ThorW's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Bullet Bill 3]

Fun game

This is definitely a fun game and for the most part I enjoyed playing it because the level designs were pretty good. It's quick paced, takes skill and reaction time, and is well designed and decently programmed. All around, it's a good game.

However, if there's one thing you should take a look at, it's nerfing that damn Phantos. Literally 100% of my boss related deaths were when I tried for new characters and Phantos was out. I can forgive the fact that he can turn on a dime, I can forgive that time slow doesn't slow him down, I can even forgive how fast he moves, BUT 90% of my deaths to him were because he spawned right on the boss as I delivered a hit to it or right on top of me as I was dodging a projectile from the boss. It's incredibly incredibly frustrating to deliver the last hit to a boss just to have him spawn there right as I hit, or to dodge a projectile and have him spawn right on top of me.
A good idea would be to do a getPosition on the cursor and based on the x position of it, spawn him on one side of the screen or the other. Or, to further prevent him spawning on top of the player, spawn him at the bottom or top and have him fly through the y axis based on how close the player is to the screen's edge.
Honestly, he's the only thing that breaks this game and takes out the skill required to beat the game because of his incredible ability to spawn right on top of you.

Anyway, I've complained enough, good work on the game, it was fun to play

[Sushi Boy Thunder]

pretty fun, not bad

This is a pretty fun little game and certainly not a bad time killer. I've looked at the site for this and most of the stuff I'd suggest adding are in the app.

However, one thing that is a problem for this (and may be for that) is the fact that the bombs appear in pretty easy to predict patterns. It was simple to figure out the pattern the bombs appeared in and then know exactly where to go until I reached a new speed for a new pattern (at least I assume that's the benchmark for a new pattern). If the patterns were to cycle randomly (and maybe only partially complete one and end with a new pattern) then that would add to the toughness.

Again, don't know how the app one works though (my phone is a crappy old one :x). Otherwise, not a bad game.

Buzzwerd responds:

Actually yeah, we do address that in the app version. The repeating patterns are much longer, and more randomized. Thanks though, glad you enjoyed it.

[ZitS the Saviour - act2]

Another Great Game

Again, a very great game considering you used Flash for it. Everything that was good with it's predecessor is good with this as well.

Now for input (you said you were fine with walls of text last time so here we go!).

Improvements: It's quite a bit more difficult. I actually had to use a few medkits to keep from dying. The speed upgrade on one zombie and the spread upgrade on one of the ranged ones was helpful. The increase in the size of the hordes that attacked also helped with that. Thanks for upping the difficulty with those.

Definitely helpful improvements, but there are still a few issues that could be addressed to make it perfect. The melee zombies still have a collision issue when attacking. They can hit once, but then will stay on top of you and do no more damage if you move, even if they are faster than you. Maybe if you have the small super fast ones deal constant hits of one damage when they reach you and the slower harder hitting ones play the attack animation if they get close and hit you once they start it, unless they are killed.

Items are still all over the place. After the first level I had a full arsenal ready as I started the outside part of the next level. You should definitely cut down on the amount of items.

And I just noticed, you get a ton of experience pretty easily. I think I had about 30 points at the end of the first level (a lot from item pick ups). This allowed me decent agility, good precision upgrade, and a bit of stamina which made the rest of the game much easier. I kinda like the fact that I can get enough experience to actually use it to choose a decent build, but at the same time it makes it a little easy. This one I'm on the fence about changing or even how to fix it if you wanted to. Maybe make the upgrades do less of an increase.

Anyway, again, a great game. Definitely good atmosphere and zombies coming out of nowhere is always fun. It improved a decent amount in difficulty at first, but went back to being easy and still could use a little bit to make it a challenge. As with last time, I'll be eagerly awaiting the next installment.

Xplored responds:

Thanks for the long and detailed feedback. It's always welcome and useful.
Regarding the XP, just note: we give 25 XP at the beginning of the Act2 (maybe you didn't noticed them as soon as you started the game, so you believed you got 30 XP from few items collected, while you got just 5 directly from them): the reason for these 25 free starting XP is that Players using their GamerSafe character's stats, from Act 1 savegame, have increased stats by even more than 25 XP collected in Act1. We didn't want to give GamerSafe players a so important exclusive benefit, so we counterbalanced it giving 25 free XP to all not-GS players starting the game without a GS savegame from Act 1.
I hope my "Itanglish" language allow you to understand the point :D

[Newgrounds: Retaliation]

Pretty lackluster

This was a pretty slow paced game. All the characters move around pretty slowly except for maybe when uber kid charges you, and even that is pretty slow.

Friendly fire for the enemies makes this game incredibly easy, just let the Dan Paladins stay alive and they take care of a lot of the enemies for you (including each other). The most effective strategy is to sit in the middle crouching and only firing at the uber kids, the spiders, and the thingy majigs. Only the spread shot Dans will hit you and the other ones will take out the other enemies.

And finally, you can take like a billion hits of damage. I don't even have a clue how many hitpoints Pico has because it was impossible for me to die.

To make this game better, make it faster paced. Add more ways to attack than just shooting in one direction of the other (maybe some melee combos), add more enemies, and make the controls a little smoother.

This is a good concept, but unfortunately has a lot of flaws and is overly repetitive.

