AshSamael's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Agnry Faic]

Challenging!

Pluses:
+Original idea;
+Challenging gameplay;

Minuses:
-No decorations.

Angry Faic somehow reminded me of Indestructotank!. But the gameplay of AF is far more difficult. It took a lot of time for me to get acquainted to the color changing controls, so I had to replay the game a few times. But it’s fun anyways and it can upgrade your attention and memory.

I liked the effects in the game. The exploding smileys looked fine and their 3D form looked awesome.

Overall, a nice game. Kept playing for a while. Good luck in your future works!

[Defend Atlantis]

Absolutely original, new idea!

Pluses:
+Original weapon;
+Playing requires nice reaction, fast-thinking and sometimes logic;
+Pretty graphics;
+Interesting gameplay;
+Perfect physics engine;

Minuses:
-The game looks unfinished for several reasons (read lower);
-Some upgrades are almost useless.

Defend Atlantis sounds like another defense game, but when you start playing it you’ll understand that it brings a lot of fresh ideas into the old genre which was left without innovations for a couple of years.

As usual, you play as you controlling the large gun (well, otherwise, this wasn’t a defense game) thanks which the Atlantis will be saved. The main idea of the game is that the cannon you use is not actually a gun. It creates bubbles (you’re drawing them by yourself) around enemies or other attacking objects affecting them in many ways.

There are a lot of kinds of bubbles. You begin with primary, normal bubble which simply doesn’t let anything or anyone go. To create bubbles you’ll need a resource, which is air here. More powerful bubbles will use more of this resource, so at the last few levels you will be more careful with it. During the game the air bar slowly restores as you use it. You can also get some air back by popping (clicking) the useless bubbles: the ones you have created accidentally or the ones which became useless for some reasons.

As you go through the 6 levels of fun the new types of bubbles and larger sizes of them will be unlocked. It looks like the authors didn’t have enough ideas about that because after unlocking certain kind of bubble some other type can become completely useless. For example, you’ll stop using the poisoning bubble after you have unlocked the squishing one: it’s effect is even faster and it restores the air automatically (to return the air from the poisoning one you will have to click it).

As the story gets further it gets more intense and interesting: to stop a mine you will have to use the metal bubble, for divers – poisoning or squishing, normal for cans with toxic waste etc. Sometimes I got really dizzy with that, because the enemies keep coming faster and faster and sometimes you just can’t figure out which bubble you have to use.

The game also requires logical thinking, because sometimes you can get rid of the enemies by making the explosive items collide with something else. Thanks to a perfect physics engine, you can think of different ways of exploding your enemies.

The frustrating thing is a fact that the game looks unfinished. First of all, it’s too easy: the possibility of difficulty level selection should be added. The story mode is not the only gaming mode, after its completion you can enjoy the endless Free Play, but actually there’s no sense of playing it because there’s no ability of earning points for the stuff you do and this really frustrates. Sometimes you try to put several objects into one bubble and the game won’t even consider this as a combo.

Although, Defend Atlantis is a great game with several interesting innovations, so if you are a fan of defense games, you should really try playing it. And even if you’re not, or you even hate the defense games for their monotony, you have to play it anyway. It has a lot of bright ideas!

[Super Mario Hardcore]

The whole game is not as great as it's idea.

Pluses:
+Perfect idea;

Minuses:
-Too many glitches;
-Short levels;
-Very few enemies (considering the game¡¦s name there had to be more);

Super Mario Hardcore is an action game based on Super Mario World universe, where you¡¦re able to use guns to kill enemies.

After reading the name you will probably think that the game is really hardcore, you¡¦ll be able to slay thousands of enemies with large arsenal instead of simply jumping on their heads. In fact, yes, there actually is such feature, but it¡¦s not realized as it should be.

The first problem you face in Super Mario Hardcore is a large amount of scripting glitches. The invisible walls appear where they mustn¡¦t and sometimes there isn¡¦t a wall where it has to be. In a few minutes this really frustrates and annoys you.

The other scripting mistake is enemies¡¦ spawning: they appear in a strange sequence and there¡¦s too few of them. With a word ¡§Hardcore¡¨ in the name of the game it should be considered that the game will be really hard because of the amount of the enemies. Instead of this, we¡¦re just simply wandering through the levels (sometimes it gets even more boring when you have to go through a thin walkway) shooting turtles time-to-time and changing weapons just for fun. Yes, there¡¦s no point of changing them because you have unlimited ammo. Besides, you have only 4 types of weapons: a rifle, bazooka, tommy-gun and a spanner to smash the enemies with (probably the best weapon in the whole game).

