StealthBeast's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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?

[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

[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.

[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.

[Bomb Detonator]

Excellent

Howeve, it was too difficult for some, and too easy for others. A changable difficulty system would really make this game shine. The main problem i have with this is the sheer inevitability of it all. You don't usually get to defuse 1 bomb every 2 seconds simply due to the distance between you and the bomb.

Also, considering how much you guys probably poured your heart and soul into this game.. yet you spell "detonator" wrong in the title.

I have a little idea for an upgrade. An upgrade that zooms the camera out, giving the player a greater field of view.

CorkySurprise responds:

Whoops! My bad!

Thanks for the review

[RaidenX]

OMG ------------------------- YOU RULE

very very very awsome. i do think that the purple ship was imbalanced, while its true the purple ship was useless against stronger armored enemys, in every other aspect it rocks. the blue ship was a bit imbalanced to, while its true it was literally useless during battle, during a boss fight it was tooo easy.

id say that if u can beat this game using only red, then u r truly talented.

nevertheless a good game that deserves nothing less then a long 1/50 and my str8 10s

Go0gley responds:

Well, I can beat the game with just red. The key to that weapon is close-up. :)

Thanks for the support!