JeffersonTD's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Jacko in Hell]

Neat design, but the game needs some fixing

I like the graphical look and in general it's a nice little adventure. But there are a few flaws that could be easily fixed.

First of all, I encountered two painful bugs:
- Once when I died on the critter in the dodge the critter scene the game just got stuck with Jacko dying there and I had to restart the game.
- When I got the bombs and fumbled when returning from there ending up as critter food, the game loaded in a mixed up situation, where didn't have the bombs but couldn't get them again either! At this point I didn't want to start all over again any more and just checked the walkthrough video.

Then I think there are a couple of weird things related to gameplay:
- Why is the player required to CLICK on the ok buttons with the mouse even though this is a game you otherwise play with only the keyboard? I don't think there's any point in that. And I don't think it's necessary to force the player to see the text that long either.
- This is a more minor thing, but why do you have to choose between the WSAD and arrow key controls? Why can't you just have them both enabled?

[Gravitoids]

Interesting concept!

The idea is quite simple but the tradeoff of getting more points through velocity but risking collision in the same time makes the choice of the initial gravitoid placement far from trivial. It's quite addictive to try out different settings, although after making a decent initial setting, in the end the most important things in reaching good scores seem to be sheer luck and using the bombs (including the fourth one) wisely.

The trophies are quite hard to get. I only got the wall color one.

[Tetrisoid]

Making bigger blocks isn't that original.

There have been other Tetris clones with blocks bigger than the tetriminos before, and probably millions of people have thought about it, so that's hardly original. The notebook sheet style isn't really "original design" either.

Gameplaywise there are a couple of complaints:

- While I think the big blocks might make the game unnecessarily hard as a given, what adds to the difficulty in a seriously unnecessary and unfun way is that your game doesn't really allow the blocks to be slided on the floor. Instead they get stuck instantly once they touch the floor, which means that filling those empty squares is needlessly difficult.
- You should be able to see the upcoming blocks - or in fact a few of them, to make the harder game modes feasible.
- Why no levels?
- Why no sound effect for destroying a row?

With the above things fixed this could be a decent Tetris clone, but it still would be far from original. To be truly original there should be something seriously different.

[Time Fcuk]

A real mind fcuk

One of the most confusing yet obsessive puzzle games. Apart from just changing the layer or dimension there are also other gimmicks that offer real mind twisters. What's actually potentially less fun is the possibility for map creators to create truly sadistic, close to impossible and unfair levels.

A really personal puzzle game with an eerie atmosphere. Not much to complain here, but here are a couple of things:
- I experienced a bug, which occurred after I had played a few levels and tried the user made levels after that. It constantly kept giving me one or two medals and when I tried to go back to the regular campaign.
- It would be nice to be able to add custom messages for the user levels - and the user level name length limit is quite short.
- The rambling of the "future self" may get a bit annoying especially when playing the user levels, where the rambling.
- For the enter the unkown game it would be nice to know how many levels are left.

ps. I'd rather call it mind fcuk, since time has quite little to do with the actual gameplay. :)

[Dirk Valentine]

A nice game, but inferior compared to Faultline.

I recognized the style as being similar to Faultline, so no wonder they are from the same author. They are both platformers with a gimmick, the difference just is, that the gimmick in Dirk Valentine pales in comparison. Faultline's gimmick is a real mind blower and something totally different from what you've seen in other games. Here, it's basically just a hookshot weapon that bounces. The gameplay works, but doesn't feel particularly fun.

One thing I'm wondering about both of the games is the scoring system. I found it unmotivating and merciless that going for the hiscores basically just means trying not to die through the duration of all the levels.

ps. Faultline was published on NG first, but I wonder which one of the games was made first?

[Line of Fire]

A great action game!

This was a fun game to play.

Pros:
+ No unnecessary and boring upgrade bs.
+ A proper challenge and nice quite balanced gameplay.
+ Nice graphical style.
+ Arnie speeches gave the commando feeling to it.
+ Didn't exactly go that much into how the scoring worked, but I suppose it works well. Took a while to notice that you lose points for using your weapons though - the idea is still good: it's more fun if you aren't encouraged to shoot all the time.

Cons:
- A little bit of more structure to the levels wouldn't be bad. Now it was pretty much constant mayhem on screen. The only exception to this was the latter part of the last level.

Chrispington responds:

Good review! The score works like this:
If you die mid level, you submit the score you had for that one level.
If you finish the game, you submit all three level scores combined!

[Speedrun]

Feels unfinished in several ways

The character animation is good and the graphics are decent enough. Even if the idea is far from creative, the game could still be good, but the fact is that it feels unfinished in so many ways:

BUGS:
- It somehow often seems to put on "sticky keys" as if your keyboard got a key stuck, even though that doesn't happen in other games.
- the death count doesn't always work.
- Why does the guy hang in the air when starting a level?
- When going downhill you lose contact with the floor and are unable to jump, and then you'll end up in the ditch.
- Controls don't work on Chrome?

FEATURES:
- why no sound effects?
- the title screen (and the author information) show music there, but I don't hear any in the game. What's up with that?

GAMEPLAY:
- Especially since this is a speed game, you definitely should be able to control the height of your jump.
- At least something a bit more creative would be needed, not just a stick dude jumping on platforms.
- boss should have been more bossy.

[Helios and the Spartan]

Breakout clone with a twist, but lacks in gameplay

I like the idea of expanding the line of Breakout clones with a twist like this. The implementation is also nice with nice looking characters and all. So all credit to that!

The problem is that the gameplay just isnt' that much fun. This takes away what's good about Breakout, Arkanoid etc., and combines it with what's bad about so many beat'em ups. Now it's just a matter of almost mindlessly slashing around left and right hoping for good powerups, which seem to easily make a big difference in solving a level.

[Gap Monsters]

Nice, simple concept with a lot of potential!

It's a nice, different concept: a rather simple basic idea, yet something that requires a bit of getting used to, and on the other hand has the potential of offering real mind-twisters. It's especially fun in a way when you have the pixels represent some well-known characters and in order to pass the map, you'll have to mess its/his/her appearance.

ps. This is the first NG game where I see user levels like that. So how do you add your level to newgrounds? What am I missing? All I saw in the editor was the export and import buttons.

Nutcasenightmare responds:

Thanks!
Also
To submit a level, you first have to play and beat your own level, to prove that it has a solution.

[Infinite Monkeys]

Simiani ad infinitum!

The intro was outstanding in all its simplicity. It really made me smirk in anticipation.

After the intro it was a small disappointment of sorts to see that the actual game didn't have that much to do with the infinity of the monkeys: gameplaywise it was just a matter of infinite lives and that's a very common thing in games these days (especially flash ones). So in a way the intro felt a bit unrelated and along with the name of the game made me expect something even more personal than a somewhat innovative platformer with yet again, an oppressed protagonist. But this might be just me...

... so as for the game itself. The idea is fresh, and the implementation is very good! An appropriate comparison for this game could be the game called Faultline. I think there the concept was even more innovative and brilliant, but this game has more to offer contentwise: there is a plot of sorts with the crazy scientist, some hidden stuff and different routes and endings to be found, and of course there are the infinite monkeys. The only annoyance are the tightest spots which you encounter in two of the other endings. Experimentally putting those distortion spheres on top of each other to get the wanted result in those tight spots sometimes seems at least partially like a game of chance instead of a space bending puzzle.

All in all a great game that offers a lot in a neat tight package!