Fooliolo's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Cave of Wonders]

Great game

I honestly expected more than one big boss fight and an obstacle course when I saw your game's title. What a let-down.

Rather than giving you the praise that many others have given you, I would like to use this space for criticisms instead.

Double-jump spinning attacks are more a nuisance than something cool. I suppose it's part of the strategy of the game to not resort to such a thing, but I've often found myself wanting to use regular attacks against Luis instead of just spinning around. Spinning attacks also open up a lot of ways to abuse busting through rock walls, and on occasions, I've managed to bypass them completely, especially when I destroy the second block up instead of the ground block, I could just walk through like the rocks weren't there.

During the 3rd stage, while I was trying to pile up the block, I kept on getting hit by the missile because I was standing in the center. This was only from my first time playing, but that got extremely annoying not knowing that the missile always spawned there instead of from Luis. Also, why don't the blocks Luis drops crush you? I don't know if you intended them to be harmless, but that's just misleading and wrong.

But I would like to end this review with a positive note. This game does not reward furious button smashing! Instead, it takes a rhythmic pressing of the attack button to maximize damage output (I've managed to defeat stage 2 before Luis could attack using the Gold Sword). I like that, fairly nice and casual.

Keep up with the good work.

[Canabalt]

Jump!

And that was that. All the artistry and stuff begs for a richer game than some guy jumping across rooftops at breakneck speed, dodging bombs, stumbling over boxes, and breaking into office windows. I'd say the challenge is there, but there's not much else to see in this game after 5 minutes (correct me if I'm wrong, I did only 3000 meters).

One big criticism is the lack of an obvious access to the pause menu, which displays the sound controls that some people may want to see. I mean, you should probably include a button for that somewhere instead of hoping for the person to click outside of the game.

[Megaman X RPG: Chapter 1]

Superior quality!

Okay... the closet ghost didn't really make much sense, including how you get the Odd Key. But then again I suppose the same goes with all the other loot you take out of that place. That particular battle reminded me of Final Fantasy; one skill/strategy will save the day! And the rest of you people saying it's fking hard, it's not fking hard >_> I beat it on my first try at lvl 16.

Anyways, on to the actual review xD

The introductory stuff is fairly well done except for the fact that everyone starts out with a lot of stuff and you don't know wtf the numbers and stuff are doing. And this is especially unhelpful if you decided to shut down the UHF beacon without getting a tutorial, since Dynamo is no longer a jog in the park; he's become an actual challenge. Challenges are a no-no if you aren't told what's going on in a battle. Then after the cut scene, I wandered through the base, get acquainted with the whole RPG system, and then I'm told that's the end of chapter 1?

I have no idea if the incredibly short main storyline is due to hammering out the game engine or if it's due to the file size, but I was incredibly disheartened that the game was composed of 70% optional material that had little to no enrichment to the game's environment (which I know little of, since I don't play MMX). I would suggest having a fair amount of content available the next time around so this game, which is full of pretentiousness, won't be thrown away within a few hours.

But speaking of optional content, I like how exploration rewards the player with all sorts of things, including regaining Axl at the very least, to the "Intentional Failure" achievement, to gaining potentially powerful skills from the 22 possible battle chips. Hmm, where to start...

Stealing: this is a bit of complicated business. Eventually though, you'll come across stuff that sells for an absurd amount, especially Gizmondos, which sell for 6333 each. I can understand riches coming from bosses (items worth 6333), but from common enemies? I bought out all the high tech stuff from the armory and even went into a 2 hour session finding out all the possible battlechips and abilities. In short, while stealing should have its own unique rewards, it shouldn't lead to bank-breaking money making.

