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)

[20 Seconds to DIE]

Ahh, the nostalgia!

This kinda of brings me back to what was especially popular around the time I signed up to NG. Since it's early years, interactive stick deaths were regularly uploaded through the Flash Portal, and with the popularity of Xiao Xiao, making the simple suckers move in extraordinary and brutal ways proved to be a very quick and fun way to satiate entertaining bloodshed.

It's good to see that the genre has come a long way since then. :)

Psycho was so detailed, and contained such REFRESHING dramatic camera angles that I began to wonder out loud why even bother keeping the characters as stick figures. The animator involved did a spectacular job. With stick flashes, it's all too common for the camera angle to either remain stationary or treat the movie like a 2D side-scroller; a terminal stage perspective with no diversity or environment to roll around...admittedly, that's simpler to maintain, but this flash threw that rule out the window! With over-the-shoulders, dramatic angles both from above and below both characters, it heightened the immersion intensely. Furthermore, the bloodsplats that remianed in air seemed very artistic, and the transition into the black figure's insanity ended the short with a fantastically brutal maneuver. Bravo!

Beard Ninja contained some stunningly powerful anime-inspired sword movements, with even more surprisingly brutal executions, like stabbing the torso from ABOVE the handle while the sword is already impaled in the victim's leg. The most interesting detail about this artist is how...CONVINCING the blood splatters off of the victim and falls to the ground. It just looks right somehow. Though the ending did get increasingly ridiculous with Beard Punches and Beard Sticky Bombs...it felt like an awesomely violent tale of what would happen if Milla Rage from Guilty Gear had a kid with Chuck Norris and that son became a grand master and kicked ass with a katana and manly man-beard. Still, as silly as it was, it was entertaining and I liked it.

Multiplication ended with Troll Physics in action. I laughed out loud :D, but what I especially liked about it is I always enjoy it when the victims put up a fight. It's just not honorable to see someone just take a beating and not even try to resist, in my perspective. The camera angles tried to tilt around to be immersive, but when it rotated the screen so wildly in the middle of when that guy's...balls(?) were getting ripped off, it seemed out of place.

Mining had your typical beat-down with an item, in this case a pick-axe, and it was decent. No details really stood out for me, except I liked how he kinda reacted to the torso hitting the deck after that climactic hit. It was more gratuitous and goofy than it was hardcore and brutal.

But the overblown gratuity and goofiness was multiplied from Mining as we got into Yoyo. The toy was doing impossible things...it looked good, but it made no sense how the round, stringed object could maintain grip, roll and bounch a fully grown man back, and Shoop Da Woop the poor guy into oblivion. The guy stood there and took all of this DBZing, and somehow the whole sequence just wasn't engaging like some of the others.

Lightning excelled with some very human reactions to the circumstances the befell him. Along with his overall body language I was impressed with the realistic hop and shakes as he realizes his ankle caught on fire. The wrath of God left a great taste in my mouth with his demise. Great job!

Exploders was hilarious! Where it lacked in perspective angles it made up for in body language. Though I thought it was odd the stub from his wounds were pinkish and floppy, I suppose it makes sense.

Beat Down though was more of a let down. Nothing extraordinary, and a pretty standard, less engaging brawl. It was my least fav because we've seen all of this before hundreds of times, some of which with much more impressive choreography without suspending disbelief. Granted, this one is probably the more realistic of all the shorts, but it didn't try anything new. No boundaries were pushed.

Overall, great job! 5'd

Stone-Steven responds:

I love to see reviews like this. Time was spent in these animations ( believe it or not! ) and it's great to see someone analyze it as for those who did the very same in creating it.

Thanks for the detailed review!

[Madness: Premeditation]

Great idea!

It's very, very trial and error, but it's still a very fun game. AP is pretty slow to accumulate, but maybe that's a good thing.

A glitch, unfortunately, ruined my gaming experience. Y'see, by the time I got to the worm right after the two sentry guns, I died from the worm once for not moving. No lie, on the second try, I sprinted ahead, shot twice behind me, and chucked a grenade in the bottom right corner. The timing was so perfect, that the grenade exploded and destroyed the worm in the bottom right. I had survived, standing on the crate in the middle, boss's health was depleted, explosion animation, sound effect, all that jazz...but it told me I had failed.

