Score: 3

"Large flaws..."

submission: The Swords

date: December 1, 2009

First off, the grammar is terrible. If you ever need a text editor, send me a PM and we can communicate through NG or through emails. Secondly, there's NO save feature, not even autosave!? I had to restart my browser due to severe Flash lag, only to come back and see that all the money I had made by repeatedly grinding the Training mission was lost, and I was forced to start back at the first mission.

If you're going to make an RPG-type side-scroller with unlockable skills, levels, items, etc., you darn well better include the ability to save, otherwise people are going to play once and never come back. As a gamer, it's annoying to spend time grinding money and exp to increase a character's level and buy new items when you're just going to lose it all anyway.

Another reason for my low score is that this game looks like a Maplestory clone... I haven't actually played Maplestory, but I've seen what the sprites look like, and this looks like it's some Flash knockoff. Not that it's normally a bad thing to imitate another game or a game's animation style, but usually when the similarity between games is so significant, the creator might want to at least state "inspired by Maplestory" or something to that effect.

Bosses tend to be immune to all attacks when they are attacking, which doesn't really seem realistic or fair... in most games, if an ability takes a certain amount of time to charge up, taking damage usually either cancels the ability or delays it. Additionally, the hitboxes weren't perfect... sometimes, enemies could hit my character when I couldn't hit them back.

Add in a save feature, correct the spelling and grammar, and revise the hitboxes, and you'll have a game that people will spend some time on... until then, I think it's going to be a one-play type of game.

Score: 7

"Not your game to submit."

submission: master of gravity

date: November 28, 2009

The REAL game, Gravity Master, is a decently enjoyable time-waster with pretty accurate physics. This game, "master of gravity," is not your game, and as such you don't deserve any score for this game. Astro75, the creator of the game, has the real submission on his profile. I recommend anyone that likes this game to review it there and rate it according, and to ignore this duplicitous submission by someone trying to gain credit for someone else's work.

Gravity Master, NOT this game, gets a 7/10.

Score: 6

"Lots of severe problems."

submission: Level Up!

date: November 25, 2009

This game was fun and everything, but I did notice some very big problems that detracted from your overall score a great deal.

1) I had 100% completion, and after checking out the bonus material my save was deleted. The game mentions that you'll be taken back to the Title screen, it doesn't say it will delete your data.
2) After I beat the game for the first time and saved the carryover data, I activated the computer before I had gotten 100% completion, and the game froze; the music continued and the pause menu still came up if my mouse left the screen, but the character could not move and I couldn't open up the Codex.
3) Enemies seemed to do random damage at times. Sometimes with the base level of Fortitude I would hit a spike thing and take 14 damage, yet sometimes even when fully healed I would be instantly killed in one hit.
4) When I reloaded my 100% game, all of the gems were fully red (100% opacity, showing that I hadn't gotten them before) but I couldn't get any of them; I would merely walk through them, and the gems would remain on the screen. Even the big gems had returned.
5) After my save file was deleted, I decided to start a new game. However, my character is invisible during the nightmare sequence, which makes it very hard. I was still able to kill him with a relationship level of 1, even though I was invisible, but this brings me to my next point...
6) Medals don't work. I've gotten 100% completion, killed the nightmare with a relationship level of 1, and should have gotten every other medal except for beating the game without sleeping and possibly the 25-second medal, but not a single one has unlocked. This is a game-killer, for me, especially since I've already played through the whole game once.

It's a decent game, but a lot of these problems I mentioned are major issues... losing save files, turning invisible, instant-kills, not being able to collect gems, etc.

Score: 5

"Please fix things..."

submission: Dragon Boy

date: November 10, 2009

I'm still playing the game, so the numerous problems aren't enough to make me stop, but there are lots of them.

