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Galneda

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I guess it would be much longer game if it did the chess thing, and it didn't allow your King to put itself into check.

It's a neat spin on the game, I dig it. I love the theme and style it has to it, and it'd be cool to see more variations to this. Like, it's already unique that it's a condensed space, everyone's right up on each other in this shrunken board, but I'd like to see it go further. Like a creative spread of duplicate pieces, a creative assembly of different maps that are in weird shapes so that you have bottlenecks, chokepoints.

Or hell, even unique pieces. Like in a map this small, knights would be OP, but their absence is really noticeable. Maybe if you did really large maps, you had a variation of knights that were like winged demons or something, so instead of a knight going two out and one beside, they had an extended range like three or four out, two or three in.

Kinda like how Advanced Wars had Artillery (Knights), but they also had Rockets (this new piece).

Also sometimes the pawns get hidden behind the tall royalty pieces, so it would be beneficial to have a look around function- I know that can be kinda limiting given the retro aesthetic of this pixel art, but even if it pulled a Doom and the sprites remained camera-facing, I think it's possible for a sequel.

Brilliant idea! Very fun, and I hope this concept really goes far for you. Excellent work!

Shellshock 2 is an impressive sequel by all accounts. 6 years later, it's still an addictive and active romp. A diverse community with a friends system in-game that reaches globally to other players who are logged in from many different websites, like ArmorGames and the like. Though it's frustrating that there is a "Friends Cap" of 12 player profiles. It makes no sense that the game forces you to delete older friends to make room for new ones.

Something I had discovered a few months ago when I picked this game up for the first time in several years. I was a level-capped veteran in Shellshock 1, and right off the bat, it allows you to cash in on that experience when you start anew in this version. I had left off my progress on this game at level 37, and it remembered all of the progress I had made- the weapons I had leveled up with experience, the custom tank I had unlocked with accumulated Tank Coins, and the stats I had divvied into Fuel, Traction, Armor, and Luck. I was at a great position to level up into the levelcap at 50.

But there are new tricks! Emblems next to certain names showed a number within a diamond. Prestige rank! Once at level 50, you're given the option to start over at level 1, and climb through the ranks to gain access to powerful Prestige weapons. There are 10 weapons, and if you prestige further than that, you're showing off. All of the XP progress you've made is kept, even the upgrade points put into your tank, but you're unlocking your arsenal all over again, which is challenging starting off as a rookie flanked by high level, high weapon-toting tanks all around you.

The community is still the worst part about it. Lots of racists, homophobes, and toxic idiots permeate the chat. You can mute them, but you can't mute their ability to ping the map with markers, arrows, and visual clutter. You can't report people, and you can't block them from entering rooms if you're trying to kick them out and keep them out. They can rejoin over and over and over again and you'll have to kick them manually every time. You also can't kick players out in mid-game if you're the host, which would've saved some headaches with particularly abusive or griefing players before they could screw over their team past a point of no-return.

You can either play in Deathmatches where each tank has HP represented in a red health bar, and Armor represented just above it with a blue armor bar. Or you can play for Points- every tank is invincible, armor is an unseen factor that reduces the damage a shot will make on you, and the game's length is determined by turns. From 5 turn quick games to 30 turn long games.

There's an option for Wind which can effect how certain shots behave, but not all. The wind can be set to low, medium, or high, and each have their respective XP bonus at the end of the match. There are some that argue that having High Wind in a game means "More XP" but you're actually losing more XP than you're gaining from the bonus because of the shots you're missing or incomplete shots that would benefit from standing still over a target now moved askew by wind. Wind isn't worth it in my opinion, unless you're just trying to switch it up and do something a little different or more challenging.

Games can be played Free For All or with Teams. If you play it in Free For All, there's a common unspoken rule in the community about "No Neighborshooting" in Deathmatches, because that's just seen as rude and cheap to them. Don't be surprised if some bloviating nutsack takes it personally if you neighborshoot in a Free For All.

