InsaneSmilie's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Escape from Crystal Lake]

A decent P&C adventure game if nothing else

It seems that at this point in time Afro-Ninja stands as the NG god of P&C adventure games (P&C stands for point and click in case your wondering), what with the escape series, nightmare house and now this. Certainly over time the quality of the illustrations have improved vastly, but it seems that the set pieces are starting repeat themselves. There wasn't a single puzzle or trick in this game that hasn't been used in a previous escape game, and if you've played previous Afro-Ninja games than the puzzles presented in this one will be second nature to you by now. Then again that's a piece of criticism that could be leveled with most P&C adventure games so lets move on to the whole horror aspect.

Escape from Crystal lake is a game that's really trying to be a horror game, but all the horror elements are let down by game play issues. One of the biggest problems with the horror is how pathetically easy your fights with Jason are. A serial Killer ceases to scary when they are unarmed and remain in your sight at all times. Every time you fight him your armed and he's not and there a little text box and flashing indicators telling you exactly how to beat him, and it's hard to be scared when all Jason ever does is dance around on the screen and throw a really slow punch ever now and then. It's a shame really because there was so much potential for a great horror game, things like the letter drop mini game and the murder scene in the bathroom really set up the atmosphere for great horror game, and I'm not kidding when I say this game has one of the best soundtracks of any horror game out there, but in the end it's all let down by a pathetic villein.

Another major issues plaguing Escape from Crystal lake that was also a problem in nightmare house is the linearity. The free roaming environment the map implies is an illusion, the game is essentially linear, all locations are locked initially and you will find each key in order as the game progress. You the player never really make any decisions which kinda takes away the whole adventure element.

The shame of it is that Escape from Crystal lake truly had the potential to be a great horror game where it not for some truly bad design choices that failed to make it scary. There was so much the designers could have learned if they just took some time to look at some good horror games and what makes them scary. Take Exmortis for example another P&C game here on Newgrounds. Exmortis keeps the player in the dark about the plot and whats going to happen. All you know is that there are these weird things that occupy this house and are evil, and there's this other thing that's been killing people, and your probably going to be it's next victim. This game on the other hand is depressingly predictable, you can see every event coming if you watched any Jason movie, there's no plot twist, and the game always tells you exactly whats going on at all times. Afro-Ninja certainly could have taken a number of pointers from games like Condemned and Resident Evil Outbreak as well, such as villains that jump out at you rather than staying in your sight at all times, and why Afro-ninja do you give the player control of the lights, in a good horror game the lights turn off at the worst possible time, a murderer is alot scarier when you can't see him half the time, Condemned proved that, and yet whenever I'm fighting Jason there's plenty of light and I can always see where he is. In Outbreak the player is often forced to run away from fights and complete objectives with zombies in hot pursuit. Your always being chased by something which makes the game alot scarier. In this game we're allowed to take our dear sweet time and Jason patiently waits until we have a new weapon to attack us, your never forced to run and once you figure this out, he ceases to be scary.

All these aspect just whittle away the whole horror aspect of the game. It's still a decent point and click adventure if nothing else, but it could have been so much better, and as far horror goes it's not nearly as scary as Kelly Osbourne's face.

Afro-Ninja responds:

Thanks for the in-depth review. I suppose one thing to keep in mind though is that this game wasn't exactly meant to be a fright-fest. Think of the original Friday the 13th movies- did they ever REALLY scare you? aside from a few cheap moments, if that? Now compare those to more modern scary movies. The Freddy and Jason flicks have always been about being scary and cheesy, but with a bit more emphasis on cheesy. That being said, you're right about puzzle replication- it's hard not to re-use ideas that worked well previously =)

[Momentum Missile Mayhem 3]

Can't match up to it's predeseesor

I mention in one of my previous reviews that MMM2 is about as good as an arcade game is going to get. Well I am happy to say that Momentum Missile Mayhem 3 caused that opinion of mine to stay exactly the same. Momentum Missile Mayhem 3 is worse than it's predecessors in many ways. Dz seems to have pulled the old stunt of trying to change a game that isn't broken by adding a bunch unnecessary gadgets to it or in this case game mode.

OK so now we've got those cards on the table lets start by looking at whats new in MMM3. There are 4 new game modes added, as priorly mentioned, which all looked great in the teasers dz posted on his news blog, but it seems in all the excitement of these new game modes the beloved old gravity launcher from the first two games was give the shaft and forced to sit on the side lines while 4 new weapons failingly tried to imitate it's awesomeness, and on that note, lets start with the first weapon, the gravity manipulator.

