aquaticmole's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Ching Chong Beautiful]

Oh so Horrible.

Terrible, this is honestly one of the worst fucking games i have ever played.

Allow me to expand.

Ching Chong Beautiful is a game that sounds great on paper but in action is actually equivalent to garbage.

Not everything in this game is bad, there are a lot of redeeming qualities to be found, the sounds design, graphics and animation are all fantastic. The character's animation flows smoothly and all the characters are beautifully decoracted and full of life. The sound of the game was phenomenal, the characters quotes are hilarious although after a while he begins to sound like a twa, still though the game is pretty funny, though most of the humor is run into the ground the broken english and the overall remarks to how fucking weird Japan is, is well done.

Yet with all that style the game is fucking terrible. The characters controls are sluggish and unresponsive EVERYTHING fucking hurts him and it bogs down the gameplay because it makes for frustrating moments occur every second. What could have been a smooth slick fun obstacle course turns into pain and frustration.

Other then the muddled controls the game is weighed down by its exaggerated realism, there is so many things that can go wrong that it ruins to flow of the game, I understand running to fast into a wall and having to get knocked over, but not being able to run up stairs is just stupid. Other then than just getting knocked down every second it bothers me how overly exagerated everyting is, sure it's funny but it's god damn obnoxious when all you want to do is jump over one little box and you have to wait 10 seconds beforethe little shit falls down and gets back up.

Another issue I have is the level design, so much shit is thrown at you that it ultimately just isn't worth it to finish it. The stuff that pops out at you and the the guns that shoot at you mixed in with the slippery surfaces, clunky controls and confinement of the course limits the fun to only pain and frustration, it doesn't help that in medium and hard you have to collect those boxes.

It's a game which puts style way over substance the voice acting is tremendous
even when it's annoying at times, the graphics and smooth animation are great eye candy yet it slows down the motion of the game.

1/10 - it's just not fun.

[Glass Fish Rhythm]

No. Just no.

It's obvious you tried really hard to create an enjoyable game, stylish 8-bit graphics and catchy rhythmic tunes, the only problem is that it just isn't fun.

In Glass Fish Rhythm you play as a fish that is turned into glass by the evil wizard who is trying to take over atlatis, in it you swim through 3 different worlds and try to make it to the end without touching ANYTHING. The gameplay is rudimentary, old and nothing particularly interesting stands out as far as it being somewhat of a rhythm game.

The good news however is that all the characters and environments are all very carefully and beautifully constructed, the graphics were top notch 8-bit goodness.

The bad news is everything else is hit and miss, the controls were either too sloppy or too sensitive and they never felt very fitting for the gameplay style. The gameplay was absolutely terrible. The game ensures you a quick and frustrating death since everything yo touch will kill you, this isn't fun and when mixed with the horrible controls creates one frustrating mess.

The game allows you to save the game whenever you want up to 3 times, I don't actually have any real complaint about this excpet for a quick FUCK YOU for not letting us save or give us any checkpoints during the final boss, if you die anytime during the final fight you have to lose all your progress and start at the begining of the level, not the fight. This was an amateur move on your part and forces the player to sit through the same boring level only to have to go back because they accidnetly brushed up against the wall because the controls are so terrible.

With great stellar graphics and artistic presentation but probably the single most frustrating gameplay, you get a....

2/10

[William and Sly]

Fetch Quest: the game

William and Sly is an unusual game, it has a simple concept (get all runestones) and executes it very nicely by giving the player a great feeling of immersion as he explores the area.

First of all right off the bat great art and animation, truly tremendous, the animation was slick and the presentation was beautiful, the environment was full of surprises and grand in size. It allows the player to explore the area and immerses them to the fullest point. I don't think there wasn't a point when I wasn't surprised.

That being said, the gameplay was horrendous. The games main and only real objective is to fetch all the runestones, fair enough but because the area is so big this becomes tedious without a map. William gives you a map later but until then you're on your own and because the area is so big you will find yourself lost so many times, patches of the environment seem to repeat themselves giving the player an odd sense of deja vu. Secondly once you get the map, it's way too tiny, and it leaves a lot of what you need off, maybe that was done on purpose but it just makes the game less fun when you're rummaging around trying to find all boxes and you have absolutely no help or guidance on where to go. The darklings were also a mediocre attempt at adding enemies. They're too fast and the only way to kill them is too find a runestone then track them down. This becomes an issue when the white magic that you receive from the stone lasts about 5 seconds and you have to find one; yet you can never truly remember where it is because you just get lost. Second off the only way (as far as im concerned) to get white magic is to find and activate a runestone. That has to be the worst idea I've ever heard. Their are only 13 runestones in the game and you can only use 12 of them to kill the darklings. This would have been alright if there were an equal or less then amount of darklings, but there weren't instead there are 15 darklings spread out, some of which aren't even close to a runestone. Flying was a pain in the ass as well because you can only go in one direction and you can't decide to use them midair for a cleaner landing, but whatever it was an add on with good intentions.

