StealthBeast's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Madness Deathwish 2]

Silly fun, even if a bit too easy.

First off all, I can't knock you for not having a real storyline. Lack of a storyline is what makes madness madness, and as such, this is as genuinely madness as you can possibly get... Storyline, I believe, would have diluted the concept.

I think the recommended mode is far too easy. I went with a tank-like build, maximizing damage output, minimizing damage input, and dumping points into regeneration... Once you do that, there's very little that can kill you, and even with all of the speed-detriments in the game equipped at the same time, you go faster than the fastest enemy in the game. Almost every single upgrade in the game (Except the martial arts, which I simply haven't tried yet) seems wildly overpowered. If you go into a thorn build, enemies will literally walk up to you and kill themself. If you go into a damage-output build, enemies will barely have time to come on screen. If you go into a health + regeneration build, the enemies can't even do enough DPS to kill you even if you weren't fighting back. Considering how effortless the Normal mode was, I can't even imagine how easy the easy mode must be...

**SPOILER ALERT!

Also, you seemed to be building up to this great finale in some sort of badass ending or something, I was expecting to fight some sort of crazy ass, dodging, high hp boss, especially considering you gave us a perk at the very end that gives us 25% crits when on a 1 on 1... only to have a short, cheesy cutscene, kill my guy, and then returning me to the Title screen.. All that work, all that buildup.. for that?!

Your game needs a save feature badly... The first time I played this, I was interrupted and ended up having to press back button on the browser. I came back to the game and looked for a continue button.. to realize its absence. "FUCK THAT" I said and ended up coming back the next day to play it. The game is repetitive and takes a long time to complete, so a save feature would be genuinely useful for this game.

Despite these flaws, this game is a pretty fun stress-reliever. Something to play when you're bored and have an hour to kill but don't feel like actually being challenged.

[Dead Frontier: Outbreak]

One of the first working zombie tests

There's an obnoxious number of zombie quizes on the internet that test ones theoretical readiness for a zombie apocalypse but all of them suffer numerous problems. Either they leave out essential information to the decision, they place the test-taker against unbeatable odds, they base their information on an overtly specific type of zombie, they give far too many subjective answers, or they give far too many opinion-based answers.

Most zombie quizes completely miss the point, asking questions such as "Can a zombie breath underwater?". This game wastes no time with subjective questions and pits the player against probable situations with a variety of reasonable answers, ensuring the player has plenty of information about the situation. Despite being a linear, scenerio-based storyline, the game manages to cover a wide variety of important survival factors such as responding to first contact, reacting to riot and looters, going it alone VS going with a group and what group is the best to stick with, vehicular options, weapon preferences, how to identify a zombie, When to fight or run, how to evade zombies, how to determine when you should leave a group, when you have to just put your emotions aside, and when you have to take risks, all in a storyline that flows seamlessly together without seeming awkward, giving the player choice and not forcing a player to choose between one extreme or another.

**SPOILER ALERT

That all being said, the game was not flawless. For example, in the bathroom when the player needs to choose between hiding in a stall and going out the window, I chose hiding in the stall. That was apparently a bad call, and I can sort of understand why... But keen sense of smell? How was I supposed to know zombies have a keen sense of smell? That's a primitive problem with many zombie quizzes: Assuming the player knows what sort of zombie they're referring to.

The weapons scenerio was a bit odd. Having to choose between a chainsaw, a crowbar, a sledge hammer, and a hand-axe. The chainsaw is obviously just a stupid idea, the sledge hammer is not a great indoor weapon. So I had to choose between a crowbar and a hand-axe. Apparently you think a crowbar is the best option... But "A crowbar" is subjective. What KIND of crowbar is it? It can vary wildly from anything from a full-sized wrecking bar (which would be just as clumsy as the sledge hammer), to an aluminum prying bar (I'd rather use my fists). Go to home depot and ask for "A crowbar" and they'll ask what kind you need, because there isn't even kind of a standardized interpretation of what a crowbar is. It's like making the user choose between "A sports-sedan" and "A flying vehicle"... A hand-axe is far less subjective, as the smallest and biggest of hand-axes do remotely the same thing.