In Team settings, a lobby can dictate if tanks are going to shoot one at a time, or if teams shoot together at once, or if everyone shoots at the same time. Individual Shot rooms take longer at a more relaxed, controlled pace. Sometimes it's beneficial to communicate to your team if you're trying to line up a shot on someone, because in a Team-Shot or All-Shot environment, sometimes damage from one weapon can cause another weapon to miss...communicating is beneficial in these circumstances, and you can do that publicly to the room or you can whisper to your teammates. I'll warn you though, if you have a maximum room of 6 tanks going for the longest setting at 30 turns on Individual Shot? I guarantee you that half of the room will quit before the game finishes, because those games take ages to complete. They seriously take a very long time, and it can be quite boring. If you died in a Deathmatch, you have the option to play Pong in-game while you wait for the game to wrap up...but that quickly gets stale and dull. Frustrating, because you'll lose whatever XP you've gained in the match if you leave early.

Also frustrating is if a teammate quits early, the game decides randomly which teammate gets to control the tank when it's supposed to be their turn. Say it's a 3 tank team, you're dead and the middle one quits, they could still give the controls to the other guy while you're sitting on your ass with nothing to do. The tank retains however the original player had leveled its stats (Fuel, Traction, Armor), and the game randomly selects one shot for you to use, and this will earn the shooter no XP benefits. These substitute tanks also cannot interact with boxes that are dropped in-game, nor damage multipliers. It already sucks and is a huge disadvantage when a teammate quits, but these added handicaps to the dead tank make it into a kind of slap in the face.

The game is standard "Free to Play, Pay to Win" format, incentivizing you at every turn to spend precious and rare tank coins on things in-game.

From the mundane and exorbitantly expensive chrome/gold rims, to items like "The Reinforced Barrel" which adds a percentage chance of critical damage to any shot. Or the dick-move Grappling Hook, which can yank a Box dropped on the field to you immediately, regardless of if you were close to it or not. Often-times stealing said box from a teammate or enemy right under their noses.

Boxes are sought after, they'll very rarely drop Tank Coins, which are hard to come by. They'll also drop weapons, sometimes premium weapons from weapon packs, deluxe arsenals, or even one's that exceed what your level has access to (this outcome is largely based on how you've leveled up your Luck stat, which I'll get to later). Uncommonly they can contain items you can use on the battlefield.

Arguably the most useful item is the Jetpack, which is great for leaping short distances to spread out from teammates, or to get yourself out of a compromising situation in the bottom of a pit or crater. The next most sought after item is the Tracer, which, when used once, plots the trajectory of your shot based on the angle and power you have set up at the time of activation...it's single-use, and can mean the difference in adjusting how you shoot a Sniper shot. There are also supply drops, which randomly equips you instantaneously with 5 new shots that you have access to (in case your current loadout is shit) and lastly, there's a shield bubble, which lasts a single turn rotation. Everyone hates it when you use the shield, it's never a cool or respectable move to protect yourself with the bubble, you will be chastized, boo'd, and hated for it. Never use the shield. Only bitch cowards use the shield.

Every 10 tank coins you earn can be spent on a Tank Upgrade point. I found out you only naturally achieve a Tank Upgrade token once a level for the first 50 levels. There isn't a single bar that should be below 1/4th's full.
-Traction should be maxed out. This is the stat that enables you to climb out of steep hills and terrain so you aren't stuck by some crater that's formed around you.
-Armor should be at 75% or full. That blue bar will help you last longer in Deathmatches, and lessen the damage you'll take in Points matches.
-Fuel definitely needs more than 50% of it upgraded- This is your movement range, and I shouldn't have to go into detail about how moving further is helpful, especially when coupled with good Traction stats.
-Luck may increase your chances of getting more Tank Coins and advanced weaponry on box drops in-game. It may be the least useful stat, because box drops are random and undependable in-game, but at the very least it could enable you to get an unexpected edge in combat, or at least a reward to dampen the blow of an inevitable loss.

But how you level up your tank is completely up to you, and will help with your survivability.

