Rayamondo's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[sk4te]

There's a future for this guy.

I personally don't think this is any more than an interactive movie but unfortunately I don't think this will receive much in the way of a good score anyway.

I think the animation was pretty good. A nice array of colours was used and everything was clearly labelled (no matter how simple it was). The good points are completely outweighed by the bad ones though. I won't go too much into it as it's only a small submission. Here's some tips for you in the future.

O Test your flash! I happened to notice that the buttons didn't function correctly.
O If you make another interactive movie, make a lot more choices, or even possibly decisions to a plot.
O Try to put as much effort in as you can so that you know you've done your best.

Too be honest, there's nothing to really be ashamed of for this short movie, but it's not necessarily the best you may have to offer as a flash artist. I think it speaks for itself at the end of the day so that's why I have attempted to compliment you as opposed to insult you with criticisms. All in all it's not a badly executed flash for your level of animation, the movement is actually very good. Keep flashing!

Rayamondo

By the way, I'd just like to say something about the reviews. You guys that have reviewed it fairly and give this guy some good points and advice, good on you. Sadly, there are always appalling, pointless and desperately short reviews. Bow I'm not pointing fingers COUGH(dogstoenails)COUGH butI'd like to say the following things to him:

1. I don't see you contributing anything to the Newgrounds community (even if I haven't, I should hope through my usefully marked reviews that I encourage and make artists feel good about themselves).
2. You say you wanted to know what the purpose of the game is? Well he's a maturing artist and seeks opinion on his work, but may I add, what was the purpose of your review exactly?
3. If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all.

lillewilli responds:

Thanks ^^

I have done all your tips on this movie, but I'm so lazy, so i let it go :P

[Jelly Towers]

Nice style, but one major flaw

I'd like to start off by saying the graphics look really good. I like the simple and soft look to the game that makes it look really fun and innocent. The lack of outlines around most of the graphics also give the animations a smooth, consistent look which works really well in my opinion. I have no quarrel with the graphical detail or quality with this game, it is the game play itself that has hindered its success as a whole.

First off, a few people have pointed out that the jelly blocks are difficult to maneuver. Maybe this is intentional with them being a wobbly substance but they are extremely difficult too move, position (vertically and horizontally), and stack. I appreciate that it takes a good mind to create such physics for any game and I'm sure no-one would question you're talent as an author but the game felt like more of a challenge through inability to move the blocks as apposed to the puzzle itself. A few suggestions for a better ease of use could be:

O Having some form of a rotate command, key press or button.
O Toning the physics down so slight knocks don't have as big a knock on effect.
O Having different substances to improve stacking ability.

These are just a few suggestions that in my opinion could be used in future development for a similar game. I feel that if the features were amended then the game would be more popular due to better game play and happier players.

All in all I've given a 7 because the graphics were well suited for this type of game. The points were lost for me through the overly excitable jelly blocks, but nevertheless it really wasn't that bad of a game by any means. Keep up the good work bud.

I hope I've left you with something to reflect on, no offence meant.

Rayamondo

[Effect Compilation]

An excellent and great hands-on experience

I really like this piece of flash for it's creativity and pure resourcefulness. I have the utmost respect for you to contributing not only a brilliant flash experience but offering the audience the ability to recreate the effects you've shown here. As a student in computer science I have to study programming and there is nothing like trying to comprehend the logistics of code. I feel that you have offered many amateur developers the opportunity to get there teeth into action script and further there knowledge of how programming languages work.

The graphics were excellent in this movie. I liked the general layout of everything as well as the external links to alternative views of them. I really liked the way you offered each individual flash file also to be chopped and modified, to give people a hands on experience into how it exactly works.

I hope you realise that it's guys like you that inspire people to take this kind of development up and you couldn't have done a better job with this compilation of tutorials.

I'd like to say well done and what a brilliant idea you had for this game/tutorial.

Rayamondo

mayoarm11 responds:

thank you very much. I am glad you enjoyed it!

