Listen2Reason's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Space Monkey]

Fun!

This game was pretty neat. The whole cartoon-ish aesthetic worked really well, with the weird enemies, heck just the "Space Monkey" himself. My one big complaint is the control scheme; nearly all games have you move with the left hand and shoot with the right. I had to cross my arms over each other to be able to play it with any skill. (Mouse with left hand, arrow keys with right.)

[Gravity Runner]

Nice!

Reminded me a lot of Solar Jetman, which was one of my favorite NES games. One thing I would add; make it so the user could press a key to go to the next level. That would you could pretty much play as long as you wanted using just the keyboard.

[Probe Avoider]

Okay...

It was all right, except for a couple things...First, it just went so slowly. It took a long time for the game to actually get interesting. Second, you could just do the same thing all the time, that is, move the guy around in a circle. The cool thing about Ice Pop Frenzy was that you had to do different things to win, like, you had to move all over the screen in different ways. In this one you just go in a circle.

Still, keep trying.

[Smash 2]

Polished, yet buggy?

Obviously a lot of work went into this, it's extremely well polished, but it seems to have some fundamental flaws...I didn't really understand the instructions, for one thing. The whole point of a "breakout" type game is that you bounce the ball off the paddle, right? So how do you hit it "hard"? The mouse cursor is some odd aiming thing that didn't seem to have any effect, clicking doesn't do anything...For a breakout game it was okay, but there are other games I could play if I want that.

Also, it seemed like level 3 was impossible. I guess that's why you give the player the option to start on level 6? When you start level 3, the ball is completely vertical. This meant it would always bounce straight up and down and would never hit the blocks. Other games solve this problem by having a curved paddle, or a little random factor in the angle so the ball eventually goes to another place. After watching it for about 60 seconds, I moved the paddle away to see if missing the ball would do anything. The game told me this was "humiliating". Yeah, that's real classy, guys.

gel responds:

You move the paddle in the direction you want to hit the ball. Think of it like tennis. You don't just hold a tennis racket still and wait for the ball to hit it. You swing the tennis racket and the harder you swing it, the harder the ball gets hit, right? Same thing in Smash 2. If you want the ball to go left, move your paddle to the left. If you want the ball to go to the right, move the paddle to the right. If you want the ball to go flying really hard, move the paddle up really fast.

I know this is different from classic Breakout style games, but that's why it's a new game and not a total clone.

The "humiliating" message was more for myself, haha. I sometimes hit the ball hard, it hits a black brick, and goes flying off screen. I thought it would be funny to put in that message so I could mock myself every time I did that. I'm serious. I think it would be unclassy to say "you suck" but instead I just stated what I thought every time I screwed up: "Bah! Humiliation."

[NGAP Radio]

Genius!

This was such a simple and obvious idea, but it works so well. It gets people more excited about the Audio Portal and aware that it's out there, which is great. I think this should be posted on the Audio Portal as the official way to listen to music and browse it.

To improve it, maybe you could have it where people could pick a genre to listen to, if they only wanted to listen to dance for example?

[Bridge Savior]

Okay, but needs just a little more work.

I liked the concept of the game, reasonably original, looks like it has some potential for fun. However, there are some problems to work out. 1) The instructions need to be clearer. It was hard to figure out how to use the bomb, for one thing. 2) The controls need to be a little more responsive. It took me several tries before I could "get" the bomb so I could use it on the enemies. 3) Speaking of which, do you only get one bomb? 4) I didn't realize the "hero" would be so dumb as to walk off the bridge when he could turn the corner. Almost Lemmings-like in that respect. Which is okay, IF the player understands it; see 1.

Anyway, keep working, you have a lot of potential!

[Happy Cyclopsland]

Kind of pointless?

I didn't really get this one. First of all, the instructions could have used some more work, it took me a while to realize that W was thrust. If only you had copy-pasted the instructions from the game description (which was hidden under the "read more") and put them in the actual GAME, that would have helped.

Anyway, once I worked out the controls, the game seemed to work well...Except I couldn't figure out what to do! There wasn't anything to fight. I can fly around and shoot, but it didn't do anything! I didn't want to kill any civilians because, well, there was no reason to, and there was also that warning in the instructions about something bad happening if you did. So there was nothing to do. Too bad because the flying controls were kind of neat.

BasV responds:

ARE YOU SERIOUS!? Dude, if you press play, you go through a tutorial BEFORE even playing the game! It displays all the keys right there! You can't miss it!! And DUDE! It sais what you have to do too in the tutorial! :O

[UFOMania]

Good, but too difficult.

Obviously there was a lot of work and skill put into this game; it's very polished with a distinctive style. That's all good. However, it's just too difficult! I try dodging missiles and the humans fly out of my beam? And my super far future high tech spaceship explodes after ONE hit? I tried for two minutes before I gave up.

[Particles]

Good stuff.

Pretty fun game. Elegant in its simplicity. I got 9 balls 232 seconds, and I bet I could do better next time. I was a little surprised at how easy it was compared to the game's comments of "Very Tricky" and such...

[Hearts 1.1]

Difficult control scheme.

First, this game really needs instructions, because otherwise how are you supposed to know that you're supposed to click WHILE an arrow is reloading? All my arrows were going straight down until I figured out that you had to click just at the right moment to start the power charging. Even if there *were* instructions, this would be a strange control scheme, I really don't understand it.

Anyway, the game itself was okay. The best thing about it was its distinctive art design and "feel".

DBarbarian responds:

lol. You're supposed to hold the mouse button down to charge...