Score: 8

"Definitely a something."

submission: LoL: Oh Yes And Spiders

date: August 22, 2009

Tons of props for originality, custom animations, and a lack of immature humor. More animations should be like this, I think. I like how it seems to be inspired by the old LoZ cartoon show, but greatly improves upon that program's near-unwatchability.

Can't give you a ten, however, as it's just not laugh-out-loud funny. I think it suffers from lackluster voiceacting and ill-polished comedic timing. I think you could make it a lot more snappy by working on that mumbling monotone Link and some of the guards seem to possess, and just generally working on the pacing. For the amount of humor in this episode, it shouldn't have been 28 minutes long.

Sprite and Zelda are fairly well done, and I really enjoyed the bit about slavery. Bonus points for the disclaimer at the loading screen.

Score: 4

"Time-waster."

submission: Brawl Funnies [Dick 1]

date: May 7, 2009

Oy.

It amazes me that an actual well-thought out point about the recent flood of brawl spoofs can be executed so poorly with respect to humor, even when it tries to take advantage of its own hypocrisy. This was beyond painful for me to watch. I haven't been this shocked, grossed out, and borderline offended since I tried to watch the MGS collaboration.

If you guys truly believe that Brawl Taunts and the rest are so incredibly unfunny, then why does your own animation fall so short of making me laugh? Almost every short is so lengthy, ill-timed, and explanatory that there really isn't any hope of it being humorous. It's as though you tried to make build a skit out of a political cartoon-style pun, then drew it out and elaborated on it so much that it begins to feel more like a lecture than a zing.

Likewise, why so many jabs at other artist's use of lowbrow humor? It's one thing to try and say that someone's work is a collection of fart/penis jokes (which may very well be a valid point), but if your next gag is a graphic depiction of 'Meet N Fuck Brawl,' then you've lowered yourself far further than your competition. I wonder if you can really call this a "collaboration" at all, as it seems like you all made this in separate rooms, then called in a neutral party to glue it together. There's no consistency.

The worst thing about all this is that I feel like I share a similar mindset with your message. YES, 90% or more of what Newgrounds artists create are immature, talentless pieces of crud, YES we should make fun of people who believe this kind of thing is funny, but MAN the thing you've just released is horrible by comparison. It makes Brawl Taunts look like There She Is! I've never been so embarrassed to be of the same viewpoint as someone else.

All that aside, rtil's stuff stands out like a fresh-baked chocolate eclair atop a pile of stale, week-old Krispy Kremes, and I don't think I need to say why (but I will anyway: strength of animation). Why is a such a gifted animator in this collaboration, and submitting a skit that has nothing to do with the rest of the piece? Do yourself a favor and don't associate yourself with these people's work from now on.

Score: 5

"Not really a puzzle game."

submission: The Enrichment Center

date: April 22, 2009

The exciting thing about puzzle/adventure games is trying to see if you can figure out what to do, and feeling good about it when your train of thought proved correct. These challenges in the game need to vary in both difficulty and medium, so as to cater equally to all types of thinkers.

Your game is just a series of identical doors, each leading to instant death or an eternal purgatory of random clicking and false hope. Every puzzle is exactly the same, the only difference between them all are the answers and the clues, the latter of which range from the painfully obvious (3 2 1) to the frustratingly obtuse (what the hell am I supposed to do HERE?).

The ideal experience should put you in the mindset that you're being manipulated by someone much smarter and more organized than yourself, not that you're playing a game thrown together as quickly as possible, using obscure clues and apparently randomly-generated sequences of fatal choices rather than their own cleverness to stump the player. That's false difficulty.

Score: 1

"Not a game."

submission: Sonic Origins

date: February 24, 2009

Unlike other people (shomoe), I have no problem giving the game a bad score if it doesn't freaking work. That should, after all, be your first and most important concern when you make any kind of game.

I do at least have to give you a point for having a good *concept* for the game - after all, if your concept sucked I wouldn't have tried to get it to work, now would I? But since I can't play it, I guess I can only imagine what you would have done with it. Would it be a worthy addition to the genesis-era games, or a mere shadow, unable to imitate their addictive gameplay, a creation rife with control issues and stale levels. Or would you have the creativity to make it into something more - something that Sega never bothered to make; a fun, fast, epic sonic game combining rich gameplay with a plot that didn't detract from the experience - a feat that most 3D Sonic titles of late seem ill-suited to acheive?

But now I'm just reaching. Your game does not work, but I like the concept of remaking the Sonic games. If it did work, it might or might not be okay. Regardless of whether it works or not, I do NOT want to play as your insipid fan-made recolor.

Score: 9

"Epic for its scope."

submission: Ultimate Crab Battle

date: February 19, 2009

This damn fight dragged on so long and had such an epic feel to it that I couldn't help but give it a great rating. However, it's not perfect - when you come right down to it, it's really just 5-10 minutes of holding down the A button and adjusting your position now and then.

And that pearl attack is cheap. I swam around and followed the beams, but I still somehow got killed when I touched the crab.

