Galneda's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Madotsuki's Dream Dock]

I don't get it.

For starters, "Warned" is misspelled in the beginning...err...warning.

But this isn't very accessible to your audience. Usually, during a point and click adventure, you're pointing and clicking at different things, and typically, sometimes, actually go on an adventure. The idea of which implies different environments, or things of significance to a story going on. While I admire your creative license on the concept, I stand by that it's not very accessible.

You hype it up to be a Halloween, scary type of flash. Yet you have the most non-threatening, calmest, what I can only assume to be anime soundtrack imaginable in the background to a girl staring at a body of water in the dark from a dock...more accurately, the BACK of a girl's head...even more accurately, the back of SEVERAL anime girl's heads. Sometimes she's a traffic light. Sometimes she's a street lamp. Sometimes she's decapitated. This makes no sense.

There's no explanation. Not even for the hooded man walking in the background, and his identical whiter cousin floating in the lake. There's no explanation as to why she turns into C-3PO and changes a color filtered layer over the whole thing. Or the multi-colored amoeba that descends among the sky. Why does she turn into a little girl, that when clicked multiplies herself over and over again until a very pixelated picture of a ghost woman consumes the background and screams? It's all very disconnected...a lot of waiting and clicking one spot, hitting one button, for little payoff. All over an obscure anime that you can't possibly assume the majority of your audience would be familiar with.

I imagine this took quite a deal of programming, and for that, I admire it's craft...for I KNOW THE HORRORS of Actionscript, lol. But I didn't really connect with this.......

....okay, admittedly, I didn't expect the startle at the end, but the graphic's pixelated quality detracted from what terror it was trying to emote. The sound? That was spot on. If it were louder, it may have made up for the visual quality...but I'm pleased that the jump scare couldn't have happened early on...not sure how it could.

The lack of diversity in interactions hurt it's score a little bit too. What was the point of that vending machine if it didn't do anything? Why make the girl on the further dock a button that does nothing? Why do we only get to stare at the back of the heads of so many characters? The lack of details are frustrating. Though at least the dock itself looked good. The white thing that seemed to be an amorphous blob of limbs coming out of orafices? Well, not to be rude, but that wasn't scary, nor did it look neat. If you truly wanted to go for psychological horror, you could have dug much, much deeper, and not relied on a Japanese Kid's show for influence. ;D As it was, it was a startle at most, and only at the climax. The rest was dulled perplexity.

Halloween is my favorite holiday, so despite all of my criticisms, I'm still voting 5, despite the score on the review itself. Give us more things to work with, and REALLY dig deep if you're going to try and scare us. Keep up the good work! You should aim your next flash into a direction of greater complexity. Challenge yourself, and kick some ass! :D

-Review Request Club-

Pienkaito responds:

Great review from club. Never expected less.

First of all, it's not based on anime. This animation is tribute to a 2005 independently produced surreal adventure PC game by homebrew Japanese developer Kikiyama. (Thanks wiki)

I can understand the non-logical aspect, because... Well, if I am making a tribute to a game that makes absolutely NO SENSE AT ALL in the first place, then I can only say this, even though it's a bit harsh: "What in the fuck is this shit?!"
It will lead to many confusions and endless open questions, so that it will render this animation on itself as uninteresting and boring if you haven't played the game, which is unfortunate. ;_;
The animation contains various sections of the game, so everything you see actually appears in the game in some sort of way.

In short, it's not a japanese kid's show. If it was, then they are seriously fucked up.

This was actually never meant to be scary in my opinion. It's very open to the audience to find it either calm, depressing or scary. (Excluding the last part, which is a lame attempt to scare someone)

I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE PROGRAMMED THAT FREAKING VENDING MACHINE. >=(
It was a nice easter egg in the game...
Speaking of content, yeah. It may seem lacking, but the game itself is exploring world and interactive with objects. That's that.
It would have been a nice jump-scare, if Madotsuki (the main girl) simply twisted her head like in the movie "The Excorcist". I actually planned to do it, but time was faster than me.

