JeffersonTD's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Smart Tic-Tac-Toe]

Game area should be unlimited

These 3 x 3 games are rather silly - just playing for ties. It should be an unlimited canvas (or close to that) with a goal of getting 5 in a row.

[Checkpoint]

Sometimes death is necessary. For greater good.

This is one of those platformers that force you to a game of trial and error for the point of being trial and error and mock you for failing miserably. If you enjoy those kinds of games, you'll probably enjoy this one as well.

What's good about this game is the concept of getting something good out of dying. At least I don't remember seeing a similar thing in a flash game before. The idea could have been developed a bit further though: now there were basically only two ways of using death as a tool.

Two complaints concerning gameplay:
- Even though the levels seem to be randomized in a way, the player should be shown his progress somehow - either as a level number, a level code that can somehow be interpreted as progress or a completion percentage.
- It's annoying that if you jump next to a wall, you'll make a wall jump automatically even if you're standing on ground! That's just not right!

[Zufoja]

A relatively fresh puzzle hiscore game

The most obvious influence behind this is probably Puzzle Bobble and the likes but this takes a relatively fresh approach and makes it something a bit different. The idea of progressing through different levels also makes it a bit more interesting.

It's nothing spectacularly novel but definitely more than just a pointless clone.

[UDE]

Very nice simple RTS!

Quite a nice strategy game!

It's simplicity is twofold: I don't think I'd had the interest of playing it, if it was a lot more complex, yet it might be seen as too simple. Now it's just a matter of building the buildings, building the troops you want and then attacking. The only purpose of all the units as well as the main hero character is to attack the enemy. This leaves little room for the strategic stuff and on the other hand not much of action challenge also. On the other hand the combination works pretty well, and there is some room for thought eg. in choosing which units (or base) to attack with the hero and with which weapons.

Anyway, due to its simplicity, the game pretty much had to be quite easy like it was, because if it was difficult it would very easily just become frustrating as there are so few possibilities how you could actually play differently. I played the Idatu campaign through (reached level 5 in experience) and did lose once (on maybe the third level).

The level of simplicity is a matter of taste, but in any case there are lot of great qualities in the game:
+ Nice visuals
+ Appropriate campaign length
+ The two races have distinct properties
+ The length of a level is appropriate. If it was longer, it could linger after it's obvious that you won and vice versa it would be annoying to be on the losing side after a long battle.
+ Given its simplicity, the difficulty level is right.

Some downsides:
- More information on the units would be nice - either numerical or textual. Just knowing the HP and damage make some units seem like they are far better value for money.
- More information on the weapons would be nice too. Now some weapons seemed better than others when just looking at the figures. Also when considering how big a improvement percentage an upgrade would give, there were huge differences between the weapons.
- I was left thinking if the weapons were balanced. It was sometimes hard to follow how effective the attacks of the hero or the units in fact were.
- With a bit more of complexity, the difficulty level could a bit higher.

[Goin Up]

Upgrades are too expensive!

The game is graphically and technically nice, but there is too much emphasis on the upgrade scavenge.

Even though I feel the whole upgrade system might be a bit unnecessary in general I understand its existence for the purpose of giving the game longevity and an interesting development curve. However it feels pointless trying to reach the heights when you don't have all the necessary upgrades yet, since you really need the upgrades to have the best possibility to get high. Thus the game becomes just scavenging for skulls: the longer you play the more skulls you get and at some point you might end up with all the upgrades. And THEN there is a point in trying to get as high as possible.

This would all be fine, if you would be constantly getting enough skulls to get those upgrades, but the upgrades are too expensive and that makes the skull harvest tedious.

[Pogo Rampage]

Like professional bowling : avoiding failures.

Well, this is a simple and quite nice hiscore game. But there are a couple of issues I have with this:

a) it's basically a matter of just getting one combo as big as possible: trying to avoid a failure and that's basically it. Getting numerous nice combos would be a better goal in the long run than just trying to make one insane combo.

b) There should be a way to be less blind about what's happening down below. Either some kind of a zoom thingie, some ground level glimpse or a map.

ps. I feel that the upgrade system might be a bit unnecessary here too, but I suppose it can be seen as a tutorial kind of a thing. Any way the thing is you just need to harvest all the upgrades before there is any point in trying to make any hiscores.

[Faultline]

Brilliant concept!

At the first couple of levels it's already evident that there is a neat concept here. But as you progress through the levels it becomes more than that. The game really explores the possibilities of this simple idea by giving the possibility of creating diagonal fault lines in any given angle, having fault lines overlap each other and having the lasers that don't jump through the fault lines. All this easily creates situations where it may hard to distinguish what's actually going on there, but as you learn the game logic you start to get the grasp of it.

