AloneInTheDark's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Johnny Rocketfingers 2]

A 9 score, but not only for you alone

The 10 is also for everyone who participated in the project. That includes the game programmer NegativeOne.

You've been causing quite some bad mood within the forums by not co-authoring him. And i agree with them, the role of NegativeOne in this game is of such a large part that not mentioning him as one of the co-authors is an insult to all the time and energy he put in the project. I understand that you want to take most credit, since the series is yours and you wrote the dialogue etc, but pretending you made this awesome game all by yourself is untrue and uncool. A band is more than its lead singer, a movie is more than its director.

Anyway, It would be unfair to give you only 0's in this review because the review should be about the game and not about the drama.

And there is no question about it, this became a real gem. Every aspect is so well worked out. The awesome animation, the cool dialogue, the scripting, the badass music. It all contains so much personality and fits in the concept perfectly. Your drawing style looks fast & cartoony and really adds to the cool atmosphere.

However i think the first part is still better. Besides the fact that it was all new then, i liked how the first one was in essence a movie with interactive elements in it. This one is an adventure game with awesome cutscenes. Though it was very well coded, the adventure part was at points slow and frustrating since the puzzles were pretty hard and I was for the most part walking around in the same background finding minimal spots to click with the mouse. It took away from the fast tempo and coolness of the series. Seeing a line like 'Are you new to adventure games or something?' when you try to figure a puzzle out, is funny the first time, but plain annoying the 20th time.

Fortunately there are enough walkthroughs here in the reviews to read when you get stuck and the awesome ending animation made me forget about all the frustation the game caused. If you plan on doing a third one, then take these things into consideration as well as to handle things with the actionscripter in a more mature way. It really causes a bad taste to the series.

AITD

vastcool responds:

He is credited in THREE places dude. THREE. Once on the pre-loader, which EVERYONE sees first. At the end credits (where peoples names NORMALLY GO to get credited). And lastly, in the freaking Game Info. But I guess having the programmers name in 3 different places is not good enough.

[Barbarian Bob]

Way to go!!!

That was so well done. Finally a game that can add new interesting elements to the side scrolling game genre.

What was brilliant about this game is that the gameplay had this tactical feel to it. It isnt just pressing one button all the time while walking from left to right, but every opponent was a challenge and every time and every slash had to be timed .

Also, the visual style was very cool. Simple, but really easy to the eye and with fun animation sequences here and there. maybe the main character looked a bit too dull, but the animation of the character and the cool moves made up for this.

No complaints either on the soundtracks and effects. All brilliantly chosen. I love the epic medieval track of the first level and the trancy songs later on. It really added to the fun experience.

Unfortunately the thing has a few minors also. First of all, 3 lives is way too little. 3 lives might be enough if you start each level with 3 lives again, but going through all the levels with this small amount is not cool. Especially when a smack from a big enemy takes away 2 lives or if you fall in spikes (which are very unclear btw) results in immediate death. Game over.. no continue or level restart, just do the entire thing again.

Also the button combination felt awkward. It would have been better if you could defend with the d key and jump with the s key! Your configure was very annoying at start, but after a while you get used to the combination though.

And finally i would suggest some more different weapons for the main character. The sword was very cool, but maybe it would be awesome if he could use a flail or spear also?

Anyway, all the minors are nothing when they are put next to the clever gameplay you created. Above all, the thing was extremely fun to play and that is, at least in my opinion, the most important thing for a game

AITD

Skribble-Style responds:

Thanks alot for the lengthy review, man.

About the character looking "dull". It can be percieved that way; but Brandon was trying to go for a faceless warrior look. Like, he is just slaughtering these people and doesnt give a crap.

Key combination! Heh, I knew alot of people wouldnt like it. I was going to add custom controls, but as I said, there just wasnt enough time. Ill be sure to add that in the next version.

As for not having enough lives. There are secret lives to find! The first one is on top of the shield of the statue. Look around for more ^__^

[MMPolarity Reconstruction]

pretty good but

This game was very awesome. But there were a few things that were so godly annoying.

I hated it how you were confronted with new situations and challenges when you didnt have 1 clue on how to approach them. It started at the first level with the laser beams coming from wall to wall. I didnt know the color of the shield absorps the same color of the laserbeam. Later i read that you wrote a bit about it in the instructions, but it would have been alot better if you gave the instructions ingame.

Then at level 2 the laserbeams come from down to up between two platforms and i didnt know they pushed me above when i jumped through them! So i kept dying from the spikes every time until i found out.

And at the last level you have to chose between one of the two holes to jump in and then you get confronted with yet another laser beam and you sort of just have to guess what color its going to be. >:(

Make the thing more clear for the people who play this man. Theres no point in being all mysterious about these type of things. Nobody will die in one of the mentioned situations and think 'Hey too bad, this was fun, i still dont have any clue what to do, but lets try again'. It is simply frustrating.

I also liked it better if the camera just moves with the character instead of just a still camera and you walk from scene to scene. Neway, good game, make a sequel or something and make sure you make it more gamer friendly and add some other megaman characters in it. Then you will have a real gem

AITD

Frankenroc responds:

The instructions DO say that when you're blue you absorb blue and when you're red you absorb red...

I only gave a quick list of controls on the commentary to let people who just wanted to start the game a chance to jump in.

As far as the screens, there are some that self-scroll, but I do see your point.

If I do make a sequel, I will keep your comments in mind. Thanks.

[Stande: Battle Mode]

Great job!

Good job, sketch. (And the other guy too ofcourse!)

So this was the platform game u told me about on AIM. Well it indeed turned out very nicely.

A very important aspect of a game is that it plays smooth and fast. And this is certainly the case in this game... The character reacted accordingly to the buttons i pressed and the bullets, knive and explosions were all in sync with the enemyanimation.

