Coop's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Clock Patience]

Good, but limited

While the mechanics of this game are well worked out and it looks and sounds nice, you're basically playing on a 1 in 13 chance that the last card you turn over will be a king. All of the 48 non-kings need to come up crucially before that last king shows his face, which is the crippling factor of the game and it can get old quickly.

Sure, I can understand playing solitaire on the computer, but clock patience just seems like something that you'd just do on a desk with the cards yourself, rather than using a computer for it - after all, you're just one step away from clicking a "play through" button and the game plays itself. Where would the fun in that be?

Still, the graphics are good, the backs of the cards could do with having a few options for changing them and if you could give a mute button for the music, the world would be a slightly better place, as it gets very boring, very quickly.

[Review Request Club]

egdcltd responds:

It's really a game that you can play without having to think too strenuously about, and you don't always have either the cards or room to do it manually.

Actually, there is a mute button, the speaker at the bottom, which you can either click or press m to mute/un-mute. Or you can alter the background music volume using the sound control accessed by the spanner button.

I find sound can easily become annoying, so I do include a mute option, although volume is new.

[Fly And Blast]

Very interesting

A somewhat engrossing game, based around other similar games that I have come across on my time on Newgrounds. Still, it is entertaining and the engine still comes up with these instant classics, as I like to call them.

Yes, the medals being historical figures from Polynesia was a little out of touch with the game, but it did still add a certain something to the gameplay. The vehicles are developed well and the instructions are clearly explained, allowing for people to progress through the game and an increasingly frantic pace, while trying to get the medals unlocked.

When you refer to the numbers of kills, I was a little confused, as I could have sworn that I killed a lot more than 20 in Level 5, but my kill total only seemed to climb by the 20 units. Perhaps that wasn't explained well enough, but if that's the only complaint, then game on!

[Review Request Club]

argene responds:

Hi Coop... Thanks for the positive review. It gives us inspiration to strive hard to improve on our future games.

[Harvey Brawl]

Not the best, but not the worst.

As with most games, there are good points and bad points. I'll start with the good, since focusing on them would be beneficial - the musical diversity is good, with the wealth of Audio Portal Submissions you've used. So many different artists as well, to help out the community. Free plugs for you, I know, but it's good to get a good spread.

The animation style was quirky - I particularly liked the fact that the characters reminded me of FancyPants Adventures, but with a photo or a traced image of a face over the head. Just something to make it your own, I suppose.

The biggest part to work on would be the engine - the controls lag a little and while the moves list is simple and reasonably effective, it doesn't help that you're punching your opponent and then he's managed to walk past you, evading the punch or kick.

On that issue, you're hit the deadly no-man's land - the movement is two dimensional, but flawed, since you can run past the other character effortlessly, thus dodging their blows, even while standing in front of them. You can't hit them, but that damages the mechanics of the game. I'd make it so that you can't run past one another and add a jump feature, so you can leap over the top of them, thus increasing the moves you can use. Not necessarily combo attacks, but it would give you somewhere to go.

On top of that, a story mode would be a nice way to get into the characters. Perhaps a few fights in the way of things like Street Fighter; Mortal Kombat or Tekken, just to show some more depth, plus as the difficulty would naturally increase in that sense, the game would become much more of a spectacle to play.

[Review Request Club]

Kwing responds:

The imported heads are meant to looked tacked-on and cheesy. In fact, the flames on the title screen, the horrible expressions, and the voice acting are all meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

I suppose I should have added in some more collision script other than just attacks, though. And the lack of background elements (throwing things, dangerous background elements) took something away from the game... But I still feel it's decent.

And thank you for suggesting a story mode. I'm not a big fan of linear gameplay but I think this requires at least a little.

[Tarakan]

Awful game

Am I seriously supposed to like this? Well, there seems to be so little effort in the piece, that I'm not sure, in all honesty.