Also, I felt you could have branched out a bit further at some parts. For example, what group you went with (besides the gun vigilantes), and what vehicle you chose (besides the jeep) made no difference to your choices.

But that's me being as critical as I possibly can, because otherwise I absolutely loved it.

[-Stick War-]

Fun, working, but not perfect.

It plays well, and fun. Not frustrating. One thing I do not enjoy in this game however, is the imbalance of the characters... The entire game is most easily won exclusivly with swordsmen, the cheapest unit in the game, yet one of the most powerful. Classes like the spearton don't shine as they should, as they cost nearly 4 times as much as a swordmen without being nearly 4 times as effective.. The mages, while well worth their price, caused massive problems with population, as each of their weak little minions takes up an entire troop.

It would have helped to have a standard "Box around group of troops, attack" thing. I was always forced to have my troops attack or retreat symetrically... Meaning whenever you did any sort of attack on the enemy, you had better be ready to lose your entire army. Sometimes I wanted to rush 2-3 swordsmen at a single archer firing at a distance, situations where the manipulation of 1 unit was not enough, but sending your whole army would be overkill.

Archers were semi-useful, I believe they were far too expensive unless you went into an archer-based build (Dumping points into archer damage)... I didn't like how they sat behind the workers. It would have worked better for me to have swordsmen up from archers behind, and workers in the FAAAR back. It is this very reason that makes an archer-dominant build unwise.

Finally, I think it would have been helpful to seperate workers from troops... If you have 15 workers, you can only have 5 soldiers... problematic.

Despite these many imperfects (and while I realise alot of them are just my personal taste, many of these issues should not be here), the game was a blast to play. It took the things that were bad about defense games and threw it away, then took everything bad about rts games, and threw that away too, leaving only the finest qualities of both an RTS and a defense game.

[Zombies - The Beginning]

Feels incomplete, even as a multi-part series.

Graphics were very acceptable.. the rest felt incomplete.

Its slow portions were too simple for an escape game, its fast portions were too complicated for twitch-reactions, and the FPS mode was unchallenging in general.

When you leave the house, I think you should have made it blatantly obvious to the player that the objective was simply to get the key out of car and go back inside... I had to restart twice before I figured that out... Better yet, you should have kept the key inside the house to add to the much needed complexity for the 'escape' portion.

Now for the bickering inconsistencies... Locked himself out of his room? How convinient... Fine, but then he goes out, stabs a zombie in the face, sees zombies killin people and stuff.. I wouldn't run to my car and get the key to my bedroom, I'd run back inside, kick down my bedroom door and get my gun.

The problem with this game, is that it makes it seem as if there is no focused goal other than "escape" (Like an escape game), when in truth, our character knew that he wanted to go outside to his truck and get the key to his bedroom so he needed his shoes, his keys, and protection in the form of his knife, in order to get a key out of his truck to the bedroom that he locked himself out of... The game just assumes we know this, when the player could have thought of ANYTHING (I personally hypothesized that I was supposed to find a breaker box or something for the power).

This took 2 years? lol, I doubt this will ever spin off.

MichaelJ responds:

Took so long because I go to school, I had a lot of extra-curricular activities, and I was learning flash. But game #2 won't disappoint you. It's almost done.

[Endless Zombie Rampage 2]

I LOVE it! Improvements:

Firstly, there's a bug, I can't tell what causes it, but sometimes when firing, when the ammo reaches 0, it will keep going into the negatives, eventually become a value of "---" and then switch back to a higher amount, reload then shoot like normal.

Also, when you start killing tons of monsters, the ground gets COVERED in bodies (I LOVED that touch)... After awhile, the colors of the live zombies and the dead on the floor begin to be difficult to differentiate.

[Sonny 2]

It would be flawless but...

This game is pretty deep. Techniques intertwine with each other extremely precisely. Equipping yourself with certain equipment will accelerate your techniques to be devastating, and failing to do so correctly renders some techniques worthless... So you really gotta study how the damage-system works.

The problem is, as intricate as this system is, it's too intricate for me.

