Score: 4

"Not bad"

submission: Rocket Launcher

date: December 1, 2009

Fairly simple concept and amusing to play. It could do with some sound and maybe some more variety in the obstacles/targets but it's otherwise a fairly amusing little game.

Score: 6

"Not bad"

submission: Agent Jones adv. 1

date: July 12, 2008

Was pretty fun actually, my main gripe being the grammar, it really needs someone to go back and proof read some of it. I'm not sure if English is your first language or not, but some of the speech was hard to understand.

Otherwise it was an amusing game!

Score: 0

"Meez?"

submission: Dance Floor Destroyer

date: April 17, 2008

I'm afraid I can't give a rating for this game as I haven't played it; there should be a way to play without having to go through the Meez sign-up process! If it means playing with a generic DJ then fine, but as I have no interest in creating a Meez avatar, I also have no interest in playing a game that requires me to.

I will not rate this entry as it would be unfair of me to do so having not actually played it.

Score: 4

"Okay"

submission: The Atlas Station

date: April 12, 2008

Again the excellent photographs seem under-utilised; there are no real puzzles. It was still amusing.

Also, as I said on my review of the Roslin station, you should really have stayed away from making references to what are still currently just theories regarding the Lost show, Abrams and Lindelof have said that the smoke monster is not made of nanites.
Maybe they'll turn out to be lying, but your game(s) would stand better if you just focused on a character who has is trying to escape Dharma or the Others. Leave answers regarding the show up to the show, and just try to create a little world of your own within the Lost setting to tell your story.

My recommendation therefore is to focus on your own story within Lost, and to make a more involved game out of it. Try to add some puzzles and more stuff involving the scenes; even if puzzles amount to finding items and bringing them to relevant objects, it's something to do!

Score: 7

"Hmmm"

submission: Pico And The Butchery-p1

date: May 2, 2007

A lot of what I think has been said already, especially about the odd look of some characters, but then I know a bit of what it's like doing that in clay so I sympathise =)
Now, you've obviously put a lot of work into these and I admire that, but there are a few things which need to be worked on:

Camera effects! I'm thinking you've gone a bit over-the-top on some of these, most of the time seemed to be taken up with lots of 'crash zooming' (I think that's the right term) shots which on the whole made it very hard to watch because 99.9% of the time I couldn't really see anything, a lot of the rest of the time was spent focusing on Pico's funny-looking mouth. I'd personally go for some slow panning shots of some of the places, so you can see the detail for yourselves from the character's perspective, maybe slowly looking over an item then quickly moving to another, making sure the pauses to view things is slow enough that the viewer can see what's going on, mimicing the movement of the character's eyes.
As it is I had to kick style points down for this as it was, as I say, hard to watch at many of the best parts.

Horror is most easily conveyed by letting us see what the character is horrified ABOUT, a lot of camera tricks just detract from that. The other main trick then is what you DON'T show, e.g you know something is going to happen, then cut to AFTER it's happened, maybe with some evidence of the act. For example someone being pushed into a wood-chipper. Yes it might be fun to show what happened to them, or seem more horrifying. But what works better is showing them being pushed (with the outcome obvious) then cutting to a shot of the horrified onlooker being sprayed with blood along with some good sound-effect. The viewer imagines for themselves what happened, SHOWING them it would spoil it as it takes away the imagination, which is what gives real horror.
These are two methods that the Saw (which you very appropriately chose) used to clever effect (Later films I was unsure of, IMO they showed too much). For example in the first film (if you've not seen it don't read on!) you see the doctor starting to cut off his foot, and then you see him throwing down the hacksaw and dragging himself across the room, but you NEVER see the foot actually coming off, or even just severed; you don't need to, the horror of knowing what he's done is already there, and you're thinking for yourself how horrible it would be to cut off your own foot, and how determined he must be to have done it.

Sound was mostly good, but I'd be more careful with music choice, some pieces might have appropriate lyrics, but don't sound at all right when used. Usually something without lyrics that is subtle (ie background music) is best, and a lot of the time no music at all is perfect if you can get some decent sounds to add in, like water dripping or something relevant to what's happening.

I seem to have gone on a bit, but I am looking forward to the conclusion (I've watched both parts so far) and hope some of this is of use to you. I still encourage you to experiment; take as many shots as you can, if you can get two cameras set up on each scene for example and take the pics together that is a cool way to get two different shots of one animation to use later, you can then try each one and decide which works best, or use both! Same with the music, I don't know what process you went through but the more music (and more varied music, sometimes something you don't expect might add a surreal effect that works well) you try lends to finding a better fit.

