absent's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Earth-Defender]

Not too bad, but graphics need work.

Well, this game has it's ups and downs for the most part.

The graphics are my main concern. The background was pretty poor, and would suggest taking more time to draw a better one, or simply get a good background off a website and use that. Also, the enemies as your turret as a whole were too big. Everything seems cramped in that small space you have to fire, so zooming out on the action by a large percent would help you see where the enemies come from better, and could also make the game harder, because there wold be more room to miss. The menu screen was also a bit plain for me. You had a large stage space to take up, but you really didn't take advantage of it. The game options seemed cramped in the corner. Some good things you did with the graphics was the intro for the most part, it was simple enough, but still had some nice style to it. I also like the way you made the cannon part of the turret, because it looked like metal.

The sounds of the game were the best part of it though. The music choices were also very nice to listen to, and being able to switch between them at will was good. Only one thing would be to add sound effects to so you can make everything sound more lively and real.

The gameplay of the game wasn't that bad either. The custom right click menu was a fine addition to the game, it made it more professional. The way the game works with you being able to pick whatever diffilculty you want at first bothers me. It might e better for some people who want more non-linear gameplay, but for a simple game like this, I would say that going for levels that increase in diffilculty would be a better choice. You could also tie the levels together with more of a plot, to make the game more engaging to play. Also, for endurance mode, there was no replay button after the game ends, so you might want to add that.

Overall, it's not the best game or anthing that really stands out, but it's still a solid game, that can provide some good diffilculty during gameplay.

[Doomrunner]

Sweet job on the effects!

This game is awesome. It stands out from other spaceship shooter games, and also has lots of effects to make it stand out from other games of its kind and more fun to play.

The graphics, although simplistic for the most part, are still good. The contrast between green being bad and blue being good was a great addition. The great thing about the graphics and style in this game is the trail path behind the missles and your ship. The colors stood out on the space background, allowing you to see everything better. The way the trails move just gives this game the extra effect that it needs to stand out from other games like this. The graphics though, didn't really change much through the game. New enemies kept the same weapons, and you never really saw a big change in anything (except for more bullets on the screen) throughout the game. The background was also somehat minimal, but with slowdowns already occuring during gameplay, it was bound to happen.

The sound was ok. It was mostly your common space/techno drum beat for the background, and your regular blaster sounds for the weapons. The sound you added for when you upgrade your weapon was a good addition though, so you can know why you're suddenly swamped with more ships to kill ;) I would have liked an option to turn the music off though, it got quite repetitive during gameplay. Violence isn't much of a factor here, sure you go around shooting things, but nothing nasty at all.

The game seems to work like a version of asteroids, except the asteroids can shoot back at you. The game is very hard when you first start, and if you don't get the hang of how to survive, you won't make it. Two things to remember is that one, never, ever stop moving unless you really have to, and two, using the ability to go from one end of the screen to another is key. It was fun to be chased around by homing missles while shooting in this frantic mess in space. The game has a very fast pace to it, and you have to keep on your toes all the way through. It gets a bit boring mid way through the game before the encounter of the bigger enemies, because you end up seeing a lot of the same, and nothing really changes. What would have been nice is that you could intergrate some sort of weapon powerup system where getting enough of X powerups will increase your maximum energy, weapon strength, etc. I think that it would make the game more fun, and the ability to increase the strength of your ship is always cool to do :) One last thing, would be to tell us what each powerup does, and what each key does, before we start the game, because although learning the hard way can be fun, I'd like to know how to approch the game before diving right in.

Overall, nice space game that you've made here. The game is fast paced and there is some cool graphic style to the game, and although the game never really gives you a whole lot of options during gameplay, it's still very hard and fun to play.

[Turbo Tank]

Short and sweet

Not too bad of a job on this nice little tank blasting action!

