Score: 9

"Masterpiece"

submission: Madness interactive

date: August 2, 2008

Mowing down legions of your fellow man seems to be a popular basis for games, but rarely are they done as brilliantly as Madness Interactive.

I've been coming on and off to this game for quite a long time now, which makes me wonder why I never got around to writing this review until now, I guess reviewing things can wait when I'm slaughtering hapless fools.

Firsly lets talk about the graphics, okay, so the Madness style has never been the Mona Lisa but you could probably call it classic in Newgrounds, and while there is next to no variation in the character models they're still all very well done, especially when they spasm in a hail of automatic fire, or go flying when you smack them one with the 'arnold' cheat on. The backgrounds and environments are all in monochrome but I can't really expect anything else, and I doubt anyone else would be, on the downside though corridors are extremely bland, the only real difference is if there are a few pictures on the wall, the blandness may be intentional but I don't like it and feel like mentioning it, if only to make my ego swell nicely by having a high word count in this review, anyway, enough blabbering on about how it looks, lets move on to all the sexy violence.

The gameplay is fun, and solid, making for many happy returns and while the control system may take a little while to get used to for some people playing it makes the combat extremely fun and unique, and while it makes trying to throw things a total bugger it does give you a nice feeling of acomplishment when your opponent goes down with a switchblade sticking out of his forehead.

The story is pretty simple, the Sheriff has stolen your pie, go murder him and murder tons of various different looking dudes on the way. Feh, fair enough, someone steals your pie, you kill them, speaks for itself (no, I'm not being sarcastic).

I also want to make some (well, at least one) recommendation(s) to anyone playing.
1) Be a man, yeah, you've got a gun, so what? Try playing through the game (or at least on experiment mode) using only melee weapons, personally I liked using my fists/a switchblade and a baseball bat, if you combine playing like this with the 'arnold' cheat then the effects are maximized, if you get shot up a lot then just use the 'willis' cheat and your balls (or metaphorical balls if you're a woman) should still feel as big. If you suck and get shot up and don't want to cheat then theres a consolation, you'll either go down looking like a real man, or go down looking like an idiotic dipshit, it all depends on perspective really.

2) This one isn't really a recomendation, but I found it pretty fun to try and showboat, for example throwing my switchblade in the air and catching it before stabbing some poor sap, do it right and you'll look stylish as hell. The scenario I'm about to describe was more of a very stylish accident, plus I want to boast about it - I was playing in experiment mode using only melee weapons and threw my baseball bat at some tit with a pistol, it hit him in the face and bounced back, when I, showing some amazing reflexes (fluking), cought the bat and smacked him with it, killing him, this made my ego swell with pride but I couldn't help but be disapointed because I was the only one who saw it, if you pull something like this off then kudos to you.

I'm running out of characters so I'll finish up now so you can stop reading. I give this game a huge recommendation to just about anyone, those looking for sophisticated gameplay will be disapointed but I can't see why anyone looking for sophisticated gameplay would even think this contained the slightest trace of it. So there we have it, Madness Interactive, a shining example of games about killing people.

Score: 6

"Meh."

submission: intrusion

date: July 31, 2008

Ah, at last, something to review. Well, lets get this trainwreck moving then.

First of all the graphics, they look nice and the main character is well animated but allow me to say this - photographic backgrounds are never good, at best they look horrible and out of place, at worst they make your own art look shit, worst of all you seem to have put some photographic obstacles in as well, maybe you're bad at drawing that stuff, maybe you're just lazy but that doesn't really make it excuseable.

The gameplay is adequate, pretty much extremely standard sidescrolling shooting gameplay and it got rather dull quite quickly for me, maybe it didn't for some people but then I'm used to more intellectual or more fast paced games.

The ragdoll physics sometimes seemed to make the game ridiculous or unrealistic, for example; You're shooting at the enemy from quite far away with the pistol, you kill them and they fly several metres back. The physics would be a lot nicer if the engine (or whatever) for them was a lot less broken or more sophisticated, although I'll appreciate how insanely hard that will probably be to do. Another thing regarding the physics, the starting crash cutscene thing cut to them far too quickly and I was half expecting to have to go through the game with my character in a wheelchair after seeing it.

