smokinjoeevil's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Karma Game]

Many of the choices didn't seem to coincide with the rating I'd be given or "points" lost toward a particular attribute. For example, a rock falls on you without warning and taking cover makes you lose a point in "ego." So taking random rocks to the head LIKE A CHAMP is what is expected to progress spiritually? News to me.

EAEverything responds:

Thanks for your comment.

This game is to be taken lightly. I see it as a taster more than an in-depth approach about spirituality. I am building a whole series of videos to get deeper into each aspect.

But if you want to know about Ego...

Ego is what prevents consciousness from escaping its incarnation, if you know you are an entity with unlimited capacity, why suffer, why get bored and mostly why go to work on Monday?

So to force a supreme being into a "bone and flesh" experience, you have to make sure that the "person" is gonna live as long as possible and do all it takes to stay safe and sound.

As a consequence of that, the more you are afraid of dying, the less you are evolved spiritually.

If you know you are all powerful and just going through a momentary embodied experience, a stone falling on your head should make you laugh... like a champ indeed :)

Most things in spirituality are counter-intuitive for us human ... obviously.

In the words of Claude Bernard: "It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning."

[Arkandian Crusade]

Interesting.

It seemed like it probably has pretty involved gameplay, and it is fairly well made. There were a few user-interface issues that made it feel wanting for a more seamless experience in terms of transitions. Half the time I wasn't sure exactly what I was expected to click on next in order to proceed with the game.

I also laughed when I saw the name of that first enemy (encountered in the intro)... the "Fak'ough" demon. I read the "ough" as "off", in case it wasn't supposed to be a joke and I've left you wondering what was so funny. So yeah... "fak off" sounds a lot like another popular phrase that comes to mind.

[Satanorium]

Walkthrough... pah...

Got stuck somewhere inside the hospital... so I clicked the "walk-through" button. But, lo-and-behold, no walk-through to speak of on the page I was delivered to. Instead, it was a "Play Hub" page with about 50 advertisements on it. What a crock.

Game itself was fair. Storyline was a bit goofy. I mean... she wakes up at her Grandma's, goes out to the little ghost girl in the bushes, and then ends up being teleported to the hospital. but then the descriptions of the game say you're trying to fix your car to leave? Which is it?

[Cat with Bow Golf 2]

Cool concept

I like the concept, and the execution was good. I didn't really understand why there had to be a ceiling... that cost me a couple strokes a few times. Also, a very un-golf-like aspect to the game was that you could "hit" again (basically perform another "stroke") even while the "ball" (cat) was still moving. I used the technique of purposefully over-shooting the target and then making in-flight trajectory adjustments a few times to save strokes. Not a bad thing... actually made it more interesting in calculating what shot to make sometimes. All in all a really good game.

[Pictogrid]

Neat and unique

Sometimes it really took goofing with the pieces to get it to lay right, since they all move as one in row/column. It would have been nice if there had been some form of "par" indicator, to tell you either the minimum number of moves required, or the average it takes to solve the average player or something. Otherwise it was really good, well thought out, and an imaginative, yet simple puzzle game.

[Tetraform]

A bug - don't know if mentioned already

I simply noticed that the clickable area of the "nuke" seemed to be locked on center-screen... that is, it DID NOT follow the actual graphical representation of the button - the radioactive symbol at the center of the "planet". Easy to test - all you have to do is move to a corner and then quickly place your cursor at center screen - the cursor turns into the hand as if there is something to click... then if you do the same (move to a corner) and mouse over the radioactive symbol, you get nothing.

This may not be very noticeable when there is no lag going on - which may be why you didn't find it in testing.

Also, at first I couldn't understand why some comments mention that the game got difficult. I didn't have any difficulty AT ALL getting all the way through and receiving a score of over 33,000 (which didn't post to the high-scores for some reason, even though I WAS logged in). But, I think the lag had something to do with it... I always had plenty of time to match up ships or tag them to my giant, protruding mace-type-things, etc. The bosses also tended to just fly around a lot and only drop stuff I could use to attack them with at long intervals - so there was a lot of down time, which was frustrating, but again, may also be related to the lag I experienced.

[Dadgame]

Real control problems

The control system had a terribly awful base pattern of storing every key-press made and then making sure it executed them all even AFTER you decided to change direction, stop attacking, etc. It made playing this extrememly frustrating. For instance I would be running in one direction, attacking, and if I held down the direction key too long, or pressed "Z" too many times, he would continue running in the given direction and attacking even if I was now pressing the keys in the other direction, and no longer pressing "Z". It was,quite honestly, one of the dumbest things I have ever experienced with regard to control in a game. In order to give players the ability to react quickly to situations, you need to be checking for and reacting to only the keys being pressed ON THE CURRENT CYCLE. In this game you seem to be building a queue of keys pressed and executing through them on each processing cycle in turn... and you make sure you never skip one. Which is ridiculous. As I held down a directional key, every cycle would be processing the key into the queue, so that even if I let go of the key, it seemed like it may have still had 20 to 30 cycles worth of presses in that direction queued-up to be executed. Half the time this made it seem like the character had a mind of his own and that I wasn't even in control or playing. It was a mess.

Maybe that's not how the control-processing is setup... but it sure seems like it, and I sure had a problem in a big way, whatever the game's engine is really doing. Reading some of the other reviews, it seems I may have been among a minority of people who experienced problems. And I admit the computer I am currently using may not be the fastest on the draw, but I have never experienced problems like this before with any other game. Flash or otherwise. This game, for me, was a train-wreck.

[Toss the Turtle]

Normally don't like these kind of games

But felt I had to give this one a 5, and the highest marks for all the variety and depth of gameplay. It is, honestly, the best of these type of throw/shoot the object and bounce games I have every played. Which is, I am sure, what you were aiming for anyway.

My favorite part was how the turtle kept up his speed if you didn't touch the ground, so that power-ups (like the shots) seemed to have more effect when you were traveling/falling fast. Either that... or gravity and friction were reduced when you are in "space" because, with the larger cannons, I soon found myself easily able to make over 300,000 feet without touching the ground, using the rocket after I had reached my peak, and the machine gun as he would fall, trying to shoot just one round at a time to conserve it and make the most distance at maximum speed.

I just bought the NG tank cannon... so I'm going to go see if I can make 400,000 + without a ground hit right now...

Awesome job. Great game.

[You Only Live Once]

Cheapened...

I got to "live" again on my work computer, and while I was waiting for it to load, I realized something. The "statement" you're trying to make with this is severely cheapened by the fact that there is an ad loaded at the beginning of every attempt to access the game. So basically... you KNEW people would very likely try to restart by closing down the Flash and/or browser and then re-load your game, thus giving you 2 (or more - if they try a few other things to circumvent their "death") hits per person. Which makes me think you did this as much for the ad exposures as you did for the statement. That may not be the case, but I can't help wondering and questioning that about you/your game. Hell... the fact that you even included an ad at all makes this less about the principle of the thing... even if only slightly less.

raitendo responds:

yes, how cheap of me trying to make a living out of what I do for a living. Kurosawa, Bergman, Hitchcock et al were pretty cheap too, because I hear they got paid for their work.

besides, what better way to get many ad views than make game without any replay value at all?

[Lastman]

Are a lot of people...

... just not reading the instructions? i didn't fall in the first pit once... and why? BECAUSE I READ IN THE INSTRUCTIONS THAT HOLDING THE "A" BUTTON INCREASES YOUR SPEED. As long as you're holding down that "A" button as you run and jump there is almost no way to NOT make the first jump. Durrrr.....