Sentio's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[TBK Battle]

A fair start. The basic mechanics work well, but at the moment there is no skill or strategy here thanks to the limited use of heal and magic. Essentially every battle you use your three attempts with each, and then it boils down to whether you are lucky enough to hit and how lucky you are with the number generation.

More attack options would make for a more compeling game, with variation in how much damage they do balanced by how often they hit. Equally being able to regenerate magic attacks or heals would make using them more strategic. A guard or defensive option would also be useful to try and counter incoming magic attacks.

As it is the only reason to replay is the medals. It would be great to play because the game is fun and rewarding as your skill defeats your opponent, not luck.

[Supreme Enterprise Sim]

This is an utterly pointless 'game', that could have been so much better. In principle I quite like these games where you strategically upgrade a character against increasingly challenging foes, but this game is completely lacking in every area.

For a start your character can't be damaged, so there is no level of danger in the game.

Completely unforgiveable though is the fact that none of the upgrades have any bearing on your character or his attributes. Whatever you do the game continues churning out random numbers, and the experience bar continues to crawl slowly upwards. If the equipment or beer had an effect (even if it just temporarily sped up the progress bar) then there would have been an element of strategy, and thus a point to this game. As it is you are left waiting for an eternity for the character to reach level 100, and unable to have any bearing on this at all.

If nothing else speed the progress bar up, as by the later levels it is mindnumbingly tedious waiting for the next level up. The medals are easy, but boring.

The graphics are basic, and not enough to make this worthwhile- there aren't even interesting enemies at the high levels to make the wait worthwhile. It could have been partially redeemed if enemy types changed more regularly (say every 2 levels) and looked genuinely impressive by the end stages. It would give the player some semblance of reward for making progress.

All in all a poor effort.

[Spectromancer: Gathering]

A good game, but a bit buggy in places. The main two that I have spotted:

1) Cards moving off the top of the screen as they continue to attack (which as a pain if you can't see the creatures stats)

2) In the league mode you are always given a defeat in the final match, even if you win comfortably. I've played through the league twice now, and the first time I was ahead far enough that the incorrect loss didn't effect my position, but the second time it cost me top spot.

Otherwise it plays well, even if it is very difficult in places. Some of the campaign matches I can't get anywhere close to beating.

[Plane Loopy]

The gameplay is decent, and I like that you can loop around to collect all of the coins etc., but the upgrade system needs looking at.

It takes an eternity to buy upgrades, and then the majority of them don't really alter the gameplay in any significant way. If you want people to work for the upgrades, then the game needs to keep evolving when you buy something new.

The new planes are pretty, but the only difference is that they go higher. This is mostly worthless.

The other upgrades are barely upgrades at all- the speed up at the start gets me killed as often as it helps, and means I miss a lot of easy coins, while the coin magnet is largely worthless and actually doesn't work very well. More expensive upgrades take hours and hours of grinding to get.

So I enjoyed it for a short time, but I'm now bored and have no desire to get most of the achievements through hours of grinding. Alter the upgrades so that they are genuinely beneficial (allow players to use them all at once for a start!), and make it easier to get lots of coins/make upgrades cheaper.

[9 Ball Pool Challenge]

Pretty average. The physics, which games like this live and die on, are mostly ok, though some angles are a little odd, and I did have a ball bounce 'through' a cushion before returning to the table. What lets this down is the lack of traditional rules- combination shots are penalised rather than rewarded, there is no penalty for hitting the wrong ball, or indeed no ball at all, and sinking the 9 ball does not end the frame.

There are much much better pool games around, but as a start this is passable.

eichwulf responds:

Thaks, will fix these for the next version!

[Second Wind]

I love it and hate it at the same time. It brings back some great memories of classic rogue, but I clearly absolutely suck at this. In a dozen play throughs I have only once made it to level 2, and often am killed in a matter of minutes.

Monsters seem to level incredibly fast, and as soon as I have to fight more than a couple in a row I get destroyed even on easy (or have to run, which hardly ever seems to work, lose all my money/health and end up dead the next time I have to fight anything). Especially against monsters that I don't even seem to be able to hit! The one time I made it to level 2 I couldn't seem to inflict any damage at all on any enemy.

I like the range of characters and play styles, though again I am hopeless with all except a couple.

I just don't get where I am going wrong each and every time. I have no doubt the fault lies with me rather than the game- it is clear that some seem to be able to make progress, but for a game with so few actual options at any one time I can't believe how terrible I am at it!

[Dangerous Treasures]

Nice, but problems

I like the game as a whole, and it is certainly a decent puzzle platformer, but the glitches make it very difficult to stomach after a while.

The biggest issue is with falling objects not always acting as they should. Sometimes they just stop as they land, sometimes they roll, and this is especially annoying if you try to catch a coin mid air only to have it bounce right off you and more often than not into an impossible position or off the screen. After doing that a few times on level 15 I gave up as the game simply wasn't responding as it should.

[Snooker]

Fundamentally rubbish

Where to start...

The hit detection is awful- more than once the cue ball passed right through a coloured ball.

The graphics are basic to say the least...

No sound makes for a boring experience

The power gauge does at least work, but hitting the ball at top power is ridiculously unrealistic and makes the hit detection even worse

There is no way at all of judging the angle of your shots (like in most other pool/snooker games)

Snooker is played with a number of different coloured balls, not just two. Even pool has a black ball, and some sort of penalty for potting the wrong colour. All the balls may as well be the same colour in this as there is no difference between potting any of them.

Both snooker and pool tables have six pockets, not four.

So if you fixed ALL of those things you might have something worthwhile here. As it is it isn't really a game as there is no point in it whatsoever and it is so broken that even if you did try and get a high score you would be defeated by the poor mechanics.

1/10, try harder next time before submitting something

[Ultimate Chess]

Battle chess revisited

Not exactly an original concept, but really neatly executed. I remember spending many an hour trying to see all of the animations in the original battle chess, so having the execution menu is an excellent addition.

And any chess game that lets you play en passant is very thoroughly researched and well made in my opinion.

My only gripe is that the computer isn't the smartest though getting it to play even semi-intelligently is impressive- I've seen much much worse. It's real issue is that it will sacrifice pieces relentlessly to stop you from taking the queen (or other high value piece), when it would be better off just letting you have it in the first place and making the best of a bad situation (in one case it gave me a rook, bishop and knight before finally relinquishing the queen).

Oh, and can we have knights, not horses in future please...

RatherRandomReality responds:

Here is my logic. It's a horse. If there was a person on it, it would be a knight, but there isn't. So it's a horse. Thanks for the review!

[Punk-o-matic 2]

Unplayable

I want to like this, I really do, but even with all the options turned down as low as possible, with every other programme shut down on my computer, and the connection running as fast as I can make it the game still lags to the point where I can't even string 10 notes together. While the quality of my computer is at least partly to blame I've never had lag problems like this with other games on NG, so a portion of the blame must go to your game. I see a great many other people are experiencing the same problems as well.

I'm sure the game is excellent on a top end computer. Of course with the graphics turned down it doesn't look too sharp on mine, but at least I can see that the numerous options and sheer ability to customise everything means this game must have a lot of replayability (though I can also see this game getting very repetitive).

Unfortunately I can't get half way through one song without quitting due to frustration, so I can only give you a (pretty generous really) 4.