Single button control really grates on the effect of the "game" and I'd certainly suggest that more time in the programming forum would help you out here. learn how to create more options, such as jumping over low tentacles, which extend out to try and grab you, while ducking under high ones. This would increase the gameplay experience so much and it's really not all that much effort. Powerups might be a better option if they occur and you have to jump or duck into them, just the same, as this requires more skill, particularly if you're trying to dodge tentacles as well. A little animation when you collect a powerup would help - I wasn't sure at the start about collecting the

Why not have a health level, where you can get struck a few times, but still let you get away? Little things make all the difference.

Work on the art - the shitty pink background needs a lot of work, but then again, so does the foreground. Work on the detail, by zooming in and looking at what you can change there - when you zoom back out, it will make such a difference to the pieces.

MightyTarakan responds:

Well it doesn't deserve a 0 does it?
How Is this worse in gameplay than the target shooting games anybody can make?
Instead of just clicking at targets you also get to run away from tentacles.
This is a 2-layer game.
Maybe if I ever get to finish the enhanced version, it will be a lot prettier.

[They Came From Nam]

It's alright

Maybe it's just me, but I found this piece an absolute bitch to control and the way that things stacked up with hordes of enemies attacking you at the Boss Stage kind of discouraged me. The charging after every shot was inspired and easy enough to get, but having to stack charge when there are more than three enemies on the screen doesn't leave much room for manoeuvre.

The graphics are well designed and quirky, the music addictive and effective, while the rest of the piece just really brings it all together. In short, I can see why you placed, but if I'm honest, 3rd seems a little low. Perhaps there were other people like me on the panel that failed while playing as well, who knows?

The plot was well written, though I would have liked to see something with voices at the start, as opposed to a 1980s Streets of Rage style introduction - perhaps a little lip sync along with it would help to give this part more impetus and make less people skip.

I'd have preferred keyboard controls and not having to charge the weapon, though I can see why you did this - to get away from the convention of these things having "auto-fire" and powerups that modify or boost this ability. From where you stand, this makes sense, but I still would have preferred it to have not had the trend bucked.

[Review Request Club]

thinking-man responds:

Honestly, if we placed higher than Meaty Boner or Butchebugs, a mob of pissed off Newgrounders would have descended on the Newgrounds office, and start a riot (as you can see from the reviews) and also, AustinBreed said he "loved everything about this game" so it was probably Tom who made us not place higher or something.

[ChatTard]

For people with no friends

It's not the best of programs that I've ever seen of this nature - it doesn't store the chat log and it takes quite a while for a response to generate. Sure, I got a medal and 5 points by playing it, but is that really necessary?

It seems that the program is just designed to give a random response to each and every statement or question, so it isn't a very good script in that respect. You could at least tailor it to how it would respond to questions, statements and aggressive remarks, differentiating them with the location of all caps words, exclamation marks, question marks, spam text and the like.

The layout was a little primitive, as opposed to looking sophisticated, like most chat protocols these days - aesthetics make up a large part of whether or not people stay around.

[Review Request Club]

Rawnern responds:

I know the design is pretty bad, but I'll change it in the near future.

[The Floorsland 2]

Needs a few things

I'll just give you a quick list of what this game could do with below and hopefully you can work on these points, to make the game more engrossing:

1) Sound - get some sound effects via Google and perhaps a backing track from the Audio Portal. This would make a much better sounding piece and start to compliment the other areas.

2) An animation tune up - particularly when it comes to the lever, you might wish to look at where the animation pivots - don't forget, when the lever leaves the shot, it doesn't end. Attaching it to one area and cutting that part of the animation off screen might help you.

3) Better looking characters would help, as would voices for these characters. See also numbers 1 and 4 for this area.

4) A plot - Yes, you collected a giant crystal at the end, but we never find out why. Giving the player some sort of reason to get this going would really help and allow the piece to step forward, since the players want to play it and you'll be excited to get the next part released.

5) A little work on the drawing side of things never hurt and don't be afraid to take more time. Don't rush these things, just don't sit there doing nothing over them. Work on them and they will all come together for you.

[Review Request Club]

telinc1 responds:

Thank you!

[Best NG Review Tutorial]

Huge throbbing member!

