Score: 4

"Nothing too special indeed"

submission: More Avoidance!

date: January 22, 2009

Indeed there is not much special in this game, if you can even call it that way. The scripting that you used is interesting and I suppose it all works well, but everything looks quite ugly in my opinion. You should really work on your drawing skills. Try out some drawing tutorials. And if you can´t draw, then use sprites or something. They´re easy to use and usually look nice.

I thought the music you added was good, I kinda liked the tune. But I believe it is poorly optimised looking at the file size. I suggest you go find a tutorial on how to optimise music, there are plenty of them on NG I believe. You can easily cut the filesize in four and barely lose any quality.

I also experienced a lot of lag on the first screen, even on low quality. You might not wanna add so many of those circles and stuff on one screen.

Overall 4 out of 10, 2 out of 5. The actionscript worked well as I said, but playing around with it in this game quickly got boring. So I´d like to see you turn this into an actual game. If you focus on your drawing skills, then I think you could be able to produce something nice.

~Auz

Score: 9

"Unbalanced"

submission: Sonny

date: January 21, 2009

I thought the game was great. It was put together very well and with the ability tree and all there was quite some dept in the gameplay. Graphics were also very nice and the music was great too. Voice-acting was also good in most cases. only the smaller roles were permormed a bit less sometimes but that was alright.

The only bad thing I´d like to state is that the game was a little bit unbalanced. The ship had the right difficulty, but in zone 2 I could completely whipe the floor with most enemies as soon as I had flame strike, which was easy to get since it only required level 5. Even the boss at the end of the zone barely gave any difficulty and was defeated easily.

Then in the next zone I had great trouble defeating golums. As soon as they had enraged on, it was a certain kill on Veradux and heavy damage on me. Earth-equipment did not protect me from this as not many of their attacks were actually earth elemental. On top of that, I was wearing stuff that I thought was better so I did not want to change armor.

Another thing is that I was suddenly facing enemies with about 700+ HP. It was very annoying that most of them could heal and they used it often (usually at least twice every battle). This made the battles drag on for a long time, even though it was already clear that I was gonna win. You can imagine that after I while I got a pretty bored with the battles. It wasn´t about strategy or skill anymore, it became more like an endurance contest.

So what I would suggest for your next game: More balance in the game. Make the enemies slowly get stronger and have less of them have healing abilities. Also, make users have access to really powerful moves later in the game. Flame Strike was just overpowered in zone 2 and still very effective in zone 3 (it was the only attack that I used actually since my other attacks were about twice as weak).

Overall 9 out of 10, 5 out of 5. The unbalanced thing is the only reason why I did not gave this a 10/10. I still thought it was an awesome game and I do hope to see more of these. Keep up the excellent work.

~Auz

Score: 7

"Pretty bad"

submission: Poker Challenge

date: January 20, 2009

This wasn´t a bad game in my opinion. It´s one of those typical time-killer games, which I usually find quite fun to play.

What I didn´t really like was the lay-out of the cards. For some reason I just didn´t liked the colors that you used. On top of that, I think you should make it easier to see the suits of the cards. The game went a little too fast to actually pay attention to them, so I was usually only going for three of a kinds and sometimes made bigger hands by luck.

I think you should also make the game go a little bit slower, since I usually couldn´t last for a minute and bombs did not really help that much either. Perhaps they should blow up more cards or something and make time freeze for a little bit longer.

What would also be nice is some background tune. Adding some music is always good. I would go for some simple, relaxing tune personally. The sounds you have added were good by the way.

Overall 7 out of 10, 3 out of 5. I thought this game had a good idea behind it, but it could´ve been made better. Try to improve it a bit and we might have an award winner here.

~Auz

Score: 5

"Not too good, but not bad either"

submission: Off the top of my head

date: January 19, 2009

I wouldn´t really call this a great animation or anything, but it´s not the worse thing I´ve seen and I think you are on your way on becoming a fine flash author.

The drawings in this movie were okay in my opinion. Some stuff looked pretty good actually, like the shotgun and the caution sign (although I am not sure whether that´s a drawing or a picture). You seem to be fairly good at animating too. You do still need some more practice though and I would mainly focus on drawing if I were you.

As for the sounds and music: There wasn´t much to hear in this which was too bad. I thought the tune in the beginning sounded nice actually. And I think you really should add more sounds, because I think the humor in this movie didn´t came over very well because of the absence of sounds. Having some tunes play at the background is always nice too.

