Darkend's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[My1st Dress Up Game]

You Forgot a Space Between "My" and "1st"

Where the heck does that grey thing go? I couldn't fit it anywhere. Hairy panties? Around the mouth? Is she a robber? Aside from her looking like the Pilsburry Dough Boy, she looks incomplete. I know you did a lot of work on the hair probably but notice it doesn't have an outline and her body does? Her body is kinda lopsided and legs off center. There's also no shading. The stage doesn't fit the background and you have white bars on the top and bottom. You might scoff at these little things and 'say who cares?' but subtle things like these make all the difference in quality.

I know it's your first, but that's why I'm giving you pointers in the things I did. Simple basics.

[Countermeasures]

Do You Realize..

That I didn't do anything and got a score of about 1400? It's because I jumped right into the game without reading instructions and didn't know how to work it, thus, I ended up doing a lot of nothing except spinning around. My next try I clicked start and didn't even touch the keyboard. I got up and left to get something to drink and when I came back I was still alive and scored over 2,000 in the end, haha. I couldn't beat that score after I figured out the game and actually tried.

I'm not saying this game is bad. I'm just saying it's odd tp play a game where I can get a high score by doing absolutely nothing.

[..:: BeatBox Beta ::..]

I'm Not Impressed In the Slightest

Sadly enough, as harsh as the review by Epikus may sound, it's all true. This "beat boxer" is very faulty, not in that it's broken or doesn't work--it works it's just...well it just sucks at doing what it does.

Seriously what is up with the tempo? You've got this funky 4, 5, 4, 4, 5, 4, 4, layout.. not to mention a random 2 beat to start us off with, it seems, just to ruin the rhythm of what's to follow even more. After seeing the odd 2 set a the beginning, I just went ahead and started my song (or "beat") right after it so that I'd stay on track..not realizing at the time that that was going to be impossible due to screwy beat placement (took me a while to figure out why my beat wasn't fitting correctly). Yeah, you can try to ignore the odd layout and do your own thing but it gets too confusing because then you have to sit there and count out everything and fight the graph. Frustrating.

I don't know what you know or heard about music, but no matter what kind of music it is: country, hip-hop, rock, whatever, beats per measure never ever change. Tempo speed might, hits per beat may, but the time signature just can't flip out in mid-song dude.

And why on Earth did you use those annoying sounds? Some were pretty alright, like the Thump, and Scratch, and a few others but if it had "synth" in it's name is was gross while others were very unrealistic. I'm not even going to begin to wonder why Bump and Thump sounded like a bass and Bass sounded like Darth Vadar on helium. Nothing at all makes much sense here, but it could just be me. You also had a few grammar errors.

For an amateur mixer or someone with no music composing/editing experience, yeah, this might be fun for them because it's something new and lets them be somewhat creative. But for people who regularly submit to the Audio Portal or those who are highly experienced mixers (like myself) this is a joke; just utterly laughable. It's good you're thinking up of new things and trying to provide a route for those who lack music software but still want to submit to the Audio Portal. Yes that's very thoughtful of you, but please.. don't cheat them like this. They deserve more, and I know you can do better. At least, I think you can..

-Darkend-

[Scribble 2!]

A Different Kind of Fun

This is one of those games that you play but wonder why you're playing it, yet at the same time you know you can't stop because you're somehow enjoying it. I guess I just described addicting.

I notice a lot of people are complaining about the new camera deal in this one. This was the first version I played and upon reading reviews about the camera, I went ahead and played the first one to see the difference and what people were talking about. I've gotta say, despite what others say, I actually like the camera in this version a lot better and here's why.

We all played connect-the-dots when we were younger, yes? What was the funnest aspect about playing them in our coloring books? For me, it was to see what the picture ultimately was; what I was drawing. I loved not knowing what I was making until finished or closed to it and getting that "Ooooh!" inside that little kids do when they figure things out. This game did that. The fact that our perspective is so close, with bigger pictures, makes it harder to guess or figure out the objects, especially as you near towards the end, and it also makes you feel little again, drawing in a big book. When I went back and played the old version I could immediately tell what I was about to draw the instant I turned the page, "Oh..boat...dipper...sled.." etc. hence taking all the fun out of it. Why do it when there's no element of surprise? Very boring.

That's just my take on the whole thing though. You're thrills and reasons for playing might be different than mine. So I suggest next time the artist makes a compromise by allowing the user to set the camera on fixed or pan. That could mess up gameplay though because if you fix it to zoom out all the way the dots may be too small, along with your cursor. If you fix the dots to scale in size as you're in fixed mode, that too could be an issue because dots that are close together will overlap each other with their size. Surely there's some way around it but I'm not going to try to hard to figure it out because its not my project.

The other attributes of the game were very good especially the recap at the end where we got to see all the pictures we drew and you let us know what they were or what they were supposed to be (mine all looked accurate except that coat hanger, hah). That was another huge difference. Not all the scribbles in the last version were actually anything, they were just...scribbles, heh. Which makes sense considering the title of the game, but still, not nearly as fun.

Awesome game! I'd love to see a 3rd one!

-Darkend-

[Sudoku]

Hah, Too Easy

I've been doing Sudoku for a while now and I've had lots of practice with harder ones so this was a breeze.

However it seems as though the game does not fully work? I solved the puzzle once (under 3 minutes) and the clock kept ticking. Why does the game keep going even after you solve it? So I pushed the Solution button thinking thats what I'm supposed to do to end the thing and get my results, but that just completely stopped the game from working at all. All the buttons became unclickable. So how am I supposed to enter my owning score on the leader board? How do I even see the leader board? The game just dies. That was extremely disappointing, which is why you fell short of your 10 and 5.

