PoisonHeart's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Run Alien, Run!]

really sluggish....nothing new, recycled/plain graphics, pointless motivation for players, badly-clashing UI's....it's really hard to provide reasonable feedback for something like this. that is because what am i to say that doesn't sound like a bash?

"nice use of two colors" or "i really enjoy how choppy the game is". there is a point at which credit for effort and driver on the authors part doesn't cover it.

Art by Kenney (not "Kenny"), sfx by kenney and freesound.org, design by generic-land, programming courtesy google.

this was probably a great learning experience, and i definitely see the enthusiasm.

the final point for me is that i'm really anti-HTML5. Flash is just a tighter package. also, sorry but every other review seems too candy-coated so i thought i'd be a little mean.

LongArmInteractive responds:

No hard feelings, mate. All feedback it accepted. And yes this game was a learning experience. 90% of the art was from a resource pack. However, the programming was not Google-ed, coded from scratch.

[House of Wolves]

dude, i remember hearing about this one and being really excited about it for a few months now. it looks like it will be a lot to figure out, but that's okay because it's all very interesting. it's not the same stale UI's and the music is wonderful. i think this is a game i could come back to more than once.

not sure what's up with hydra's comment down there, i'm not seeing anything that suggests this was incomplete. unless that mention was snuck into the end.

i really enjoy not having to wait for units, and how easy it is to grab a ton of peasant and make them build. i think games like starcraft actually saw that as potential flaw, like it could be too easily exploited. but here i think there is a good balance.

i like the variety of resources, i love the music like i've already said....a lot of thought was put into this game, and it's really inspiring! i love it.

Louissi responds:

Thank you it means a lot to me

[Earth Taken]

i've played this game for about five minutes after seeing it here on NG a couple months back....it's smart, addictive, deep, and has really great atmosphere. i find myself definitely able to sink into the established TERROR of the ALIEN INVASION!

SeethingSwarm responds:

Thank you! So glad you enjoyed the game... hopefully you've played it for longer than 5 minutes after your first time a couple of months back :P ...thanks for the 5 stars!

[Apocalypse: Survive it]

really experimental and interesting. the lack of player-controlled menu progression made me have to right-click>play more often than not, but still very cool. good luck with the kickstarter!

Kolumbo responds:

thanks

[Rodman vs Kim: One on One]

i really liked the simple controls, gfx, and gameplay all wrapped around a really interesting and bizarre world-event. it's like eating bacon-wrapped shrimp while reading the news, interesting.

DBuck-Eye responds:

That was the exact metaphor that I was going for!

[Final Slam 2]

kind of a bummer...i invested a lot of time into building a character, which was a part i really liked...that reminded me of the old WWF games they made where you could customize your wrestler to a tee..

However...this is slow, unpredictable, and above all else the Author is asking for donations to play a version with more content. if the action were most fast-paced, and controls weren't all over the place, I'd be totally into this. the graphics are fine, and I love the number of options available. i still have yet to see a keyboard-only fighter that really works.

i think it's easy to be let down by this genre, given that people who play it know what they want and know what they like. Obviously the cult-classic "Guilty Gear" this isn't. It's not Tekken either, and I know that. But I won't lie, I always go into fighting games on newgrounds hoping for something awesome, and usually it is just this.

i don't really see the logic in adding 50lb's of fluff to something that is just not worth it. but that is of the Authors choice, and I can tell a great deal of work went into this game. it's just that when you get down to the meat of it, the fighting is not that good.

josh-tamugaia responds:

Thanks for your constructive review and opinions, and I don't disagree with you actually. However, there are a lot of people who enjoyed the game as it is now, as well. And of course, if possible, I'd improve the gameplay even more in future versions. Again, thank you for taking your time to write this lengthy review. Much appreciated.

[Sky Cops]

not bad, a little generic...the graphics are just fine, and the design itself is entirely functional and simple, it's nice. the real problem here I have is what about this makes it about being a cop? You're just auto-firing at army-dudes. i don't think cops usually do that.

playgb responds:

Hey there! Thank you for the comment! Yes, Sky Cops is the name of a special unit who are called, when the situation is critical :D. I hope you follow us to see our next games.

[Loot Hero]

I would really like to know more about the process behind the artwork here, it's really different than what you normally see in a Flash game. honestly, looks like it came straight from the cutting floor of "Mischief Makers" for N64, and I would love to know more.

I'm sorry I don't have a lot else to contribute, but I really like the game and love the art so would like to know more about that.

VaragtP responds:

Thanks :) I really like to experiment with different art styles! I have not tried Mischief Makers though! This was basically done by doing very small pixelart and then scaling it up about 4 times. The backgrounds where also made from pixelart, but after I scaled them I also blurred the images to different degrees to make it feel like it had more depth (a long with the parallaxing) and also as a contrast to the front "sharp" pixelart characters :) Hope that explains some of it!

[Vulcan Beta 1.1]

not quite my thing, but i really wanted to get back to hearing my music so i had to play muted until i wanted that enough. the sound is cool, it's very chip-like, but it's also VERY loud and totally dominated my speakers.

this is not complex stuff, considering what you already have here....would be easy enough to add a volume slider, or at least a toggle.

_root.MySound.setVolume(INTEGER);

KiiraGames responds:

Thank you for the response! :) I'll implement that soon.

[Toy Soldiers]

This is cool! It reminds me of a 90's shareware game. Could definitely be tightened. Would love to see that, but would rather see INSTRUCTIONS instead of an explaination for why there aren't any instructions....it's too complex to unravel the mystery of each krampon ability.

also, I'm not entirely sure, but the game is a little sluggish. I would guess the framerate is under 28FPS, if it were closer to 38 that would rock harder. there is also terrible lag with many krampons (?) on-screen.

graphics could be polished, for a version 1.5, they are admittedly somewhat dingy as is (no not dinghy, just a little drab, sharp, and kinda blurry).

as a final thought, i'd just like restate that i'd love to see a v 1.5 because I love Lemmings and this could be a great christmas-themed verison of that.

for the lag, i can only recommend reducing the size of the toy soldiers graphics, not just their movieclips, but the selectable, pixel-clickable objects that were traced from bitmaps or whatever.

also, i think Unity is a piece of trash, but that's STRICTLY my opinion. i don't think it allows the kind of flexibility any creative person really wants from an SDK.

Bcadren responds:

Actually I know what causes the lag and I will fix it. This was a compo entry for Ludum Dare; so I submitted it as-is. Update will be a bit yet. If you are wondering though; the lag is caused by the fact that every single pixel of the background is a separate physics object and each soldier is 6 with AI making the march work. I'm going to change it to pixel-data direct calculations instead of actual physics and it should clear up the frame rate and a few glitches.