Other than that I don´t have much to add, except that the scenes were just random and had no connection with eachother which was bit weird. But I see this was just a test movie, so it´s okay. It´s good that you submitted this actually, to see the reviews and such.

Overall 5 out of 10, 2 out of 5. I´d say just keep practicing a lot and you might produce some good movies someday. Keep it up.

~Auz

Score: 10

"Hilarious"

submission: Zelda: Don Keyote

date: January 19, 2009

I think this is one of the funniest series I have ever seen on Newgrounds. The way you put this all together and timed all the jokes is just perfect in my opinion. Your voiceacting in combination with the expressions on Links faces in the game really gave some hilarious scenes. I laughed pretty hard at "He was saved by a young girl.... who couldn´t hang on for very long" and "Time for some friendly interrogation" for example.

As for the technical stuff. The graphics were pretty much "stolen" from the game, but at least they were of decent quality. I just couldn´t really see the windmill in the beginning because it was too dark, but that was alright. The voices/sounds are really good as I have pretty much already stated above. You got a good voice for these sort of things and the jokes came over really well.

The only thing that I missed was a replay button in the end. It´s not such a big deal, but it´s not that hard to make either. So if you ever, ever plan on looking back at this movie and want to improve it a bit, I´d say add a replay button.

Overall 10 out of 10, 5 out of 5. Even though the movie is not perfect as my score would suggest, it was very entertaining to me and I think that´s what it´s all about in the end. Even after these years I still hope Don Keyote 5 is gonna come out someday, but I´m not counting on it anymore.

~Auz

Score: 10

"Very funny"

submission: Zelda: Heart for the Hero

date: January 18, 2009

This was quite a funny Zelda short. It put a smile on my face and not many movies here can do that. I think it´s good that many of the inside jokes, like the stuff they sold in the shop and the kill Navi thing, were placed very subtle. Better than putting them in as main jokes.

Other than it being a funny movie, the graphics were also great. You got a good drawing style and you can animate pretty good as well. As for the sounds and the music: The music was alright in my opinion. It were usually ordinary Zelda themes, but it´s nice that you made a remix by yourself for the ending credits. The voice acting that you did was good as well. You got a good voice for these sort of things, which is quite a rare talent I think.

Overall 10 out of 10, 5 out of 5. Personally I did not expect that this would remain in the top 50 for so long. I thought this movie would eventually get bumped out of it without ever returning again, like so many other great movies here. But nowadays I still see it in top 50 often, which must mean that you made an NG classic with this. You surely did a great job and I added this movie to favorites as soon as it came out. I hope you´re gonna make another Zelda short someday. Keep up the excellent work.

~Auz

Score: 10

"Awesome"

submission: Bitey of Brackenwood

date: January 17, 2009

A great first episode this was (this is officially the first right?). I´ve already said it many times, your drawings are amazing. Even now, almost five years later, I rarely see anything with more beautiful shots as this. The animating is also good. It´s not as good as you do nowadays, but it´s still excellent to me.

Music and sound are great as always. Nice tunes, and I thought it was funny that the yellow thing sounded exactly like one of those plastic balls.

As for the plot. Several character were introduced in this first episode, and as far as the series goes now, they haven´t quite.. come back or developed yet. Personally I do hope that the witch will return in a feature episode. It seems to me like you could make an interesting character out of her. Perhaps you could make a little side-story with her. Just an idea...

Overall 10 out of 10, 5 out of 5. Along with Prowlies at the River, I´ve also added this to favorites when I just signed up on Newgrounds, almost 4 years ago. It still is one of my all time favorites up to this day. Keep up the excellent work and I´m looking forward to the next episode of this series.

~Auz

Score: 10

"Still one of the best ever"

submission: Prowlies at the River

date: January 17, 2009

This is still one of the best submissions ever on NG in my opinion. You really have a wonderful drawing style. Especially that first shot at bitey´s home by night was very impressive and the water looked great as well. Must´ve been diffecult to animate The music that you use in the bitey series is also very nice and catchy. Suits the series quite well.

Overall 10 out of 10, 5 out of 5. I already added this to favorites on the day I signed up, which was almost 4 years ago. I was suprised that I have never reviewed it before though. Anyway, keep up the excellent work and I´m looking forward to the next episode in the bitey series. Hopefully with some more character development on Bitey´s side as I have already stated in my waterlollies review.

