Sentio's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Arcuz]

Takes patience, but awesome!

I'm closing in on 20 hours spent on this now, and I can't see the end in sight just yet (I'm at level 25 currently, and on about mission 20). This takes some serious time and patience to get to the end, but the fact that I have taken the time to get this far, and am determined to get to the end eventually suggests that the game is worth being patient with.

Firstly the positives:

The variation in weapons and enemies etc is fantastic for a flash game, and despite the constant grinding required to make progress each new enemy type provides a new challenge.

I love the composition system, once you get the hang of it the difference it can make to your stats is enormous. My only gripe with it is how luck based it can be- I've tried again and again to level up my gear from +1 to +2 (should be an 80% chance) only to see my hard earned gems wasted. Given how hard gems are to come by it feels exceptionally harsh to be punished like this!

The combat system requires enough skill to stop the game getting boring. I've specialized with a sword and find that the only way to progress is a balance between all out attack and luring one enemy at a time towards me. It isn't simply a case of mashing a button, and I like that inclusion of optional magic abilities (even though I almost never use them).

The difficulty is a big positive for me- no matter how much you level your character the next mission will still be a challenge, and I've died again and again in some areas. It's great that there is no real way to farm experience due to it reducing as you level up, which forces you to push on into new areas with a character weaker than the enemies you are facing to gain precious experience.

Fabulous music!

And now the negatives:

There is one glitch I have had trouble with. When doing the special strike move with the sword there is a problem with flying through scenery and getting trapped (particularly in forest areas). It is always possible to force your way out, but it shouldn't happen in the first place!

Not enough gems and stones to make the most of the composition system, especially as I lose so many due to bad luck!

Rewards from missions are often useless. If a weapon or piece of armour is going to be a reward it needs to definitely be stronger than what you already have. So far I haven't been rewarded with a single item worth keeping over my current gear, and that is extremely frustrating after so much effort to get it! Perhaps make all mission rewards experience rather than weapons in future, or make the weapon/armour gained so amazing that it can't possibly be worse than your current gear- maybe a unique item?

Some boring/repetitive level design- there are only so many identical forested areas I can go through before getting sick of them!

So generally a very nice game, with enough to keep me coming back to it despite a few shortcomings. And there is no need to spend money on it whatsoever so long as you have a little patience and are willing to sign up to facebook or Mochi games (both of which are free and painless).

9/10

[Drop the Bomb (Medals)]

Absolutely impossible, but well made

Seriously, the difficulty of this needs toning down about 10 levels. While I'm at a disadvantage anyway through not being American, rendering probably 80% of the questions I'm facing pure guesswork (Seriously, there is sport and TV outside of the USA you know...), even the 'neutral' subjects are tough. I'd consider myself to have a good general knowledge, but every question is painfully obscure.

I've played 20 or so games and made the final once, it is just that tough!

At the very least scale it, so rounds for $100 have much easier questions, while the $1000 dollar rounds are more like the current difficulty. I lucked out getting the 8 question right in a row medal, but some of the others seem completely impossible as it is at the moment.

Other than that, it is a well made and entertaining game, and I've not come across any glitches like some other people have. The music does get a bit annoying though...

7/10

pacdude responds:

That's a fair review, and to be honest, if I weren't American, then yes, I would have questions that centered outside my culture. We're planning a question expansion very soon, so if you would like to help and contribute questions, then PM me and we'll start a dialogue.

[Learn to Fly !]

Brlliant for a first game!

I can't quite believe this is your first game! You must have put a great deal of effort into this, and the result is fantastic.

Firstly the animation and drawing is perfect for this type of game, with simple clean designs. It really doesn't need anything more than that. Game play is what counts, and this has that in abundance, dragging you back until you've reached that elusive 6000m.

My only complaint is that the skimming mechanic is seriously underused. To succeed is much more about gliding, and really very little needs to be done as far as tipping the penguin up and down- I made the distance by simply tipping very slightly down and using the rocket. Perhaps a bit more skill could be used to glide long distances and get multiple skims of the water rather than just one or two.

Also it was a bit easy to upgrade everything with the endless amount of time available. Perhaps a bit more of an incentive to do it quickly (NG medals for completing in under 25 days for example?) would be a good idea.