Battlechips: the sxp flows a bit too slowly for my liking, especially when there's a lot of useful skills out there. By the time I beat "??? A", I've accumulated less than 2000 sxp. I have no idea how long you plan on carrying this game, but it's going to take forever to cover a third of all the abilities. Since it's possible to use a save file and up to 500 sxp to find out all of the abilities, I think you should forget making the skills a mystery and just tell us what they do before we stupidly invest in a skill. Oh, and for all you synthesizers out there, the max chips you'll need to get any chip is 3 =P

Achievements: some of them are redundant, such as the "Dy-no-might!" and "Into the Frying Pan..." ones. They're both essentially the same milestone.

Training courses: It would be nice to be able to fight Dynamo again, and maybe you should make it random encounters instead of having a set number of encounters. Oh, and the Swordsman should not have Melee and/or Buster resists, since in addition to the status debuffs, the new player would most likely be ill-equipped to handle him.

Other things of mentioning:
--Controls sometimes become unresponsive. It's not the "moonwalk" thing though.
--Sometimes when a character gets stunned, he cannot be cured of it, no matter how many mobility repair kits you throw at him.
--Armory sometimes thinks I'm wearing items I do not have, such as "A Brown Coat."
--They're =/= their. Fix those o.O
--Guy outside the command center thingy traps you in an endless chat cycle most of the time. Really annoying.
--What's the "Eyepod" for? It never shows up in my inventory too.
--Gear and battlechips get "lost" on Zero due to the training data copy thingy.

Overall, a very nice game ChamberACR, I hope to see more in the future =)

ChamberACR responds:

Thank you for the feedback. I'll try and correct most of these oversights before the next installment.

One thing, though, which I have to comment about. The Achivements "Dynomight" and "Into the Frying Pan" are different for one reason: beating Dynamo is optional. You can lose that fight. If you win, then yay - achievement. If you lose, then no biggie. The story continues (with a slight twist).

But again, thank you for the feedback. I'll fix these hopefully before the next installment.

[Tetris: Charity Edition!]

Meh, it was mediocre

The joke was awesome and all that, but I seriously sniped for lvl 3 and got 8 lines in a row when I had 14 lines, and yet it stopped at 19. You couldn't be more subtle?

Anywho, it got very boring getting to lvl 2 alone, let alone lvl 3. And whatever happened to "no music"?

And the laughing skull was "meh" as well.

[Portal Defenders]

Excellent game!

I'm sure y'all know how great the game is and stuff already xD So I'ma dedicate this space to all the stuff I found interesting and/or detracting.

First off is the peculiar coding. Sometimes the actionscripters' projectiles will expire when they just fired at you while you're eating guts. Also what doesn't quite make sense is that when you're cleaning the floor, the guts don't go away (but hey, bonus for the players xD). What's more is that it seems rather easy to mash the attack button when you're below the enemy and score a few hits, but is rather difficult to do when approaching in any other position, with a few exceptions.

Next, AI. I like how the regular enemies intentionally try to approach you from behind some times so it's hard to get the upper hand against them. I find that the hit-and-run tactic works quite well against those maneuvers when you're playing a speedy character, especially April. But another one of the AI's obnoxious tricks is that they will prefer to use projectiles against you when you're at an appropriate distance from them. If you're really unfortunate, you can get comboed to death from the AI spamming projectiles (and Wadolf's l4z0r), which I think detracts from gameplay. This is especially true when Psycho Goldfish decides to "glitch" and decide to hug a wall instead of going up/down the room. Pretty much guaranteed death if you happen to get caught in his attacks when he "glitches". Using the AI's predictability though, I did discover a rather cheap technique when you're encountering two regular enemies, one at close distance and the other at roughly the screen's edge. Smack the close enemy around, in the meanwhile the other enemy will use a projectile attack (I found that the Moderators don't like to use their projectiles for some reason) at which point you run away, letting the first enemy get hit instead of flying over the projectile. Quick way to kill off enemies. Actually using any enemy attack against other enemies tend to be extra rewarding. Nice touch.

Whether you intended some of those "flaws" or not described above, I'm not sure. But it's all for the fun of the game.