[Nice Day]

Nice idea (a proper review if you wanted one)

The idea of trying to give a Madness character a good day was different and a very good concept I thought. The decision making made this more of an interactive movie as apposed to a game and I thought maybe there was a few things you could have improved on to enhance it's rating.

The graphics matched Madness pretty well. The characters were well copied but i felt the backdrop and scene detail was lacking a bit. It would've been much better if you'd attempted to put a fair amount of detail into the already "cartoony" scene's like in the original Madness series.

The music and sound effects I couldn't fault at all. A nice and tranquil music to start with added some humour to it as we all know fully well what's going to happen somewhere down the line. I liked the transition from soft to hard music when ambushed by various Madness villains, which also added a fair amount of humour. The sound effects worked well with all of the scenes also.

The humour of it all was fairly good, e.g. at the pool I found quite amusing, but as well as this I thought that there was a lot of random but not so funny scenes.

The decision making concept was a good idea, unfortunately I found that not only were the scenes and overall game short but they lacked in creativity in places. Some of the scenes just didn't really make sense in a humorous aspect as well as a decision making one. You may not have been aiming for it to make sense but if you wanted to make this game better I suggest the following things:

o A lot more scenes and decisions to be made, making the game longer and more interesting.
o Make the scenes more applicable to the decision made prior. Try to be more creative with the whereabouts of the scene as apposed to it not making sense whatsoever.
o The decisions would have benefited from being bigger and more interesting. Rather than just having "pool, lake or park" make them longer and less random so it offers the player a sense of purpose for playing the game.
o An important one, actually have some sort of good ending. From what I could see there was no "good ending". This is all fine and well but people that take there time to play it need to feel some sense of achievement as apposed to just restarting from random deaths.

Overall I think it's a good effort. They graphics were sport on for the Madness characters but more work could have been put into the background. The music and sound effects were spot on. I would greatly suggest taking into account what I said above to make games in the future more fun and also give the player the chance to achieve a good ending.

I hope I've left you with something to reflect on, no offence meant.

Rayamondo

[Machete Chamber]

Almost like multi tasking, but I'm a guy

Full of black humour this game certainly didn't lack in it's ability to give people a sly giggle or two. The graphical side too it was very good including the main menu screen with the image of the camera man and the janitor, that was good, detailed drawing.

I can't fault the music which very much suited the mood of "That guy must be taking something to be playing on this show". As well as the above good points, the instructions were good, labelled in steps and were kept short and sweet as not to waste time.

(The following part may very well depend on the type of person you are.)

Unfortunately, I felt the game play was too frantic too soon because it wasn't so much challenging as it was aggravating. This is because of:

O The knives fell too fast, in massive quantities, from the very start.
O The knives also came in from all angles from the start.
O It was very difficult to maneuver the man into gaps quickly.

Judging from all these things, and as a personal opinion, I think that there should be a smaller build up to the intensity of falling knives. I just feel that maybe too many people marked the game down because of the difficulty from the very beginning of the game and quite possibly the confusion it caused having to look at two places at the same time. If not a smaller build up, possibly some form of protection whereby it deteriorates throughout the game, making it more and more difficult as the game progresses.

In conclusion, I feel that the game didn't lack at all with the visual or sound aspects more in the difficulty of the game play itself. What is a very good concept could have been better with a slower build up of difficulty, Well done nonetheless.

[Tipping Point]

Brilliant point 'n' click

firstly, I liked the way that you loaded up the different chapters as and when they were needed. I thought it was a really good idea to load small segments as apposed to one big load up at the beginning.

The game itself was spot on. I liked the graphics, the way real images were adapted and edited to move was very clever. The whole concept for the game is very good too (I won't spoil it for anyone who's not played yet) and I felt that although sometimes the challenges were confusing, that they made perfect sense once completed. The challenges were all aided with subtle clues, which is what kept the puzzles challenging yet plausible.

When the game became a little too challenging, there was the walk through. Even this was brilliantly laid out as not to give away too much of the plot, giving help with certain objects and puzzles.