Still, very enjoyable, and I hope now that you've got your first game under your belt you'll only continue to improve.

[Doom Triple Pack]

Ah the nostalgia

Doom 2 was the first game I ever played, and the only one for a good three years. While I'm less familiar with the original it has still brought back some wonderful memories of my childhood. I'm astonished just how good a conversion this is, it runs better than they do on CD for me! Shame about the music, but inclusion of everything else, including secrets and cheats is nothing short of brilliant.

And then there is heretic and hexen as well! I've never played heretic and a run through this evening has had me completely lost and confused. Hexen I still consider one of the hardest games I have ever played (Considerable use of a walkthrough eventually got me to the end on the full version), and while I know the demo level back to front it is still a good play.

Only minor issue is the controls, which just don't feel natural to someone who has played these games with the old control system for so long. But I quickly got the feel of them, even if it was a bit strange for a while.

Plus medals as well. I couldn't seem to get the hexen ones to work, but I'm well on my way to the others (if I can ever find my way out of the maze of heretic!)

All in all just about perfect

10/10

[In Utero]

Great!

I was on the verge of accusing this game of being too difficult, with probably 6 or 7 attempts ending at the boss. But as there is no more beyond that (thank goodness!) it is pretty much spot on! Takes a few goes, but you get there in the end!

Gameplay is smooth, enemies are initially overwhelming, but actually quite manageable, the pace it comes at you is fast and furious, but needs to be to make sure you don't blast through it in one go. Certainly the challenge keeps you coming back until you've won!

And medals as well, though the scew of points seems a little odd- perhaps 100 points for beating the boss with no lives lost and 25 for passing the first level without shooting (as that is easy with so many lives).

I guess you could accuse it of being too short, but with so many of the medal games taking an age to finish it was actually refreshing to have one that is a quick, fun blast and actually replayable without wanting to kill something...

All in all a great effort, a good little time waster, and a worthy tribute to mini fulp and parents.

FetusFulp responds:

i'm surprised that people are willing to replay this so much. is it the frustration of not beating it that makes you go back? or the allure of more punishment? a need for closure?

there are a lot of mixed responses regarding the smoothness of this. sometimes i get "it's so laggy" and sometimes it just runs fine. i don't know if it's the user's browser or their computer, or if it's the game itself. i guess it's in this paragraph that you reveal why you kept coming back to try and beat the boss - the challenge. interesting.

there was a lot of difficulty balancing in-between coming up with medals and their point values and the release. the boss used to be a lot harder, but after complaints from our beta testers, we had to drop it down quite a few notches. we tried to keep it at least a little challenging, but it's hard to tell exactly how challenging it is after making it and testing it so much. i can run through the game and beat it without dying once, but i certainly don't represent the majority of people, especially on their first try. also, the first level used to last longer, and you used to get swarmed with more enemies. it's still fairly challenging, because the fish and spores are hard to dodge, and throwing in the shots from the black tampons and the terrain really complicates things. sometimes you just get lucky.

this game was initially supposed to be a mini-game, and though it grew and grew in complexity, we still kept it short. it was actually going to be longer, with multiple levels and multiple bosses.

thanks for your thoughtful review.

[Powerpool 2]

Entertaining

Overall it was a very enjoyable game, with good variation from level to level and table to table. Generally the power-ups were interesting, though I found usually a hindrance rather than useful (to the point where I usually tried to get rid of them without hitting them directly).

I do have a few minor gripes with it though.

Firstly it seems far far too easy to scratch/pot the cue ball. I don't know if I'm just hopeless at the game, but often it seemed it would fly in from ridiculous positions. This was especially true when hitting the light blue splitting balls. They could be covering the pocket, but upon hitting them the white would career right through it and in, leaving the three reds on the table.

On a similar note, the reactions of the balls when hitting each other is a bit inconsistent. Sometimes the cue ball would bounce away from the object ball, sometimes it would follow it in, both playing it slow and hard, and on perfectly straight shots. With the option of putting spin on this would be fine, but it was incredibly annoying to play a straight shot and watch the white just follow on into the pocket. The same could be said for object balls hitting each other. A lot of plants resulted in both balls following in as if some kind of top spin had been imparted.