I can never just highlight a debuff on my character and know what it does... I have to read a massive block of text and spend 30 seconds thinking about how it will affect me due to my stats and equipment. I think the game would be much more pleasant if I didn't have to read:

Next Tier (Lvl. 4): Attack
the enemy for 10% of your
Strength and Instinct. Also
reduces the target's
damage by 28%, causes
the target to lose Focus
and suffer damage equal
to 30% of your Strength for
4 turns. This effect has a
15% chance to resist
being dispelles. This
effect cannot stack.

...every 6 seconds.

Other than that, and refraining from making jokes about the voice acting, it was fun, and balanced.

[Portal Defenders]

Am I the only one who can't stand this game?

I don't see what people like in this game. Everyone is 10/10ing this, and the few who give negative reviews get rated "useless".

The gameplay is an over-simplified hack-n-slash game with no real plot. The player simply spams the attack button until the enemy is dead. The only other game mechanic is the bombs, but they are few and far between, rarely effective, and not very interesting in general. The pacing of the game is slow and monotonous, and while the enemies become more powerful and with more moves as the game moves on, the player recieves no apparent upgrades or abilities.

Aggrivating, slow, and boring.. No plot, no fulfillment, no replayability.

On the plus side? Great graphics, great theme, no apparent glitches, and an excellent soundtrack selection. Looks like alot of time and love was put into this game... But it's just not fun.

[Days 2 Die]

Great bass, used its potential, but needs refining

It was fun in the beginning because you don't know what's going on. Upgraded weapons actually made a big difference, and halfway through the level, your barricade would give out and you would be frantically running around shooting zombies trying to beat the timer.

The great wall of rage:

By the time the end of the game was strolling around, I had the most powerful weapon, 2 of the most powerful barricades, and 2 mercs, but it was still just a flip of the coin to whether I'd survive. Rather than being an invorating survival experiance, it was just trying to find out what weapon mathematically does the best, damage, saving up for the most powerful merc, and just standing by the barricade holding E for 1.5 minutes. Melee weapons were useless, because as soon as your barricade gave out, you'd die in 2 seconds. Explosives were equally useless because they would destroy your barricades. Also, theres a huge, at times debilitating, glitch where clicking certain parts of the map will cause your sponsor's webpages to pop up and get you killed. The problem I feel with this game, is the unseriousness of the upgrades. You heavily feel the change in difficulty from level to level, you heavily feel the price of each upgrade you buy, but you don't heavily feel the advantages of buying the upgrades.

</wall>

[Thing-Thing 4]

I'm just don't see what people are seeing in this.

I don't grade flashes on graphics unless they are profusely shitty, but this is not the case here. The game was rather stylish. The story, though not original, was very well executed. This is an astronomical programming feat. I haven't encountered a single bug. It looks like so much time and love was put into making this game...

But........ it just wasn't fun for me.

Waves upon waves of enemies end up forcing the player to repeatedly jump up and down in the air to avoid damage and regenerate, swinging the pipe wildly in a desperate attempt to get a gun.

There's so many enemies to kill and so much requirement to evade damage, that there's very little stradegy, planning, or reaction on the players part, making each kill less fulfulling than the last...

Which is really bad since there's no alternative purpose. You're not running for your life, your not destroying the reinforcement generators or trying to find a switch to activate the door. You absolutly, positively have to kill every single motherfucker in the room with no exceptions, and it grows stale.

The time and effort put into ensuring that this game was playable and pretty, I really think more time should have went into making sure it's balanced and fun.

As much as it hurts to say this, especially considering the fanboys will probably mark this as a useless review for it: This game is the domestic definition of a crapshoot.

[Zombie Survival Quiz]

Some accurate constructive feedback...:

This quiz is quite fualty. This quiz is entirely too biased toward people who read the zombie survival guide (which is, while organised, NOT a very good source of info in my opinion). Alot of what that guide says is true, but some of the "facts" are just opinions of the books. Whether or not a zombie digests food, whether or not the zombie will eat animals as well as human, has an operating respiritory system, or can bring corpses back to life can change depending on what you think the definition of a zombie is.

A few of your questions make me question your logic... for example, making me choose between a police station, a church, a school, a mall, a military base, and my home is a retarded question in my opinion. Obviously the police stations, churches, malls, military bases, and most schools are terrible choices, and "home" can vary from an open-house in the middle of a city, to a weather-fortified farmhouse on a plantation in nowhereland. It's a trick question.

