Coop's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[StoryShift]

I have waited a long time for this. Literally years.

Yes, StoryShift has finally arrived, allowing people to read my story and vote on how it turns out. Other people's stories too, but right now, they seem less important, at this moment in time. Give it a few days and things will return to normal.

Did you ever read the Fighting Fantasy novels by Ian Livingstone? Where you turned to a paragraph number, based on your own choices and the adventure played out? Well, that's basically what we have here. Only this time, the story unfolds in real time, where the writer doesn't know what is going to pan out, just the same as his or her readers. It is a test of the writer's skills to develop the piece as much as possible, without tying themselves in knots (This will undoubtedly happen at some stage)

Give it a week and we shall start to see the next part playing out, with the adventures truly beginning to take off. I am already looking forward to writing the next part and I know which of the four options I want to happen and how each one will play out.

Give it a read, give me a challenge. Heck, while you're at it, read some of my friends' stories and comics and vote on them. The future is in your hands.

Evil-Dog responds:

It's awesome to have you in the project :D Can't wait to see how it all unfolds.

[Pixel Madness]

Really annoying!

Seriously, do you have to have the screen flashing on and off like that? As if the game weren't difficult enough, you decided to up the ante, by blacking us out every half second or so. I'm calm, I've managed seven levels, before I declared "fuck it" and gave up.

Alright, I admit, there is a slightly addictive quality to it, because a few minutes later, I was back, polishing off the rest of the levels., but that's not the thing that makes this game good. I wasn't impressed to see that the Level 20 medal is broken, especially when levels after that are just the same crap shoot of trying to get through a ridiculous spinning dervish of black squares, where your only hope of success, even if you are pointing in the right direction is a heap of luck.

Simple and effective, I'd have preferred a mute button and the ability to restart by pressing R, rather than waiting for the screen to exit blackout and having to click when "restart is highlighted", I'd say that this is a decent game, but nothing more than a quick half-hour time killer.

kokos0102 responds:

Thanks for the review. There were some good hints...
But the screen flashing should give a dark atmosphere to the game ;-)

[Beat the House]

This piece needs a lot of work, like learning a few basics of poker and how someone usually plays a poker simulation.

Aces high is a term which usually comes up in poker, since the aces are the best value cards that you can have. I managed a pair of "bullets" and the woman politely informs me "you lose". Naturally, I was a little peeved with this, as the term Jacks or better would indicate a pair of jacks, queens, kings or aces. Not a big deal, but it does get to you after a while of playing. How can the ace be low, if a royal flush, the best hand in the game, have an ace at the very top?

Holding / toggling cards was the other major bugbear - I was dealt a flush and wanted to keep all of my cards - most games assume that you want to keep the cards and if you click on one, it flips it over, indicating that you require a replacement. Albeit a little naively, I clicked deal and promptly lost the flush, to my dismay. These sorts of issues are the sort of thing that gets people clicking away from your game, as opposed to on it.

The artwork of the cards was nice - did you draw them yourself, or borrow them from elsewhere? An option to speed up the dealing would be nice as well, since the game didn't have all that much flow for my liking.

[Knightmare Tower]

Fantastic fun!

Well, this is another game to take up most of my time over the next few days. I'm glad, as I'll really be able t get my teeth into it and save the princesses... Well, I've already done that, but I want to get the rest of the medals.

The challenge is simple - build yourself up and use tactics with manoeuvring, to get the best possible launch, before you die from the monsters, or get melted by the lava that seems to be bubbling up, for some inexplicable reason. I'm not a geologist, nor a structural engineer, so I wouldn't know how that happens.

Still, the game is fantastic, with a great selection of powerups available and some lovely graphics, which reminds me of how long I wasted on Burrito Bison Revenge. Great days.

If I could have changed this around at all, I would have had springs and catapults on the walls of the tower, every now and again, to give improved lift, for our intrepid hero, but hey, that's how I do business.

Certainly something that I'll be coming back to, for my additional... 375 medal points.

[Review Request Club]

[Kingdom Hearts Tidbits]

Guide book, with music.

Not really something that I expect to see on here. I've seen soundboards before and it's just a bunch of buttons that give sound bytes, so I'm not all that impressed. The rest is just pages of text files, showing people a few tips and tricks of how to play the game, which doesn't give me all that much faith in the submission.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that it's programmed well, but given that there's nothing really original to justify the use of flash, I can't award higher marks. I can write guides for games and wouldn't use a program to "animate" them, unless I had video walkthroughs - screenshots just seem like something that would be put in a blog walkthrough.

Sorry.

[Review Request Club]

[Lincari]

Needs AI opponents.