[ZitS the Saviour - act1]

Terrific Game

You guys have always made great zombie games, and this is one of the finest you've made so far. The graphics and music were both very good. The items were great, especially the flare which was a wonderful idea with how much darkness there is. I love the fact that there are so many shadows around to make it easier for a zombie to pop up on you. And of course a great surprise was the helicopter shooting scenes.

The voice acting was very good, and the story itself was decent. It'd be cool to see a little more than just a couple conversations though.

Now, despite all the greatness in this game, there are a few issues that make it a little lackluster or buggy.
The first and foremost problem is that it's easy... very very easy. Most zombies can't even reach me before dying, and the ranged attackers are relatively easy to dodge. Towards the end I had full precision and was just downing them in one-two shots with my pistol. Also, if you move literally as they try to attack, their hit will miss, so the melee zombies never hit me once. As a suggestion, perhaps some zombies that can jump around so they're harder to shoot, or faster projectiles from ranged zombies.

And as for the ranged zombies specifically, they would sometimes try to attack through walls, letting me know they're there cause I can see the splash. And it didn't happen every time, but sometimes while against a wall that they hit it would hit me with the splash from the attack.

Next, the amount of items/ammo. The items are littered EVERYWHERE. I never ran out of grenades, flares, or medkits. It's nice to have them, but it goes back to the being too easy thing. And I can understand infinite ammo on the handgun, but again, it makes it too easy. Add ammo to the handgun and a melee attack so you have to be more careful where you aim and it would help immensely.

And finally, it's repetitive. It's basically the same level played over 3 times. I understand the problems with trying to create a bit of diversity in a game like this, but it would help. Maybe have a few levels where you have to do more than just clear out the building and find the survivor. Maybe have one level where the building gets swarmed as you find the survivor and you have to hold your ground with them. Or, do what I was really hoping for, and add a boss battle or two in there.

Well, that's my two cents on it, this is a great game and is really fun, but it's extremely easy and it a little repetitive. Still, I enjoyed playing it and I look forward to the next installment. Good job on this one and sorry for the walls of text @.@

Xplored responds:

Walls of text are always welcome. It the place where we learn how to do better and better :D
Thanks for all the inputs... and for the 9!

[1066]

Awesome game

This is a very good combination of genres and has been polished extremely well. I've found little that I can complain about and most of it is minor.

One thing you should look into though, on several occassions when I demoralized the enemy and they ran away, the game froze on their running animation and I had to redo the battle.

Other than that problem, very well done.

[Greater Fighter]

Needs some tweaks

The game concept is great, but the execution could use some work. The music is good (the voices are annoying though...) and I love the Touhou-esque enemy attack patterns, lots of bullets and sometimes quick moving enemies. Gives it a good challenge.

First of all, leveling. Since large combos get you to level faster it makes it easy to level a few characters but it is incredibly difficult to level some characters. If you gained experience at the end of the fight based on how much damage you dealt that would help, it would still make it a bit harder for slow characters but it would be a little more fair.

Combining: A good concept again, but having only one character that can initiate the support and only being able to combine with the other two originals makes it harder to pull off, and half the time the larger size only succeeds in making you a big target so you can die easier.

Heroes for Hire: Good that we can buy more fighters to help, but a few of them are tough to use. So far only maxamillion and Zero have proven useful for me. *Note to anyone who reads this, Maxamillion is like a shotgun, just put him on top of the enemy and he can deal big damage and avoid most enemy attacks.

Some enemies, such as Stardust, have attack patterns that are impossible to completely dodge. This isn't so bad, but if you're using a slow character you're subject to a lot of hits and are almost guaranteed to die. One way to remedy this would be to let someone decide to use an ability to get rid of enemy bullets rather than use their special to attack.

The rules could use some fixing too. They can make it more strategic, but can give you a major disadvantage. The worst of these is the silence rule. It makes you have to dodge for 60 seconds and you get no reward? I understand having you dodge, but there needs to be something you're given for doing so, otherwise it's just a waste of 60 seconds and your hp.

Overall it's a good concept and wasn't a bad play, but some of the gameplay elements make it overly difficult to play the game and are just plain annoying. I'm hoping for a sequel to this with the problems I mentioned fixed and some more work put into it.

[FrozenFun]

So-so

This game had a few things that bugged me about it that could use sorting out. First of all, the hit test failed on numerous occassions to recognize the ball hitting the paddle, costing me a life each time.

Secondly, the powerups last for an entire life, which can be alright for some perks, but with a slow powerup on and few blocks left it makes for a boring wait for the ball to bounce back down to the paddle.

Third, the music was pretty bland and repetetive, it didn't spice up the gameplay or make me want to listen to it, it made me sleepy.

But for the problems this game has, it was still executed decently. All the powerups worked when I got them, the physics were good, and it can make for an okay game for a casual gamer. So a 6/10 since most of the important things worked.

[Arise]

Just not good

This was a poor attempt at a horror inspiring game. The graphics weren't nearly as good as they should have been for such a game, the random popups of faces and noises aren't very scary at all, I don't even wanna know why there's a sewer entrance in the woods, and don't even get me started on the poor grammar in the diaries (even if this was made by a foreigner, there's something called proofreading that a friend could do).

This was a shoddy attempt at a horror game and seemed like it was just thrown together in a couple of days.

Take the old proverb, "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right." Follow that proverb the next time you plan to make a game like this.

[The Magic Mind Reader]

Cool

That's a great trick you came up with. I had to think a bit before I figured it out. Not bad at all.