By the way, you should check the game out if you have NOTHING else to play. It's...surreal.
I also think that making this in less than 3 days is surreal as well IMO. lol

I really want to thank you for this constructive review. It totally pleases me and at least a few people left their opinion on it now.

PS.: Grammar and spelling mistakes are unintended. (obviously, haha)

[Rebuild 2]

Rebuild 2 is VERY addictive.

It's easy to get immersed into managing your group of survivors, and it can be pretty exciting once you have an entire city's worth of people, all talented, under your command.

After my first campaign, I learned to grow very leery of churches and preachers who gained too much sway. "Gentleman Jibbajabba" was a leader whom I had let publish his book "We Are The Dinosaurs" which glorified zombies. If you let him do whatever he wants for the sake of keeping people happy, well, sure your camp will be at a 100% :) but they're going to stop working altogether, and there's nothing you can do to stop people from killing themselves to join the horde, or taking holidays literally every single day. You can't just cancel a preacher's mission like you can a bartenders, so when half of your army dies in a month without doing a single thing you're telling them to do, you should pretty much just install a suicide button to save us time.

It was because of this negative experience that all of my newer towns/cities were called "Godless." I specifically reformatted every church I happened upon into either a school or apartment. This worked brilliantly, to the point where I had started new campaigns as Godless II, and Godless III. All successful. Except Godless IV which was on impossible difficulty...there just wasn't enough manpower, not enough food, and not enough time between constant hordes that grew stronger after each wave...equipping new guards with weapons from Godless III simply wasn't enough, recruits died too easily, and everyone was unhappy. Not even reviving churches seemed to fix this.

The music was wonderfully atmospheric, and it definitely sounded like something one would hear from a zombie film. The sound effects were...sufficient for what was going on...but that brings me to my thoughts on the visuals. We're looking at the bare necessities of visual stimulation in a game where the theme calls for it...it would have been it's most appealing asset and it just falls short. Maybe a quick comic panel here to show us we survived the zombie attack...a quick comic panel there to show us we lost some property...a newspaper clipping when we write the consitution, or an overall very silly vignette with poor, cropped out blood spatters, and a 90's arcade looking animation of a crow eating the face of some dude if we lose.

This could have been terrifying. This could have been awesome. This could have been a strong reason to keep replaying, for the immersion. When the zombies attack, it's a couple of vague humans supposedly our guarding force, and a couple of vague zombies separated by the same wall we see every time. Show us the attack! If that 8-12 across the street is overrun with zombies, why can't we see it? If we could actually see our people within the walls, being happy, miserable, or working, that would be much better. If we could actually see the rotting walking dead shuffling outside of our walls, or coming in hordes, that would be MUCH more tense than just a triangle with a "!".

On another note, why is it an apartment of several floors can only house, like, 2 or 3 people? Suburbs with several houses only 2 people? I call bullshit that we don't have enough room for recruits. Hell, we're surviving; here is a couch.

But at least our characters have faces to them. It's frustrating when you're clicking through trying to get a proper face for your starting leader. There should be better avatar customization, because some of the random generated ones we encounter look hilarious. Like "Curry Clay Aiken", "the town pedophile" and one of my soldiers looked exactly like Christopher Walken.

Also, it's implied you can have four save files, but it only seems to use the bottom slot. Is there a way to utilize the three other slots?

All in all, the music sets the tension very efficiently, and it's easy to get carried away with the strategy aspect of it all...but even the entire time I was playing, I felt something was missing, and I've deduced that the game needs better art and animations. Looking forward to Rebuild 3! Voting 5!

[House of Dead Ninjas]

Incredibly Fun and Challenging! I LOVE THIS GAME!