So this first weapon looks kinda cool, an energy ball similar to those used in the last two games only this time it fallows your mouse around. Looks cool, but actually using the damn thing is about as intuitive as learning quantum physics while piss drunk. Your not really given any hint or useful instructions on how to use the damn thing either. Alot of jargon and ambiguous terms make the brief description of the controls useless and so the briefing at the beginning of the first mission left me more confused than anything, and even once you master the controls though you'll find the gravity manipulator behaves somewhat unpredictably, sure it's fun to swing around but actually trying to hit something with it is more frustrating than it is challenging, and considering how much harder this game seems to have gotten that's saying alot.

Next is the artillery, a game mode where you pick different kinda bombs off a menu and try to time where you drop them with the enemy's movement. You can expect that most any time you hit with a shell it will kill it's target and even if it doesn't you won't be able to predict where it launches the tanks it didn't kill taking the momentum aspect out of the game. It sorta feels like something added just for the sake of having another game mode. This type of game play has been tried before and has been proven to be wildly unsuccessful. I thought modern arcade games were moving away for the whole bomberman style of play, it adds nothing to the game and just adds frustration.

Next is the Singularity cannon, which was probably the only game mode I actually liked. A gun that rapid fires projectiles like the ones from MMM2, that's Awesome! There are still plenty of nitpicks I could pick at it though like how it only has two types of the projectiles and the alternate fire, while fun to use, is completely useless for actually killing anything, but a least I was having fun with this one.

The next game mode killed my enjoyment however by giving me a little disk and telling me I had to kill things with it. The biggest problem with this game mode is that it's impossible to predict where the bloody things is going to go and this becomes especially problematic when you upgrade it more allowing to bonce around longer, often forcing you to wait around while it bonces uselessly on the wrong side of the screen, and since explosions slow the damn thing down upgrading speed isn't much help either.

I think it's fair to say that just about everything that was added to the game since MMM3 made it less fun to play. The terrain is glitchy often slingshoting tanks to their destination, the teleporter often cuts the distance the tanks have to go in half, and when tanks are coming from all directions setting up massive chain reactions like you could in MMM2 becomes near impossible. MMM2 had the right level of difficulty, MMM3 is just plain frustrating.

To summarize this ridiculously long review, if something isn't broke don't try to fix it. It's still a cool game which why I gave it 7/10 in weak justification, but MMM2 was fine on it's own, and didn't need a sequel.

dz2001 responds:

>Dz seems to have pulled the old stunt of trying to change a game that isn't broken

I was not going to release the same game again. There is nothing to improve or add to MMM2 concept.

>if something isn't broke don't try to fix it.

thats why I made a new game instead of milking the old concept.

[Mardek Rpg: Chapter 2]

An Interesting game, despite it's flaws

On first notice this game seems to be alot like the old final fantasy game or indeed any 3rd generation rpg for that matter. The combat has almost been directly extracted from any final fantasy game, and the graphics are pretty much what you expect to see on a game boy, or one one of those old 3rd generation concles as previously mentioned. OK that's a bit harsh cause cause truth is the graphics are pretty good for a flash game, but it stands to the point that this type of game has already been completely worn down (I mostly blame final fantasy for that).

OK, now I've got that out of the way, lets get to whats good about it. I think the thing that first got me interested in this game and kept me playing it to the end is the plot, and be forewarned that if you didn't play Chapter 1, you'll really be left in the dark. A alien how crash lands in a medieval like human civilization, who posses the body of young boy to survive, hiding on a backwater planet called earth from his pears who hunt him for his betrayal of their own evil motives which were inspired by a strange artifact that came into their possession (that's a synopsis of the first chapter by the way). It 's a new and interesting plot line that hasn't been tried before.

The dialog is a bit annoying at first, it consists of long annoying conversations and weak attempt to characterise unimportant characters with generic personality, and ageing we see the deminative connection to final fantasy. This is particular bad in the beginning where alot the unimportant character feel the need to chime in with their useless opinion at every given opportunity (I'm talking about you in particular Donovan), as well as the annoying generic macho character who might as well wear a shirt that says I gonna die by the end of the first mission as a result of my own short sightedness, but then again his inevitable death is somewhat Ironic so I revoke my original criticism there, and I suppose if the point of his constant antagonising is to give the player more satisfaction when he finally dies than mission accomplished I suppose.