One final issue was how balls bounced when wedged against a cushion/bumper. If they were up close and you hit straight into them they always seemed to follow the cushion rather than bouncing back off it. In some cases with the bumpers they didn't even move at all! Although that made potting easier on the square table, the seemingly random bouncing back of the cue ball led to a large number of scratches that wouldn't have happened had the ball bounced back normally.

So mainly just minor physics issues to complain about, but overall an enjoyable game.

[Amorphous+]

My favourite game on NG

I loved the old version of this game (and indeed wrote a somewhat lengthy review saying as much) and this newer version comes as no disappointment! Everything I loved about the first game, from the level of difficulty to the music, and the endless variability from minute to minute has been retained, while the award/reward system has added even more replayability (as well as making it harder than ever!).

My only complaint (and it is a very small one) is that there are no new glooples in this new version (not including the final one, which I still can't defeat...). I realise a great deal of creativity and thought went into getting variation and balance into the old gloople types, but a few new ones would have spiced things up a bit, especially ones that 'gloop' together- I can just imagine a couple of stickies blending into some giant custard pie of a gloople, or a couple of melties turning into a radioactive disaster of chernobyl proportions... (though the cursed melties still kill me far more than anything else). More variation equals more fun, and more replayability :)

It might just be my incompetence, but the difficulty is steep... I've spent hours upon hours on this game and still only have 92 rewards, and am no closer to surviving a huge nest, nor a queen (let alone the 'other' ones...). I like that though, I wouldn't want this to be easy, and I know once the torchies and frosties start showing up I'm in trouble.

So once again, I love this game, it went straight into my favourites before I'd even played it (I had faith after the old version was so good) and I am in no way disappointed- no other game on here has ever taken up so much of my time, nor has any other kept dragging me back for more...

[Amorphous]

Addictive!

I've devoted a great deal of my time over the last couple of weeks to this game (time that I probably didn't have, but never mind). This has to be one of the most addictive games I've seen on Newgrounds, and one of the most replayable as every time it seems a little different from the last. There are a few things I would like to see improved, however.

Firstly each round is extremely long, and going through the same basic glooples over and over to get to the interesting ones gets very repetetive. Perhaps having check points, or different game modes where you can select the types of gloople that appear would be nice.

That also means that there are types of gloople that you very rarely get to see. I never saw a Queen in all the attempts at the game I made, and only saw a couple of Frosties and Torchies, because I simply never survived long enough (usually thanks to amalgams and fuzzles/biters).

It would be nice if the training mode gave you any glooples that you have seen, rather than just those you have defeated. I only saw one horror, and a couple of void eaters, and I never got the chance to kill them as they inevitabley got me first. It would have been nice to practice against them and work out their attack patterns in a training environment rather than simply getting killed every time one showed up.

The tips were useful, but it would have been nice if there was a list of those that you had seen somewhere, or even all of them, as I'm sure there are a lot that I never saw, and those I did I forgot after a while.

It also would have been nice to have a save feature! That way I could have collected everything in my bestiary, and also the training ground, and not had to replay endlessly to get the information on some of the later glooples. Plus there would have been more incentive to beat my previous high scores etc.

As for gameplay, maybe a few power ups/weapon upgrades would have made the later glooples a little easier to handle, although I did enjoy the difficulty of the game, and it made me come back for more. That may also have added to the replayability.

Enough of the bad, the good.

I loved the music, and how it changed rather than having one endless looping track- that is a fault of so many games!

I also loved the simple graphics, and the amount of detail you went into with each type of gloople. Those descriptions of them in the bestiary were very clever and added a whole new dimension to the game (it reminded me a lot of Pikmin in that respect). I also enjoyed how varied the glooples were, and how creative some of them were. Also the way they reacted to each other was great, with more dangerous ones being able to kill weaker ones, and the way they bounced off each other etc. The merging was a great idea, and I only wish there were more combinations available. It was nice it didn't happen too often as the combined glooples were tough!

Gameplay with the mouse was nice, and the framerate was never a problem, making it easy to pick up and play, but very tough to master. Being able to dodge and force the tougher enemies off the screen was a great addition and made life a little easier, though I did get pounced on by biters a lot if I strayed too far from the middle.

