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168 Game Reviews

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I know it's for the premise of the game...

But there is just too much about the type of game it is that makes the storyline feel crappy and wrong. Like the fact that the soldiers you're flinging your soldier-ammunition at aren't even really attacking you... just marching at you?? What the hell sense does that make? And only like-colored soldiers (when standing near two or more other like-colored soldiers) kill each other when hit? What the hell sense does THAT make? I know it was supposed to be funny. It just came off as more of an excuse to make it into a game like this, rather than a reason.

I will say it was well made. Graphics were nice, menus clean, and it had the right amount of polish and shine to it. The power ups were a nice touch, and pretty creative.

Trial and error

That's what the beginning parts of this game are all about. There are no hints or clues as to what you're supposed to do. The only thing you get is to know what NOT to do the next time based on the fact that you failed. How was I supposed to know I was looking for the room key when I could only go between that second zombie and the truck? All I could do was click around until something worked within the 15 seconds you had alotted.

This is more like watching a movie, except that, instead of just getting to watch it all the way through, you get slapped with a big, fat "FAIL" screen and are forced to start watching it over again from the beginning.

You seem to be trying to say...

... that there is no free will. I can somewhat understand why people lean toward that way of thinking, but the basic fact of the matter is that, whether we have "free-will" or not, whether things are pre-destined or not, it's all just different ways of stating the same thing - that is, you can't change what has already happened. You can't. End of story. Sure you can pick up the pieces and try again if something goes wrong... but what you did originally in each instance is done, and can't be retracted. You get one chance to make every decision in your entire life.

Could you have done something differently for a given situation? Most likely, yes... but it's a moot point. You CAN'T have done something different because you did what you did during that time, and that time is gone. That certainly doesn't mean that, the first time through, you weren't making your own decisions, and acting on your own "free-will". You likely were... but you did what you did, and that's over.

I don't believe that free-will is an illusion. You have a choice... it's just that you only get one shot to make it. And saying that there is no free-will is a cop-out for what people who believe that really want to say... which is that they feel they shouldn't be held accountable for their actions because, ultimately, they feel someone else was pulling the strings. And that... is crap. Just own up, for God's sake, and stop being a pussy.

And otherwise, the idea behind it was sound, and clever, and all that. And the execution was good, the mechanics of the game hearty and entertaining. And the ultimate realization at the end (the ever-popular "twist" - if you will), while I didn't agree with the point made, was still brought on with enough poignancy for me to give a nod to you, certainly. Nice job.

raitendo responds:

the argument that determinists just have to "man up" is pretty hilarious, in its naivety.

Did I actually shoot the enemies gun...

... multiple times and:

A. It didn't fly out of his hand and

B. He was still able to use the dumb thing???

That is, at least, what it looked like to me.

And I don't care who you are, or what you are wearing on your head... you don't take multiple BULLETS TO THE FACE without, at the very least, flinching. That's really the major flaw with this game... yeah sure, once the guys die the rag-doll physics kick in... but BEFORE they die they're as stiff as a board and can take all the punishment you dish out without so much as a pause in firing their weapons. It's asinine to tell you the truth.

The sounds in the game also annoyed me. The professionalism with which the rest of the game was made was really down-played by the goofy little voices and the non-stop, cheesy clinking of (I'm assuming) shells on the ground.

Well...

For me, this is a fair game. Well made, graphical content is pretty good, etc. But it is just SO small - screen-size wise. And, having developed some games myself, I understand that the size was probably a necessary design decision to surmount the processing overhead had by the browser and the Flash Player itself to prevent lag. But there is just too much going on sometimes for the size it is displayed at to be conducive to an enjoyable gaming experience. I know I could have lowered my screen resolution... but let's face it, I'm not going to do that for a Flash game.

I also noticed that it is 14.5 MB... which is kinda sad, really, considering that the original Super Mario World on Super Nintendo (which was oodles longer and more involved than this Flash game - and played full-screen with nary an issue) was likely 1 to 1.5 MB... and that is probably a liberal estimate. I know we all tend to treat disk-space like water these days... but doesn't it seem like a step backward when nearly the same type of game (only again - shorter and smaller) needs over 14 MB to be put into production? It's certainly nothing to be proud of.