To Players:
-READ THE MANUAL
-DOUBLE TAP DOWN to break silver or purple blocks
-IF FALLING FROM GREAT HEIGHTS, either hold DOWN or remember you have a double jump to evade near-death
-USE SHURIKENS OFTEN, WISELY, and RECOLLECT THEM
-PILEDRIVING = Holding down in midair for a downward stab. Quickly kills many enemies from above.

GREEN NINJA- A stab or shuriken should do the trick, kill if in the way.
PURPLE NINJA- If you move below them, they might fall on your from above. Take the precaution to kill them when you can, but be careful; groups of them can cluster up sometimes, so when you think there's one, there might be two. A stab or piledriver will take care of twins in one shot, but I'm warning you of this if you stick with shurikens.
FAT NINJA- Double tap the shurikens or piledrive. It's a little risky getting up close to double stab.
FOX DAGGER- When you see them from above, wait for them to throw their knife, then drop down and immediately shuriken. They usually throw a knife the moment you appear on screen, so let them make themselves vulnerable. If landing from way up high, REMEMBER TO KEEP DUCKING ONCE YOU LAND! Crouch below a thrown knife, stand and shuriken.
FROGS- Duck and shuriken AT A DISTANCE to kill them quickly if the terrain allows it. They'll jump towards you when you're a certain distance away from them. This becomes predictable with practice. You COULD approach, retreat, and stab. Similar to the Fox Dagger, they'll act on the level below you as if you were down there with them. After they jump, they're vulnerable for a second or three, so run in and stab them AFTER they've jumped.
MADMEN (The Electric Ghost)- They're very predictable, so just be patient and slip past them. If that ain't an option, you can kill them with a bomb.
KARAKA (Hopping Chicken)- A well timed shuriken or a stab should do it. Just try not to get too close.
DRAGON- Keep an eye peeled for that tiny green spike in the level you're about to drop down on AT ALL TIMES. The moment you land, quickly throw a single shuriken in it's direction, and it WILL hit before a fireball is shot. You can even shoot the shuriken from afar before the dragon is triggered to attack; it's hitbox is higher than the spike is. If the fireball is coming, duck and get away from the wall where it'll splash against.
EKI (Spiked Balls)- Can be destroyed with bombs if necessary, the tricky part is placing the bomb where the ball WILL be when it detonates. The one you'll probably need to bomb the most is the unchained one ricocheting all over the place. Typically predictable, just try to see their pattern and move around them.
WUM WUM (Purple Worms) Just avoid them or stab them.
GROR (Purple Stone Things) Can be bombed from above (before they fall, while attached to the ceiling). Typically you can just jump over them once they've landed. If you can't, bomb 'em.
NOMIT (Skeletons) They charge you the instant you land on their level. Shuriken them as quickly as possibly. If they somehow fall below you, but at such an angle you can't stab, try to outrun them to shuriken, time a well-placed stab, or land, double jump, and piledrive.
WALKING SPIKE TRAPS- Shuriken them when they've walked in an area where you could deal with a spike trap. SOMETIMES you can piledrive them and live if you juuust hit the sides, but it's risky.
NORMAL SPIKES- Evade or bomb 'em.
RIPPER-A well-timed shuriken or piledrive will kill them. If you MUST stab them, jump while you do it.
MAGICLOKE-This is important. Double Jump above them and PILEDRIVE 'EM. They will die without putting up a fight.
SCHIMP (Shield Ninja) Shuriken them in the back. They're almost invulnerable if they're stuck on a single space, so try to stab them without getting too close when that happens
DAINON (Block Tower) shuriken or stab the eye block. You can piledrive the one's where the eye is at the very top.
BAHAMUT- Some say you need nine lives and stay alive to summon him, others say you need to kill every kind of enemy without dying. Challenge Accepted.

Fun and Fast game! I love the NES Nostalgia! Voted 5! Thank you!

[Helicopter Launch]

This game is rubbish.