On the whole this is a great game. Unique and replayable, definitely one of my favourites. It just needs a few touches here and there to make it perfect.

4/5

[-Spectre-]

Nice game!

Firstly, damn you for submitting this in that 8 hour period I was asleep! I didn't even realise it was here until you posted about it in the Mafia :P.

Great game, simple yet fun- that is a good combination.

Graphics- Nice and shiny, not a lot more that could be done with them given the style of the game, and my computer was already laggy enough at around 10,000 points without any more for it to worry about. Maybe could have done a bit more with the menus, but that doesn't really matter as far as the game goes.

Style- Simple style, and easy to pick up and play. The concept is fairly original, and the difficulty curve is just about right, though it does jump quite quickly from being easy to incredibly difficult. I still would have liked to see more colors, and random color changes rather than in sequence, but I know that would have fried my computer, so I'll shut up :)

No violence and Humor, doesn't need them, nor should there be any in a game like this (unless you include me beating my head against my desk when I got trapped in a corner by 5 blue balls)

Interactivity- I don't know what everyone else is moaning about, I like the mouse control, it adds to the difficulty that it moves around a bit. The keyboard control is a lot more difficult as you can't move diagonally, but still playable- in fact I found it easier to avoid balls with the keyboard, but harder to catch ones of the right color. Good to see you implemented the bouncing off the side walls, that really helped.

So overall a very solid 4/5, and congrats on the daily 4th, you deserved it!

Lebastic responds:

Too bad you weren't there, maybe next time I submit something XD
As far as the review goes, thanks alot it's very helpful. I'm glad you liked the game and thanks for the congratulations.

-Lebastic

[600Volt Car]

Needs a lot of work, but some potential

There is clearly some skill behind this submission, but there are an awful lot of problems which make it fairly lacking as a game, and pretty much unplayable and not enjoyable.

Graphics: The idea of using google earth for a map background (or something similar) is certainly a novel one, but the picture quality suffers badly as a result. It was very difficult to see what was road and what wasn't, and generally it looked kind of tacky and poorly done. The car itself was basic, but good enough under the circumstances. Perhaps using a different kind of map, ideally with a lot better resolution, would be a good idea, and also a little more detail to the car would be nice.

Style: A solid idea on the lines of crazy taxi etc. It needs a lot more added to it though, such as moving obstacles, things that can be run over (pedestrians?), the objective moving each time you have collected it, different maps and cars, and most importantly instructions! With no indication of when you have collected the objective or not it was hard to understand what was going on or what you were supposed to do. I spent some time hitting buttons with the expectation of picking up the star, only to find that running over it is enough. It would also be an idea to clarify that the star is indeed the objective.

Sound: None, and that is a BIG problem with this submission. Even simple background music would have vastly improved this game, and then on top of that you could have added crash sounds when you collide with barriers, screeching sounds when you turn, and maybe a small chime when you collect the objective/cross the finish line. All of those would have made this a more enjoyable game to play.

Violence: none, often that wouldn't be a problem, but with a game like this, on a site that craves a bit of blood, it feels like a missed opportunity. It would have been nice to throw some pedestrians in there to splat!

Interactivity: The controls were reasonable going forward, but in reverse they felt horrible. Not only were they very slow in both turning and speed, but the turning was in the wrong direction. With reverse it feels more natural if pressing the right key turns the car left, and vice versa, just like in a real car. Other than that this was one of the best parts of the game though, with forward motion at a good speed and with a nice turning circle. It was also nice that you couldn't turn the car when stationary, adding to the difficulty.

Humor: None, and again a possible missed opportunity. There are plenty of things that can be done with a game like this to make it funny, just look at games like Carmageddon for inspiration.

So overall just about worthy to pass as a work in progress, but it needs a huge amount of work to improve and make it a solid and enjoyable game. On top of all the game improvements mentioned above also work on using a preloader, having a menu system (which with the options I suggest you will need), and taking your time over submissions and posting them only when you feel they are as good as they can possibly be. The best work takes a lot of time and patience, but you get more satisfaction from a job well done.

2/5