Or at least, as much as you can. There are extremely unfair weapons in the game; it's not balanced very well. Many deluxe/premium weapons take no effort to aim and wreak absolute high damage havoc. I got burned out many years ago trying to level up as a proud vanilla tank using no Deluxe weaponry, and you cannot compete against bought advantages. There are some that claim that not everyone buys these things with money, it just takes a lot of time to grind to the point where you can redeem tank coins for these things...and there are others that brag about their salary and gloat about how any and everything that can be maxed out in the game HAS been maxed out...and I encountered this shameless creature a few days ago in 2018. So I imagine it speaks well for KChamp games that they're still getting business from the cashcow that is Shellshock 2.

But for all the frustration I've experienced with people that were made better by bought advantages, and for all the times I'm annoyed by a stoner or kid slacking off in school messing up in a team environment, there have been some fun moments when it all goes according to plan. A clutch trick-shot with a Sniper bouncing off the border at the edge of the map... the wind guiding a luckily arranged volley of asteroids... Nuking 2/3rds of a team, or rarely, all 3 tanks of an enemy team. Watching some high-level asshole's weapon backfiring on him in the worst possible way... Even something as simple as the addiction of monitoring the candy-blue experience gauge on a weapon that you're trying to maximize it's potential by leveling up. There's a reason there's still an active community here. It just works! And that's really special and rare in a flash game.

Be warned, it'll suck you in. There'll be bad games that'll see you staring a "gg" in the face because you got killed by Firestorm and a Galaxy that caught a Double Damage modifier in the first round and you didn't have the opportunity to even shoot yet. There'll be idiots on your team that may be hellbent on ensuring that you lose, intentionally or unintentionally. You may need to communicate to a teammate who doesn't speak a language that you know, and sometimes, in more relaxed environments, that can be kinda cool. I had Google Translate up in another window and I was copy-pasting back-and-forth chatting with someone from Germany who didn't know very much english. Moments like that stick with me. Moments when I was nearing level 50 and I felt like the big-dick hero in the room protecting lower-leveled players in a Free For All felt good too. Finding yourself in a team that just "clicks" and works...and the best moments are when it's a really nice room filled with nice people, chatting it up and joking around, having fun. No pressure, no animosity, just a couple of strangers from different time zones shooting each other with little tanks.

I could recommend this game to someone that wants a simple turn-based accuracy game. Sometimes I can recommend it as an online chatroom thats ALSO a game. I'm still blown away its community is as active as it is. It slows down a bit at certain times, and other times there'll be pages of rooms looking for tanks to join. If you got a modest amount of disposable income, I suppose you could add to the likelihood that you'll have a good time. But I don't recommend doing that until you know that you'll be spending enough time in this game to make back your money's worth in enjoyment. Trust that they definitely want you to spend money on this.

It's an extremely competent game, free to play, pay to win, learning how shots behave and practicing your aim are the keys to success...and grind, baby, grind.

This gem from 2012 still holds up through the test of time.

That cat is gonna get the diabeetus.

Its like a less imaginative "Toss The Turtle" with the cuteness scaled WAY up. Really kid friendly, girls would love it because the cat is really fat and jiggly, and it makes cute noises. I wanted to rag on this game, but it kept me occupied, and I saw it through to the end.

Perhaps its just my computer, but there is an incredible lag. When the countdown clock starts after you complete a stage's goal, it takes about 3-4 real second for one second on the in-game timer to click off. This may be way I can tell the saxophone music from the Dodgy Mushroom is only meant to be played for 6 seconds when the record-needle-scratch chimes in and then it just loops...it didn't seem an intentional decision...in fact, the music came off to me like it was an unused track for Sushi Cat to be sexually attracted to someone/something, but a story-arc like that got scrapped because it wouldn't be kid-friendly anymore...I think advocating the use of hallucinogenic drugs was a much better alternative.

The overall musical score was well chosen. I can't really complain about it looping too often because of my Windows XP giving me bullet-time from the lag. The art direction was great! Simple, "less-is-more", but effective. I love the cat's jigglyness, but the gameplay itself was kinda mindless. Maybe that's the point, and maybe that doesn't matter because the target audience wouldn't be looking for a challenge anyway...just a "shift your brain and neutral and do a thing to kill time" kinda game. Even still, I found myself nodding off to sleep in the downtown stages, the final stretch before the moon launch...perhaps its for the better that this game is as short as it is.