-First off, it's very rude. The instant you hit play, you die immediately because nothing has been explained to the player as to what the hell is going on. You just immediately sink and die. No tutorial, no explanation, no moment to catch your breath.

-I closed out of the game just to reload it again to double check if there was a how-to-play or even a sentence telling you to "click to ascend" on the title screen...the preloader is timed to lie...it will not let you hit play until the ad has finished playing.

-Once you actually start to try and play the game...you know, FUTILELY ATTEMPTING to survive. The helicopter itself is the most clumsily ascending and descending helicopter I've ever played in a game. Sometimes it jerks up or down, other times it barely moves in a direction, before falling like a rock or careening upward. It doesn't take kindly to slight adjustments in a game where you're meant to guide the chopper through a gap about it's size.

I actually tried to see if I could get an upgrade that would allow it to handle better...you can literally "buy" upgrades that alter everything BUT how the helicopter handles. You can make the stage bigger, the chopper smaller, alter the size of the obstacles, HIGHLIGHTING the obstacles, get more gas, get more cash, speed it up, slow it down, EVERYTHING BUT it's key fault...that it handles like a mole rat with palsy.

And that's why this game sucks. It's a game about tightly maneuvering a craft that clearly can't maneuver to save it's life. The principal of which is retarded, because a helicopter can move up, down, left, right, forward, and back, and you've only given us the option for "click to move up." Nevermind hovering or moving AROUND the obstacles, I guess, because the trailing smoke indicates it's damaged. If there's a problem with the tail rotor, the chopper would usually be spinning wildly out of control toward the ground...so even it's damage doesn't make sense...

Nevermind why there's even floating blocks in a city...I've seen a flash game exactly like this but done better years ago where it was a much smaller green chopper inside of a much larger cave...maneuvering around collosal stalagtites and stalagmites. Not only did that make more sense, but it was more fun because the chopper did what the player told it to do. So I can't even credit the game on originality.

The more I think about it, the game is pretty pointless anyway. because it's high score based, we aren't really do anything and we don't have goals except buying powerups that are meant to reduce the bullshit. Normally games get harder as you progress, and you're promoting a game that makes it easier without sparing it's critical flaw...and for what? To get just a little bit farther? If it were fun, maybe I'd do it...but this game isn't fun, not appealing to the eyes or ears, and there's no incentive to keep playing...and therefore, it's pointless.

That's why I voted accordingly.

[Fortress Magnus]

Pretty fun! Man, my wrist hurts...

Never before have I asked myself, "You know what this 'Defend this Castle Game is Missing?' ...if only I could just MOVE the damn thing around, that would make this task a whole lot easier." Thankfully, somebody thought the exact same thing. In Fortress Magnus, we get to steer our suprisingly agile castle around in the skies, streaming never ending punishment to our foes who seek our princesses.

Because to hell with the Queen and King. Seriously, they don't do anything.

While the game certainly does put our decked out Fortress in a tight jam from time to time, against a seemingly invincible, dense flying militia throwing WALLS of bullets at us, I seriously beat this thing in one play through, unlocking every achievement except for the survival mode-based ones. Some levels I didn't get hit once...a little bit manuevering, and a lot of it shooting down the bullets before they even reach you.

The game suggests to hold down the mouse for an extended rate of fire. My advice to you is to ignore that, and click as rapidly as you can. Nothing survives for long, and you can rapidly deal with threats that are coming from multiple angles. Click six times a second over here, five over there, and keep prioritizing the closest imminent threat until you've pretty much cleared it. Doing tight circles in the middle or away from where the enemies are coming from, you can make a mad charge for the health if you're getting critically low...and the good news for you is health is ALWAYS plentiful.

So is cash, evidently. Seriously, just kill EVERYTHING, and focus only on evading, anti-air, and immediately plop down one of your mech-knights for ground forces. At the end of each stage, it all comes to you anyway. That's right; power ups never fade away. There isn't any consequences to just letting them sit adrift out there among the incoming horde. The ending treasure chest selection is generous too...often times I just clicked the middle one sense my castle was pretty much there anyway and it saved time. 1 out of 5 times was it a weak payload. Pretty dependable boost of income, usually...maybe I'm just lucky.