The Clean up minigame I think is flawed. It's possible to get 100% (90%+ = 9 bombs!), but not in the way expected. I should say that this game is the equivalent of touching 90 invisible points on the field, dispersed evenly, before time runs out. In other words, sometimes you can sweep across the floor and not get any % at all. That's wrong, and I think it should be addressed to match more realistic expectations.

Fighting mechanics of the game is pretty simple, and I like it, though I'm normally not a fan of fighting games xD I appreciate how you deliberately made it so that you stand little chance of wailing on many of the bosses without getting some retaliation, say immediately after your first hit. Otherwise, there's no fun in the game if you could combo enemies to death nonstop. On a different note however, this made killing the Zombies a real pain in the ass, and in my first dozen games I avoided them entirely until Wadolf was dead. That is, until I discovered the secret. Zombies can be killed guaranteed (unless Wadolf interferes) if you hit them from as far away as possible, since your weapon has longer range than their fists/bites. Actually you could do this too for the Ambiguous Duo, making it ridiculously easy to take out the slow guy (Johnny Utah?).

Other stuff worth mentioning:
--Zombies eat guts! If you're saving them for the final wave, better eat the guts in the middle of the floor and ration the ones at the edge of the playing field.
--Bombs can be ridiculously powerful. At least three of them is usually enough to take out any of the bosses, excluding Wadolf.
--On a related note, Dan Paladin gets an unusual amount of bombs for some reason.
--Is it even feasible to get a time bonus on Wave 4?

Eventually if you know enough tricks, you can win the game with any character, all the time. Unless you get unlucky.

[Evolution Squared]

Not bad.

I liked how this game is sorta revolving around the life cycles of some square monster thingy. The music and the journey together make for a good experience, as they both go together well. The rest of it is sorta bleh though, and quite average otherwise. And then there's the rewards system that makes it obligatory to try everything there is to try in the game. But at least you've made it so that mashing the spacebar in manual bite doesn't always get you food; it has to be deliberate.

Basically the only things I will remember this game for are the life cycle deal and the three music pieces. The rest could stand to use significant improvement.

--=Rewards (left side)=--

--Blood Mode: Finish with manual bite? Everytime you chomp food, blood comes out. This is a bit distracting in the water stages.
--The Professor: Read all the food info. Gives you useless facts!
--Cursor Mode: Finish the game three times. Lets you use the mouse instead of the keyboard to play.
--Evolution Viewer: Die three times. Lets you see the evolution stages as they happen.
--Enemy Laboratory: Finish with fewest enemy spawns. It's basically the laboratory for enemies.
--Tiny Mode: Finish with maximum food spawns. While you are harder to hit, it's also a lot harder to eat food.
--Distraction Mode: Finish the game once? You'll be distracted while playing the game! Stupid speed and maybe shifting size distractions are what will kill you. +3000 points for finishing.
--Stats Viewer: Get enough rewards. Lets you see your stats.
--Inverted U/D Mode: Finish with maximum enemy spawns. Up and down controls are now inverted. +5000 points for finishing.
--Gentlemen Mode: Finish with fewest food spawns. Food will be dressed up with top hat, mustache, and monocle.
--Inverted R/L Mode: Finish with over 15,000 points. Right and left controls are now inverted. +5000 points for finishing.
--UR#1: Finish the game with maximum enemy spawns, minimum food spawns, manual bite, distraction mode, inverted U/D mode, and inverted R/L mode. This one's a secret =P

--=Yellow Food Text=--

YELLOW FOOD
IF YOU CAN ACTUALLY READ THIS THEN THAT IS CUITE FREAKY
LOL
EATENx#
EATENx#
EATENx#
EATENx#
EATENx#

[Closure]

Creepy

Did you get some inspiration from the spotlight stage runs from Super Mario Galaxy? =P

I thoroughly enjoyed the puzzles you've designed, and some of them really had me going trying to figure out how to reach the door. For the most part the ending sequences seem to be a bit more like trial and error than actual thinking. Also, some of the messages written on the walls were too hard to read without a second light, particularly the one in the level where you have to light the walkway up top to the door with all five lights. And the end is a bit disturbing.