All in all it was a smashing game, took a good 40 minutes for me to complete and was well worth playing. Even without extra chapters, or some form of sequel, your style is great and I'm sure if you release another point 'n' click game, it will be a great one. Thankyou.

[Dark Cut²]

Well Accomplished game

First of all i'd like to say taht i palyed Dark Cut 1 and that in itself made me feel a little a little shocked at the interactivity and realism of the "surgery". I thought the first game was brilliant and highly original without ever seeing another game like it, until now.

This game really raised the bar, i loved the realism of the limbs and heads and the injuries to them. The graphical detail is just intense and makes this game that lot more gourier. The whiskey to numb the aptients pain was also an excellent and very realistic idea. All of the tools used throughout the surgeries looked brilliant and i like how each was used atleast once.

The realism was taken a step further with the historically correct wartime scenario, this made it seem even more gruseome and dingey, especially with the dark lighting and battle sound effects.

The thing that really did it for me though, was the massive twist (which i won't ruin for everyone else out there =]) but it was actually really shocking and unexpected, realistically planned out, i was panicking doing it, you really pulled that off amazingly well.

Although there were some bugs listed, i didnt come across any so i have no complaints whatsoever, i really enjoyed this game, 10/10.

by the way, was the music specifically designed for this game in mind? i noticed they're all by the same artist, its good stuff.

[Hangman Extreme!]

Creative but Too difficult

First of all i liked the way that the deaths werent repetitive in anyway and they all made me laugh in a sick kind of way, but it was much too difficult to give it a better score. I know its supposed to be extreme but maybe the timer could be a little bit slower so that itd give more of a chance of actually winning. However, if your plan was to make it difficult so that people wtinessed the brutal deaths of the stick man, then job well done, im gonna give it 5 because i liked the creativity of it.

[Finishing the NG Layout!]

Very very short!

Too be honest, it was hardly the most inventive piece of flash really, i dont know how it got 5th place it needed too be a lot lot longer. The fact that the gameplay (if thats what you can call it!) was so easy and so short really made this almost a pointless entry.

The flash was nice looking though and it the ending movie was quite funny. I just think that this couldve been a lot more than a 1 minute attempt at a flash game. Maybe you could have added difficulty levels or choice of song, or been really creative and come up with a totally new concept. I was expecting a lot more from this, the flash was good, but the gameplay was bad.

JohnMazz responds:

Thanks for the review.
"The flash was nice looking though and it the ending movie was quite funny"
I tried to make it clear, but this was the point! it wasn't meant to be a game, the "game" part of it was the set up of the joke, poking fun at the RO contest and the underconstruction page. The ending was the punchline. The fact that you found it funny means I did a good job. Anyway, glad you liked it, even though you didnt know why. =)

[V-tech Rampage]

Hmmmm...

I myself am not american but i still saw and heard the news headlines of the shootings and it made me sympathetic to all the innocent students and there families. It really made me think about how you cannot trust anybody these days and just how selfish some people can be.

Firstly, I think the reviews commenting on how the game only stands out because of its title are true. The gameplay was a bit simple aswell as the graphics and so it couldnt have been a popular game because of these aspects.

I think that the authour has just jumped on the wagon to try and stand out. Its almost as if he just put this together before anyone could submit anything else to do with the shootings and as intellectual as the author sounds with his replies i think a lot of people would agree. It is also not a very original idea and anyone could have put sometihng like this together.

It may be historically accurate, im not sure how many people died exactly or how they did but i still think certain lines have been crossed, such as respect. I think it was released WAY too soon, (IF it should have even been released at all) and rather than argue it out, you should accept that people will find it offensive and will retaliate nastily.

As an author its okey to use historical events within flash movies and games but sometimes theres lack of common decency and sense to realise when you might have taken it a bit too far, and in my and many other peoples opinions, this has.

PiGPEN responds:

I havent retaliated in more than jest.
I understand peoples objections...and dont care.