Score: 8

"Interesting, but needs polish."

submission: Soul Core

date: October 22, 2008

This was a fairly striaghtforward puzzle game with a great concept for its backstory, nice music, and while the puzzles themselves weren't incredibly challenging, they weren't incredibly frustrating either, which is much more than I can say for a lot of the other good puzzle games out there.

Your game only has two major flaws that I can see.

First, you took a pretty big leap there, expecting anyone to be able to solve the game with 100% soul without looking up a walkthrough. A scavenger hunt? Seriously? How the hell were we supposed to know that magical glowing symbols that gave XX a +5% to her soul rating would just suddenly appear? Next time, at least HINT at the fact that something like that is happening.

Secondly, I went back for a second try after I found out how to get the 'special' ending. Only now, I can't see it, because I have UBER-SOLVED this game. That's right. I've finished it with 105% soul. Subject XX is now a goddess on Neo Earth.

I've taken a screenshot of this accomplishment, so all of you who boast over mere 100% can look on in despair once I post it to my profile (if you want to believe it's been shopped, you're welcome to think that). No, I didn't use any kind of hacking software, I just exploited a glitch in the game allowing you to completely bypass the use of the fuse.

Anyway, I'd give you points for that if it didn't keep me from seeing the ending. Oh, well.

Score: 0

"What??"

submission: Sift Heads 4

date: October 15, 2008

Tried two different missions, the one in Montreal and the one in Italy. Neither one registered any shots.

Score: 10

"Addicting, funny, rewarding."

submission: Mastermind: WC

date: October 9, 2008

I played this game in about two hours without getting up once. Wow.

Things start out a little slow, you have to really scrimp and save to buy yourself nice things; a worthwhile henchman, a suitable minion army, a decent base and weapons/defenses to match. But towards the end, it seems hard to be even mildly inconvenienced by the enemies.

I bought the skyscraper base as soon as I could, and had to evac there after discovering how devastating the tanks were. Once there, I bought a few businesses and made a crapload of money, supplementing my income with frequent cash grabs. I managed to land some flamethrowers (an excellent buy), as well as numerous science advances. I didn't find the Henchmen particularly useful except in the beginning, and I didn't enjoy the fact that you couldn't fire them.

Patsies made for interesting mission cinematics, especially when you fed them to your sharks. Only issue with them: when you go on a mission, your cinematic depicts the patsy you most recently had a meeting with, rather than the one you specifically assigned to that mission.

I bought a lot of the upgrades just because I didn't know what else to do with the money. It seems to me like the only ones you really need are...

- Defense powers: Invincible minions, Clone troops (free minions forever!)
- Base: Skyscraper
- Weapons: Flamethrower, heavy rifle, laser (or railgun)
- science: anything that gives you the above stuff, and the AI.
- plots/missions: robbery, steal science. Any other mission just tends to fail, or attract unnecessary attention from countries. I never had a country get more than slightly cautious.

All in all, it is a great game, and the humor more than makes up for any minor glitches or issues present in the gameplay. If I were to make one suggestion, it would be that the last part of the game needs to be at least as tough as the first, if not tougher. If you have 30 minions running around the moon base with flamethrowers, the game kinda plays itself (wait, combustion engines don't work on the moon, but flamethrowers are just peachy?). The world should really be throwing something bigger at someone who's just stolen the necessary science for Genesis.

5/5, 10/10, favorited. Holy crap.

Score: 5

"Accept no substitutes."

submission: Mario Remix

date: September 20, 2008

It's hard to get past the fact that the game just doesn't play like Mario. All your jumps are stunted, there is no feeling of inertia when you change direction, you can't bounce higher off an enemy by holding jump, and you can neither pick up turtle shells nor count on them to take out your enemies.

Basically, you die in this game because it reminds you of Mario, but it doesn't quite reproduce it faithfully. Although, the fact that you managed to emulate the game well enough to screw with someone's head like that is praiseworthy.

Score: 10

"A sequel?"

submission: Aeternus Lamnia Duo

date: September 13, 2008

I've always considered Aeternus Lamnia a great game, but I never really looked twice at it since I beat it a year or more back... I can't believe that you made a sequel!

It's a wondrous refinement of the original game, without the occasional bugs in it, like having to hold down the button longer to hit the spider's eyes in the first game (but maybe that was just my crappy laptop). I like the addition of magic, as well as the shield, though if I would give any fault to them at all, it's that having so many different techniques available makes decision-making quite difficult - it's a steeper learning curve than the first game.

Much like last time, I had a blast playing this game. The bosses were all pretty epic, and each required you to think on your toes if you didn't want to die on the first attempt. I would've liked a little storyline, though. Why is the hero fighting all these bosses, anyway? For that matter, WHO is the hero? Just some food for thought for next time.

On an unrelated note: the hardest part of the game in my opinion was the minigame level where your controls were reversed. I had to turn my laptop around and bend the screen back towards me so that my movements actually made sense (my roommate was quite perplexed when he saw me do this). The easiest part was the unlockable boss after the minigames. It really doesn't have any attacks anywhere near as threatening as the others.

10/10 MARVELOUS job. But part 3 comes out in 2012? Argh.