...What? I killed the worm and lived to tell about it. How did I fail?

I retried the game from the very start. Frustrated I couldn't repeat my lucky grenade hit, I devoted that 1 AP to the other pistol...and in my continued frustration, realizing I'm having a pretty bad time with the FIRST BOSS, I basically rage-quit. One thing I can't complain about is it's certainly not easy, so the challenge is a plus!

Additionally, it would be most useful if you could remove the targeting nodes after you've placed them, instead of having to restart and maneuver your way around level again. It's a pretty brilliant system, with how it's layed out, and it does a good job not to over power Hank...but perhaps he might be a little underpowered.

The atmosphere, characters, and all-around artistic style looked awesome! Sound effects were all good, and the music was appropriate for the mood, but not very interesting and never grabbed my attention. As far as programming goes, it felt very nice! Hank was reliably weighty, and I pulled off the wall-jump well, the targeting system is accurate, and I suppose disallowing targeting nodes to be close together makes sense for recoil, but they should still be easily removed should the player make a mistake. And what's the deal with those grenades? Was my boss mishap a similar result to SangerZonvolt's (below me) deal?

I'm still voting highly regardless of it because it was a good lookin', good feeling game, with a good idea; it's evident you guys spent some time on this. Happy belated Pico Day! Voted 5.

BoMToons responds:

you can remove nodes by clicking on them after they're placed (then clicking an "x" in the gun assignment menu), I'll look into the worm boss grenade bug, thanks!

[crushd]

Addictive, Simple, and cool! Great time waster!

I think any added complexity would stave the challenge from this High Score time-sink. I love it for it's retro feel, yet surprisingly intuitive puzzle-like challenge. Just keeping Red from getting crushed is a challenge on it's own, and when it inevitably happens, he seems to want to land on the one spot that'll make him drown...(or perhaps I've been too patient with the water level to rise to that point.) Either way, every error I've encountered through the game was by my own...accidentally trapping the guy, and having to dig him out against the clock, while some other block descends...there's something just very classic and timeless on the premise, though I know I haven't played this game before. It's very interesting how it handles...I like how over time, the Red block will try to force his way out of a tight spot, which can either help things or complicate them.

Loved the game! I'd try talking to Tom about implementing the medal system! It's not necessary, of course, but it would definitely accrue more hits.

I will definitely return to this game, either way, to shave off some time. Again, it's very cool!

MrPiglet responds:

I'm extremely happy to hear you say that. One of the hardest things to do whilst making this was to find ways of balancing out the quirks in my initial concept/prototype to try to achieve the 'timeless' feel you mention.

Much thanks for sharing your thoughts :)

[Fatherly Bonds Da Game]

A Programming Disaster

Lochie fucked the game over, but Archer didn't come close to save it; your animating ability has improved over the years, but it wasn't demonstrated in this. Your graphical craftsmanship with flash games is also superb as demonstrated via Toss the Turtle, but again, wasn't demonstrated in this. If I played Toss the Turtle before I played this and didn't know any better, I would have assumed Turtle came out years AFTER this was plopped down, hoping you had trekked a path of steady progression.

There were cuts, there were mis-communications, and undependable help that plagued this project...but there was nothing redeemable about it upon submission; as a time-killer, it was more a time-waster...beating up nameless antagonists from the successful flash short of last year should be a fun, violent, invigorating experience, taking command of the brutal yet powerful Dad. For something based off of a pretty epic flash and what was probably inspired by Double Dragon/Paladin's "Dad n Me" games, instead of becoming awesome fell COMPLETELY short.

We're aware of the story from Fatherly Bonds, but we get none of that here...absolutely no flesh whatsoever. It's actually kind of impolite from gaming standards to just toss you into the middle of it all the instant you hit play...and another thing! Having to hold down the key symbol to figure out how to play is just tacky.