The graphic had a nice cartoony style to them. Rather than look very polished or profesional, you go for the more hand drawn look, which turned out well for the game. I like how the enemies like the giant robot guy reacts to being shot. The enemies and the tank weren't very detailed for the most part, considering the game takes place from a "far away" view. There also wasn't much variety with enemies, considering there are only three kinds. I would have liked it if you could make more type of enemies or landscape other than roads, to make it more of a enjoyable game. The background was interesting as well. The red convays a sense of distress to show the war mood in the game.

The sound in the game is pretty cool actually. The strange music was fun to listen to, and many of the sound effects were also good. From the little squashing sound of the poor soldiers, to the explosions, it was all very good and done well. The violence in the game was there and kicking, as blood spurts from the men as they get blown up by tanks. Not a very nice scene, but it never gets too gory, and since you never get close up, there isn't much blood to look at.

The gameplay of the game is easy to pickup, and fun throughout. I was going to comment that the game was repetitive, but the game ends fairly quickly, so you don't get bored of what you were doing. The physics of the game are non-existant, as the tank can jump a good amount into the air, but this makes the game more fun, and it makes it possible to jump over enemy fire, etc. I also noticed how you can go up hills faster than you can go down them, so I don't know if that was your intention, but it was kinda wired. The game is also very easy. Your tank is provided with a good amount of health, and for the most part, if you continue moving, you should be able to make it to the boss without much problem. I was hoping for more levels and enemies in this game, but it turned out to be much shorter than expected.

Overall, it's a good game that doesn't take long to beat. It doesn't have the most variety or replay value, but it provides a good amount of action for what it's worth.

[Super Mario Mini DS]

Clever idea, but could use more work.

This is very cool, and the way you play the game like a ds was quite neat! I'll try to comment on all three of the games that you've provided.

Game one: High score: 97 This was the most fun of the three for me, but also the only game that didn't take advantage of both screens. The graphics are simply sprites, but everything was smooth and the moving background was done well. It was fun to avoid the bomb blast on the screen and the stone and collect coins as fast as I could. A good minigame overall for the most part, definitely the best and hardest one of the lot. I wish you could have intergrated the top screen more in the game, but it would have been hard to considering you have concentrate on the bottom most of the time. If you were to remake this one, you could have had coins fall from the top screen instead of appear right on the bottom one.

Game two: This one was ok, I like how you used both the top and bottom screens in the game well. The graphics in this were nothing special, and the bowser sprite one seems to become a bit pixilated when it comes closer. The game idea is a good one, but the game seemed to have a few big problems. First off, it was way too easy. You had to be right in the center of the shell in order to be hit. I ended up killing my self after the game got boring. You might want to make it easier to be hit, and have the bowser shells come down faster.

Game three: This one seemed to have the most potential, but you didn't act on it as well as I may have hoped. The graphics were pretty good, and the water effect on the bottom screen was done well. The stylus however seemed to cover the fish most of the time, which was annoying, so you might want to fix that. Also, there was no highscore or anything of that matter, which is bad. With minigames like these, getting higher scores are the main reason you keep playing them. If you made this minigame harder, and with some way to add score, it would become much better.

The music for all the games was your usual mario fare, nothing special or new, but it gets the job done. I would have preferred more interesting remixes of the songs, but you can't go wrong with the originals. Overall, a nice idea, but you could have improved upon it by making the games harder.

[GunRun]

The colors and the style oh my!

Wow, another great game that I've had the pleasure of coming across today. This one intrigued me quite a bit, considering the look of the game is one that is very unique. The graphics are the most interesting part of the game in my opinion. I find the gameplay fun and the controls not too diffilcult, but simply the style of the graphics is something that can really draw me towards the game easily. The golden background and the black outline characters are a real sight to look at. It looks like you and your enemies are shawdows that are wandering along a huge gold city shooting and fighting. So to sum my compliments on this original color sceme and way of presenting ones game, I say kudos to you sir. The enemy drawings were actually pretty detailed as a matter of fact, and all of them were original designs such as alligators on wheels, and so on. I also enjoyed rage mode quite a bit, as the colors change from a yellow color to red, as you dash through your enemies with ease ;)