LASTLY the final fight with the weird snake thing was terrible. It was frustrating and seemed like a last ditch effort to make the game more challenging. It was way too hard to find all 5 darklings in time before the snake got you and it seems impossible to actually remember his moves and if he touches you even in the slightest you lose all your fireflys and have to try again.

All in all it works best as a relaxing title but you tried to stuff a bunch of unnessary challengs into the game ruining it entirely, also the gameplay in this game was a clunky frustrating mess.

3/10

[BOom It!]

Dull, boring and repetive.

This game is just a glorified time waster, though it does win over in style, it loses in innovation and gameplay.

The goal of Boom it is to create a chain reaction by clicking on the bombs to make them explode, a fun idea but due to the lack of gameplay mechanics the overall idea will seem dull by the 10th level.

The graphics in the game were decent, the simple style lends itself to the simple gameplay, their aren't any risks taken but the graphics are still above average. However graphics only go so far and the overall gameplay destoys whatever glory the graphics might have served.

The game plays out like you would expect, you click on a bomb and it carries out it's explosion and then carries on more explosion through other bombs causing a chain reaction. In every level you are given a certain amount of bombs to explode and are limited to the amount of clicks you get. As you continue on your edventure you will find that very little has been done to spice up the game, their are a few things: the bombs speed up and you get more clicks yet this doesn't really add much to what you're actually doing, which is simply pointing and clicking. Most of the chain reactions are made up of dumb luck that hopefully a bomb will fly by in the time that is allotted.

I'm sorry if I sound like a douchbag, I feel like you have a really fun core element you just need to expand on it, it would be nice to see in game power ups, to diversify the game.

a
5/10

sandfire1on1 responds:

I'm glad you write this review, because I agree. The idea behind the game was to make a simple time-waster game, as I haven't really released anything recently. I'm wanting to improve the gameplay for a sequel, so if you have more ideas, I'd be glad if you PM'd me or something =]

[Run Run Fury]

Pretty Buggy, Sis.

This was a great concept that was just not really that well executed, it has many bugs and just not enough variety to keep me interested.

In this game you play as a man who is running from the cops, you use the mouse to shoot and blow up cop cars and evade barracks and auto targeted missiles, the overall idea and fast paced action is a great. It's just not that well put together, the graphics and animation were pretty solid but there really just wasn't much of a variety between them after the 6th or 5th round I realized that I had already seen everything.

Not only had I also seen everything but I had also done everything, you're given 3 tasks which are shoot and dodge cops, evade auto target missiles, and dodge barracks. The three tasks are strung together to give off a sense of fast paced extreme action and is fun, but there is just such a lack of variety, there are no upgrades from your gun and the enemies don't even change at all and neither do the set pieces. Achievements are here to add replay value but after I got a few and looked back at the ones I still needed to get, I realized I didn't care about them if it meant that I had to play another match.

Then there are the bugs. The "Try Again" button seemed to be a tricky guy, if you are shooting by just holding down the mouse button then when you hit try again your guy will start off firing constantly without the help of the mouse, on top of that none of the cop cars bullets seem to hurt you after the first round which destroys a huge chuck of the challenge.

So with a great idea that is fun for a while, but a lack of variety and bugs which hold back fun this gets a.

6/10

[Armed with Wings 2]

C'mon, you could have done better then this.

Really this game was just sloppy, now to be fair there was a few good parts of the game but those parts only shined every once in a while.

Just to begin this game does have some very sharp qualities, the game's visual presentation is crisp clean and well crafted, it has slick animation and boasts a unique color scheme. As well as the presentation this game has some very good fight mechanics that allows for a nice way to string together combos.

However there is just too many things weighing it down, the jumping in this game feels way to stiff which is odd because he runs so fast yet whenever the up button is hit, his weight seems to increase and this makes jumps extremely difficult, this wouldn't be such a problem but the game seems to really want to emulate a platformer which just doesn't work. The camera is another thing, the camera works best when it is just following you around however whenever the game tries to become a platformer the camera decides to zoom out which threw me off when it first occurred.

Though this game has smooth fight controls and slick animation it suffers from stiff jumps which are needed often and a poor and confusing camera.

A generous 4/10

[Black Knight:Insurrection]

almost perfect.

This game is a highly addictive puzzle game and I fully recommend it, this game is in it's own right a reimagination of chess.