Overall we have a slightly above average sidescrolling shooter, it could be a lot worse I guess but it's just a bit, meh.

Score: 8

"Fun"

submission: Create a Gun V2

date: July 28, 2008

Well, I've never seen anything like this before, looks interesting.

First of all - Bugger me that's a lot of gun parts, I think I'm in over my head but I seem to be making some progress, although I'm not really sure how most of these will fit together, I scrapped trying to make a futuristic shotgun so I've moved onto a lightweight looking assault rifle.

The gunparts are well drawn and certainly numerous, it's actually quite fun to play around with all the different gun parts, and I have a feeling that this may become useful to me. The gun noises are an interesting little addition, althoughit'd be better if it associated a different sound with each gun barrell so you would know the way the gun would sound simply.

This is a nice little program and I'll probably use it again in the future.

Score: 5

"Average"

submission: Bang, Boom, Splat!

date: July 26, 2008

First of all I'd like to say that this is little more than a shooting gallery game which has automatically lost it some points.

The graphics are pretty basic but nice and suit the spoof element well, although some (by some I mean most) enemies look like they were done in 20 minuites using MS paint, the environments are probably the best part about this, but a few of them aren't exactly easy on the eye.

The gameplay is a standard shooting gallery style, not really interesting when I was hoping for an actual run'n'gun FPS but I guess it could be worse. Nice use of the Doom stlye interface by the way, that was pretty good. Telling the truth I only got up to the zombie level until I got bored but to be honest declaring a game bad because of the first few parts is completely professional.

Overall it's not more than a particuarly nice looking shooting game, but if you're extremely bored I guess it's worth playing.

Score: 4

"Doesn't live up."

submission: Portal: The Flash Version

date: July 26, 2008

As most people who've played it will agree, the actual Portal was a flawless instant classic, this however just can't live up to it's Source Engine Sibling.

The obvious thing to go for right now is the graphics. . . so I will; The graphics aren't the best I've seen in a flash game, and to be honest, they kind of take away from the game itsself, they're just not very nice.

Regarding the gameplay, well, it's okay really, but annoyingly repetetive and making a quick nod back at the graphics, it's marred by the lack of the 3D that the true version has.

Sadly this game is also lacking the humour of the Valve version, and even more sadly, this is all I really have to say about this rather than my usual walls of text.

Score: 9

"Improves on the original in some places."

submission: Pandemic II

date: July 15, 2008

The first pandemic game was something I had strong feelings for, and the dumbed down version almost broke my.... no, I'm exaggerating there, but it was a bit of a kick in the balls, and by the looks of this, this is actually going to improve on the previous one, not including the dumbed down version of course, but as usual, I'm playing through as I write so, this review may take a shift towards the hating further on.

The interface is a lot nicer than the previous game, and I like the fact that more dangerous symptoms have to be unocked, the natural disasters seem to be an interesting addition, although I've never heard of hurricanes in western europe, especially seeing as I live in western europe... Oh well, it does seem harder to kill people this time, not sure if I'm happy or sad about that, although I'm sure I'll figure out my stance later the map is more segmented which add's a nice addition of more challenge, by the time I've written this I've infected all of South America, oh, and I forgot to praise the choice between different types of infection, that was an innovative little addition.

I'm starting to pile up the corpses at last, although now that I am everyone seems to have gone crazy paranoid quicker than they did in the other games, probably because I infected a lot of people before becoming deadly though... Oh, and I also like the idea that people only start researching into a vaccine when you start killing a large amount of people, the researching into vaccines when you were little more than a common cold in the previous games confused me. Oh, and is it just me or do you not get as many points as you did previously? If so, it's a bit of a downside I think, I'm getting a bit low on them. I'm also happy that you've sorted out your geography since last time.