I'm not sure I would play it again after earning that final cutscene. The lack of replay value is reflected in my score, but it wasn't a bad flash game, so I voted 5.

It took a while to really build momentum and get up and goin'. I felt like my patience was being tried at a couple of parts before it even got to the dinner table. When it came to the momentum of self-aware parody where the Dad was criticizing "Why aren't YOUR web games fun!" I pessimistically agreed at first... and I thought I had the right idea on how to play this. I tried playing it as reasonably straight-forward as possible... and when it all started piling up, becoming ever evident that these aren't reasonable people, I felt the gravity of the situation. I told them to fuck themselves. I placed the blame on the parents. I rejected the idea of transfer, the forced relationship with the tutor, and I told the dude that I didn't know what would happen. I played it genuine, because Brevity is the Soul of Wit.

The ending was kinda heart-felt...and my perspective on the self-aware parody, the crass comment about the enjoyability with the games shifted, because that character was successfully vilified...but the presentation where there were needless or useless dialogue options still strained my focus and my patience... I would never waste my time to hear the Lie story, I just wanted the truth at the end of it all. That was the only instance where it didn't necessarily get better...but then I suppose it holds pattern to the constant, spinal reference to the game...you're totally an amateur poet...but I guess you're practicing.

This flash is the worth the praise.

Fun and smooth!

Despite the content of war and the scale of decimation and death that is the focal point of the game, it seems better equipped to kids/teenagers. I found no difficulty in quickly rising through the ranks to Colonel in two separate playthroughs. If dedicated, it could be done in a day.

The Grenadiers' limited range puts them as the weakest squadmate out of the possible army you can amass, and I found myself avoiding them if I had the luxury to do so. Riflemen, at the very least, could reach downrange and (after an upgrade) fulfill the role of Grenadier efficiently, especially when there's more than two of 'em.

LMG's (Light Machine Gunners) Were perfect fillers for the downrange barrage of fire. They were a preferable addition to the team just to fill out the ranks a little more thoroughly.

Once you unlock the Marksmen, the squad can make short work of the entire enemy force. Jeeps don't last long, and its the extra oomf needed to take out high value targets that you can't immediately address by swiveling the squad into position. Once you unlock the AA specialists, and you have a few of them lobbing Bazookas all around while Marksmen are picking people off left and right, you barely have to do anything.

You just need to equip your Commander with a Rocket Launcher, hook up the Napalm Wave as the skill, and you'll quickly close the distance between yourself and Colonel, raking in full achievements for the game in short time when you periodically dump your coins into fully upgrading everything.

The difficulty curve never caught up to the amount of punishment a high ranked, high-capped squad could dish out...it just got easier and easier. In Endless, I noticed that when Heroic Dash was activated, there would be a more intense wave of enemies than usual; a thick horde of impenetrable foes FLOODING the screen with ordinance....yet, when the Heroic Dash depleted, that intensity waned into the usual pattern of things... The Napalm Wave is the more efficient skill, but by equipping it, or even the Air Strike, you seem to be corralled into selecting "Normal" difficulty...where the "Hard" is hidden in a brief window of opportunity in the Dash skill. I feel like there should be more distinction between difficulty curves, or something more deliberate...an intentional, "So you're maxed out, huh? Wanna try HELL mode!?"

...Granted, I've yet to see if this is something that's still waiting to be locked. In the Tactics Menu, it says I've done 30 of 100 different missions, which are more like achievement parameters like "Launch Airstrike 10 times" or "Kill 100 enemies using missiles" ...but there's a missed opportunity in integrating these little challenges into the trophy/achievement system here in NG. Once I reached 100% completion, I felt compelled to write my review on the game.