Ok gameplay, the fun begins. The game is quite hard for the most part, considering enemies come at you fairly quickly even in early levels, so you have to click that mouse like you really mean it. The rpg element of getting powerups and being able to increase your maximum health, or gun power was another great addition. It's hard to include features like these into a game like this, but I felt you did so flawlessly. The controls for the game were a bit trickly for me at first, and still are, considering moving with the left hand is always a harder task. But there isn't really much you can do if you need the right hand to deal with aiming and shooting. Some problems I had with shooting would be that you can't point your gun in all directions. For example, more than once I would jump over an incoming enemy, and then proceed to shoot it, only to find my gun cannot point that far downward. It was quite annoying, and since health is quite scarce and hard to come by, losing life because of this really gets annoying. I would hope that if you were to change something, it would be to allow your character to use his gun in a larger range of motion. By the way, I noticed that if you try to submit your score and leave the name part blank, it changes to "dumbass," how cleaver of your ;)

The sound of the game is nothing special, but nothing bad either way. You have your money collection sound, gun sound, and even the bomb dropping sound from some of the later enemies. There obviously was violence in this game if you're going to decide to call it GunRun, but nothing too graphical, just a white flash for pain and a small explosion for enemies. Nothing too funny about this game that I noticed, except for the submit-score-name-changing-thing.

Overall, this is a great game to spend some time with, and if you're into high score boards, this is your thing, considering there's a nice little board included in this heafty package of a game called GunRun. A unique graphics style awaits you in this challenging action game.

[BLOBS!]

Lots of fun with blobs!

Wow, sweet game that has sucked up quite a great deal of my spare time while playing just one game through! I like defence type games in general, and this one sure didn't let me down. The only thing which this game doesn't have to great spectacular graphics. Now I'm not going to say that, that is a problem! It isn't actually, it allows the game to be more simple, easy to follow, and lessens the chance of any gameplay slowdown. Plus, many of the blobs are pretty cool too! Who thought a simple glowing dot on the screen could get this good? The loads of different colors and sizes keep the game visually fun to play, so the game doesn't become one where you simply collect the single colored pixels or anything of that notion. The simple style is really great, and it allows you to do other things gameplay wise than something with great graphics might not have.

The game was a lot of fun, and really gets hard, as you quickly get into the game. Towards the start all you do is simply increase your power gauge by sucking up all the little red blobs near the top of the screen. Then the game gets harder by adding faster green blobs! Then when you think you've adjusted to that, a door on the bottom of the screen opens up, and here come even faster yellow ones! As I've descibed, this is how the game plays out. More colors, more blobs, and a lot more intense. It's good that you can control your use of power, so you don't all use it up in one sweep. That allows you to think about how you want to defend your small little base smack dab in the middle of the screen.

As you get farther in the game, the blobs really pile up and the density of which they are on the screen is very thick. The one problem with this, is that you can use power while eating blobs, and because of the amount of them, you can continue to go fast without stopping because you keep getting power back from killing the blobs. What I would suggest is maybe a hard mode where if you're using power and killing blobs, you can't get power from them! That would make it much harder, and call for a much shorter game most likely. It seemed almost easy to me to use power and destroy lots of blobs with no problem. There wasn't much sound in the game except for the sound of killing the blobs, which was basicly the sound you would hear throughout the game. Maybe some type of soft sound track to go in the background would help this game. Overall, this game is a great timewaster for any fan of defense type games, and even with plenty of enemies on the screen, the game maintains its pace and doesn't slow down to a crawl like many other graphics heavy games do. Good job on this!

[Wade vs The StarSyndicate]

What a rush :)

Wade must have quite the hard job by being bombarded by flash files every second ;)

The graphics weren't great or anything, but they get the job done. Most of them were pretty plain and not very detailed, but the game already seemed to slow down on my computer a little during play, so not going overboard was a good thing after all. I like how the backgrounds change every time you reach a certain amount of points, as to keep things interesting, as well as make it harder to see all the flash movies flying at you.