So, a good watch, I liked it, and hope that it delivers more of the same or even better! 4 for rating and a high 7, almost 8 for the review.

Score: 8

"Sweet"

submission: Madness Elimination 3

date: September 13, 2006

You may remember I wrote a lengthy review of the last one. Well, I would like to make it known that I'm impressed by the improvements made!

While I do still feel the environments could be taken advantage of even further, there was a lot of cool stuff to make this one far more interesting, better range of weapons, switch to first-person, and the car chase was well executed. I probably wouldn't have noticed the rocks going the wrong way if Rave4Yourself hadn't mentioned it, but at the same time it somehow seems more stylised, like the camera is sweeping past the nearest rocks (and we can just pretend the far away ones aren't there =)

But yeah, great work on this one, now I'm definitely looking forward to the rest!

Score: 5

"Hrmm"

submission: Madness Elimination 2

date: August 14, 2006

While the graphics and animation were okay, I felt that this was far too lacking in originality to be held up too high. I don't want to discourage, yes it's really well drawn and animated, but it's number #945,487 in a long line of Madness tributes/rip-offs/whatever you call them.

The thing about the original is that it had lots of quite cool/humorous ideas that kept it interesting throughout, while this, like a number of Madness flashes is just:

- Guy enters room
- Guy shoots people in room
- Guy goes to next room
- (optional) something involving zombie resurrection and/or mysterious Jesus-man and/or clown

You should try some new ideas, while sticking to the style. For example, you're going to have airplanes, try using the environment inside an airplane, there are toilet cubicles, luggage compartments, seats etc in them. Or a fight while falling in the air from the plane trying to open a parachute/sabotage the enemy's. Those are just a couple off the top of my tired head.
I guess that's what I'm getting at, the original used some environmental variables such as boxes/crates, doors or lifts to good effect. Think about a cool place to have a fight then think about how your character can use things in that environment. That keeps it much more interesting, along with original/interesting/cool weapons. Guns, guns and more guns is a bit tedious as well, they go bang, the guy gets shot, more of the same really. While something a bit more interesting likes the odd knife, gun butt or grenade keeps it from being repetitive.

I hope you don't think I'm being overly critical, and I hope the review is of some use to you, but while the graphics were nice and well done, it was still fairly average overall, not really enough to make it stand-out from the rest. Good luck with your next one though!

Score: 7

"Hmm"

submission: LL-Back off Busta

date: May 27, 2006

You coulda got a five if only you hadn't been lazy and skipped the music credits. I mean, I'm lazy too, but really, you've used someone else's music, may as well credit them, especially if it's something I want to download but can't because I don't know what it is.

You should be ashamed >:-(

Score: 6

"Pretty good"

submission: DoubleWide - Episode 1

date: May 18, 2006

It was quite good, I'll address each thing in turn I guess:

Graphics: Really great graphics, drawn really well, animation is solid, visual style is pretty cool.
Style: The idea itself has some potential, I'm not sure it's wholly what I'd look for but eh, if it's funny it's not a problem =)
Sound: Voice acting again is good, I'd maybe try to have all voices closer in volume, as the woman was a bit too quiet, but turning up volume to compensate makes the guy too loud. I'm a bit picky on that so I wouldn't worry too much!
Violence: My rating on this is more of a quantity, there wasn't much 'proper' violence, though a fair bit of action. The violence that was in it I definitely can't fault, amused me =)
Humour: Quite amusing, but timing needs to be worked on:

Overall: Good effort, will look out for the next episode. My thought on what to work on though is timing/delivery, it just felt to me like the cartoon was too slow, reducing the pauses and taking less time to focus on some details would be beneficial. Sped up, the jokes wouldn't have seemed so far apart so it would be more entertaining. The humour in here was good, but it only takes a fraction of a second to deliver a simple joke (e.g the pig & cheetos), so no need to draw it out, as it lessens the overall impact.

Good work, and I hope to see more soon! I've rated the previous reviewer (Gyroid) as abusive, it was certainly uneccessary, you don't deserve that so don't let it get to you!

Score: 6

"Meh"

submission: Fiberglass Monkey

date: April 30, 2006

As far as lemon demon songs go, that one was pretty bad. The animation etc. was really good, but the song that made it a music video wasn't very interesting at all, after such awesome songs ebaumsworld and Ultimate Showdown, I'm afraid this one is a let-down =(