ElEspectro's Reviews

[Pencilmation #14]

Great as always, I don't agree with the change

Another great Pencilmation, Ross. Kudos again!

However, you say in the description that you're experimenting with shorter animations, and I'm not sure I agree with that trend. The beauty of many of your pieces (especially the earlier ones) is your ability to weave a compelling (albeit silly) story, even if the gags moved at a slow pace. This movie, though funny, is basically just a story centered around 1 gag, instead of a story made up of several. I appreciate your trying to speed up your Pencilmation releases, but don't sacrifice what made the series great to begin with. I don't care if you need to release a story in several installments, just make sure you don't kill 'em completely.

[NG 2009]

Ah, Nostalgia...

You did a mighty good job of picking out 09's great animations and games, and I commend you for making the montage in flash; I'm sure that took a hell of a long time. Bravo!

One small point though: As much as I disagree with LordMyrddraal's dismissal of this piece, his point that none of the animations are labelled, nor is there a credits page DOES carry a load of merit. At the most basic level, the artists deserve to at least be briefly mentioned, but even more, it allows those of us who have not seen every last one to go back and find them, helping to bring new members of the community into the fold and give our favorites exposure to audiences they would not otherwise have had. At the very least, if you could list the animations in your Author Comments section above, that would be friggin' sweet.
Otherwise, this is a great montage put together beautifully.

poprock responds:

I will mos def put it into the comments. Thanks

[Tarboy]

Oh my...

Words can't even describe. Excellent plotline, stylish animation, impeccable voice acting, and well-designed soundtrack. This is definitely one of the best animations on Newgrounds, hands down.

[Mr Gunface]

Doesn't deserve MOST of the crap it's getting

First, a message to the haters that are voting it down just because there are other games like it: Welcome to Newgrounds. Top-down shooters are a staple of the site, and frankly, most of them work exactly the same way. Get over yourselves.

Personally, I thought the face system (having 4 weapons equipped at once) was pretty cool, and the artwork is really suited for the genre.

That said, there WERE issues. First, and foremost, the game is wayyyy too prone to lag. I changed the quality to low, turned off the sounds, and optimized my CPU, but something in the programming is still super power-hungry, maybe the clutter of having too many complicated enemies onscreen at once. And having the gun-toting robots fly all over when they got hit was funny at first, but got really annoying when they would just fly into ME. I got most of my kills in one level by just having enemies slam into me, decreasing the fun of the shooter. And, while I enjoyed the face system, cycling through the weapons on at a time during combat felt cumbersome. Lastly, the lack of a pause feature in a game like this is ridiculous.

My main suggestion is to incorporate an inventory system into a pause screen. That way you can change your entire weapon loadout at once, without simultaneously worrying about dodging enemies. Also, get rid of those spinning enemies (or make the action smaller) and see if you can simplify the code to get rid of the lag, since it's not the graphics alone.

Overall, this is a solid game with some interesting spins, but it needs to be polished to make it more playable. Good work.

[Newgrounds Radio]

Better versions have been done

This is a nifty little streaming radio gadget that has what it needs to have. You put in the randomizer, links to a song's page, even a button to download the song. Functionally, it does what it needs to.

That said, you're not the first one, and likely not the last to make an Audio Portal radio. The best I've come across is from Dissolute Productions (They made Chaos Faction among other games), which has about everything that you have here, plus a lot more playback and informational options. It's much less clunky than yours and you can download it as an external program (viewing your radio even in a popup window required some awkward scrolling to fit it exactly, making an .exe would probably help)

The biggest problem for me was that the one feature that I DON'T see on most radio gadgets, the visualizer, did not work at ALL. I tried changing some of my flash settings around, tried all of those visualizer settings, and loaded 20 different songs, and all I got for my troubles was an empty black box with an FPS monitor in it. My advise is either to fix that (unless its just being temperamental just on my computer for some reason) or take it out and streamline the rest of the playback and informational options.

Otherwise, it's a decent radio, but not the best one out there.

Archawn responds:

The visualizer is the main thing that separates this from EON's radio. I'm mad that it doesn't work correctly.

[Mogo-Mogo]

Decent, but lacks the continuity of the first...

Overall this is a very strong game. Interesting puzzles (albeit a bit simple) and sweet graphics make this game worth playing.

My main complaint, though, actually revolves around your decision to label this as a prequel to "Little Wheel." I loved Little Wheel. Even though the puzzles were easy, I enjoyed exploring that post-apocalyptic world and advancing the story. Each scene was tied to the next in a clear cut way (either by cable car or elevator, for instance). In Mogo-Mogo, however, it appears the story and continuity have been sacrificed completely in favor of a password-based save system and a couple art liberties. Instead of this "level" and "portal" based puzzle system, I would have rather had each level directly tie in with the last. Instead of being in a forest, jumping through a portal, and suddenly being on a whale, I'd have rather walked from the forest to a seashore, jumped into the ocean, and found the whale swimming. I know that the idea is a dream world with different levels, but I think you could have kept the motif while still having scenes flow seamlessly (without "Level 12" screens or passwords; it's a short enough game to finish in 20-30 minutes for an uber-casual gamer) to make it one big adventure, like Little Wheel was. Otherwise, keep this as a standalone game, unrelated to Little Wheel.