1) Exp/gold resets when the game is continued.
2) The tutorial must be viewed every time the game is loaded (a minor inconvenience).
3) Paying the shopkeeper to see a random list of items makes no sense... it's possible to spend too much money reloading his inventory to be able to afford the item you're looking for.
4) There's VERY little weapon diversity... three weapon types isn't enough.
5) Item drops are shite. Mini-bosses and bosses are expected to drop extra or better gear, but often times drop nothing at all.
6) Hard mode seems too hard... often times I was either forced to grind the same level 30-40 times in a row just to get 1 level to get just a tiny bit better.
7) The orb, though it says it deals 100 damage (when maxed) doesn't seem to deal any damage at all. At the boss fight in the Hill Top in Hard Mode, I let the orb do over 4,000 damage to the boss before I started fighting, and once I did, the fight lasted just as long as every other time I had killed him, signifying that no damage had yet been dealt.
8) Arazec is retarded. She doesn't cast spells when she's supposed to much of the time. I have been frequently surrounded by three or more enemies, and no Nova spells are being cast at all.
9) Healing items can be used on dead characters without reviving them, and dead characters regenerate life.
10) Hard Mode promised better items and such, but I'm halfway through the Valley and have yet to see anything blue drop, much less anything new, or for the shop to sell something different. Where are these new items?

I keep coming back to this game, because beating it in Hard Mode is going to be a big challenge, but there are still a lot of problems with it that need to be addressed. A lot of people have said some of the things that I have, and those issues have yet to be addressed... The Gun Game had tons of problems when it was first released, but it was updated like 6 times due to reviews and bug reports. This game has tons of problems, and nothing has been fixed at all. Please listen to the players and fix some of these problems.

You get a 5 for making a game I can keep playing, but as the game stands, I can't give you a higher score than that.

Score: 6

"Nice time waster"

submission: The Gun Game

date: October 25, 2009

It was a nice time waster, with a few major drawbacks in my opinion. First, having an accuracy challenge for the two shotguns is a little absurd, since it's totally based on luck, whereas all other challenges are based on skill. Also, some of the SMGs, particularly the P90 and PK2, have a very fast fire rate, so firing only one bullet at a time was particularly hard, and since there wasn't a whole lot of leeway in the accuracy challenge, it usually meant multiple retries. This isn't a dealbreaker, I still got all challenges to Expert, with one exception that is just literally impossible.

There is absolutely no way to get 3 seconds or less on the speed challenge with the Kar 98k. The reload, due it being a bolt action, is so slow that it only fires about one round per second, and even having everything in the game unlocked (except for the Veteran and Expert unlockables, as well as the 98,000 shot unlockable), I only have 6 rounds per clip, which means that I am forced to reload, which takes another full second. Somehow, through the blessing of Raptor Jesus, I was able to get 9 seconds, but that's the fastest I could ever see this gun firing.

Additionally, the 98,000 shot unlockable is complete hogwash. Do you actually expect anyone to unlock it? At about one round per second (I clocked it at 6 rounds per 5.5 seconds or so shooting as fast as possible) plus reload time, a player would have to spend over 27 hours straight just firing the Kar 98k. And they would have to be at their computer the whole time, since there is no autofire option, and even if there was, the player would still have to exit out of Warmup Mode after every 10 minutes or so and reload it to refill their ammo. So, reloading every 10 minutes for 27.2 hours.... yeah, it's never going to happen. What's the point of adding achievements into a game if they are impossible to get?

Lastly, there seems to be a severe memory leak; even with the quality set to low and visible bullets set to 10, there is a noticeable decline in performance even after playing a level maybe 5 times. On the speed challenge for the Kar 98k, I started out getting 9 seconds, and then a few tries later, even firing as fast as possible, the time more than doubled to 19 seconds due to the lag in firing and reloading animation. This issue would severely adversely affect the time mentioned above for obtaining the 98,000 shot unlockable, but since it's already over a full day of play, I don't even think it's worth calculating how much time the lag would tack on.

6/10 for having achievements for us achievement whores... that's what kept my attention the longest, was trying to get everything unlocked. Just three impossible unlockables left to go =)

Score: 3

"Too easy."

submission: Log Ball

date: October 5, 2009

First off, this type of game has been done many times before. Also, your colour scheme made it very easy to just look at the center of the screen when the green dots are present for a few moments while the timer is ticking down to see the same dots presented in magenta afterwards. Of course, if one moves his eyes, the effect fails, but my point remains.