Whats the point in playing this if I don't get to submit? If I wanted to just play sudoku for fun (and play more challenging levels) I'll go to some other sudoku website, not play this. This failed its true purpose for me, but it was still quality work which why you passed in the end. Just fix it and you'll have yourself a true piece of work.

-Darkend-

[-DEBT BUGS-]

Different

This is different from your normal enteries but that is probably because its for work...and it's not LDS related ;)

I'm a big fan of you and your work. I have you down as my favorite artist and I've got a few of your submissions in my favs as well. Going off of all of those, and judging by your previous work, this wasn't the same. In quality yeah, but it had a different style. On the other hand I should give you congrats on that because it fulfilled what it was designed to be.

The game ends way too quickly though and so it gets dull real fast. I suggest making an alternate NG version so we could play longer and it'd have greater value. Yeah?

I don't know..I'm not sure why you submitted this, but either way you get a good job from me. It's not the greatest thing you've done in my opinion but hey. Next time though, I wanna see some BOM stories. Eh? Eh? *nudge nudge* I've always thought about how funny it'd be if you did spoofs depicting alternate BOM storylines. Like, "we know the story goes like this, but what if this happend instead" Nephi meeting Moroni etc, etc. Ah, but who am I to tell ya what to do?

Hence forth. Keep on working and serving. Whether it be in the world or in ours.

-Darkend-

BoMToons responds:

I'm not sure why I submitted it either.

It's been a long time since I submitted something to NG on my own (been doing collaborative efforts lately) and you get a certain rush from the portal submission and review process.

A lot of the reasoning was curiosity as to what the NG community would say to a banner ad being submitted thru the portal.

Thanks for supporting me as an author. We've got some really cool stuff in the works, most importantly: The sequel to brother Nephi's adventure...it's coming out amazingly and will hopefully be done by the end of the year or early January.

[Click Shot]

This Is Hot

I love the style this was created in. Everything from the music, sounds, and looks was awesome and very pleasing to my tastes. I took some time to examine your design. From looking at the grid in the background, to watching the cross-hair effects when you take a shot. I like how the outter cursor pulses out to a different direction everytime and its rotation speed accelerates. Slick.

One thing that would be nice to have though is a Main Menu button at the highscores table. After you play the game and submit your score, you're stuck staring at the score screen and the only way to try again is to close out of the window and load it back up.

Either way, this rocked my socks off. Ch'yeah, they're gone. Lets see what you can do when you spend more time on a bigger project, eh? I'll be watching.

-Darkend-

64 responds:

1st paragraph - Thank you! I'm glad someone noticed the subtle effects in this game.

2nd - Yeah, I told one of the reviewers before that it's a glitch that can't be fixed (right now). I'm gonna try to work on it, though.

Awesome review, gracias!

[Savage]

Yeah...Sucks On a Mac

As stated, the play button does not work for people who have macs, so unfortunatly that includes me. And you cannot simply right click to play ssoo...yeah its glitched up. Which really really sucks because I loved the sound of this game and now I can't play.. :( I wasn't going to be a jerk and just give you zeros because I know you worked hard on this based on the other reviews, however on the other hand you obviously didn't do a perfect job considering some of us can't even LOOK at it. So I rated 5 all around. Fair? I hope so, because us mac users are really upset about this.

-Darkend-

[Mobile Weapon Assault]

Question

You titled this Mobile Weapon Assault, but isn't it supposed to be Mobile Assault Weapon? After all, the machines are called, "MAW's". Just thought I'd point that out.

Anyway, if there is anything you should know, I am one heck of a huge fan when it comes to mecha. (my name where I'm known is literally 2.0) You guys got some real potential here. Great stat design, level creation, and graphics, but I guess what I don't like it your style. The people you draw are excellent, no doubt about it, but your style of mecha is the number one thing that shys me away from your series. Same goes with the design of your badguys. They're just....egh I dunno. I draw mecha myself and we just kinda have opposite styles.

As far as gameplay goes, this one got real boring, real fast. Things just seemed very repetitive with no real changing objectives. Always the same, progress through this level, blow this stuff up, the end, yay. Y'know? You guys definatly took this game in a different direction compared to your last one in the series.

Don't get me wrong, I think what you've got going here is great. I wish I could launch some of my own stuff out here, (which I will in the coming months) so I admire what you're doing, keep it up. Like I said before, I love mecha, I love technology, so I naturally have an attraction to your creation. I hope your next installment will be a little above this one as far as gameplay and quality. Good Work.

-Darkend-

TylerProjects responds:

The MAWs are actually "Mobile Adaptive Weapon".

Mobile Weapon Assault is just the name for our series of side scroller shooter for the MW world.

The main MW series will still remain as a pure RPG genre.

:p

[woah an rpg yes finally]

What Do You Mean, "Finally"?

If you're implying that there are no RPG's on Newgrounds and yours is one of the first then..you obviously don't know Newgrounds not matter how much you like it.

Oh yeah, it sucked by the way. The graphics need work, you need to label which character you are. (even though that's obvious once you start playing) I thought I was the guy on the left for a second. And you need to label the buttons so we know what is attack and magic and all that crap. This game really didn't have very many options to it and therefore makes the winner of the battle predictable. Work on all that. Add more elements. (And when I say elements I'm not talking about magic, or fire/water/earth or that crap.)

-Darkend-