This game has a lot of great aspects that go toward making a puzzle game. The movement very solid smooth and simple and the fact that this is based on a game of chess fully utilizes the different parts of the game, for example you play as a knight and you have to kill off the other pieces that you would also find in a game of chess, the other pieces move and even act like they normally would, and the look of the figures was also great.

However, with all that good comes some bad, in some of the later levels I would end up at the end of the board opposite to where I first began and enemies will pop up; due to having a camera that seems to be in the middle of birds eye view and regular person view I found this difficult to move because it was hard to find out which way the enemy was pointing.

This game offers great presentation, the music in the game was great and didn't distract the players mind from focusing on his next move, the solution to each puzzle was fair and the difficulty scale went up at a very smooth pace. So for have a great art style, lovely music, beautiful gameplay machanics but a somewhat faulty camera position which you just can't move, this gets :

9.1/10

[Totem Destroyer]

Nicely Presented but falls a little too short.

In Totem Destroyer you go through 28 levels of destroying blocks while keeping the idol still in tact. This game boasts some very good qualities like a great physics engine, achievements, and auto saving. However with all these powerhouse records there are some faults that keep this game very far away from perfect.

To start the presentation of this game is top notch the game looks and feels alive and colorful but still feels very basic and in some areas a little too simple.
The Physics in this game are great you destroy a block and everything is affected by it and it all feels very realistic and believable. The overall gameplay is very addicting but at the same time feels a little repetitive which is a side effect when the game is a little too simple at times, but that doesn't mean you wont want to replay it because like I said earlier there are many achievements to be had in the game, all of them are very well balanced and give off a good challenge for replaying the game.

However there are some faults in this game. It just feels a little to stripped, for one thing the game doesn't really offer that much variety in the blocks which is a disappointment because it seems like you could have put in a lot more creativity into it and really after you have completed all of the achievements you feel a little unfulfilled.

a solid
7/10

[Alien Slayer 3D]

A little above average Flash FPS

To be brutally honest I didn't like this game very much, this game seems to be a game that it relies more on it's technicality that it does on gameplay.

First off I must input that this game looks amazing. The graphics are simply marvelous for an online shooting game and the 3D rooms looked great for the limitations on flash, however I feel that there were to many limitations as of I found it easy to get lost in the giant areas. The walls all looked the same and when you end up in a giant maze it turns in a (excuse my english) cluster fuck of where to go.

Another element that I must say I hated was the controls, I felt that if I just so the slightest bit move my gun to left my whole body moved uncontrollably with it which in the heat of a battle made it easy to die, which is another thing there is no life system, this is huge deal in a game like this because the battles can some times get frustrating with the insanely sensitive controls and it doesn't help that you need t start all the way back at the begining of the level.

Not al is gloomy however there was one aspect of the game which I liked which was the EXP process that you undergo, as you go along on your missions certain types of kills (e.g fast and survival kills) give you EXP which can be used to add up stats to make your guy overall be better and it increases skills such as stealth.

So in a nutshell this is a game that looks beautiful but plays sloppy, the controls are over sensitive and the areas get confusing and are easy to get lost in.

[_dRive]

Good first try.

I thought thus game very fun loved the upgrades. I just feel like it needs something else.

The whole idea of the game seems like a hit and miss, I say this mainly because I felt like the whole premise of the game just doesn't work, at all. I feel like the game is mainly based on warping the music but I feel like you can't warp it at all. I feel this way because when you move the ships to the left and right it doesn't really do anything to the track it just makes it skip which makes the music sound really irritating.

Another complaint I have with this is that it's hard to control the other ships when you aren't in control of them. They seem to just flicker and jitter for no reason. I feel like it was a cool idea for the upgrades but I feel like they don't realyl add much to the warping of the sound, they all just seem to do the same thing and I feel like that part of the game could have been better.

One suggestion I have is to maybe include more power ups then just speeding it all up, because power ups in games usually will keep the gamer coming back for more.

A good idea that wasn't very well executed due to sound bugs.

7/10

axcho responds:

Thanks for the detailed review.

I agree that the way the music is affected could be improved - the skipping is a common element in glitch music, but it's usually used more sparingly than in this game. Maybe it should only skip when you collect a certain item, instead of whenever you move?

It may not have been clear to you exactly how the glitching works. Each ship's track corresponds to a separate music track (lead, drums, pad). When you move a ship, only the music track that goes with that ship is glitched. And the amount that the music skips depends on the speed of the ship.

The movement of the different ships is linked by derivatives. The easiest way to control all of them is to use the ship on the far right.

I think that having more powerups would be a good idea, especially if they affect the music. This was a very experimental sort of project, as it was my first attempt at using interactive glitch music in a game. I think some of it worked pretty well but there's definitely a lot to improve on. Thanks again for the feedback.