Then of course the gun questions. 5.56x45 nato isn't exactly easily accessible to most citizens of any country, even America. Civilians dont need to be able to identify them. Then your "when you loot a gunstore, what do you take" question. You take whatever is appropriate for the situation. If you need a compact killer you take a handgun, if you need a medium-range, multiple-zombie killer you take the assault rifle, if you need to be able to easily take on one zombie at a time, you take the shotgun, If you need an assault-rifle like weapon that still runs on the very-common handgun ammo, you take the submachine gun, and if you need an easy to care for long-range zombie killer your take the rifle. Every gun is for a different situation... Thats why different types of guns EXIST. "If you have 50 rounds of ammo, which of these weigh the least." Well really, who cares. When you go to the gun store and have the ammo in front of you, you'll be able to weigh the advantages and disadvantages right there. Also, just because .22 weighs the least, doesn't mean it's the best to pack, in fact, just because a round is smaller, doesn't mean it weighs less. Look at shotgun shells, proportionally they weigh less than most bullet rounds for their size.

Why do you need to know how to make explosives? It's a zombie outbreak.. what could you possibly use explosives for.

Traveling from place to place, the size of the group is completly determined on the resources at hand, and the distance needed to be traveled. Theres no general answer to that question.

Whether or not the person owns horses is rediculous. Almost no one has horses, most people don't know how to ride a horse, furthermore, a horse consumes WAY TOO MANY resources to consider as a vehicle. You always have to feed a horse whether or not you use it. You can't put a horse somewhere for 3 months then quick-quick pick it up and ride it like you can with a bike or motorvehicle for the obvious reason that the horse is a living creature.

"Which is best? An axe, A katana, a revolver, a knife" Which is the best at what? Killing 1 zombie? taking on a group of zombies? Surviving the test of time? Obviously a revolver would be the true killer, but I half-expected the quiz to pop out the screen, slap me, and say "BUT THE AMMO IS OVERLIMITING". The question is too vague.

"When a zombie is close, you should fire: When it's close so you dont miss, or when its far so you don't get hit?" How about... both? What kind of silly question is that? I don't want to miss OR get bit. It's not one or the other..

And then of course the scenerios. "You are surrounded by a group of zombies, you have matches, a hatchet, and a handgun" What do I look like? Macgyver? It's a vague question. How big of a group of zombies? how far from me? How much ammo do I have? Theres this huge gap between "4 zombies, 15 rounds, 20 yards" and "25 zombies, 7 rounds, 5 yards" that your question could be refering to.

Then again, I've always been a bit too critical with peoples zombie accuracy =P. Otherwise, I enjoyed taking this quiz. I scored Z+.

secv responds:

All I have to ask is if you read the answers or not. A lot of the grips you are explaining, while well thought out, are explained in the end.

1) I HAD to decide upon a "zombie type" otherwise I'd be jumping around saying zombies can run or zombies eat everything, but at the same time saying they only walk and eat people. It's for convenience's and comprehension's sake that I used the Zombie Survival Guide model of a zombie.

2) All questions are based on generalizations. I can't pick and choose every situation. Then the quiz would be 502 questions instead of 52.

3) Once again, in the answers I stated that unless you have the right resources at hand, smaller groups are better. If not, then I agree with you here. However, most people wouldn't be able to organize large convoys and such a convoy would most likely have mobility issues due to clogged streets.

4) Horses eat grass, you don't have to physically feed them. They were around before humans domesticated them. Also, horses are much more mobile than any vehicle or human and can carry more as well. The problem is YOU NEED TO BE TRAINED in horse riding, otherwise any nearby zombies will startle your horse and you will be thrown, possibly killing or disabling you.

5) The question was which is best. Nothing specific, just which is best overall.

6) If you don't want to get bit, then the answer shoot from a distance would be correct for you. The question was a gauge of how people think of themselves and how much danger they'd put themselves in.

7) I didn't like that question either, but hitting yourself with a hatchet and catching yourself on fire was too good an answer to leave out. :P

9) Thank you, I'm happy you enjoyed the quiz. It took a while to finish.