeeeee...]

Tom Fulp deserves a freakin' medal

For going through dozens of craptacular entries such as this one every freakin' DAY! I mean my goodness gracious this sucks! What kind of neanderthol could find entertainment in this?! The graphics, controls, and gameplay are the equivalent to a circus train wreck!

-Phantos

kingdarkness responds:

Shut the fuck up Mother fucker!!!
You don't even have a flash movie!!!