The stages are nice and varied...it was an interesting twist as we got out to the ocean where we couldn't depend on our anti-ground Mech Knight. Those submaries bombarding below the flood of aircraft on both sides DID get overwhelming...but oddly enough, I didn't come close to dying. Like I said, health is abundant, and maybe I'm just quick enough to shoot the mind-numbing array of incoming ordinance. The closest I came to dying was being entrapped by a swarm inside the caves...but I pushed through for the untouched health packs, and my health was maxed out almost instantly.

Perhaps this game is going too easy on us...because by all means, this SHOULD be hard as hell. This SHOULD be one of the most difficult flash games ever...especially since the more you upgrade your castle, the bigger a target you are facing the bigger, more impenetrable fleets...but it isn't...it got easy, then it got medium as our firepower wasn't meeting up to it's necessary standard, then it got easy again.

I never missed a princess. I rescued each and every single identical, slutty looking anime princess dressed like a maid. It's kind of hilarious and out of place when they give that sultry "YEEAHH <3" and pop in the corner to make a pose before sashaying away, but whatevs. Where the hell are they parachuting from anyway? Did they demand to be flown over a fucking battlefield just HOPING to land on our fortress? They're morons! Just sail in on your dainty little parachute while bullets and explosions are literally FILLING THE AIR. It would make sense if they could get shot, even by friendly fire...sort of exploding into a bloody splotch like the birds.

The dialogue from our castle is kind of awkward too. How many times did they call the enemy "rust buckets?" Think of something new, unidentified crew member. And also, yeah, we get it, something big is coming. We know it's a boss. Shut up already. I doubt that machine is bigger than Texas.

Fun, but easy. 5!

[Bob's Busy Boxing Biz]

I voted 3...it's made well, but it's sterile.

+Everything looks great. Animations are smooth, the 3D models, while low in polygon count, get the message across perfectly, and I found no fault with them. Bob maintains a wide, insane grin on his face despite the soul crushing environment that surrounds him.

-The learning curve is a bit steep, but I think I got the hang of it by the second or third in-game day. The opening tutorial and how-to-play chart is helpful, but it's a little weakly established. Even below, kids are still having a difficult time following along. I did too. Bob is alone in there the entire time, it could help if he had a staff member or something better establish how to run things for the player's sake...unless Bob specifically said "nah fuck that, nobody showed ME how to do this...just tell them this does that, this is this, good luck trolololol"

-I finally received a game over for not being fast enough, getting fired by a happy Tom Fulp. I'll ignore how depressing this is until later...but there was no indication that time was running out. At one point I had paused to answer a phone call, but the time seemed little more than some sort of score keeper. The threat that my time would run out was neither established, nor brought to my attention that time was running low (via warning sound or blinking red timer. Nothing). It was very unceremoniously abrupt...and that, admittedly, left a bad taste in my mouth. No warning, just immediate termination after ALLL my hard "work." :P

+The audio/sfx adjustment levels are refreshingly specific in the pause menu, allowing the player to adjust whichever they want to their comfortable specifications.

-That minute long loop gets pretty annoying very quickly. With little audio diversity, it's only a matter of time before you turn "USSR Goodness" off because it only reminds you of....

-...the deadening monotony of it all. This might not be a fault when you consider this is listed as a "Job Simulation" flash game, which before today I never even realized was an actual category on Newgrounds...but in terms of a flash game which you would play for fun, it wears out very quickly. There's nothing to break up the pace of the same task over and over again except for the report at the end of each day. Eventually you just look forward to it after the first time you get an order wrong just to check if you did it all right, because there's no other indication in game. That's not very fun at all.