You¡¦ll probably expect at least a long playing time, but you can forget about it now: there are only 4 levels in the game. At least, they are totally different, thanks for that. When you¡¦ll get bored of killing innocent creatures you can entertain yourself attempting to collect all the coins on the level. But don¡¦t forget about the flying cubes you can¡¦t stand on and the walls you¡¦ll periodically stuck in.

The idea is really great and could be realized much better that this. But instead of hardcore arcade shooting we get a boring and frustrating gameplay.

Advices for the author:
Dear Casualty, I am a Flash-maker myself, so I suppose I can give you some advices you can use in the future. First of all, you should improve your AS skills. In fact, I could help you with that, but I¡¦m not so good in physical part myselfƒ¼. Add more enemies and coins. Improve weapon shooting effects. Make levels more interesting and much longer.

That¡¦s it, we¡¦re waiting for a sequel=)!

Casualty responds:

You're really inspiring me to do a sequel =) I dunno, I'll see next year. Oh wait... That's in a few days! Nah, I'll think about it, but first I'm doing some other music video project.

[Console Launch: 2nd Ship]

The whole game is not as great as it's idea.

Pluses:
+Awesome script conception;
+Witty ideas;
+Nice graphics;

Minuses:
-Monotonic gameplay;
-Small amount of weapons.

Console Launch: 2nd Shipment has funny and satiric conception concerted into serious game.

We’ve all heard about bloody launch of PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii. Yeah, a lot of crazy stuff has happened as a result and this event couldn’t be forgotten without being parodied. So here’s a bright example of the console war’s legacy.

You are playing as a courier whose truck with console shipment was destroyed and robbed. He is thrown to the streets and should protect the last three consoles (they are used as an amount of lives indicator) from the zombie-like looking people. The whole atmosphere is really serious and a bit scary: the streets are on fire, the destruction rules everywhere. Yeah, that’s what I call a satire.

Your main weapon is PS3’s unreleased (oh yeah, Sony, thanks for that!) boomerang-like gamepad. The other ones are lasers, broken cell phones and other electronic stuff. This looks even funnier.

Although, the game is pretty bad, but it’s conception and hidden satiric jokes are just perfect.

[Playing Field 2]

7074L D3S7RUC710N!!!

Pluses:
+TOTALLY MAD gameplay;
+Possibility to select weapons, locations and victims;
+Well, you actually CAN’T LOSE! God never loses!!!;

Minuses:
-Poor graphics and animation;
-More victims, locations and weapons should be added;
-No sense of playing long.

Playing Field 2 is totally mad, destructive and cool.

The main feature is the fact that you can’t actually win or lose. You’re just keep killing innocent victims (well, they can’t be called enemies) until you get bored. To help you with this mission and to make it more interesting you’re proposed to select one of 6 weapons, 6 locations and 6 enemies (you can add or delete a certain type from the level). Does the satanic number combination have something to do with this?

The aim of a game is really easy: all you have to do is to point at creatures and smash, zap, or burn them. Do it as much as possible. At the beginning you can unlock the rest of items by earning points. That’s not that hard. After unlocking all the stuff the game loses its sense and you’ll get bored after a while.

The objects on the locations are also destructible, but if you burn the trees they will fall and that looks a bit silly. The victims you will kill are stickmen, deaths, worms and other weird stuff. If you don’t like one of them you can always remove its type by accessing one of the three menus: one for the victims, one to choose the location and the last one for weapon selection.

To recommend something to the author, I’ll say that the third part should be filled with a variety of modes, for example, in campaign you will have to stop the creatures from escaping the certain space or something like that, because the game really loses its sense after unlocking all the features.

The game can’t boast with great graphics or special effects, but it’s main feature is a totally MAD gameplay with tons of destruction craziness. Have fun.

[Dobble]

Pretty good!

Pluses:
+Great style;
+Finally, something actually educating among Flash entertainment;
+Nice gameplay idea;
+Perfect graphics;

Minuses:
-The game is too childish;
-Inconvenient interface.

Dobble is generally created for children’ education, but nevertheless, can be quite a nice experience for teens and even adults.

The whole atmosphere brings back memories about baby toys making different sounds and stuff. The aim of the game is collecting letters to spell different words like A-R-M-O-R, or G-R-O-U-P. But it gets a bit harder if you should collect them in the right sequence, R after A, M after R etc. Harder, because if you collect M after A instead of R you will die and lose a life.

The whole atmosphere is totally childish. The main hero, Dobble, is a strange-looking baby-like creature with violet color of the skin. The music is really merry and the most violent object in the game is a bunch of thorn which appears on the levels. The other enemies don’t actually look like enemies. The game doesn’t have any checkpoints or saving ability, so if you die, you’ll have to start from the very beginning.

The main feature of the game is QUALITY. Armor Studios or other professional Flash-maker companies like Miniclip never forget about this element. There are almost no glitches in the game and the graphics are made perfectly. There’s even a bunch of mini games to fool around with like “Catch the falling apples” game, the one with driving where you should jump over obstacles while riding a bike and a dress-up game.