At this point I'm not really sure why none of the infected insects are getting past borders, you can't cull them all and you sure as hell can't stop them with border patrol. Wait.... The game is over now that I've killed everyone in south america? What about all the insects I'd infected?! I thought I'd sit around, brooding in my tiny virus mind until mankind lowered their guard, thinking I was gone and then BLAMMO! Someone vomits their stomach! But I guess I can't be too angry, even if I did eradicate the world in the previous game.

Overall this game does actually improve on the original, but only in some places, but I definatly prefer it, probably due to it's complexity.

Score: 6

"Decent."

submission: Alien Slayer 3D

date: July 11, 2008

Hm, where to start... Where to start, well, upon seeing the naming screen I decided to immiediatly name my character 'Master Marcus Aran'.

Upon entering the game, I went for the 'Soldier' difficulty level, and since I usually play FPS games with 'Realistic' mode, this was a slightly lower level than I usually go for, soon afterwards I quickly changed to recruit level because the recoil was fucking destroying me, I took a quick aim at the aliens charging towards me, started firing, realised I had it a bit wrong, tried to alter it and ended up shooting about 100 holes in the roof while they chewed my balls off.

Despite what anyone who knows of me knows me more, I'm not going to chastise anyone for lack of story, and I'll tell you why, this is an FPS, and when playing an FPS I tend not to want to get ladened down with large amounts of dialogue. The graphics are impressive, and this game runs rather smoothly, so I like that. But all this is marred by the aiming problems I had, and yes, I'm aware I can upgrade that, but the problem shouldn't be there to upgrade in the first place.

This game's pretty damn good, definatly worth playing actually, just don't expect too much, and watch out for the bloody recoil.

Score: 8

"Good game."

submission: Storm Boat:Vietnam Mayhem

date: July 8, 2008

At last, something on the front page that actually appealed to me. Now that that's out of my system lets get on with reviewing it.

I'm not really sure how some californian surfing sounding guitar works on the opening screen, but I guess it works in a funny way. The controls are also simple and I like that, it means I don't have to memorise different ways of slamming my head against my laptop keyboard. I also like the missing briefing style, it seems very unique.

The gameplay is quite solid and fun, but I dislike the boats moving animations, the way it moves side to side seems a bit... Easy really I guess. The level design though is fun and the enemies are nice and varied and I'm happy that it dosn't take me about 5 missiles to take down a single trooper like some shooting games seem to like me to do.

The graphics are nice, but the water just looks. . . Wrong, I guess thats the word I'm searching for, it just dosn't look right to me and I can't really put my finger on why I think that.

Anyway, overall this is a good rail shooter, definatly worth playing although I'd definatly recommend turning the music off and playing something of your own if you want something more serious to go with the war setting.

Score: 6

"It's okay, I guess."

submission: Bombators Multiplayer

date: July 3, 2008

A good game, kind of makes me think of Bomberman, A few problems such as somtimes (but not always) getting killed by your own bombs, which is a huge problem as far as I'm concerned when I get hit by a blast and die while my opponent seems to be in a constant inferno of their own stupidity, and that coupled with you dropping bombs while you type is a highway to hell, and actually lost this game a few points from me. At another point playing the game I died at random and if you need to explain to you why that is annoying then I'm surprised you can read.

Overall this game is average, nothing special but at the same time worth playing.

Score: 3

"Really, what the hell?"

submission: Choose your brawl 2(clay)

date: June 30, 2008

This being my first review in a short while I'm actually happy to see that I picked something this bad to go for. Now, maybe I was the only person here actually expecting an actual game, even if it was clunky or whatever, what I got was... Well, I don't really know, an interactive movie? Maybe the thought of actually playing it was unjustified, but I don't really think so. For anyone wondering what this is, I'll save you a few minuites; You click one of the 'characters' on the list, and it plays a short movie with that character gimp slapping all the others.

It's possible that you'e wondering why I gave it a three, rather than a lower score because all I seem to have is bad things to say about it, well, time to say some nice things I guess, I've seen some short videos of stock animation in progress, and I appreciate the work that's gone into this, especially to make the videos run so smoothly.

Overall - Why the hell are you reading this review?! Go on another page and play a proper game. I know that's what I'm going to do now...