Why not some minigames in between days? Coffee breaks, where you can do something silly or mindless, or where Bob can interact with the staff? Is this simulation implying that Bob is antisocial, and is perfectly content with spending his entire day in this stuffy, windowless room, packing orders, and slaving away with no breaks?

With no environment changes, no diversity in the gameplay outside of "Whoops, guess I need a bigger box!" this becomes less fun and moreso depressing...eSPECIALLY with that damn music farting away in the background, never changing.

On one end it's a BRILLIANT method to advertise the NG store, and emulate the booming economy that churns away in the background that keeps this site running...but there's not much fun to this interactive store ad. The closest to it is coming up with some clever arrangement for the randomized Tetris-shaped mystery boxes. But that's it. Looking at the achievements, there's one in there for "Work Through a Full (in game) Month" ..."Earn $10,000?" ...if it were mentally stimulating I'd be all for it.

But sadly...it's kinda deadening. :C I love your work, Zirbes, and I positively assume Bob is a badass, who bosses these tasks like the motivated machine that he is. If it were easy everybody would do it. It's a great game idea, but it's just too sterile...there's nothing to break up the pace, and diversify the same task over and over again. Even Mario swam from time to time.

[Super Puzzle Platformer]

Very fun!

I was thoroughly entertained and picked right up where the game was going with this. Everything looks and sounds great; excellent soundtrack and sound effects to compliment the nostalgic, yet original visuals.

The character flows nicely...he has an agile little jump, and the super-cape following behind him looks great too! It takes some getting used to that his ray gun has recoil that bumps his character backward, but at least the gun doesn't overheat, or some bullshit that prevents you from shooting like reloading. Such is the mastery of retro-themed games...infinite ammo, and little consequences! But the trick to our nameless protagonist is making sure we're not firing so much that we're blown off the edge into spikes, or even BENEATH a falling block...

Which I have to add, the game's progression bar is in a terrible spot. It sort of obscures our view of where blocks are dropping, and when they're all dropping at once save for one spot, that gets a little frustrating. Not impeding, mind you...just frustrating...couldn't you have positioned the progression bar ABOVE the line where the blocks drop from? Poor design choice, in my opinion.

The double-clicking for the fullscreen was a fantastic touch, as was the three initial scoring system. Is there any way for us to compare with other scores online?

Lastly, some of what made retro games...well, retro, was due to technical limitations. Here, it's 2011...and while a factor in the gameplay's challenge is you can only aim horizontally, like Mega Man, It would be most beneficial if you could physically aim where to shoot, in case we wanted to rid of a block below us or even above with prime accuracy. Adding dexterity to your character, or making the game flow with more fun would not rob you of the retro theme you're so devoted to.

I've found myself a new time-killer for a little while, but the replayability can only go so far. I look forward to a sequel to this same premise that introduces more obstacles, quickens the pace, and immerses us deeper into this challenging environment you've introduced us to....what I would love is a story to accommodate our caped, ray gun shooting, blocky hero. An identity and a goal! A nemesis! Get to it! I'll have a five waiting for you then.

...but for your first game, this ain't bad either. :D Voted 5.

[Goin Up]

Great Time Killer; Fun and Random

Rufus the Demon makes a comeback! Taking from the success of Toss the Turtle, your goal is to see how far you can get your character on a linear course, using elements from the environment to push you further or avoiding elements that could stop you dead in your tracks.

The stage is randomized at the beginning, and Gonzossm lends his artistic flair to making everything and everyone look great. It really doesn't make a difference on which level you started, it's all cosmetic. The goal is for you to get into space anyway, and that's going to pretty much be the same regardless.

All of the enemies are randomized, and not having a wall as you get higher up really makes all the difference. You need to pace yourself if you want to survive...which is difficult to do if you're exploding and rocketing upwards ricocheting off everything with a pulse, but once you're on solid ground again, make sure you don't jump directly underneath a Goomba.

