Listen2Reason's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Sixty]

Kind of interesting

Interesting coding there, kinda fun stuff going in with the graphics, and top-down shooters are usually fun. I only had two complaints. First, when you go to a new level you get thrown in to this new area of enemies, so it's really hard to avoid them. Secondly, your scoring scale is way off. I think I'm okay at these sort of games but I can only get "Amusingly Awful". I mean, sure, maybe someone could do a LITTLE better than I did, but not three times better than I did. So obviously those higher reaches of the score scale are impossible to reach.

[Shore Siege!]

Pretty good

It was pretty fun...Very imaginative, a very distinctive tone. I liked the art and the whole "piratey" thing. The one problem I had was with those dino-creatures, since there wasn't any way to defeat them except the bomb birds, and there weren't enough of those! So you lose points for that.

[Shape Dodger]

Well done

It's a very simple game...I don't really like games this simple, but I can see you did a good job. There was some pretty good programming in there. The scrolling was nifty, and I also like how you can go as long as you want in one direction. Does it repeat? Interesting. Also, I like how you got the file size so low. (Probably even lower if you took out your llama! But whatever. ;) )

[Cheat2Win]

Innovative.

It's interesting, but you really have to know how to mess with Flash to be able to solve it. Those of us who have never TRIED cheating on a game won't have any idea how to do it. I looked at your guide and I hadn't even known half of those things were possible!

Maybe if you "trained" the player by showing and introducing various cheating techniques...

I give you a lot of credit for trying something different, at least! And, heck, testing this thing must have been hellish. "Okay, it's a bug if you can cheat THIS way but not THIS way..."

[Pandemic II]

Okay, though it has some problems.

On the whole I liked the game. However, I'd like to talk about what I think are the bad parts of the game.

I really wanted to be able to click and drag the main map to move around the world, instead of clicking and dragging the minimap. But that's a minor interface issue.

It seems to me like most of the options of the game don't really matter...If you can infect every region on earth before they close all their borders, then you can wait as long as you need to accumulate enough points to make your disease lethal. If you don't infect every region, then you lose. (Or at least you don't win.) So, most of the stuff, while interesting, doesn't really impact the game much.

In view of this, Madagascar is broken. (Meaning, it's too tough to beat.) If you can start in Africa, it's probably not hard to infect Madagascar, but I always seem to start in South or Central America.

Also, I noticed that even with all the resistances and transmission types, "infectivity" was still very, very small. So that huge infectivity bar is really just a red herring, I guess.

Also, you really should have instructions within the game. It's annoying to have to go to some other website to learn about it...and those video tutorials are pretty lame. The game is just NOT that complicated, you could easily write a help screen for it. Or, maybe half a dozen screens since you want to have diagrams showing how to press the "X" to close the windows. (That's the ONLY thing I really needed from the tutorials.)

Here's an actual bug: I was playing a game where the only hospital left open was in Greenland. Strangely, Greenland was taking no action to try halting the spread of the disease. And then everyone in Greenland died...but the hospital was still working on a vaccine. It would have taken them more than 1000 days, but they were still working, even though everyone was dead! Seems like a bug to me. (I was playing a Virus on Relaxed.)

Speaking of which, I've noticed that there's always one ship wandering around the world even after all the shipyards close. Huh.

And one more thing...Necrosis + Hypotonia = Zombie Apocalypse?

[Paddle Smash]

Falls short

You obviously put a lot of work into it, but I ended up not liking it. The bit about the screen shaking and the paddle getting pushed downward...it was an interesting effect, but it made it feel like the game was a STRUGGLE. Like you were struggling to hang on and keep pounding this ball upward. I ended up feeling exhausted after playing. That's not really how I want to feel after playing a cute little Flash game.

The other thing is that the ball's direction seemed completely random. On the fourth level I got stuck, the ball would just go in the same path into an empty corner and then down, almost straight up and down. The path never changed. I stopped touching any keys and it looked like it would go on forever. I suppose I could have let the ball fall so as to reset the level, but I was bored at that point. So, you might want to look into that bug.

OneSexyPaperBag responds:

I'm sorry you didn't like it. I always thought of the cuteness and the fact that you had to struggle made it cuter.

I admit the physics are a little odd, this game started out as an experiment and I never really got it perfect (hence why I gave up on it originally). I'm not really sure how to improve it at this point though (I'd basically have to overhaul the whole game) and everyone else seems to be handling it.

Thanks for the review though. The physics thing I've already gotten a lot better at. But I'll keep in mind your suggestions for the cuteness of the game when I work on future projects.

[GHOST TANK]

Too hard.

Sure, I can shoot like twice a second, but only about 5% of the shots actually hit the target. With the way you have it set up, basically what the player has to do is draw a line from the tank to the target...WHILE the tank is moving, so you actually have to draw a line from where the tank WILL be to the target, WHILE you're moving around and dodging bullets. You can't draw the line all the way from the tank to the target, because that takes too much time; you can't stay close, because then you get shot; and if you just try drawing the line near the target, well, it's too hard to judge. Basically it's too hard.

id8games responds:

L2R, thank you for your feedback. Notice when you first click, a yellow marker shows up? well you are actually aiming relative to this yellow marker, and not the tank. This means you can click anywhere on the screen and drag in the direction you want to shoot. You don't have to drag that far as well to get a maximum shot. I do hope you give it one more go.

After a while you can almost just look at the tank, and aim with its cannon. Without the need to see the yellow marker.

Once again thank you for the feedback.

[Explode-a-Ton]

Bugged?

It looked like it was bugged or something; I waited for the game to start so I could start moving blocks, but blocks kept appearing, and then suddenly it ended. I tried it a couple more times but I just couldn't get it to work.

[Enigma]

Good!

I liked this, a good idea (yay Metal Storm!) and implemented well. It's not immediately obvious that you can use the mouse to do stuff...I didn't see that mentioned in the help, but it was mentioned in the in-game tutorial, but I guess it's okay. There were just two things that bothered me.

1) The controls change when gravity changes. If gravity is left, then suddenly left is jump. It's hard to wrap your mind around. We're much more used to playing games where the controls stay the same but the direction of play changes.

2) Why can't you change gravity in midair? That was one of the really cool features of Metal Storm.

Anyway, good job!

EggysGames responds:

If you changed in mid air you would be able to fly..