StealthBeast's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Jim the Worm]

Review and some advice to new players

Never thought I'd find such intuitive play in a platform of this style!
Gonna make a run in Hard mode later, but I can't help but review now.
Give the game a chance in the beginning,
You really gotta get past level 3 to get
Up to the reaaaally fun parts!

Never approach bird fields head on! I was
Gonna try to write a thorough guide on bird fields, but I'll
Let someone more experience handle it... besides,
You really gotta play to learn... So in the beginning, just stay
Down, move slowly, and you'll learn what I'm talkin' about.

Never open your inventory while paused! You're
Gonna crash the game... That's complaint number 1.
Run animations sometimes lock up but they're just asthetic.
Around the time you unlock the spring-jump
And the dirt launcher moves, (lv 2) things get easier.
Desert boss was WAY too difficult man...
You really gotta tone that down.

Never unlocked the "secret" hat from the bonus cabinet...
Gonna look at the reviews afterward and see if I can find it.
Make an objective arrow or something!
You can get stuck alot, it'll make you
Cry and throw the keyboard across the room lol.

Never do those green side missions, all they're
Gonna do is deplete you dirt-ammo... I'd
Say to stick with Red and Blue missions.
Goodbye and good riddence to the tutorial levels!

Never use your atomic dust move, you're
Gonna wish you saved it when you get to a boss.
Tell friend from foe in the beginning, or it gets
A LOT harder later on.
Lie to the mafia-worm
And the underground worm if you want, but not the
Hurt-worms, or they'll screw
You on later missions.

Once you make a playthrough, replaying the game on higher difficulties are really really fun! Only extra piece of advice I can give you would be to read the left-most words of each line of my review in order, straight down. Enjoy the game!

[Red Jet Rabbit]

It's okay "I guess"

Yet another catapult-style game where you start out weak and upgrade after every round until you eventually reach a farfetched goal. There's many of these games, and there's many of these games that are better executed than this.

What you got right:

GOOD catapult games (toss the turtle, hedgehog launch) tend to start you out miserably pissweak and the first few levels are grueling and boring. This is the first catapult game I've seen that DOESN'T do that to the player, so the innitial "grind" of the first few levels is a whole lot smoother. So well done, I hope future catapult-style games imitate that

What you got wrong:

Visual noise. There's too much of it. Now, all catapult games have this problem to an extent as the player gains speed, but it's especially a problem here with lots of little props, noisy backgrounds, and trouble with depth perception. After a certain amount of upgrade, I wasn't doing anything but tapping the space bar from time to time, because anything I did with the arrow keys was prettymuch pointless.

Story. It just wasn't that interesting, nor did it make alot of sense... You're a rabbit who beta-tests an invention designed to be indestructible, and for whatever arbitrary reason, you need to destroy this invention to impress a lady rabbit you're interested in... I don't see the co-relation, and even if there is one, it's shallow in and of itself. Now, successful catapult games like Toss the Turtle don't always feature a storyline at all... But a general rule of thumb, if you're going to do a story, do it right, if you're NOT going to do the story right, don't do it at all. Do it right, or don't do it at all. Toss the turtle had no backstory, that's okay. Hedgehog Launch had a great backstory that's okay too. This had a shitty story... that's not okay.

Good catapult games like hedgehog launch shows your progress dramatically overtime. For example, when you first start out, you can barely get 10 feet off the ground before failing, but as you upgrade your arsenal, you see progress, for example, breaching the stratosphere, breaching the blue skys, seeing the curvature of the earth, flying past the moon etc... This game shows some minor ques showing the destruction of your vehicle, but none of it is very dramatic until you get to 90%, and even then, since there's no interesting reason to why you are actually trying to destroy this vehicle, there's no interesting incentive to continue.

"The wall" What? I fully upgraded my craft, invested in 3000 points worth of peripheals, and beat my record for time lasted and BOOM. I hit a giant brick wall that instantly gives me the ending... What?