The music was pretty cool, I like the rock music, which kept me pumped while hold down the mouse button. The music seemed a bit loud compared to all the other sounds effects though. Not much heavy violence, just the shooting of the star syndicate people. The concept as a whole, the shooting of floating enemies to survive, is pretty basic, but you make it more interesting and funny by making the enemies the star syndiate, and the bullets that they shoot are really flash movies.

As far as gameplay went, it was a lot harder than I expected. The game is pretty intense really, as you become surrounded from up high, to even the lower parts of the screen. Farther into the game, I just had to concentrate on simply surviving rather than targetting specific enemies on the screen. I didn't ever see myself ever using the jump command during the game however. It seemed useless because if I try to jump on platforms to get higher up, I'll simply be followed and surrounded faster. I also couldn't really jump to avoid being hit either, so the jump command seemed pretty useless to me. It might be because I didn't get the hang of using it that I didn't do that well in the game, but I figure getting a score of around 19000 must tell you something.

Great job on the game, lots of fun to play, and with the addition of a high score board it makes it even better. Did you really make this with flash 4? If so, then it tells you something about those people with their high-tech flash 8 programs and all those special effects they have ;)

[Zorro Tank]

Strategy vs action?

Graphics - Nice graphics, they were pretty simple 2D drawings, but they still looked pretty good along with the background. The explosion was pretty cool too, and stood out well. Not mch else to say, considering they looked awesome I guess.

Style - This type of game has been done a few times that's for sure. Tank-shooting-side-scrolling action is the kind of game though that never gets old right? Most of the way the game played out was average. You fight some enemies, but right before you get to the end you fight a harder enemy or a group of hard enemies like a boss fight. Nothing really happened that was too special like some kind of cutscene to you going. It's basicly a skirmish type game and you make your way through a few levels and try to get a high score. Nothing special, but the gameplay was good at keeping my attention.

Sound - The upbeat music was nice, along with your regular explosion. The music wasn't anything too great for me personally, but the music wasn't terrible either. Nice job with the sound and music volume bars, pretty nifty! :)

Violence - Well, it is a tank game isn't it! No blood or anything, since the game doesn't have any people, but the explosion of enemies wouldn't be the most plesant thing ever now wouldn't it.

Interactivity - Ok, here's the reason why I named this review Strategy vs action. The game starts out with no moving enemies. They're all just turrets places on certain areas on the map. I found myself just finding a place to stay so I could shoot the enemy without being able to be hit. So I was a bit confused as why this was being called an action game, considering I was taking my time to go from enemy to enemy, finding ways to shoot without worrying about return fire. Then I got to the later levels, with the flying enemies and the moving tanks. It really started to feel like an action game now, as I had to dodge bullets left and right, while shooting and bouncing along the bumpy paths. I saw it this way, maybe not everyone did, but that's just the way the game worked for me.

Some things I did like about the gameplay were the physics, as it was fun sending my tank bounding through the air and then being knocked backwards upon hitting a big ditch. And doing all this while shooting an enemy attacking from the air and then a tank making it's way towards me, and oh yeah, there's a big turret right in front of me too! Ahh! See, now that is some fun. I also like how you can get damaged by your own bullets, as it makes it more realistic, and it also prevents you from shooting wildly. Argg, I died at the final boss, can you believe that? So in light of this event, I suggest allowing players to continue, but reset the score to 0, considering getting score is the important part of the game. I just want to beat the spaceship guy without going through the whole thing again.

Humor - Now, I didn't think you were trying to make us laugh in this game right? :p

Overall, good game to spend some time. Not the most exciting or maybe most interesting thing for me, but still a very good game nonetheless.

[Train Robber!]

Woot, I be robbin your train!

Awesome game man! I like this a lot, short and sweet, nothing gigantic or ground breaking, but that doesn't mean it's not any less fun to play.