...BUT! Its definitely the sign of a fun game that I decided to keep on playing after 100%ing it. The sound effects are great, but the music is basic, and the graphics are just sufficient. The controls are fine. You go down one corridor that phases in between three different landscapes, and its the epitome of linear gameplay, but for some reason, its still quite fun. Bunkers are a pain in the ass that warrant a bit of tension, especially when squadmates are low on health. Though there seems to be an abundance of health kits in regular play, its still a kinda satisfying march.

So what if the enemy is purple uniformed, driving pink jeeps? I like to pretend in my imagination how hardcore the commander is, or if the Riflemen that spawned with him have a name or a history with the Commander, and what kind of interactions happen with the squad if one of 'em dies amidst the carnage. Oh the drama...OH THE HORROR. It's all fun. :D

+ For keeping it simple to control
+ For keeping it simple to understand
+ For making a functional, fun game with incentive to replay value
In the future, try not to make it so easy to 100% complete...don't do anything CHEAP to stretch out the play time, but definitely consider including more depth. Options, and flexibility for thought and adaption.

Great job! Voted 5

I got my first game over on the final boss of stage 3.

THIS GAME IS AWESOME.

I'm a huge Galaga fan, and my favorite arcades to play on as a kid were the top-down shooters like 1945 and Raiden and the likes. Even as a really little guy, it was a general rule of thumb with those kind of games to survive long enough and get enough of an upgrade, and you'll be so overpowered filling the screen with bullets that nothing would survive long as you came spewing out this never-ending stream of death.

What I love about this game...really LOVE about it...is it totally throws that rule of thumb out the window and reinvents the genre.

The very idea of going up to those kind of bosses from those kind of games, and making the core gameplay mechanic to fly as close to the wave of attacks just to Hap Ki Do that shit and throw it right back at them sounds like an idea concocted from a crazy, superhuman nerd who got bored with something already great, and wanted to take the challenge an insane step further.

My God is it satisfying.

The music is catchy and engaging and fits RIGHT AT HOME with the theme of things. I can see where other complaints are coming from with it getting a little too repetitive, but I found myself recognizing some parts and humming along with it by stage 3, so it's whatever. I've heard of no one complaining about the Galaga theme that begins at each new level. But perhaps it couldn't hurt the game at all to vary the music from section to section. The first ten bosses could have one theme...but those first ten won't be as difficult as the next ten, so maybe they should get something a little more intense...and the final ten should get something cataclysmically face-melting.

Well, while we're on the subject of variation, I did occasionally find myself wanting something else to be going on with the background. Maybe its because the menu screen is focused on a big-'ol picture of Earth, and it just cuts to the same space for the duration of the game. IDK, the feeling of progression may subconsciously slip.

Don't get me wrong, though...there's still that heightened sense of intrigue and jubilation when the next boss craft is named, and the readout lists its arsenal...you're like, "Okay, let's go. Bring it on." and then you focus on the ship. Focus on the pattern, sure...but what I think would've filled it out a bit more is something ambient to accent the background beneath. Nothing distracting, but...SOMETHING. Maybe we're over the martian surface, drifting dangerously close to Phobos...maybe the camera in particular is facing in the direction of the sun, and we have a sort of a Solar Dawn color theme going on. Maybe near the end, these bosses got dangerously close to the Earth, and we're witness an eclipsed Earthrise...what of a stage close to the moon? Stuff like that.

BUT. All are mere suggestions. There's too much good going on with this game to really deduct on the lack of cosmetic trimmings. The ships are detailed enough, and I'm impressed with the HUD bumping away when flown into.

With a game that demanded such precision flight, I chose to control with the mouse, and I never had a problem.

I'm relieved the game is as forgiving as it is with death, and treats the respawn with a time penalty...it's very swift, and it doesn't bullshit around. Hell, there are some games that I PAID for that don't even do that, and THEY SHOULD. No bullshit minions, no long-winded exposition, just BAM. Here's what you do. BAM. Here's how you do it. BAM. First boss, fuck 'em up. BOOM. Good job, here's the next one.

