blanchon's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Stick Fighter RPG]

Decent, but I fail to understand some of the ideas behind the whole progress the player is meant to go through.

First, the weapon selection menu isn't giving us any information on the weapons whatsoever apart from which one you're picking. No idea what the upgrade does, and you can't try them in your "home" either.

Then, the default weapon is far too effective compared to others you can grab throughout the game. The very first two handed weapon I grabbed was in every point except damage worse. It even had a smaller reach and the damage output wasn't much better for a weapon that eats most of your default stamina bar in two swings. The traveler's default sword simply reaches way too far for not only a one-handed weapon but a starter weapon as well.

Also, the fighting is mediocre at best. The idea is basic in theory but the execution has its up and downs.
Starting with the fact that the AI is far too unpredictable. Sometime it will just cower into a corner and let itself get bullied while others it will just dodge every single one of your attacks and combo you to death ! Some of the controls are also seemingly unresponsive and simply lets you get stunlocked with still some stamina to spare.

Finally, probably the most absurd point in my opinion, is the progression system. Most of the time you barely get anything apart from upgrade material, extra XP or the absolute worse : an arena ... Whenever you finally get a weapon or armor, chances are you're not even gonna use it because you already upgraded your previous equipment, or it doesn't even fit your playstyle/fashion to begin with.

[S.T.A.N.D.]

I played only 3 levels and can already tell how bad it's trying to be a flash version of SUPERHOT but only copies its main mechanic : when you stop, so does time.

The original game is about survival in a context of inferiority with few to no weapon to begin with and limited ammo, but in this, the very first thing you grab is a pistol with unlimited ammo, which is the only weapon you'll ever get if you do not have an account to whatever website the dev wants you to go to.

SUPERHOT is a fast-paced action game when you move and more strategic when stationary, but S.T.A.N.D. is slow when moving and abit slower when standing still. However, the slow-mo is messed up since it doesn't affect rats nor your reload time. As long as you stand still your pistol becomes a machine-gun.

If bullets could collide in Superhot, they were not the size of a forearm and you didn't need to shoot someone / be shot yourself several times to kill them, which is yet another way of making an action-game actionless.

Also, work on your english or have your work spell-checked because the description, tags and ingame sentences makes few to no sense.

[Fleeing the Complex]

Oh boy ! This episode was up to my expectations, way better even ! Apart from Ellie's voice not being too convincing, the fact that you can click on the map when it's under the medal screen and I had at least one medal seemingly not working (bruUHGHNO), all the jokes that are in there are just perfect.

PuffballsUnited responds:

I'm glad it was better than you expected. Also the medal is not broken, you're not completing it.

[NG: Zero Hour Demo]

The project is looking good so far, but I expect harder boss fights in the future, once you know what to do, you can just take litteraly no damage whatsoever.

Also, being able to change direction while dashing is rather wierd, especially when it forces you to go where you're looking when not holding any direction button down.

TwinBlazar responds:

Thank you for your review!

> I expect harder boss fights in the future
We will have harder boss fights in later stages.

> Also, being able to change direction while dashing is rather wierd
The reason for this will be reviewed in the later stages of the game. :)

In case you didn't know, we have just changed the control to keyboard+mouse. Mind give it a whirl and PM me what do you think? :)

[Dawn Of The Sniper 2]

Here's another one of the many "you're a sniper, shoot stuff" kind of game, done wrong.

AND there are even zombies in it, how could this be less original ? Zombies that runs and some bigger guys being bullet sponges ! Oh wait ... You did not do that, did you ? Ow.

All you need to play of this game are the first six levels, nothing progresses from this point whatsoever, no new mechanics, no new enemies, no nothing ! (And I went through 3/4 of the game to say that)
All you get that's new are snipers and their upgrades.

Speaking of which, all the snipers barely have any differences between them apart from the stats. But all of that would actually matter if I was able equip one ... For some reason (and I tried that on two different saves) changing the weapon I currently have equipped is glitched :

Since I can only seem to equip the best weapon I bought, and buying or upgrading a weapon instantly equips it, I'm now stuck with the SG 550 even though I bought and fully upgraded two better weapons ... Hurray !

Onward to happiness then ! Go forth, story-less sniper, as you go through killing zombie-silhouettes with red glowing eyes ... red glowing eyes ? For real ? So not only there's a virus that revives people and turns them into mindless, man-eating carcasses, they also turn into freakin lighthouses !?

Well I can accept that in a way, since it's trying to help us differentiate the zombies from, oh, I don't know GODDAMN EVERYTHING !? From the livings to the now very dead, everything is in the same shade of grey, I was kind of thrilled after seeing the intro, I was expecting some MadWorld-esque graphisms, but all I've seen is grey, red or yellow (apart from a few backgrounds which colors may vary, most of them are red-yellow-ish) ...

So you're a sniper helping silhouette-people fighting silhouette-zombie-lightpoles, how could it get worse ? ADD A FOREGROUND LAYER ! And don't bother make it unpierceable, you never know, someone might get CAUGHT BEHIND A BLOODY WALL !? How comes you never thought of that, seriously !? I had to spray an entire magazine inside a wall to help the survivor behind it...

Which reminds me, apart from picking weapons off the air-dropped supply crates which has to be unlocked by you or more specifically your bullet (do I have to do another sentence to explain how stupid that is ?) ... the survivors have NOTHING to defend themselves, not to mention that most of these weapons sucks, they can barely kill the walking ones ... The one thig I started to like in this game and even that was messed up ... Urgh.

I didn't even mention the Facebook sharing option you can just bypass for some free money ...

Half a star for the effort.