The Soundtrack... It's cool in a retro way, but it's also the most undeniably annoying thing I have ever heard in my entire life... I know I'm not alone. Tone that shit down!

This game is a great action-scripting feat... As an artist, I'm very impressed, and you should be commemorated just for that... Nevertheless, good scripting and fun gameplay is not the same thing, and as a viewer, this wasn't that great.

Xplored responds:

Thanks for the long time you dedicated in commenting deeply our title. We appreciate. And a vote 7 is quite ok, isn't it?

[Virtual Handgun]

Hah. Cute.

Improvements? Maybe some more types. Virtual revolver, Virtual AR15. Virtual Mauser 98. Virtual Remington 870. Virtual hand grenade. Virtual Grenade launcher. These could get REALLY interesting.

Maybe accessories for the guns. 33 round mag for the Glock 18, or even aftermarket drum mags, lasers, lights, or different color variations for the guns.

[Ultimate Gun Tutorial]

More of a gun lesson than an art lesson.

Being a massive gun enthusiast myself, I followed along the gun history and gun explanations just fine, but I can certainly understand how gun-uninformed people could get bored/confused by this... particularly bored. Considering this flash is trying to appeal to artists, and artists are not exactly notorious gun collectors, the flash loses its focus a LOT.

We don't need a history recap on the first chinese uses of gun powder for you to explain how to trace a gun... and thinking about it now, you went into VERY LITTLE detail on how to properly trace guns to make them look good like you do. For example, making radial fills work for realistic effects, how to make the muzzle flash look blurred, how many frames the muzzle flashes should remain, how to set the weapons up as independant symbols, or in segregated layer folders so that you don't end up with hundreds of layers everywhere...

Your guide basically went "Here's my work, here's the history of guns, here's how guns work, these are the different types of guns, here's a gallery of my guns, bye". There's nothing "Ultimate" about that.

scrimpy responds:

Wow, I'm impressed by the amount of effort you put into this review. Rare to find such constructive critism nowadays. But, I won't be responding in such an elaborate manner, because, really, all there is to say to it is essentially: You're right.

Come to think of it, the tutorial really isn't that helpful and in fact, more of a disguised showoff. I really should have elaborated on different drawing and animation techniques. I actually have later made another tutorial which went in detail about tracing high detailed guns.
But, in retrospect, I'm not even too fond of that anymore, and, as I said, it is limited to this very section.

However, I won't attempt to do better, because nowadays, I have other things on my mind. Also, while certainly not "ultimate", I've called this Gun Tutorial Ultimate. And honest, it would feel really weird calling it "The really more Ultimate Gun Tutorial, serious now!", wouldn't it?
So, I'll keep it with this tutorial, if anyone wants to make a tutorial that's more "ultimate" than mine, I'll be happy to see it myself.

Well, that's it.

~ scrimpy

/tl;dr: yes.

[Chaos Chamber]

New life to an old genre.

This game introduces a number of new concepts at once, relying less on complicated thought, and more on a constant stream of fast reaction on the players part.

The disorienting nature of the game is uber! I liked it. It breathed some new life into the old genre of block games, and it didn't feel like a crapshoot.

One complaint however... The upside down modes, and the colors modes are all fine and dandy... but I think the black-and-white mode is just unfair. I went from 1 locked down row to all of them locked down except 4 because of that, and once it went away I cleared my screen easily. WAY too much of a difficulty spike there, I was basically just sitting there clicking bombs and lasers waiting for it the color to come back so I can rock and roll..

I give you a 10/10 though, and a 5/5, because I want to see more of this. Maybe you could apply these gameplay elements to other classics.

JoUBG responds:

I agree the black and white needs rebalancing for sure, especially on the first 2 level-7 and level-14. The disorienting aspect was going to be a lot heavier but the engine just cant use any more processing without going overboard.

Thanks for the good review! :D

[The Company of Myself]

Intuitive simplicity prevails yet again!

A simple game with a simple storyline I'll not spoil. The game flows flawlessly, and challenges the player without over-frustrating them. It kept me really engaged, and the comments in the background kept me wondering what was going to happen next.