...and c'mon, they seem inexplicably shamed to call these flying creatures Goomba's, and yet that's clearly what they are. Copyright infringement or not, Nintendo's not a bunch of morons. While the repeated video game pop culture references are neat why not make this game 100% original? Sure, it was probably made just for fun, and hell yes, the game was very fun. But the references were unnecessary, and if you were to port this as an iPad/iPhone app, the creator would run into snags.

Usually bombs and spikes are detrimental to a video game character's well being...but not in this game! Bombs are good, and the basic, bottomless spikes are good too; when jumping into a bottom-less spike trap, not only do you kill it, but you kill anything you come up beneath from the subsequent launch (INCLUDING full bodied spike traps). This is surprising because typically when you run underneath anything that's not a bomb, you take damage unless you're engulfed in the flames of being propelled by a bomb.

A neat feature of the game is the leveling process, where as you kill enemies and collect skulls, you gain experience which effects how high you can jump, and how powerfully(?) you kill things. I add a question mark because usually all it takes is one hit, but I seem to remember having to hit bigger creatures less as you're fully leveled up. Which btw, is at level 10. See, normally the whole leveling up process is to give the player a sense of fulfillment...that they are actively progressing, and as they face the challenges of the game, they can remind themselves that they've only just begun. To cap it off at a mere level 10 is just sort of underwhelming Yeah, the evolving system was neat, but I'm glad you could let us choose which form of Rufus after the fact; I hated how Steroid Rufus had these massive arms, and yet he rarely used them.

Of all the Specials you, the player, should prioritize is Health and Double Jump. The Wall jump is important too, but if you were to divide land, sky, and space into two parts, you only have walls for the first 1/6th of the game. It might be important to speed things along for you to get out of that beginning canyon, but I'd venture a guess to say even unlocking bombs or any of the three temporary boost powerups takes priority over it.

Then there's the skins...between the three Rufus forms, I think the difference is cosmetic, but I prefer the middle one.
Scunt - just fast. Not a bad character.
Mario Parody - has a wicked double jump, but not too different from a maxed out Rufus.
Turtle - The best in my opinion because he has extra health. He's agile too.
Dad - can crush spikes, but only from above, He's not as thoroughly animated as the others, and he's a tad slower.
and the "?" skin is a bizarre, light blue and red version of Mario. Which is kind of offensive, if you ask me. He only has two poses, standing and jumping. He doesn't walk, he glides, and the ONLY advantage he has is he kills large enemies with a single jump. That's it. The author's comments were "WE GOT RICH!" which basically means we got ripped off. The most expensive item in the game is disappointing.

[ShellShock Live v1.0+]

It's like a drug.

It's like a drug because it's addicting as hell. It may have its flaws here and there, and there might be assholes that play it badly to give it a bad rep, but the high makes it totally worth it.

The first couple of days I played this I was merely "Guest Phobotech." Being no stranger to turn-based war games like Worms Armageddon, I jumped right into this expansive trajectory based combat with delight.

Immediately I was reminded of a similar flash game already here on NG from '07, but the tanks were bigger, the map was smaller, you only had a basic shot, and NOBODY plays it any more on multiplayer. It was called "Artillery Live" and it's right there under the Games section of NG. To be honest, this game should take it's spot, because the players don't seem to be isolated to NG and it's obscure server like Artillery Live...this flash is connecting users from NG to all over the world.

I was playing people from Estonia. Norway. UK. A South Korean kid learning English. Usually when playing a flash game here, it's just your typical NG geographics, so lots of US, Canada, some in Mexico and UK. The players here were diverse, and after weeks of playing this, most of them were quite friendly and even conversational while we're battling.

...But with the good crowd, of course, comes the bad...and what I've walked away learning from my experience in this game is that usually Guests are trolls. It's a wonderful feature that each tank doesn't have health, but the damage you deal effects your team's score....so when you friendly fire or accidentally (or in some cases with the Guests, intentionally) blow yourself up, it's really just hurting your team. But it's unfair to the players who are trying to have a good game when the trolls insist on staying in the game just to sabotage you and uncreatively bash on our moms or call us faggots.