Graphics - Seriously now, it's dan come on! How can a rate this low? Some of the character choices were interesting like the lizard guy or alien hominid. The little "horse" thing was funny looking too. I like when the coins fly out of the bag when you grab them, nice touch. Not the most spectacular graphics ever, but pretty darn good when squeezing them into a little banner sized space.

Style - It has that dan cartoon style to it which I like so much. Nobody can truly copy that, we are not worthy!

Sound - Nothing really too special, common sounds like the ka-ching sound for grabbing a bag of coins or a little bleep for missing one. No background music, but it still works because of the sound effects that keep going on so the game doesn't seem too quiet.

Violence - No real violence in this game, even the bags come out of their train cars themselves!

Interactivity - The game is great, I like the way you add cacti or tumbleweeds to distract players ;) The simple controls that I love, and the easy to pick up gameplay, that can still be hard. I felt kind of crammped in the small window size, and I wish this could become more a fullsize game. I may not have noticed, but I nice thing to add would be that if you finish the game without missing a bag, there could be some kind of bonus points awarded. Also, reset button, as me being a perfectionist, I need to start again when missing a few bags. Getting yourself arrested was the next best thing, but still...

Humor - Not much really, the horse creature was funny looking and watching bags of money knock out the sherif was nice.

Overall great game, not very big and a bit repetitive, but the highscore board drives us to play this over, and over, and over, and....

[Black Knight]

Cartoon charm and fun gameplay.

It's great to see professional quality games on newgrounds. It's also sad to see people flag them all the time just because they were on other websites too. Oh well, nothing like being overly cautious I guess. But anyway, to the actual review.

Graphics - I love these graphics. The funny expressions on the peasants faces to the goofy look of your tax collectiong character, all make the game unique. The game is presented well and although most of the graphics don't have the most detail or fine artistic quality, the cartoony look is nothing less of awesome. There were three good stages, each with a different look of the "kingdom" although I would have enjoyed more, or atleast have the stages change slighty throughout the game.

Style - What can I say? The game is a whole new kind for me, I've never played a similar game, which is great. Enough of these countless platformer games or side scrolling shooters. Sure, you can make them better and better, but when something more unique comes along, it's a good day.

Sound - The sounds and music weren't anything too special. Cheerful music to keep the game at a bouncy pace I guess are good choices. The grunts and comments from the peasants were ok, although repetitive, since there really aren't many sound bites to go by.

Violence - You really tried to keep this as low as possible really. Nobody really gets hurt, only knocked out with simple little stars over their head. Although it's a more violent concept, it's kept kid-friendly with all the funny little touches you add to it. So you get LOW MARKS here ;)

Interactivity - The games controls are great for the simple minded fool like me or just any body who wants to dive right into a game. I see too many control heavy games out there that turn me off by the shear complexity of the controls. The click and hold gameplay is great, although repetitive, there isn't much to do about that really when aiming for simplicity. The game however, is slighty based on luck though the very early stages and then into the early teen and above stages. I mean, you make your way through the first few stages aiming to get the mace, so you don't have to worry about not having enough coins as you make your way through the game. Then, around stage 12+, you start to have barely enough coins for passing stages I noticed. It really started to get based on luck a little too much when you get into it.

Also, you force players to buy the strength tonic for each stage, considering that going medieval is the only way you'll be able to grab enough coins. You could have added more weapons to the game, or added powerups that add more time to stages, so there could be other ways to gain more coins. I would have also liked the amount of coins you need to pass the next stage shown while in the shop, so I could manage my money, and see how much I need to buy, etc. It would have made the amounts needed per level less of a mystety for me.

Humor - The little things the peasants say were funny, along with some of the descriptions of shops in the levels. The subtle humor in games is always great, but I can't really give high marks for this, I mean, that wasn't really the sole focus of the game now was it? ;)

Overall, it's a great game to kill some time, as long as you don't go overboard and try to get on the highscore board. I don't know how some people do it, maybe luck, maybe skill, but whatever, I'm content with my high score of 40000 and something :)