Another thing about the dialog that at first annoyed me was how many of the insignificant characters often try to weakly rationalise as why they never moved from a particular spot, or why they were guarding something that clearly didn't need to be guarded. What I came to suspect more and more as I played through the game though is that Mardek RPG is a spoof, a parody of the game it imitates so closely and that was the point where I intently faved this game because once you take it a spoof it actually becomes genuinely funny. It certainly beats the above mentioned final fantasy concept of having useless characters who act like it normal to stay in the same spot for the entire duration of the game, which is good in my opinion because I feel a game that take after final fantasy should use every opportunity to make fun of it.

Over the dialog is actually very good. I'll even put aside the fact that the character you play is kinda stupid, mainly because he has an alien possessing his body who takes over every time an intelligent response is needed. Overall, I found myself getting genuinely attached to the main characters, and that why the ending came as kind of a slap in the face. It seemed Pseudolonewolf was intent to get rid of all the characters he could at the end, and I pray he plans on bringing at least some of them back in the next chapter. To me the end was were the plot began to faulter, Rohoph practically says that your going to be fighting a new member of his order in each episode to come, which kinda suggests that the remaining chapters will be more of the same. I can't shake the feeling that Pseudolonewolf is digging him self into a hole plot wise that he can't possibly hope to get out of by the time the final episode wraps it all, but I'm not going criticise this game on it's future potential. Overall this is a very good game and if you haven't played it you should. Their is more I could say like how damn easy the ending but I hit the max length so...

Pseudolonewolf responds:

A few notes:
There are still six more chapters left, so any characters who seem unimportant now might not necessarily be so later on. All they say might be contributing to a larger plot and hinting towards future events or decisions...
I planned the plot fully before I began, and I'll say that Rohoph's comment at the end there is mainly humourous; yet another stab at conventions and tropes.

Thank you for the long... balanced... review, anyway.

[Short Term Memory Test]

Well I failed

No supprise there, so I guess pretty acurate. It's a cool idea for a game, but it gets kinda boaring, mabey you should make it so you have to remeber things other than just number. You know switch it up a bit move the text box around to confuse people. Also you really don't need that much time, it whould be more of a chalenge if the numbers disappeared faster. Cool idea though.

MinusNick responds:

Lol, sorry you failed... In my next one I'll be sure to implement new things and definitely lower the time limit, as that seems to be a common denominator in these reviews. Thanks for the review!

[-Letter Effects 3 Redone-]

Very cool

I like you animation style, very smooth. It's imressive that you have an animation for each letter and they are very cool. One glitch though when you change the music it continues to play the current song as well and sounds really crappy. Otherwise very good work.

rather-meaty responds:

Thats why there is a stop sound button?

[V Soundboard]

Whats the point

The problem with sound boards in general is that they are pointless. It's not entertaining and you can't really use it for anything, and I can hear all this if rent the movie. I really don't think that anyone is ever actualy going to use this even if it does pass judgement.

Frenzy responds:

You really are insane.

[Atack]

This could be alot cooler

The interface was good but the game got boring pretty fast. However your drawings and animation were great, so I think you could make this into a much better game.

Here is my suggestion:
Make it a first person from a plane were your the gunner and you shot planes and missles comming at you. You could make the plane lok like it was moving by animating he background, and since the player whouldn't control the movement of the plane it whould look as good as if you were moving. I think that whould make a much cooler game and you could reuse alot of the graphics and action script.

LFAP13 responds:

Thanks for the suggestion, but are my first game and I have not taken classes, when it learns intara better to match that, thanks: - D

[Pedestrian]

Your right, it is fun

It is deffinately fun, unfortunately since not much happens it gets kind of boring. You mentioned you were making a grand theft auto game and if it uses this system than I can't wait to see. Cool game, good job, keep up the good work.

Delop responds:

who the fuc u think u are my teacher... no one tells me to keep up the good work...suc it!!!!!!1111

[Fordy's Pong]

Yea it's pong

Congradulation, you've made a game that amature programing students make better versions of in there free time. We have all played this game before, and this version isn't even well made.

shadowford responds:

look at my other games then make something better

[Orb]

Yea it's a great game but

Wasn't this already submited like 4 hours ago. One more thing, I noticed a glitch, when your ord changes color it sticks to your mouse. Nothing major it's just anoying cause I'll think that I droped it and loose because of that.

MasterFury responds:

I did submit this about a day ago but I acidently removed it. The orb sitcking to the mouse gitch only happens when you change to green or from green, I just coulnt get it fixed without chaging too much of the games code.