The combos the player performs are boring immediately after you've seen it twice, and the special ability, ala spinning in place, can only seem to be executed once. There's no apparent difference between the scrawny masked minions and the juiced up giant minions in how much damage they take, and the background environments, although attempting to switch it up to keep it from getting boring, completely fail to do so, because NOTHING. HAPPENS.

...How else can I say it than "this wasn't fun." The little thumbs-up screen with the score, ad, and "Proceed" button disrupt the pace of an already boring beat-em-up that doesn't seem to toss anything new, familiar, or entertaining for the player.

-What of a plot.
-What of powerups.
-What of a block function.
-What of a jump button
-What of different combo's
-What of more enemies
-What of weapons
-What of throws
-What of interactive environments
-What of ENVIRONMENTS for that matter
-What of animated sequences if there wasn't enough time to construct strips of land in between fights

I mean COME ON, you make it abundantly clear you love the fuck out of Double Dragon and Battletoads among other genuinely interesting games, so clearly it wasn't from a lack of vision that left out many gameplay elements that could've saved this thing. Lochie may have failed you, but Archer failed you as well...there's too much wrong with this game and not enough right, but I hope that you walked away from the experience a wiser man.

Get ye a programmer you can depend on...you're a recognized face on NG, so it shouldn't be so hard! lol

Gonzossm responds:

Believe me its hard to find a dependable coder. 90% seem to be douche bags <_< I was lucky to evan get this out here for u guys :P evan if its small. Thanks for the review. :P

[M-Bot The Game]

Ran out of room in the review space...again.

For starters, on a game that has looping sound on the preloader, it's always a good idea to have a button that toggles mute (ESPECIALLY if it's a huge filesize, where the player will be subjected to it for a prolonged amount of time.) The music loop wasn't particularly annoying to me, but it's always a conscientious option, as there are some who would disagree.

One way around it, though, since you have our control options there, with our protagonist chasing an antagonist, is you could use the preloader space to provide us with an interactive warm-up of a minigame. But a mute button would be easier to program to accommodate the whiners. :P

The control scheme with the mouse takes a little getting used to. But once you learn to concentrate on the red line-of-sight, it gets a little easier. It's a recurring theme throughout the game where it's pivotal to your survival to know exactly where on the street your player is, and that's tricky to get a hang of since the camera is terminally side-scroller on a plane that contains depth. It would be merciful for us if the angle was viewed higher, looking down at the player...or if you REALLY wanted to be expiremental with flash, take from Einhander, an underrated Playstation 3D side scroller, and consistently switch up the perspectives, while never taking away from the fact that it's a side scroller.

The point of view makes it difficult to navigate with the mouse when the landmines came in. Instinctively, I wanted to switch play-styles without losing progress I've gained, so I seeked out the pause button for the menu. The "P" for pause was there, but it simply froze the game. It would be a great feature to have a menu where you could swap out play-styles without disrupting the whole game...like say you've tried keyboard and decided you wanted to give mouse a try.

It wasn't until the barrier section that I finally figured out that the health was indicated with the score, and similar to Da Pink Knight, also parallelled with what power ups you were granted. It's a good system that rewards the player with incentive to keep as shiny and untouched as possible, but it's not clearly established. Like even just an arrow that laid it straight for us at the very beginning WHILE we're getting used to the controls would've sufficed. "See this? This is your score. The more you got, the beefier you get. Don't let it drop to zero. Off you go." dusts off it's hands and let's you play the game.

*sigh*...I'm going to run out of review space...this review window's open WHILE I'm playing.

The music is actually pretty awesome. It gets you pumped, and it's remeniscent of arcade games, especially with the inclusion of dynamic sound effects that almost seem to be a part of the remix of the song you're listening to. Like the "Honk...Honnnk" going with the beat, and the whiplashes and shit. It only adds to the awesome. However, since it's ABSOLUTELY important to pay attention to where the red line-of-sight is, it keeps your eyes off of your character and the score-board more often than not. When you take damage, the little "Kzzzkkt" is barely audible when you take a hit. There were also missed opportunities for the jet-boost noise, and the gun SFX on the double-barrelled powerup don't match with the rate of fire...in other words; there are some SFX that are just right, but there are others that need to catch up to par with the appropriate ones.