Luckily you can mute any player by clicking on their tank. Another excellent feature. But even if we ignore them, there are still some that deliberately go out of their way to team damage us. It's unfair to punish those who are new to the game and are doing it by accident, but for the trolls it would be really beneficial to have a kick function.

...Well...now that I say that out loud, I could see how that would play out. The enemy team probably won't vote to kick the troll because they're helping them win...but I think a fair game-master should have that ability. The one who starts the game could be managing it by kicking unruly players. They already have the ability to kick players in the lobby, and a SURPRISING amount of players quit the moment their team is being dominated anyway...leaving their teammates out to dry.

Though there's an unexpected advantage to being alone in a 3 person team. Instead of taking out the pilotless tank or having a crappy/badass AI take it's place, the game randomly selects a teammate to control the tank that was left behind, like a surrogate tank. It's brilliantly balanced, because these surrogate tanks can't pick up powerups that are dropped onto the battlefield, and the special shot that's armed is selected at random. A skilled player left alone on a 3v3 match now has the opportunity to BE the entire team, practicing with various shots, and in some cases, even I have proved this, can come back from losing and win, win, win. Scoring BIG-TIME in the XP department.

Gaining XP is so worth it. The reason I signed up is I was tired of being bombarded by all of these neat attacks, and wanted to be the one dishing out the hurt as I progressively improved in accuracy. Right now I'm level 10, and I just unlocked the AC-130 shot which is like a big and burlier airstrike. From what I've seen out in the battlefield, I haven't even scratched the surface yet.

The music is epic as hell, even though I'm convinced the Latin chorus is saying "Heavy Boots of Lead" because it's fitting; this game kicks ass. Despite the trolls, despite the simplified graphics, despite the Smiley Bomb having that overblown very pixelated look...this is a fun, balanced game.

I'll see you in battle.

[Robot Clashes]

Pretty damn good!

As far as these kind of strategy games go, one with a constant rate of output, where the challenge is to distribute your income properly, this is executed pretty decently. I like how everything looks, and the camera swivels around nicely; either showing us our base, or otherwise cutting straight to the frontlines of the action. It's thoroughly more stimulating than surveying a vast stretch of land as you send out your troops one at a time.

The robot voices were too quiet, or almost too distorted for me to make sense of what dialogue was being heard on the battlefield. The music was nice, and the sound effects were great! Though I would proof-read your stuff before sending it out there...there were a few instances of grammatical errors from our Commander as he debriefed us. Seeing as how they're robots, I would find someone to write robot-like dialogue for them...flawlessly structured, elegant, perhaps with a sophisticated vocabulary...or maybe this is a joke, as the alien stuck to his face might have fried an English circuit. :P just messin' with you

I liked the idea that it shifted from robots to squid-like aliens. I think I got all the way up to 4-1, so I can't confirm if there are any other enemy variants...if not, there totally should be, because this is an entertaining game, and good games could always use a little switching up. While I put up a decent fight, I eventually get my ass-kicked on 4-1...I'll return again and again until I defeat it.

My only problem, and I suppose this could be justified in the games story through faulty, imperfect AI in the soldiers, is once my troops get up to the gates, they have no sense of target priority. They'll be blasting away at the gate while taking basic-level fire to the face until dead, and there's no way I can go "Hey! Idiots! Take THAT guy out...or die, y'know why not. You're only a Captain with an Acid Gun in front of two of our best snipers, being killed by ONE of their grunts. Stupid stupid stupid!" lol

I would hope they would go after the greater threat before moving onto the immobile target.

Still, it was an addicting time-waster, and because I have yet to reach the very end, I'll come back to finish the job. Great work! Voted 5.