fepayton's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Bouncing Balls!]

A broken clone

As game like this go its not bad. The graphics are good and the aiming and reflection are solid and reliable.
A magor problem that needs to be fixed is the end game.
In games like this, one you eliminate a colour, that colour no longer appear in the launcher. i.e: once I've gotten rid of all the yellow I'll never fire another yellow ball.
Because this game dosn't do that the end game is a legion of frustration hpoing beyond hope that you get the precice sequence of colours in a multiple of three.

For me this was a show stopper. It took an 8/10 game and made it a 4/10.

[Furious Tank]

Needs a zoom out

It may seem harsh to rate a decent game badly for a simple zoom problem, but the camera being too close is unfortunatly what kills the game for me.

Everything about the game is good: the graphics (though enemy fire is hard to see), the music (though repetitive) and the gameplay; all are decent.

Beeing so closely zoomed in makes moving have a leap of faith feel. And as the enemies are visible on radar, the best strategy is to fire blindly off screen edge. This makes playing feel like a gamble. In short, because I cant see until im on top of them, I might as well have brought a sword.

A painful miss on a game that could have been a solid 10.

[GUNROX Holy Grenade Quest]

Warning: Pain of grind imminent

Everything about this games is great except the grind.

When making a game there has to be something in it for the player: experience, items, a cut scene... anything to reward the player for playing the game. Second, the reward must be worth more than the effort; either a kind of something that they couldn't get otherwise or more resources in than out. This game dosn't do that!

Example: In this game there is no experience, so my character are fighting for equipment and items only. I go into a battle and randomly it is 5 bad guys appear (against my 3). Its a tough fight and I use three med-kits and a grenade to win it. Then: my random reward was NOTHING! It then took me 12 fights to get back the med kits I had used. I entered that area again and fought the big fight: again my reward was nothing!

Why should I play if there might not be a point in playing.

As a demo this is the worst possible kind of advertisement for the "real" game. If I can expect to play a game that might or might not be worth my time, then it is clearly not worth my time.

Art: +10
Music: +7
Gameplay: +8
Reward system: -bajillion

Overall: 3/10 and unfortunately this is also my optimism towards the full thing.
Sorry

[BoxFace]

Felt Sticky

Art good. Music good. Basic game-play good. So why not 10: the game play was not robust.

Control is what connects a player and character. I felt like that connection was full of static. Jumping had a small delay. I feel like I had to plan my jumps instead of reacting. The Animation was nice, but there were a couple time that I felt like I was missing timed jumps because of it.

The games controls also seemed to be incompatible with each other. Holding down fire and pressing jump, has a cool effect, but not the desired jump and shoot that I would like.

All in all: this could have been a 10 except for the controls.

[zed town]

Worthwhile but feels unfinished

There is a great example of a game that has many excellent elements, but is missing a couple necessary ones.

The game is fantastic for atmosphere. You have light, and it casts shadows. Long black freaky shadows that make you feel a bit lost and uncertain. The amazing strength is also the game's weakness.

The floors and walls are untextured. To so if you back into a wall or are walking down a hall, you can't really tell that you're moving until you have some other wall (that is out of shadow) to compare your position to.

An easy fix: textured floor. Something to give reference for the player. In addition, the game could use some art. The game is technically fantastic, but all the houses feel like giant steel boxes. Even if the Zombies left a corpse or some splatter; anything to tell me where I am.

A few glitches cleared up and some polish and this game would have easily been a 10.

Keep up the good work.

[Aside: The last shot/kill is not recorded by the game. A house with three zombies will complete with two shots and two kills.]

[Pirate Defense]

Sweet but needs some staging.

This is totally sweet, but needs more of an introduction.

The ability to link traps was a great idea. It seems to combine a bit of the incredible machine and the standard defense game.

Why not a 10 out of 10:
It is possible that I'm just thick, but the learning curve is super steep. A regular tower defense game would start by using the cheap weapons with simple properties and progress after a cuple levels to the complex towers with complex properties. This seemed to have the works available from the get go and that made it very confusing. After some persistance (and a couple failures) I got into the swing of things, but the onset was not hard, just not as casual as I like my casual games to be.

How to make it a 10 out of 10:
I guess I would recommend a training gauntlet, where a few well placed traps "solve" the level (maybe 2 or three waves). Given a gradual pace that allows the player to learn and recognize when traps are or are not effective could help. This is all a moot point after the first while, but the learning c urve could have been a bit lazier for simple (read thick) people like myself.

[Nautilus]

How to make this game so much better.

Every thing great except the controls, which pulls down the gameplay, which makes everything seem awful.

I would suggest using the mouse. The turret tracking speed and momentum could make it allot of fun to play, but with the keyboard it just makes it frustrating.

The powerups are a great idea, but one ends up relying on them because the laser s just to difficult to control.

[Sky Invasion]

Need to berewarded for goals.

This should be a 9 not a 6. The sound is good, the gameplay is good. The difficulty is good. The graphics are good.

The rewards are very very bad.

Because score/experience is based on the number of enemy kills and has nothing to do with the destruction of the enemy base, the best way to play the game is to treat it as a screen saver.

Start on level one and set the turrets to automatic. They are not great so you may have to start an automated repair once in a while, but they are adequate. You will kill enemy after enemy and gain the experience, at about the same rate that you aquire gold, without losing health. (at the time of writing this rewiew, I am on level one having gold in excess of 800, having spent 900 in upgrades, and my health has only fallen to 750/1000).

I have no need or desire to destroy my enemy, so I don't. What need to be here is an incentive for destroying the enemy in a timely fashion (note this should not be mistaken for a penalty for not doing so, because that would make the game frustrating).

Good start.

[The Strangers 3]

Just needs some/much balance.

First the good:
- Sound works well
- Art: looks good.
- Basic gameplay: good in theory: a variety of weapons that are intuitive and a cover mechanic

The bad: the execution of the gameplay. (sorry but this is what made this a 5 and not a 9).

The game offers the play no choice. By this I mean that there is one best option (use the rifle and never duck).
Ducking is loaded with flaws:
1) you can't shoot as you emerge from cover, but the bad guys can shoot you.
2) As you are in cover more badguys keep showing up, soon a constant wall of fire will be waiting when you stand up.
3) I can reload faster than I can duck.

Problems with the weapons:
1) They all reload at the same rate. If the pistol was a faster reload than the rifle I might consider it, but as it stands the pistol is there for when you run out of rifle ammo.

Problems with the A.I.
1) When thinking about AI think patterns and not speed. The AI just kept getting faster. This is the tetris AI. It fails in a shooter. Maybe if there were some more variety each with a different pattern.
2) When does the level end? I have no idea if I was 1 guy or ten guys away from finishing a level when I died.

It could get better later, but the gameplay issues were enough for me to stop half way in to level 3.

[Factory: The Game]

Badly needed keyboard shortcuts!!

Great concept, great game.

There are often only a few switches each level and each felt very small and stickey using just the mouse. The best example of this was the Ice Cream level. The mouse hit areas were just too small and things became more difficult than they should have been,

Number he switches 1,2,3... corresponding to keyboard keys and this game would have been 10. Still great work.