A couple of things that could be improved:
- What I personally would enjoy more would be a bit more of action combined with this puzzle kind of gameplay. Eg. situations where you have to quickly create the right kinds of fault lines to get through for example those rotating platforms or spikes.
- Maybe the ability to control the height of your jump.
- If there is going to be a sequel, perhaps you could consider the possibility of being able to shoot the nodes as well, not just create fault lines between them! That would make the game very dynamic, but probably a lot harder to design to be bugfree and otherwise challenging.
- The whole game is also quite short and ends with a level that is no different from the other levels, so there is no climax. So was this just a "test sequence" like the game itself states?

I'm looking forward to more of something like this.

[Dimension Diver]

Great game but sadly fails as a hiscore challenge!

Was this inspired by Super Mario? Jumping on goombas to get 1-ups? Make an entire game about jumping consecutively on enemies like this, add a boost element and even put the flying fish equivalents in it? Why not!

I like the idea for the game, the graphics are pleasant, the music works, the combo system works, the random generation of the levels is nice and the overall amount of levels is somewhat right. Although I understand the complaints about the dash controls, I don't find even that to big a big issue. Lots of great qualities, yet something brings the words of the AVGN to mind: "what were they thinking"?

Let me explain. Single player games could be roughly divided as having three purposes out of which a game shoud fill at least one:
- to give a special experience (like some artistic games that tell a story).
- to give a challenge for the player.
- to let the player compete for hiscores.

Since there isn't any significant story and the game is quite easy in general, I came to the conclusion that its ultimate purpose is in fact hiscores. But there are two elements that should never be part of a hiscore game!

1. THE MINOR ISSUE:
Separate skill levels but a common hiscore list. Why? I suppose there is a tradeoff for playing with the more difficult skill levels, but I still think they should have separate hiscore lists.

2. THE MAJOR ISSUE:
Now this is the thing that I'm truly wondering! You just keep getting those extra lives through which you can keep getting as many points as you want to! Where's the point (no pun intended)? There would be several ways to get rid of this ridiculousity: not give extra lives, make you get the extra lives only when passing a level, or preferably losing your level points when dying.

For the record, I made the current All-Time high of 2,059,700 points on hard, but even though that was almost double the previous All-Time high by Seals (1,049,600) with thousands of people having played the game, I bet someone will soon break my record too.

Without these issues, this would have been a 9, perhaps even a 10. Make a sequel with these things fixed, and consider the feedback about the dash controls as well, and you'll have a superb game!

[Newgrounds: Retaliation]

Nice graphics, but game ruined by bad controls

I feel bad giving this a low rating like this, since the graphics and design are very nice. This just happens to be one of those games that leave me wondering how a game with such nice graphics could be ruined by serious shortcomings in terms of gameplay.

The main complaint are the controls. It seems like the whole game has a graphics oriented design: you first create the animation and then try to fit the controls into the animation. Well, the animations are very nice, but this is supposed to be a game so that doesn't seem to work really. Just moving back and forth seems too clunky and you almost have to stop to shoot at your enemies. You can't even shoot while airborne.

Because of the clumsy controls there can't be much enemies around to make the levels manageable, which leads to two things: boring levels/foes and a feeling of being bad at playing a game like this. A good game of this genre would do the opposite: give a positive challenge that also results in a feeling of satisfaction once you beat the enemies.

[Spike - A Love Story]

A personal concept implemented with style!

It's a very fresh idea that the traditional player and foe kind of change places. We've seen games where you play on the bad guys' side (like Dungen Keeper), but in a way this is more than that: taking the role of a simple foe. The antics of the "players" are done with style, which keeps the interest for the duration of the "story" mode. The game is definitely very engaging considering that you only have one button to control and (unlike in One button Bob) there is also only one action for that button. All this considered, this game deserves to be mentioned.

However, there are a couple of buts:

- The downside is that it still gets old quite fast. Just pressing one button still doesn't give a long lasting interest towards the game. One Button Bob with its different actions for the key makes it have a more long-lasting appeal.

- Even taking into account that this is meant to be just a simple little game, there is one thing that could be improved. Currently there are three ways to get past the hardest stages: with phenomenal if not supernatural reflexes, good luck or memorizing the movements. The third one's the issue here. It would be more fun if you would need a bit less phenomenal reflexes in general, but the actions of the characters would be more randomized.