There MIGHT be a fault in that mechanic somewhere to SOMEONE, but I PERSONALLY kinda love it for cuttin' it straight to us. And you would think that shit would be over really quick, but its really kinda not! There's a genuine learning curve to a genuine challenge. Some attacks are actually kinda AWESOMELY terrifying, like the laser beams, and the "Death Blossom-esque" Super Attacks are awe inspiring and they FEEL empowering. Did I mention the SFX were great too?

All in all, you guys did a fantastic job. Thank you!

Very fun idea for a game! I had a blast playing Cathode Raybots...but, and I'm aware much of this will change with coming patches/updates, there's several glitches and unintentional flaws in my hours of play through.

Most notably is that I never seem to keep whatever hats or hands that I unlock for my Raybots. I knew something was up when I kept earning the trash-can hat every time I downvoted a Raybot I didn't particularly like, but when I unlocked a whole SLEW of hats and hands after defeating the Travis Bots and Jerks, I was MIGHTY disappointed that I would have to fight them all over again just to keep those cosmetic items.

Sometimes I would choose to access the game by clicking on the icon of a custom face I had made...right there from my user profile. Let's say the character I wanted to fight was my design, "//Run:STAB-Demon" The new page would open, Cathode Robots would load, and it would bring me right to what was supposedly Stab-Demon's stage...the clock would countdown, but there was no environment or characters...only the background graphic was visible. Shooting would drain a non-existent enemies health to zero, acting like I had won at the end.

I thought this was the only instance of this glitch, but somehow or another, I started a campaign, this way. This is how I defeated the Bourgeois; as an invisible human, on an invisible stage, "shooting" at nothing, winning boss after boss. However, the game DOES have a tendency to sort of reset itself after a weird glitch...the next campaign was perfectly normal.

Occasionally when saving or loading a Raybot, all music and sound will abruptly die. Toggling mute (M) does nothing...but after a long while, the music and sound will (startlingly) return in seemingly arbitrary circumstances.

Onto my thoughts on the game itself, I loved the concept. The intro is simple, short, and sweet, and the robotic voice over is awesome...it's a REALLY dramatic, very cool voice to attribute to the titular droids, but aside from the intro and the select screen, we never hear it again. I would've liked to have heard more of it.

Even Ching Chong Beautiful had TomaMoto's Announcer guy. It would've been cool if the vignette, transferring the human from one boss to the next was accompanied by some crass, degrading Robot Host...spitting insults at the inferior design of the fallen 'bot, and the inevitable decay of this insect fleshbag.

But, maybe that's a bit much. It's a straight-up arcade fun-fest! Though it says "campaign", it's evident we're not here for the story...I, personally, think that was a missed opportunity. There's something to be said about the MASSIVE undertaking it was to knock this beast out while balancing life outside of NG, but I personally see the platform that IS this game, at it's core, with much greater potential. What we have here is a budding plant, expanding with user-generated content, when it could absolutely be an ass-kicking tree, TEEMING with user-generated content.

I can't complain too hard...I'm absolutely engrossed with the challenge and the fun this game provides. I love to design new faces, and I've been having a great time with the level editor...I just wish the level editor was capable of more too. After a few maps, you really begin to realize just how little a space we're left to work with. With the only varying elements being between blocks and platforms, there's only so much you can do before you've seen every kinda scenario. I'm not suggesting the addition of hazards, or (platformer cliche here), but if we just had a BIGGER map and different shaped structures...hell, at the very LEAST, a different background than the same purple environment with the same drone looming over the top left quarter.

I read your response about why the human wasn't provided any upgrades. Well, the Raybots don't have much in terms for upgrades either, but instead they have cosmetic customization. Well SHIT, if anything would even be remotely concerned about their appearance, one would think it would be the human! lol Varying helmets, armor, whatevs!

GG! Voted 5!

-This is Phobotech!-
I've done animatics for Cyanide & Happiness, Purgatony, and WWE Storytime! I'm also a voice actor that's performed roles in One Piece, Gundam: Witch from Mercury, & Smite!
Check out my sci-fi novel, Umbra's Legion on Amazon Kindle!

Geoff Galneda @Galneda

Age 37, Male

Voice Actor/Animator

Collin College

Denver, CO

Joined on 9/22/03

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