The entire concept is much fun and the shooting around and throwing grenades is really amusing. The knive could have worked out a bit more detailed though. Cause when i stab someone i want to see the blood coming down in gallons!

I missed a couple of things though that prevented me from giving this a 9 or 10. First of all i would have liked to see some more soundeffects. Maybe some loud screams of the enemies suffering in pain when they get hit! (hey im evil). The music also became a little bit annoying after like 2 minutes.

The next thing is that its a pity there is only 1 background! Although it was really worked out well and the different enemies were very cool, the game would have been so much more addicting if there were a couple of more backgrounds!

But the good aspects far outweigh the bad ones and im looking forwards to your next project! Take care...

AloneInTheDark

SketchMichaels responds:

YOu make some very valid points. Thanks for taking the time to pick it apart, glad you enjoyed it. You can thank Nero for the excellent control response... made that stuff nice and slick.

p.s. you can turn off the music if it's a real pain :)

p.p.s. Thanks for the review

[Raiden IIS - Part B]

wtf?

Is there standard an 'unlimited life' system in this game or something? Cause i think i died a trillion times the 10 minutes i played your game.

I like the concept of the coloured square powerups that become more powerful while collecting. I have never played 'raiden' before so i cant really compare this between the original.

What also was extremely annoying were the overpowered levelbosses. Not only did they shoot 1000 pixels per second in every direction, also if u have a good poweruped ship and encounter a boss, he will probably destroy you in a couple of seconds. Then u respawn again, but only with the standard level 1 gay weapon. At that point it basically is a matter of flying directly into the boss while keeping the shift button pressed...

Try to balance the game a little bit more. But i saw in your profile that you are only 13 years old. And although this game needs working it still is a very good job for a kid ur age. Im sure that when u are a little bit older and keep on doing flash u will make some real masterpieces in the future. Take care!

Go0gley responds:

I was thinking of making a credit system but I wasn't in the mood with making a "game over" page. If you found this game bearable, I think you might enjoy the real game. If you like, you could get it free at http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=3013 at the bottom of the page where it says "where to get it." Once you downloaded it and unzipped it, you could play it instantly. Sorry about the overpowered bosses (I expect you were using the purple weapon, because they get killed within 10 seconds if you use the blue one), I'll try to lower down their HP a little. I'll be 14 in August 18, I'm glad you found it okay anyway. :)

[NB! Game Anthology]

good job

Pretty well designed. The games all looked top-notch. I especially liked the helicopter game with the double dragon music. Really stylish. Playing the game was fun for a while, only they all lasted a little bit too short. But still, nice piece of actionscripting though... And that from the guy who learned me how to do a replay button. lolz. U probably dont remember anymore but i asked u how to do a replay button a while ago and then used the code u gave in my first movie short skirt/long jacket and again in my second one, out of control. Tanx again man.

Norwegian-Blue responds:

A master never forgets his aprentice....or...wait..i did.....good to know i helped....just ask if ya need more help!


Thanks for the review!

[The Dead Case]

o wow

What a beauty u have here. All ur hard work paid off , this is a very cool and complete game. The visual style is simply awesome and very original too. Nice and creepy backgrounds, a cool character and a sweet & handy interface. The music fits perfectly with this game. Kinda mysterious but not too scary. Damn i love everything about this. The only pain in the ass where the arrows to move to the next screen. Although it looked stylish with the arrows popping up slowly and fading away, it wasnt really handy. I would have liked it better when they were just static things so u could easily click from screen to screen. But meh, i think i would have lost some of the beauty of the background artwork this way, so no biggie. Maybe a deep voice actor for the main character (xombie style) would have made it even more superb. But hey these are things u can work on in the sequal. Cause u are going to make it, like it or not, lol. Or otherwise make other original and cool adventures like this! U are teh rox!1

Retshark responds:

Originally I wanted all the ghosts to speak, not have so much text based stuff. But the sheer size of the file alone made that hard-- and they say so MUCH, it'd be a giant file, really.

[Random Maze Generator]

very impressive

Although this doesnt have much to do with flash, the algorithm u came up with for this movie is very impressive. I give u the benifit of the doubt and assume that U cam up with it and that u didnt just copy/paste it from somewhere else. I couldnt find any bugs because the 2 mazes i played had a good route to the other point and were pretty challenging. So on the technical aspect this game is really top notch. But then for the entertainment value. It was really annoying that the dot u controled reacted so slow to the arrow keys. I understand this is because its a heavy application but still (I dont have an outdated pc). The entire presentation was pretty dull too, since it consisted of 2 dots and some lines. And ofcourse the lacking in the sound area isnt something im too happy about. But still i give u credits for the code and the concept and i hope to see more of stuff from ur hand in the future. Adios.

ChrisBored responds:

I wrote this one from scratch, which is why im so happy to see everyone saying they like the generation aspect of it :D

[Fat Fuck Football 2!]

well done!

I liked this game alot. Its nice to see and play a soccer game because im pretty much a soccerfan myself (go ajax!). Neway it was pretty funny and addictive but there are some points u need to work on. The entire tournament was a one-man-show the way i played it. Since the defenders were slower as the attacker i only played (scored and defended) with the attacker. The controls were good though, but it would have been better when both defenders moved automatically right and left with the attacker. And vice versa. Also try to implement fun stuff as an animated tackle and maybe yellow and red cards? What i was also missing were pass shots so u could pass the ball to the other teammates. And maybe a system that will make u shoot harder when u press the button longer? Finally i think it would have been cool if u gave the players names, just to personalize the whole thing a little. I know this game must have been hell actionscripting and if u are going to work on the things i said it will be an even bigger hell. But i still had good fun playing it and that is what a game is all about!

BoJoe-Studios responds:

Thanks a lot for a useful review.