~Auz

Score: 9

"Fun"

submission: Twisted Tennis

date: January 16, 2009

You really couldn´t have chosen a worser day to upload this than clockday :p I see this game got heavily overlooked now with only 7 reviews and less than 2,000 views. I think it would´ve easily won an award and gained a lot more attention if you had picked any other day.

The game itself was really good in my opinion. It plays really well and is very easy to learn. It´s good that you could adjust the controls, although the default controls were fine as they were already. It´s also nice that you could get those power shots by hitting stuff on the background. Added an interesting little element to the game and the small cutscenes that occured simply made it fun. Also liked the music, reminded me a bit of the summer vacation somehow.

As for the bad parts, the only thing was that I experienced some lagging every now and again. Fortunaly you added a quality adjustment button so that I could get rid of it for the most part. But my only complaint left would be that I wasn´t able to change it during gameplay and there wasn´t a back to menu button as far as I could see. You might wanna add one of those if you´re still gonna make that sequel.

Overall 9 out of 10, 5 out of 5. This game is simply a lot of fun, can´t say anything else about it really. I hope that sequel will get some more attention, because it really deserves that. Keep up the excellent work.

~Auz

Score: 7

"Good, but many bugs and dislikes"

submission: Battle Gear

date: January 8, 2009

The good things are that the graphics are pretty good. Everything looked nice and I especially liked the explosive effects, they seemed a bit spritey. The save option was also great since the game was quite long, so that was very handy. I also liked the addition of hot keys, especially the ones to scroll around the battlefield were really useful.

There are quite a few bad points I would like to mention and I´ve decided to list them since otherwise the review would become a little hard to follow.

Dislikes:
1) There are just too many things to upgrade, and in the end it didn´t even seem to matter that much anymore what you upgraded and what not. Usually I just clicked whatever seemed good, but I did not experience any serious improvements during battles to be honest. I´d say try to keep it more simple.
2) Planes flying into eachother was kinda lame. I think about 90% of my aircrafts crashed that way and often it were a bunch of cheap helicopters that destroyed my expensive bombers.
3) The music got a little annoying after a while, especially during the longer battles. I suggest adding more tracks and perhaps different tracks for different types of areas.
4) The troops and buildings slot wasn´t very well organised. It was a complete mess after a while and I had diffeculty in finding the units I wanted to upgrade. There should be an option to organize those slots. Along with that I thought it was quite hard to see which units are actually my strongest ones.
5) Later on it became pretty much impossible to destroy the enemy base. With like over a million health, I rarely got close to destroying the enemy base. Killing all the units was far easier, but gave you less experience.
6) Just a small point. I was able to buy boats quickly, but only got to use them very late (when I could already buy medium ships if I remember it well). I don´t know if this is any different for China and USSR campaigns, but perhaps you should alter this for different campaigns then.

Bugs (note: I took the American campaign):
1) At level 23, most of the boats I bought were constantly firing at something outside of the screen. Some of the enemy boats were also firing outside of the screen and only the small boats actually seemed to shoot at other boats. The battle took forever this way and the most efficient way to kill the enemy was to buy loads of strikes.
2) Bomber airplanes often didn´t seemed to do anything. In their first flight they bombed but then they only flew over and only served as a distraction or to fly into enemy planes. A bit of a shame since they are the most expensive ones.
3) At level 20 or so, my base was suddenly in the middle of the screen, the enemy base was gone and if I put stuff on my base it appeared somewhere in midair on the left side of the screen. My base did lose life though when it was hit in the middle of the screen.
4) Enemy rockets flew all the way from their base to my base which kept causing damage. Not that it mattered cause they were never even close to destroying my base, but still I doubt that was intentional.
5) At later levels, enemies didn´t seem to have any timers at all. They just constantly spawned new stuff. This did cause me to lose a level once, an aircraft only level, and this was mainly caused by a combination of this point and point 2 of the dislikes.
6) Because of points 5 of the bugs, the gamed lagged a lot later on in the game. Lag is always an annoyance, so I suggest you do something about the enemy timer.

What I could personally conclude is that pretty much all of these bugs occured at the later parts of the game. In the beginning I really didn´t have any trouble, but it became worse and worse after level 15 or so.

Overall 7 out of 10, 3 out of 5. Even with all the bugs and dislikes, I must say that I did still enjoy the game. The battles were quite fun and it became quite addicting. I do hope you fix some of the bugs and do increase on some of the dislikes. I think it would´ve won daily first without all of them. Anyway, keep up the good work and hope to see more games from you soon.

~Auz