Coop's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[RAPTUS]

Dark and fantastic.

I love the way that this little game (which could quite easily be a movie as well) evolves. The story did look to have a happy ending initially, but I'm not so sure now, that I've played it through twice and have seen all of the possibilities (at least, according to the medals available, that is!) I'd love to hear what your inspirations were for it and how you managed to get the ideas from your head to your computer. Some sort of psychological thrillers, like Se7en would be my guess, but only you know...

I may have made a snappy judgement, only giving it a three, since you didn't easily place for daily first. A shame, but something that I cannot correct, hence the 4.5 star review. The only real reason I've awarded half a star below max is because I'm incredibly harsh. I kid, it was more because the piece seemed to have more legs and want to go further. Particularly the end of Chapter III, when the subtitle gets amended - we could have potentially seen him go on to kill again, so why not? He could have swam after her and kept her as a trophy, in the more macabre endings to the various sickening films tat I've seen, including Silence of the Lambs, with the killer making clothing out of the victim's skins.

You've barely scratched the surface here and I felt it was a shame not to exploit it further, but what do I know? Still, that said, I look forward to some of your other projects, with great interest.

[Review Request Club]

AlanZucconi responds:

Thank you for your review!
My main inspiration for the storyline was "The Body" from AwkwardSilenceGames.
I was willing to explore the concept started in that game with RAPTUS, providing more details although trying to keep the same dark atmosphere.

My idea is that He's neither a maniac nor a stalker. He really loves Her, even in the end. He loves Her so much that now she belongs to him forever. His love was pure, but after killing her, He couldn't turn back to fix the past. He had to carry on, and do what He had to do.
I left the question of "what happened?" un-answered on purpose. I have a couple of theories, but you are the one who have to fill the gaps. This is why in the end you can decide what to do with his life, as well as with your guiltiness.

However, the original version of RAPTUS was much much much *much* more violent and sexually explicit. But I decided to "smooth" it a little bit. What a shame! :-p

The "frustration" of "He's too slow! Scrooolll faaasteeeeer" is absolutely intended. Something similar has been made in "Pathos" from "BitBattalion". In RAPTUS, you are so frustrated about the slow-factor that you have to release your rage in the first "raptus" scene. Too bad that every click that you have made was bending His will a little bit more every time...

[Madness: Project Nexus (Classic)]

Nice work guys!

The controls are a little clunky and I suffered from lag when busting Sanford and Deimos out of the clink, but other than that, you've clearly laid the foundations for what should be a fantastic game series that you're developing.

To compensate for the laptop running quite slowly, I had to use lower graphics options, yet I didn't see any issues with that, until the lag kicked in. Smaller fights seemed fine, but I didn't really push myself to get through there.

I think that I either missed a tooltip for the switching weapons, but I managed to blunder my way through it being "E", also managing to throw my sword at the cowering guy in the room with the locker and the SMG.

I'm certainly looking forward to seeing more from this team, there's a lot of talent here, from many different facets, so take what you've got and move forward with it. The plot will be one that I certainly watch out for!

[Review Request Club]

[Burrito Bison Revenge]

Delightfully addictive.

Sweet, but not in the kind of way that you'll become clinically obese from just playing at this game, there is a certain degree of sadistic pleasure to be had from squashing jelly sweets repetitively. While the game is a pleasure to play, the sounds are fantastic and, while the music is annoying after a while, it's easy to turn off.

I think that while the gameplay is simple, it relies heavily on luck and there is little you can do to influence your own progress, save from mashing the left mouse button or spacebar when you're on a cruiser / on fire; clicking at the appropriate moments when on a plane, wearing a propeller hat, or riding a chubby gummy and trying to find the best times to launch a rocket slam. To improve this, have a little range that you can manoeuvre, thinking of the way that some people wave their arms helplessly to try and gain altitude or speed, while plummeting inevitably towards something like a swimming pool.

In the survival mode, I felt that you could reward us for distance made. The missions were successful, as was the buying your way past them. I only did that for a few missions and still ended up about a million dollars short of the target to max every upgrade out. I know that I'd spent 500k on the Barbarian by then, but I assumed that he needed to be purchased to get the achievement. When you reach in excess of 40,000 metres with a flight (dollars and km? that's an interesting combination, by the way!), you should certainly get rewarded monetarily for flying further than once around the earth in a single launch. $90,000 doesn't really cut it, if you understand my meaning.

Being able to only attempt three missions at once seemed unnecessary, considering that some of them were based on a huge slice of luck and when I'd already achieved it once, to have to do it again was rather frustrating.

Still, these criticisms aside, they've only cost you half a star, when all is said and done. I've got a few more hours to fly to get that last achievement and I feel that I owe it to myself to finish your game. I wonder, will we see more of Burrito Bison?