It just goes to show you, that it doesn't take obnoxious music, huge explosions, rediculously complex storylines, finely detailed art, and hours of content to make an incredibly satisfying game! What makes a good game, a good game, is how fun it was.... and this was SO fun.

The (wonderful) backstory didn't really leave itself open to a sequel, but there's so much potential in the puzzles themselves, I wouldn't be disappointed if you simply released a map-pack for this. I really want to see more of this!

[Parkour Parkour Brooklyn]

Interesting, but not fun.

When one thinks of parkour, or of free-running, there's a sense of fluidity and freedom. Following a perfectly linear path doesn't necessarily negate that, but the pause every 3 seconds breaks up the feel of the game so much there DEFINITELY isn't any sense of fluidity or freedom.

Using the mouse in this style of game is rather original, but clearly doesn't work... You would have been far better off using the classic on-screen arrow key style and doing away with the pauses. It's cookie-cutter and every game uses it but that's because it works.

7/10 is me being as generous as I can possible be with a game that just wasn't fun. It was interesting, but not fun.

[Days 2 Die-The Other Side]

A great system limited by the short length...

**SOME SPOILERS

It features a complex point and stat system, featuring a wide variety of handguns, shotguns, smgs, historical rifles, assault rifles, grenade launchers, sniper rifles, explosives and a number of hand weapons... All of which go wildly unused in the intensely short length. You even feature a premium equipment system through accounts for special weapons... Yet the game is like, what? 25 minutes long? You'll rarely invest in more than 2 additional weapons... and really, you don't need to invest in anything at all because the game gives you a great smg right at the beginning. And forget the mercenaries, you can't afford them.

I don't mind short-sweet games, but this game doesn't look like its length was intentional. The writing felt rushed, the protagonist, who I was supposed to feel bad for for the seperation of his sister, was a cold completely unlikable character. The most well-developed character in the game is the merchant, and he was only interesting in a stereotypically-mysterious-RE4merchan t sort of way... Each character's lines were poorly written and like 1 line long, the cutscenes weren't spectacular and the voice-acting was poor. The characters don't even sound kind of into it. The story and dialogue flows like one big B-rated horror movie.

The art in general was not great. The unserious cartoony feel of the game kills the spooky-horror mood that you were so obviously shooting for, and is an eyesore to stare at in general.

The problem, besides the length, is the complete unoriginality of it all... I mean come one... You're a cop (Chris?) trying to find your sister (Claire?) when the zombie outbreak breaks out and the police are overwhelmed (Resident evil 2?). You split up with your partner (Any horror movie?) and stumble upon a mysterious stranger who sells you guns (RE4 merchant ?). You jump in a get-away vehicle and from the roof shoot at a giant humanoid bat (jeeper-creepers?) until it flips your vehicle over (conviniently, right at the place of your house), you come to a defenseless, lone survivor (Sherry/Ashley/Any unarmed female from Resident evil?) who's looking for her family and might know where your sister is if you can find her family. You bring the family to the docks, but in a rush of panic, the boat leaves without you (Oh, I didn't see THAT coming). You fight a giant-armed humanoid that throws rocks (L4D tank?), become overwhelmed, and your character blows himself and a large group of zombies up by blowing up a gas tank (Dawn of the Dead?). There is nothing original about the storyline... I guess that's not necessarily a game-killer, but when combined with all the other negativity about the game, and when the already unoriginal storyline isn't even well executed, it's gonna kill what little ingenuity the game had.

All that being said... It was actually kind of fun. You solved a LOT of the problems that were in Days 2 Die 1, there were no debilitating glitches (Sponsors webpage popping up -_-), and despite the length and quality this game left me wondering, "What's going to happen next?!" at every turn (even if what happened next was totally B-rated...)

Oh, and I had trouble finding the car and gas, and from the other reviews, I can tell I'm not the only one. For such a short, linear game, there sure is alot of backtracking...

[Miami Shark]

Ahahahaha!!

That was frickin' extreme!