But there’s also a bunch of disadvantages you should remember about. The interface, for example. The list of letters you should collect is right in the lower center of the screen and sometimes it’s easy to fall on a bunch of thorns just because you didn’t mention it in time, thanks to the picture.

Although, Dobble is a perfect game which almost doesn’t have any serious problems. It’s just plain fun.

[Arrival In Hell]

Nice graphics - awful gameplay.

Pluses:
+Shocking graphics;
+Pretty scary atmosphere;

Minuses:
-A couple of awful moments;
-Pretty bad animation.

Arrival in Hell is a pretty nice experience to play and complete for once, but it has a lot of mistakes.

You really tried to make the atmosphere as scary and serious, as it actually could be, but thanks to some stuff you couldn’t. Yeah, the guard’s skin ripped of looked just as disgusting as it has to be, but that just doesn’t scare me much.

First of all, the animation mistakes sometimes made me smile, and the dialogs were pretty silly. Besides, who the hell will think out that you should wash the hand in the toilet, not in the sink? The guy standing right next to the evil beast eating a guy alive also looks awful.

But anyway, you did a nice work with graphics and scripting, and it’s really respectable.

I give the movie a 4, but only because you wasn’t lazy with the decorations and level design. That’s one of the games which the player can play and go through only for once. My advice – work on the conception.

[Zombie Swarm]

The idea is rotten.

Pluses:
+Pretty nice graphics;
+Gameplay seems to be fun at first;

Minuses:
-The idea is too old; you haven’t brought anything new to the player;
-Gets extremely boring after a while;
-No music;
-Poor sound.

What was the sense of submitting this to the portal? The idea is as old, as my granny. Besides, you haven’t put there a thing that makes interest or is somehow new. There could be a lot of different kinds of weapons, like giant electronic guns, or electric grenades. How about different levels or at least, background selection? All right, it was kinda fun at first, but soon it got too damn boring.
Why couldn’t you put some action music? The gun’s roaring made me almost falling asleep, and the zombie sounds are also awful. You could put a little bit more of them!

[Elysium Man]

Nice.

Pluses:
+The buttons respond correctly and in time (this makes gameplay fun and enjoyable);
+Funny cutscenes between levels;
+Interesting environment;

Minuses:
-A bunch of scripting glitches;
-Awful controls - as for me, I don't have enough fingers for all that;
-What?! No combos?

First thing I want to begin with is the absence of combos. How can an average fighting game exist without that? Besides, with your control scripting it could be real fun: it’s hard to find a game, when the key responds correctly right after pressing it. This makes the gameplay as enjoyable as it can be.
The cutscenes was a correct idea. No matter, if they don’t have anything to do with the script, they look hilarious and cheerful. The animation was great. Not awesome, just nice.
Level design and environment is pretty interesting: they remind me about experimental movies somehow.
The last two frustrating things were glitches and the controls. For example, I couldn’t kick a guy’s balls with a hard kick attack when he was too close. The controls are just awful: I wish I had a sixth finger to press Shift to run. Every time I had to put my fingers back to attacking keys, I got a lot of damage because of time loss while I was doing it.
In average, the game is great. But the only thing that should be fixed for sure is the control keys.
Good luck.

[Black Ops:Korean Conflict]

Nice. Very nice!

Pluses:
+Nicely balanced stealth gameplay;
+Changeable music rocked;
+Serious atmosphere;
+Nice comic-like cutscenes;
+Large variety of actions;
+Quite smart AI;

Minuses:
-Poorly-drawn people (the style is too unserious, and it harms the atmosphere).

There are really a few Flash-stealth games on the web. And only half of them can be interesting. This is one of them.
The serious atmosphere creates a serious look on the whole product. Inspiring. The first interesting thing here is the hand-drawn noir intro. The script, of course, can’t become a rival for Tom Clancy’s, but it’s nice anyway. Most of action games don’t have any proper script at all.
The training was really useful, thanks. The amount of the actions available impresses: hanging on the balconies, ropes etc, running, crawling and other stuff. But one of the most interesting is the possibility to kill silently. This feature was done as good as it could be.
The enemies act quite normally, but the moments when they begin chaotically run from one part of the map to another looks awful. From my point of view, they should run to the spot where the intruder was last seen. Another disadvantage is their design: they look a little bit funny and the mimics have to be improved, because it just doesn’t feet that serious atmosphere you managed to create.
The music also cheered me up: it sounds just like in the movies! And the effect of its changing when the player is spotted is just hilarious.
So, the game really deserves a 5. Your scripting skills are impressive + the atmosphere + HUGE number of possible actions. Good luck in your future works.