[Rot]

Not too bad of a game, but I've had a few problems with it ...

the game feels horrible, in top down shooters like this one it matters alot, the complete lack of animations apart from particles makes this game feel kinda bland, not to mention the weapon changing -which poses the game- is breaking the little action this game has.

The way melee works is not explained anywhere AND is glitched : there's a cooldown only for hitting the same zombie, if you find yourself stuck between two zombies just tap left and right and they should be dead in no time !

Speaking of glitch, this one is of the unconvenient type, I once started a level between 2 bosses, which got me stuck and instakilled.

Apart from that, money balance is mediocre at best, some weapon upgrades barely changing anything to the weapon and some useful one increased by a ridiculous amount !

So yeah, even if I apreciate the ZQSD option, there is still ALOT lacking to make this a good game, unfortunately.

Squize responds:

That's a really awesome well written review mate, I don't agree with all of it but there are some excellent points in there, thank you.

[The Gun Game: Redux]

This game is not half bad but clearly there's room for improvement.

First, the challenges' difficulty.
Speed : the difficulty is so inconsistent, weapons such as the m4, the ak, shotguns etc has some really easy ones while the scar, the five-seven and especially the shipka are way too hard in comparison.

Skill : I had no real trouble with any of them but the G36, everything was easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Accuracy : Now this is where the nonesense comes in : Do you seriously expect me to get those 20 5x7 bullets spot without ammo capacity boost ? Not to mention the spread and the seemingly random time periods during which targets stays on ... Well I did it but I still unlocked the Five Seven Kevin thing in the meantime, which reminds me ...

The achievements in this game are just there to add some virtual game content, the things you unlocks most of the time is les recoil or faster reload for the gun you just shot a bazillion bullets with, considering how many bullets the game wants you to shoot, you can easily do the challenges and complete one of the campaign most of the time ... In 2 hours ingame I unlocked every achievement exept for (obviously) the 3 hours game time and the 1 hour in the range... Why should I spend an hour in this nonesense !? All it's good for is holding/mashing the Z button to spray them walls or targets for the achievement you can unlock by playing the campaign or whatever challenge the game throws at you.

Speaking of the campain, both efficiency and target defense are easy and fun, they can be done with pretty much any weapon. The gunfight however is clearly too slow and repetitive. just spray the opponent with the recoil and stay below him, go for the top once you have to reload or you reach the bottom, repeat, profit. BUT IT TAKES FOREVER ! these guys clearly are bullet sponges, 200 bullets while I only have 5HP is a goddamn virtual difficulty if I've ever seen one, you're more likely to mess up out of boredom more than anything else.

[Kick The Critter]

Another tossing game and a good one at it ! With it's own original mecanics and the "classics" (like Burrito Bison's "smash" when you go out of scren). I love the way you break the monotony of tossing games with fun and short minigames (even though the pause button gets in the way)

I managed to ... "break" the score counter in "the floor is lava" game; my computer being so bad (I can't even play Hearthstone ...!) this game is so slow on high quality I managed to score 1004100 points ! (yes, I have no life ...) and the last "0" in the score was not showing up ! (I expected the score to go over the actual frame it was in ... but your work is of quality, I respect that)

Also, my computer "slowliness" allows me to have quite the graphic glitch : some batties are green (I guess that's normal) but they have random objects popping on them sometime for a split second (mohawks, helmets, they sometimes turn purple as well,...), but hey, that doesn't prevent me from enjoying the PHOQUE out of it !

BerzerkStudio responds:

Haha! Thanks for the feedback man ! Really appreciated :)

[The Blind Swordsman]

Here, I (finally) had the opportunity to play with (decent) headphones, this game is (by far) the most original game I've ever played in a LONG time, I would even class this game as a rythm game more than as an "action" game ...
the real challenging part for me was the before-last battle, that hit and parry and hit ... doing that was not a real problem (reflexes from Soul Calibur 3 "Gard Impacts were still there) but the fact that I had to turn around at the right angle at the same time was really a pain in the ass, I don't even know if that's how you're supposed to beat him !
I don't consider the last boss as challenging but more as IMPOSSIBLE TO BEAT.
the teleporting and crow things are no big deal, but those fireballs ... it's allways the SAME volume, either he shots from afar or from a close distance, so you can't really tell when to parry, I once didn't even had the time to face him, while the others were slow as snails ...

So ... Yeah, that boss is really a pain in the ass, but the whole game is plain perfect ! tenoutaten ! It seriously helped me for CS and such games ...!

And for the peoples that are complaining, I beat the first enemy of the game with shitty ass speakers with an half-working stereophonic system, piece of cake ! :P

I..I.

[Sierra 7]

It is one of the (if not THE) best rail shooter of Newgrounds, need I say more ?

Graphics are decent, a very simple grey pre-rendered 3D environment with stick dudes ; above average animation quality (who am I kidding, they're GORGEOUSLY FLUID ! ) and sound work was really good, both gun-sounds and voice-acting.

Then to the gameplay itself, this game offers a good mecanic, making heavy guns slowly following the cursor is a good way of balancing weapons. And I enjoyed the fact that you placed random ennemy spawns in this game, it helps replay value a lot.

I also really like when the game forces you to think of what to do (even if the radio guy is most of the time telling you what to do, even if it's pretty obvious, the LMG scene for instance). But I believe you should have added a bit more randomness in the order in wich you kill soldiers during the sniping mission but meh ... Alright then !)

Conclusion : a rock-solid "tenouttaten" for this game, if it had more content, was on another engine and used bigger productions' graphics, I'd consider buying it, even if it's a rail-shooter, a genre I use to hate especially due to Time Crisis and the none sense of 15 terrorists hiding behind a couch and civilians running in front of you and ... I'm not talking about the game anymore now, am I ?
Anyway, it has potential, just a bit too short because of the file size limit and I understand that.