Score: 6

"It's okay..."

submission: Naruto: Ultimate Battle

date: September 11, 2009

I've recently started watching Naruto, so I like the subject matter, but the game itself is far from perfect. Many times my character would freeze up, being unable to move or perform any attacks or jutsu, and as such I would get comboed and knocked off the screen, losing a substantial amount of life. Also, the super techniques, such as Chidori, take way too long to charge, and almost always are interrupted by the enemy before they can be released. Furthermore, your characters need more balance... Sasuke pretty much sucks all around (I was even comboed when I did his Lion's Barrage.. that doesn't really make sense), whereas Neji is totally overpowered. All I did to easily beat the game on Hard with Neji is do his Forward+Normal attack, which launches the enemy practically halfway across the screen. Since leaving the edge of the screen does so much damage, I just did this move over and over, easily beating everyone.

The hint at the beginning of the game to unlock the extra three characters is not true; I've played single player mode with all characters, and have beaten the game on easy and medium with most, and hard with a couple, and all I've unlocked is extreme mode. The lack of an ending to this game is very disappointing, as well... it doesn't even say "Congratulations" or "Thanks for Playing" or anything, it just goes straight to credits.

It's kinda fun when everything works properly, but I can't rate it above a 6 due to the bugs and the misinformation presented in the game. Also, out of curiosity... why do you not have a default key configuration? Every single game has a default. Giving the player the ability to customize is great, but if they don't read through the messages at the beginning of the game, they are screwed. Always set default keys, there's no reason not to.

Score: 7

"Nice"

submission: Being One - Episode 3

date: September 10, 2009

I enjoy all of the Being One games so far, and I have been looking forward to this installment for a while now. However, it's a little frustrating, to be honest. The keypad hacker is just irritating; first off, the player only gets 3 tries, and I realize there are an unlimited amount of attempts, but if the third guess is incorrect, the player is not told whether the number is higher or lower, so only the first two attempts truly help to guess the number. Fortunately, the combinations don't change from game to game, so once you have written the number down, the hacking process will never have to be gone through again.

Another thing that bothered me was the battery backup in the computer room; when the battery is first activated, the flashlight aura is gone, as if the battery was able to supply light to the room. But after logging into the computer or saying hello to the monster, the flashlight aura comes back.

Something else that I noticed that is unlike the previous installments is that there is no running count of how many datapads or x-rays have been viewed, which was a letdown. It was, however, nice to finally find out so much more information on the facility and what kinds of things have been going on there.

So far, my best score is 52,426, completed in 03:18. Not the greatest, but it's not bad I suppose.

Score: 6

"It's OK..."

submission: Enigmata

date: August 20, 2009

This game was, for the most part, a standard shooter, but there were so many negative powerups that it was nearly impossible to avoid them. On one level, I got three times as many negative powerups as helpful ones, which is just completely absurd. Also, when you get the "unaccuracy" powerdown, it's practically impossible to avoid getting other powerdowns while still killing enemies, since you have to move your ship into point-blank range just to hit them, and as soon as they down you grab the powerdown. I suppose adding in powerdowns is nice, since it's a change from most shooters, but turn their spawn rate way, WAY down, as it totally ruins the game when you get nothing but powerdowns for 10, 15, 20 spawns.

I'd say overall the game was fun to play, it was nice to be able to go down different ship "trees," but the powerdowns really cut into the rating of this game. 6/10.

Score: 8

"Nice"

submission: DG Little Red Riding Hood

date: August 14, 2009

Nice artwork, nice music, and the changes weren't impossible to find. One thing I find that ruins "Find the Difference"-type games is when the differences between pictures are so minuscule that they are nearly impossible to find without a Hint or using Zoom. Also, it's nice that you give bonus points for completing a scene quickly, but you don't force the player to be constrained to a time limit, which means the player can still take however long they need to find all the differences. Furthermore, it's nice that you just subtract points when an incorrect point is clicked, instead of limiting the player to a set number of misses; in this fashion, assuming a player doesn't care about score, he can still complete the game by complete guesswork.

I do like that you tell a story without using any spoken or written text, and I love the cyberpunk atmosphere. The Hints were useful, and the fact that they needed to be recharged allowed the player to use them an unlimited amount of times... if they didn't mind waiting and losing their time bonus, that is.

I think this is a great framework for "Find the Difference" games, having elements from many other games rolled into one that can appeal to anyone that likes this style of game; the player can go for a speed run with high score, or just take his time and enjoy the artwork and music while going through at his own pace, waiting for hints to recharge.