A shame really, because it's a good concept, if a little confusing to get the hang of in the first place. I like the way that it looks and I can see that over time, this will become a very addictive little game, if it's developed from here.

Perhaps have an interactive tutorial, as opposed to the instruction book at the start, which was utterly confusing, even to an experienced card player, such as myself. You will pick these games up much better, if you play them and have the rules explained to you, as you need them and play alongside them.

Decent colour sets, decent sounds, perhaps a little thing in the layout could indicate which cards you need to click to finish a trick, just to make it more user friendly.

[Review Request Club]

Kwing responds:

I'm not sure what you mean by AI opponents or 'finishing a trick', so I'm not sure why you only gave me a 3/5 on this. The tutorial could have been explained better, I'll admit that. I'm not very good with the interactive thing, but perhaps an animated one would have worked.

I was at one point considering making a multiplayer version where you and an opponent took turns trying to score points and prevent the other player from doing the same, but i definitely don't have the skill to code an AI that will play cards strategically.

[Mouse Maze: No Mouse 4]

Challenging, but awful.

Sorry, I've never liked maze games on a computer and I never will - the dexterity may have been boosted by the addition of the "no mouse" gimmick. Sure, it adds a challenge, but for me, the greater challenge would be a more complex maze, but that's how I get my thrills - seeing the way through the maze and knowing how to get out of them can be more entertaining than a mere dexterity test.

[Review Request Club]

[American 8-Ball Pool]

It's been done...

Very little to tell between the games "Pub Snooker"; "English Pub Pool"; "American 8 Ball Pool" and this title, to be honest. This leaves me with the question: Why not just have them all together? That way, you could save up for the 1,000 pints medal on one game, while being able to play all forms of the game, which to me would be much better, as it would be less boring.

The gameplay is average at best - the physics doesn't work, with the cushions even more unforgiving than those at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. In addition to this, the angles generated when balls make contact can seem a little odd, as the white ball seems to fly true into the pocket, from the most bizarre of angles.

All in all, this is a great series of games, but I'd have preferred to see the one game, with medals combined across all of the baize based games. Perhaps you could add Billards, as well. That's a very different game, that takes a lot to master, while only being based around three balls on a snooker table at the same time.

[Review Request Club]

[Avoision 2]

Slow, awkward, high scores are broken, the music is annoying. What more can I say?

I think that this needs a massive overhaul as I can't seem to get the controls to work. I had to press pause so many times, to get the game to respond, it was ridiculous. I tried reloading, as I thought that there was an issue with Firefox, but it kept acting really weirdly. You move your mouse and wait about a second, then the robot flies straight towards where you've moved to. If this is straight through an enemy, then you lose a life for your trouble.

Avoider games are usually quite fun for a minute or two, but this one got old very quickly. I think there might be an issue with the programming, as the whole thing seemed to be running too slowly, to make much sense. I think that if you get struck by an enemy, it should be removed from the game, rather than hitting you and still having chance to hit you again, after you've recovered. Given the way that everything else fits in, this game could be really good, with a little more work.

[Review Request Club]

[Utopian Mining]

It's been done before - mine a certain resource, upgrade your equipment and when you're done, you get some super plot device right at the bottom of the map. I can't really give it any more plaudits, as if I did, they should be directed at the original author, who created this concept. I'm sure I've even played a game like this that could be viewed as better, thus making this an inferior clone, but I won't go that far.

If you look at my medal collection, you'll note that I did indeed take the time over a few lunch hours to get every medal for this game. It's a grind, but anyone with two brain cells to rub together and a most basic rudimentary knowledge of the principle of gaming can work this one out within minutes. Yes, the plot was well written, but the difficulty curve was very steep to start with and then it dropped off dramatically, as you got enough money to do stuff, like buy the second or third tranche of upgrades. Suddenly, the mining tactic of expose as much of the map as possible, by mining the fewest squares, to expose everything paid off. A few runs later and I was minted, so down to the next level, to get Smaragd, whatever the hell that is, rubies and diamonds, to add to the collection.

The "original", if I can call it that, for it may even be a clone itself, had additional features, such as teleporters that you could place underground, to speed up the mining process. Throwing a few more features in there would be nice, as would explaining that C cancels any open window, as in the first few exchanges, I did have trouble finding that out, having obviously skipped over a page of the tutorial, by pressing X.

I know that the graphics are supposed to be 8-bit and it works in a kind of "you played this when you were a child, Coop" sort of way. It's endearing and for revisiting my childhood and padding my medal score, I have some decent score to hand to you. Thanks.

[Review Request Club]