Now that I've got your attention, lets get down to business. A great little piece, full of malice and humour, especially the punchline. I won't spoil it, the people need to click through and listen to it read by Speakonia (or is it Microsoft Sam?) themselves.

The concept is very basic and could use being coloured up a little. Some images illustrating reviews of this calibre would help in the pages referring to each part of the review themselves. You're clearly very learned on internet culture, so it stands to reason that you've seen these, so why not share them? The grey background needs some work, as it reminds me too much of a Conservative Party Conference. If you're after voice acting for this piece, shoot me a PM, or have a look at the Voice Acting thread, as the users in there might be able to inject another level of impetus into the piece. Not that you've done a poor job here, I might hasten to add!

It was good music that you chose for the piece and if I did anything different, I might suggest that you go and make a slight change to the controls, with mouse activated buttons, as it keeps the interactivity under one roof - it's not a game, after all.

[Review Request Club]

thinking-man responds:

Thanks! I might make an updated version later. (It's sam from Speakonia btw.)

[Droid Grids Beta 0.19.1]

Not too bad, but still has issues

This isn't a bad game, but there are still issues with the piece itself - I think that while the mechanics are improved and the game seems to flow better, it still lacks a basic tutorial and perhaps even a plot-based explanation of why you're fighting. Is it training, fighting off some sort of rebellion or revolution or something similar? With a plot in place, you might get a situation that people to gain an affinity for our main character, so that they try to keep him alive.

The graphics need some work on making it look less "chunky" and block-like. Robots these days don't have all that much in the way of square and cubic parts, where the aesthetics are more favoured.

I think that you've got a good setup for the game and it is developing, though I would urge you not to keep deleting the games as you release a new one - it just looks like a resubmission, as the changes are largely minor. Sure, when you come to the alpha phase, you might want to bin the old projects, but why not have a large showcase of where you've come from?

[Review Request Club]

glider521al responds:

Hey Coop, thanks once again for posting an awesome review.

TUTORIAL/PLOT:
Yeah I agree that in game text messages are no substitute for an actual interactive tutorial.
The tutorial will come later once, once I've added in some more gameplay features and polished the graphics. For now I'll be trying to make the gameplay as intuitive, challenging and fun as possible.

I've been thinking of adding a campaign mode to explain the story of why you're fighting, but this will probably happen towards the
end of the development cycle.

SPRITING: In a few updates time I hope to enlist the help of a 3D modeller/Isometric artist, to help me make appropriate images for the robots.

DEVELOPMENT: Don't worry, I've learnt my lesson, I won't be binning my old submissions from this point on (especially as newgrounds have the same default page for manually deleted submissions as blammed submissions).
I particularly like the idea of showing people the development cycle.

A reviewer, posted to my profile to suggest I make a new submission for every significant set of updates.
Also, this way I can quickly get feedback of what new features people liked/hated, and adjust the game accordingly. I've taken his advice.
Next major update (aside from the minor changes to this submission), will have a focus on adding in an armoury and later 2 other enemy types...

[Falsely Imprisoned!]

Not all that impressive

The preloader took an age to load and that left us with a white screen for such a long time. That puts gamers off, so I'd suggest that you simplify that, so that it loads quicker. This will improve everything about it.

When it comes to the gameplay, you haven't really put that much of a learning curve in there for the newbie gamer. It's straight into the action and the guards are so unforgiving. Granted, they would be more difficult in real life, as usually one bullet would stop you dead, but that's the beauty of poetic licence. I'd certainly say that you need to get yourself things in there like health powerups. Back to the poetic licence with them being present in the vent system, but you've got unguarded blades spinning around there, so why not?

The animation and the drawing is great. I love the fluid movements of the characters and the only thing that could be improved here is the addition of voices for the characters. It's all working out nicely, so just a few more tweaks here and there will make this game a very good one, that people play, talk about and beg for medals on.

[Review Request Club]

Skeik responds:

You're right about the HP and the guards. A lot of it is misdirected (Why bother having health when you get shot if getting noticed at all is instant death?). The source file just became hard to work with. The decompiler broke a lot of things, made the preloader load secondary to the game and made it extremely difficult to edit past levels and mechanics.