And in the end... this is another Mario game... of which there are already too many. And enough of them are even more professionally made than this, are longer and more enjoyable.

Lastly... I think it is hilarious every time I see a game trying to put a serious back-story to why Mario is on his next adventure. Talk of all these power crystals, and menacing enemies... and then you start the game and it is the same old colorful, happy crap that Mario games have always been.

Runouw responds:

Newgrounds has an option to change the size of the game in case you didn't know. Also, are you comparing a free fan-game designed by two teenagers on their spare time to a professionally and internationally published video game made by a paid team of developers?

Super Mario World is such a small file size because the levels are tile-based and the music and audio are made similar to how MIDI's work. This game uses WAV files for the Audio, which is higher quality than MIDI's.

Amusing concept...

I found it interesting, and to me, it ended up not being about getting the medals, but rather trying to prove that these weren't as difficult as you try and make them out to be.

For instance, with 'Big O' button, I simply hit the tab key, and when the outline appeared over my button, I held down the space bar. Got to the 10,000 "clicks" within about 5 minutes this way... and didn't even need to wear out my mouse.

For 'The Pianist' I screen-capped each section of text and compiled it all in a Photoshop-type program... then downloaded some OCR software and got a nice chunk of the text without having to type on any but the "print screen" keys. Of course... it still didn't validate, so I had to do a scan between the screen-cap and the document and see if there were still mistakes. And either there were... or you have some sort of detection of the number of actual key-presses in there that would prevent someone from using good ol' control+V only to paste in the "answer".

For the "Shut" one, I am assuming you have some sort of screen at the end of the 14 hours that you have to click some inane button on in order to win the medal, because I let it run in a separate tab all night, but when I checked it in the morning I was just back to the main menu.

I stopped trying after that... because could really care less about the medals... and in the end it isn't worth the effort to try and out-wit this idiotic thing anyway. So... I guess I was even proved the fool by your submission.

Awesome game!

I was disappointed to see that the auto-save self-cleared itself after you win. At least it did for me. When I started back in there was no progress saved. Almost like i had never actually beaten it at all.

Otherwise this game had a great premise. Excellent "tutorial" type first levels and ramping up of difficulty. I never once felt like I didn't have enough knowledge of how the game worked in order to defeat a level. Granted... I was stumped for a few minutes here and there on a couple levels, but you gave just enough hint at the tools necessary to defeat the level that the player's brain could sort it all out in the end.

Nice job on this. Really original, I thought.

Cool game... couple issues...

My guess is you were very busy testing and tweaking the engine and level designs, and so glossed over a couple things. Like how to even get on the score-boards? I didn't see a single way to submit your score. Maybe only after you beat all the levels? And when I accessed the "Leaderboards" and clicked to (presumably) view scores for one of the levels, things started to go a bit haywire with the ad displaying behind everything, and it continued to stay there even when I went back to the main menu... and even when I started the game, etc. Excellent concept... and mostly excellent execution.

A few issues to work out...

I had a problem with more than one gun being in "manual" mode, and therefore controlled by the mouse. I was trying to control one of the initial cannons and the EMP shell cannon at the same time. The regular cannon shot ust fine, in the direction I had the mouse, and its usual shell. However, the EMP was firing THE SAME round as the regular cannon and at some odd angle that seemed like about half of whatever the first gun was aimed to. As soon as I switched the EMP to "automatic", it began firing what I assume was it's intended round... a white ball. Switch it back to manual with the other cannon still on manual, and it went hay-wire again. Seems like some edge-cases need ironed out within the code.

A bit too easy/simplistic.

All the pieces are rotated the right way from the start. And (though I don't know exactly what elese to do about it) having them snap into position even at close range gives the player a slight advantage that they don't have when working with a real puzzle. It would be better if only pieces that actually went together snapped together when within very close proximity to their relative positioning needed to fit precisely. And then, have it so that you can double-click to move any sets of pieces you've already connected together to try and snap them into place with other sets or pieces you've already constructed. As it was, i completed one of the puzzles on normal in just over 60 seconds.

So now you see that evil will always triumph, because good... is dumb.

Age 46, Male

Web programmer

UT

Toledo, OH

Joined on 6/22/06

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