I also liked the subtle touches on the character that suggested it might have been a female.

[Jasmine & Jacks Adventure]

Great!

I liked how you could play through the game again and again to get different stories for w/e happens to the girl and the dog in the park. Amusing xD

I did not like how the border obstructed the pictures, so sometimes when I think I've spotted a difference, it really wasn't. A good example of this is the wide right pupil of the girl when the frisbee hits the bee hive.

Also, something I noticed in this game that wasn't exhibited in the last game (although it's possible it was in the last game as well) was that sometimes there was more than 5 differences. In one picture, I've found 7! The difference counter went down to -2, and I milked 10 extra points. I have no idea if this was intentional or not, but it certainly doesn't make sense to have -2 differences in the very least.

Keep up the good work.

DifferenceGames responds:

Hey Fooliolo,

Thanks for another good review! There are 8 (or even 10) difference shown on most scenes. However, you shouldn't be able to get -2... was the game stuck? Or did you just quickly click on everything before the scenes advanced?

I'm starting to come around on the border graphics. There was actually a bit of debate about them (I liked it) and what you see now is actually considerably toned down from an earlier border. Maybe we will do an update to place the image on top.

[DifferenceGames - Dreams]

Wonderful experience!

This is unlike many of the Spot The Difference games!

I liked how you had the choice of clicking on one screen or the other, and you'll get results based on which screen you clicked. For example, if there was a mole on the left screen but not on the right screen, and you clicked the mole on the left screen, it will disappear. Clicking on the spot where the mole should be on the right screen, and the mole will appear. Pretty cool. It also means that you won't have some marker there saying "difference found" or whatever; it's just one difference less to find, and that's all it is.

I also liked how you incorporated the music and made the pictures into one story of sorts. Better marks for the game.

The hints function is rather unique, although I think it kicks in rather early. Maybe add a scroll timer in the options? I get the feelings of a "teehee" moment for some reason whenever you get those subtle "what was that" changes in the images. All in all, the hints in this game are way better than having some circle telling you where to find a difference, as it acts as a sort of radar/Geiger counter telling you how close you are to finding the difference, and it's also not obstructing the picture.

My chief complaint was that it's a bit easy. This isn't entirely bad though. You have the right idea in making the differences rather objective instead of subjective ("oh, that patch of black is suppose to be blacker"), and I applaud you for making this decision.

I'm definitely going to remember this game, and not just for the artistry too!

DifferenceGames responds:

Hey Fooliolo, Thanks for the wonderful review! This is one of my favorite parts after working on a game so long to read something like this. ;) Thanks for the nice smile this evening!

I love how you noticed the mechanics on the how it matters what side you click. We have some interesting things planned with that in future releases.

The difficulty you mentioned is interesting. I've done several versions of the game but generally we have found that its better to be a little to easy (and keep things flowing) then making it to hard. If you check DifferenceGames.com you can play some harder games. [and they will make their way to NG in the future]

There are actually 6 or 7 differences shown on each scene but you don't have to find them all to advance. Note, if you play the game again you will find that most of the differences have changed. Its really interesting if you are competing for the high score where you get a big bonus based on your speed. You would have to play the game many many times to know where all the potential differences are.

Thanks again for the taking the time to leave us such detailed feedback.

Best wishes!
Adam

[StarBaron - Campaigns]

Original concept

However it seems to be mostly the same things over and over again. Mainly, start off really small, devastate the Empire, then start out with everything, and get bombarded by the computer.

Find ways to make the flash run smoother, as it doesn't work very well if you're having to wait a whole minute for ships to go from a star from one side of the map to the other side.

Additionally, some time during a mission, the computer might send a ship out to the middle of nowhere off of the map, causing the mission to become impossible to complete, because the computer still has a ship out there that you can't possibly ever destroy.