Khuskan's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Neverending Light]

An interesting narrative

While the decision to focus on a story may be somewhat of a downfall, it's an inventive jump for flash games and one worthy of merit. The story flows quite well, and leaves many unanswered questions, which is a good grasp of the concepts of horror.

But as I mentioned, downfall.

There isn't really much of a game. Enemies, for the most part, act as incredibly avoidable barriers leaving you to simply find alternate routes. There's no other challenge other than finding your way - not even the classic bottomless pits are hazardous, the gameplay seems to be equal to that of simply navigating a maze with the odd vanishing wall and collecting bonuses.

Also, the direction you're meant to be taken lacks clarity. I must have run around for ten minutes trying to find a 'weapon' with no real guidance of what exactly I was looking for. While the idea that your friend was getting her guts sucked out of her could have potentially added a challenge, it doesn't seem to make any difference in the long run and you can spend as long as you want working out the ambiguities of the tasks at hand.

While the majority of the voice acting was excellent, the voice of Anabel, notably the main vocal character, was incredibly annoying to me. There was a moment of 'Oh she's going to turn out to be the antagonist' in the elevator which never got resolved'. I'm not sure if it's the writing or just how the lines were delivered, there was just something that made her seem so miscast.

The story is the games saving grace, despite the gripes with the actual game itself, it was enough to keep me trying for 15 minutes to work out exactly what I was supposed to do when finding a weapon seemed like it should be worth it, and it was.

[The Wheel of Misfortune]

What an awesome game.

And I'm totally unbiased.

Those having problems with the tomato levels, make sure you have the latest version of flash player installed.

[Lars' Adventure]

An excellent game

One of the most solid platformers I've played on NG. The engine was defined and well developed which in turn shoveled awesomeness by the bucketload into the rest of the game. Lots of stages with varied artwork through, bosses and all, it's got all the features that full platformers have!

Some of the highlights I got here was the sort of puzzle game feel it also gave to it, with the switches and keys that were hidden just that little bit off screen that you had to explore the level to find them, then memorise the root back. I also loved that continue system, probably the most evil I've ever seen in a game yet, actually showing your score being deducted :-P

So what else could it need?

It's a long game, A save system wouldn't be a miss. Also I feel this game would work very nicely with an online high score system, there dosn't seem to be a fixed high score you can get, given time bonuses (of course it would probably get hacked to heck and back)

Well bloody done.

raitendo responds:

Thanks for the review Khuskan :) the game wouldn't be the same without your music.

[NGAP Radio]

Wooooo

Although it sadly backs up my ideas that 99% of the conceivable audio portal is crappy 10 minute fruityloop deals, this is really quite an awesome gadget, and I came across a few gems that I've never even heard of before.

Oh yeah;

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[Graphic design tutorial 1]

Urgh..

That's not graphics DESIGN, thats graphics TRACING.

Design is where you actually come out with something origional at the end of it. What you've done is taken a vector photograph.

[Be a Touchtone Genius]

Nice.

Good to see you made good use of those tone sounds I made!

Seeing some of the other reviews, I sort of agree it needs an eaisier way to play. What you could do is open up the sounds in audacity or something and paste them a load of times to make them longer, then for the buttons have it start playing the sound on press and stop on release. This would allow for longer notes to be played.

As for muliple keypresses, I don't think its nessacary, because you can't do that on a real phone anyway.

PARAGON-pvp responds:

Atualy these arn't the tones you made, i found a different way to make them and i used the ones i made myself, but then again, they're the same tone so thats probably why the sound similar. Thanks for the review though and i'm working on making it a bit easier with a few more songs, i've been working on "funky town" and "drink milk love life" and hopefully i can add them today or tommorow.

PARAGON_pvp

[Half-Life Soundtrack]

Umm...

That's only.. very.. in violation of copyright, and coincidentially very, very illegal.

TheKGB responds:

Actually... it's very... not in violation because I'm not distributing them. There is no money involved.

[Guitar Workshop 1.0]

A guitar dress up where you can do ANYTHING?

Except play the guitar. Strange, that seems an obvious one to miss.

Interesting twist on dressup games though.

[Pico vs. Uberkids]

Quick its pico day!

So reupload all the pico stuff already on the site to the portal.

For some reason, I always prefered this to picos school. Might be because when I used to play picos school, I got a framerate of 2, whereas this was much more playable. Its actually quite tense watching this game take place, and tends to make you jump when you get a live round.

Especially a good job considering it was made with such an old version of flash.

Well done, mr Fulp.

[Battlefield]

Flawed. Horribly flawed.

A fair idea, if not slightly cliché on a website full of these 'defend/attack your castle/spacestation/turret/computer' games, but it was flawed beyond playability.

I started the game with moderate anticipation, realised I was a bit short of cash and spawned 10 men. They went, walked past the single arrow and beat the crap out of the castle. Yay.

So I figured a fair investment of the plunder would be upgrading my ram, and I sent a ram, along with some men in on the next wave. The ram instantly died, and the men were destroyed by the oil.

So heres the problem. You could make the filesize much smaller and simply have the soldiers as the unit and their sword upgrades. I havn't even got to level 20 yet, and my swords are at level 300 and something and as a result destroy the castle in seconds upon reaching the walls.

The mighty orc? The huge catapults? Useless. They die from the hit of a single arrow. There is no hitpoint system to be seen, not to mention all the ranged units kindly position themselves right in the range of the arrows coming from the castle anyway, just to add even more pointlessness to their existance.

Regardless, it was quite fun just to see how many men I could shove on the screen at once, causing a horrible FPS and a quick game. The time spent on the game and the effort is evident, which is enough to purswade me to give it a 3 and a 6, but if you adress the issue of the hitpoints (or lack thereof), then it will obviously improve the score of the game.

Also, the horses had no limbs, whats up with that?