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."

[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?

[Free Will - The Game]

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.

[Super Mario 63]

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.

[the compound]

Got stuck...

Pretty cool puzzle elements. I like the turning on the lights in different areas using different power boxes... the pipes that connects through floors and walls but were traceable back to their source valve, etc. But I got stuck when I put one end of a connector cable into the switch-board looking thing and then was forced to utilize the other end (which was stuck to my cursor from that point on). The problem was, I could neither use that other end of the cable, nor put the dang thing back into my inventory... and every other action I could take (like leaving the room) wouldn't work since the cursor was tied up in action. So I just couldn't do anything.

djinn33 responds:

thank you for your response
the cable is rigged to go back to the invitory by leaving the room. did you try this this has worked on all the computers ive tested this on. if it realy dosent work i'll try to fix it as soon as possable but as far as i can tell from hear it works

[Castlevania MD Engine]

Could have been cool.

Although of the 3 enemy types I came in contact with before I gave up, 2 of them had much longer weapons than any that I had, and could kill me in two hits. The difficulty balancing on this would have made it near impossible to have beaten. The first enemy you encounter is able to stop, mid-whip-swing and jump back out of range when you try and strike him. The only strategy is to put yourself directly in his line of fire by jumping in front of him and quickly trying to strike before he gets a hit off. Even then... I didn't once kill him. I hit him 3 times with the gigantic over-head swinging sword and he still didn't die. While I die in two hits of his whip, every time. Granted, it was never finished, but even had it been, no one would have had the patience to play it through.

SoulstealerMex86 responds:

The level up button raises your attack and defense stats (the button its there to debug but the exp points system works), the first guy was only an AI test he wasnt supposed to show up until later in the game thats why he is so damn powerful (you are level 1 at the very begging of course)

The idea was to raise your levels through stages
You should try the other weapons and crashes

[NG Signature creator 1.1]

Signature? What??

What does this do? You're saying you can make a signature out of the News Post form?? Or from whistle-status/level statistics display? Why wouldn't someone just screen-capture those things off the site itself? I'm not sure I entirely understand the point... and you have little to no instruction in the Flash. Your "How to paste image" button does the exact same thing as the "Image uploading" button. And the "Image uploading" button does nothing but display a file-browse box, so I can't be sure that it's doing what it is supposed to do either.

MarioFlashMovies responds:

No, you do it to your BBS.

[Winzows BETA]

Confused...

Your author comments say (excitedely) "I passed judgment! My score isn't too good but I passed." I'd say a score of 3.99 is a bit more than just "passing". How did the score for this get so high?

I can imagine this (rightfully) having a low score. The quality of the drawings and animation was very sub-par. You didn't even make it so that the "Winzows" could be dragged around and out of the way of other content, and it is a BETA... which I am glad to see you didn't continue work on to make it some full-fledged Windows parody/clone. So I can imagine the score for this, when you originally submit it, was pretty low. So what has been going on since submission that gets it to 3.99? I'm really very curious.

Zerobeam responds:

I had no idea people were still viewing submissions this old and rotten, I was just checking around and saw it had a review. While I'm at it, I might as well reply:

As you can see, this was originally submitted on 05/07/2006, which means it's more than 2 years old. I've started using Flash around October 2005 and I had hardly any experience with animation or whatsoever.

Of course, when I look back at this submission, it is terrible. It has very poor AS, almost no effort graphic-wise and the humor is equal to the IQ of a sandwich. I am sure you think the same. I assume that if you knew these facts, you wouldn't even consider reviewing it. My point is that this is rotten, out-of-date and just a sample of a young, undeveloped artist. Therefor, please don't judge me on this (or my other) submissions, I have developed much greater skills and knowledge. Thanks for the review of course, but I thought it was rather useless, since I know all of this.

But what can you do? It's just an old submission which I haven't cared for in a long while. About the score? No idea. I used to vote 5 on it for a few weeks, to increase my score and voting level, but since so many people had already voted 1 or 2, my voting had little-to-no effect on my total scoring. Someone must've liked my submission and voted on it with high voting power, or most voters must've had a different oppinion about it than you had. But let's be honest, do you really care that much?

It is old. Let it rot. :)

[Anaksha: Female Assassin]

Game is okay...

Fantastic graphics, solid feel to the snipering, but it is simply just too basic in my opinion. Another sniper game. That's all.

I also noticed your plea to other web-sites that they not steal the game... basically, you just challenged their basic desire to do so, and asked for it. I searched on Google, and it is all over the place. Of course, as a developer you should have known how to protect yourself from this within the program itself. All you had to do was release a version here that checks the base URL that the file is called from and verify that it contained "newgrounds.com" within the first so-many characters of the URL. All you had to do was make your first scene a tiny bit of actionscript verifying this condition and all it does if it isn't true is stop on some message telling everyone who reads it to go screw themselves. I mean, honestly... duh.

ArifRocks responds:

Did you notice the bit where it said it was OK to host it on other sites once I obtained the corrrect license? I mean, honestly... duh!

[RoboFall]

Where can I get a...

... kite for $100,000,000? It must be the best kite ever. I gotta get me one of them.

In all seriousness, it felt a little stiff, and the premise is kinda lacking. When you get to this project "Moonshine" (which you do know is the name of an illegal home-brewing of alcohol, right?) it is automatically destroyed... in fact, the robot simply picks it up and throws it aside. As if the party responsible for creating the robot has absolutely no way to defend itself against it. Kinda ruins it.

FreelanceFlashGames responds:

Haha I know. The project name was a joke of sorts because it had to have a codename with something pertaining to the moon, and it came to mind.