3p0ch's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[ComicBookMovie]

It's an ok time waster I guess, but doesn't seem like a very inspired game. Specifically, the levels were all very similar and the bosses were essentially identical. None of the bad guys seemed to aim at your current position, they just shot in whatever pre-arranged pattern they have, so there's no element of trying to kite the enemy shots along to keep one step ahead of them. Giving the enemies missiles that could veer trajectory towards you could also accomplish a similar effect. Once you upgrade your main weapon enough so your shots basically fill the screen, it becomes purely an exercise in moving your mouse to a gap in the bullets. (Yeah I know that's what all bullet-hell games boil down to, but not having to aim your shots still seems like it takes something away from the game.) If you do give players a weapon that can blast the entire screen, then to keep the player from focusing completely on bullets in their immediate vicinity and make them pay attention to the rest of the screen, you could have something like lasers that will fire across the screen (perhaps at an angle) instantly after a warning flashes at the edge of the screen from which it will emerge. IDK, maybe a mix of all of the above that gradually gets introduced into the game as it progresses to keep it from being repetitive. And bosses that do different things -- be it firing different types of weapons, or having armor that reflects your bullets back at you if you don't shoot them right in the middle, or spawning gravity wells that pull you in weird directions, or something that makes each of them unique.

If this was meant to not really be an attempt at making a serious game so much as a way to poke fun at comic book nerds, then I'm afraid it doesn't do a very good job of mocking comic book nerds either... I'll defer to WarpZone's review on that aspect.

[Only One Chance]

lol at the secret ending (even if it's not really a secret when you talk about it in the game description). worth a second playthrough if you haven't gotten it already.

johnfn responds:

haha yeah fair point but if i don't mention it then people are like "zomg i didn't get the girl THERE'S A BUG"

[[US]SR]

If you hate the game because it's not much fun to be maimed and left for dead by forces beyond your control instead of being able to shoot down five enemies with a single bullet and take down a helicopter with a bow and arrow, then you've got the point of the game completely.

It's subpar and lazy for not letting you advance text and letting you crawl all the way off the screen (it's not like I'm giving it 5 stars), but it doesn't really need to be fancy. Now if he were to make a game where you were maimed and had to crawl your way to a MASH unit to survive with obstacles that are tough to overcome, trying not to black out from a concussion or exsanguinate or such, that'd be 5 stars, even if you still got killed half the time by forces beyond your control just to get the message across.

just404it responds:

Where were you able to crawl off the screen? I thought I had snagged all those bugs!

As for the gameplay bits, it was originally going to be a masocore game where the player would have to dodge various enemies and bullets while crossing the highway (death would still static them back to the beginning), but it became obvious that we didn't feel left out of the action; we had fun with that approach and felt like 'main characters,' so gameplay was reduced to the current bleed-out-static so the player is constantly aware of their minimal control (its a weak gameplay mechanic designed to contrast with the shoot-em-up actions of the back heroine). It felt that adding means of death beyond player controlled ones would emphasize the player's role too much. Thank you for the feedback!

[Accelerator]

This is a very good game as it is. But I can't help but remember Vector Rush and Vectrix - similar genre where a game that I thought was very good became awesome on a re-release, and I can easily imagine a similar jump to the next level with Accelerator. (Unfortunately there seems to be something wrong with the swf for Vector Rush now which the author can't fix; if you haven't played it while it was working then imagine a stripped-down version of Vectrix.)

[Social Dysphoria The Game]

You appear to be invincible if you park in a corner and leave a paperweight on the spacebar.

VOEC responds:

Thank you for letting me know.
Fixed it and updated some things to make the overall game a bit more challenging. Also added a new shoot pattern for more variety.

[2013 Shelter]

A little too much of a pixel hunt for my tastes. Specifically: finding the nail and hammer in the second puzzle, the axe in the third puzzle, using the box in the middle of the lake of the fourth puzzle, finding the rock in the sixth puzzle, etc were all just a matter of futzing around until you stumbled upon the solution. What's with the out-of-place barrel with a note in the first scene? Going to an outside site to continue after finishing the game here also doesn't help.

As far as making this constructive criticism, my biggest sentiment is that a game like this should focus more on trying to find creative ways of solving a weird problem and having the player interact in a way that makes it clear that they know what the problem is and what they're doing to solve it (dragging items into the appropriate things to use them on maybe?) than on finding a hammer when only the handle is showing.

[Ripple Dot Zero]

Found a bug: The credits screen only has three people listed, and there's no freaking way the best flash game ever was made by just three people.

[The Ruins of Machi Itcza]

People complaining about the ending need to play upgrade complete if they haven't already. In that game you click a button and it goes from a plain text screen at the end with no real congratulations to a buff pic saying you're awesome and you totally kicked butt. Seriously, that makes any difference in a game? And, well, I kinda liked the end because even though I got trolled I kind of got a smirk from thinking about all the other people out there getting trolled who would actually get POed at it.

The journey in this game wasn't half bad in my opinion. The later keys required a little bit of thinking about how the game is laid out to anticipate where you should go, not a whole lot but suitable for a flash game. Platforming wasn't very challenging except for one or two points, but it's fine for a game that's supposed to be more cerebral than cerebellar. My only real gripe is that movement was a little too slow to be completely enjoyable (maybe because I'm playing on a $2.99 piece o crap laptop, but others seem to have thought it was slow too). Run button, plz.