[Review Request Club]

[Alien's Quest]

A little basic in the point and click stakes, but still passable. Nothing really new and inventive enough to really get me into the game and want to play it more than once, if I'm entirely honest with you here.

I see that on release, there were eight medals, yet after one play through, I see that you've disabled the medals "Candy" and "Dynamite", which took some of the reasoning for playing away. Still, it was still worth playing the once.

The sounds were a little on the basic side, without much in the way of editing, to get it to all fit together, which as a shame. I feel that you could give us a more comprehensive game if you took a little more time to get things like that right about it and perhaps even considered taking items from other screens to complete puzzles in later areas.

When the Alien returns to space, there was a minor bug when the cockroach stayed behind - as the rocket leaves shot, the roach reappears where he starts that screen. Just one little niggle that I feel need addressing.

[Review Request Club]

[angry blue jack]

The physics sucks

A nice game, but it's not as good as Crush the Castle - here it seems that you can get a direct hit from the rocks, the scenery or the Blue Jacks themselves and still not get a kill. Don't get me wrong, it's well designed and the stages are quirky, though the game does tend to get a little "samey" along those lines.

There's nothing in here that makes me want to choose this game over Crush, because it has things that your game doesn't - scenery that reacts (various things like powder kegs, fire vials, burning walls and the like), different ammunition, differing sounds for people getting killed and even a plot.

I must pick a hole in Level 11, as how can you hope to get a game that works properly, when as soon as the level starts, the scenery falls apart. I don't necessarily mind this, but I cannot see what I'm shooting at - some sort of mechanic to check what I'm aiming for would also be nice, to allow me the view of a siege engineer, as opposed to some inbred moron, lobbing rocks at the surrounding areas, hoping that they cause enough damage for me to be feared.

[Review Request Club]

[Mini-Game Collab 2]

Some good, some bad

I think that you all need to beta test this piece better before you submit your work as a collab - some games came with instructions and looked the real deal, capable of making it on their own, while others probably should still be in development and held this piece back.

Pong on the preloader was basic and awful - glitchy controls and not the best. I hoped that it wasn't an indication of what was to come and for the most part, it wasn't.

Whiteboard avoider was decent enough, with the strategy of climbing an imaginary scrolling mountain, while things get tougher as you climb. Not bad, but why? A little more plot needed.

BrickDuel wasn't much to write home about - unresponsive controls meaning that I couldn't manoeuvre the paddle into place to win, despite me knowing where it needs to be. Since that's most of the mechanics of your game, you really need to fix that.

Bike seemed good to start with, but too difficult in the early running, as you keep crashing into things. Learn to get your audience hooked with a few easy obstacles to start with.

Chicken Drop - organised mayhem. Too many rocks and chickens by the end of everything, so consider having less of them, but making it more of a challenge by stripping more time if you miss one?

Air Gunner - something that I couldn't get on with - the obstacles came thick and fast and after dying against a few and learning to avoid them, I got bored of trial and error. Perhaps if it were a game on its own it would be better.

Dodge them 2 - simple, effective, but a little boring. It's a spacial awareness game. The graphics were nice though.

Dance. Not really a dance game, more of an "exercise for your fingers" game, so I was left unfulfilled, by the experience

Moon Walker. Catchy title, a decent spin on a game I've seen before and some nice controls. Perhaps gravity was less than usual, but it would be for the Moon, so I'll let you off. This one has potential.

Space Cadet Bob looked fantastic, but came without a manual of sorts - it wasn't the most of explanatory games and if I'm shooting at a spaceship, how am I going to only damage the pink antennae?

There was an issue with the mute button - once you've muted it all and you play a game to a loss, the sound comes back on and the only way to stop it is to restart the game. Poor design.

Overall, it's not bad, though it's not something that sets me afire.

[Review Request Club]

[Gather the Clock Crew]

Needs work

Well, it's a clock day flash, so will come with an inflated score, clock themes and not a lot else. I'm not surprised about the playability of the game, due to Games Factory having a hand in it. You've given me something to play, which is better than nothing, I suppose.

Why not have StrawberryClock say something when he meets one of his clock subjects? Some sort of animation at the start, when he decides that he must go after all of the clocks for some reason would set up the game much better, as would a little piece of plot between levels, so that we can see just what is needed and perhaps learn something about what is going on.

The idea of having Strawberry wake up at the end of the levels would be great, as if saying "Oh... it was just a dream." Then he turns off the light and starts counting Bs again, until he drifts off, ready for Clock Day.

There was so much potential to make this a much better game tan it turned out to be, I was quite disappointed to see it wasted like this. Please try looking into some of the suggestions for Clock Day 2012, as it may be the last change that StrawberryClock gets!

[Review Request Club]