Visually, I was taken off guard by the visuals. You had submitted 3D material as early as 2003, and it shows you've been pumping some polygonal iron. I was immediately reminded of Einhander, stated earlier, with the immersive bridge/tunnel thing the character had to pass through early on. While I already mentioned my beef with the fixed POV, the wall/barrier sequence was a little disorientating at first with the collision detection of the character. Sometimes it felt like a coin toss, and other times I accept responsiblity for being too slow to get to the weak-point. But everything looks great! I especially like the epic power-up vignettes.

Great Expirement! 5

MindChamber responds:

Thanks for the awesome review. This 3D rendered stuff is definitely something I've been holding near and dear to me for many years. its definitely a novel ideas thats became anitquited over the years. Back in 03 it seems so revolutionary, I had plans to do heroes of cybertron2, STagger, even wheelman. but as you can see they all fell by the waistside because I just couldnt find that balance between detail and filesize. In fact I never did, which is why all those projects were backburned. That is why i felt the need even finish one thing like this. The good news is Flash CAN do 3D and someday I will be able to use real 3D and not just prerended, and have a decent filesize to boot!. but yeah thanks for noticing..

I do agree with you there isnt enough info on how to play the game, I was much more thorough with Baron and to a degree pink knight. I just felt no matter how much material I put out, no one really reads it, and its imperative that the game is as intuitive as possible. And as you can see it isnt always easy. but I will keep trying harder to make the readability of the game from beginning to end.

I agree about the mute button AND the minigame. orginally the pixel art in the beginning was supposed to be an interactive tutorial, but this game had been delayed so many times, and schedules are so hectic that we just wanted it out by the time we saw the finish line.
not trying to make excuses, just saying you are right about that and we knew about it. :)

also yeah an isometic view of the game wouldve ruled!

thanks for the review

[crazy lander]

Interesting!

At first, I wasn't impressed by it in the slightest...another Lunar Lander rip, but with the fuel gauge taken out.

"Infinite Fuel?" I thought. "Well then there's no challenge! The angle is even fixed so you can't land sideways...this'll be a piece of cake!"

Then shit got really interesting. Rotating the planet instead of maneuvering the ship around the land and flipped landscapes. "Okay...it's a little more challenging, I'll admit...but still do-able!"

Then the lights went off. Then the ship began to malfunction...shit got creative!

I voted highly to praise the switch up in the gameplay that isn't typically associated with Lunar Lander. I can't vote highly, however, for the lack of sound, background music, and basic, BASIC visuals.

It needs a facelift and a soundtrack, but overall it's still fun to play. I stopped playing because I actually gotta jet at the moment, but I didn't get to even cover the later levels...if you were to do a sequel, however, come up with even crazier original gameplay elements, and expand on it so it has intense replay value.

amoebadan responds:

we are currently working on a sequel at the moment and looking at iphone app possibilities.

p.s. cows may be involved in the sequel

[zOMGies]

Ha! Very fun!

One can never judge a book by it's cover...at first glance, it would seem to be a pretty short-lived run for a guy in pink pajamas sprinting down an open street picking off zombies behind him. But looks can most certainly be deceiving...

...This game kicked a flash-load of ass!

Our nameless, pink pajama clad hero is a totally hardcore, unrelenting Olympian track-star of a Mass Murder Machine. The constant state of motion puts forth a decent edge of tension that's backed by the much faster enemies. The name of the game is "Prioritize your targets."

I hovered between the middle and 3/4th's in through most of my gameplay, keeping an eye out for obstacles and explosives. (Those explosive barrels and ammo cache's were REALLY blessings in disguises, saving my ass on numerous occasions.)

Early in the game, it gets really rough when the crawl runners were introduced. The crowbar was pretty much useless to me, and tolerating the campaign with a pistol wore out it's welcome quickly. The sub-machine gun was a VAST improvement, but became quickly outdated with stronger zombies. The shotgun, naturally, had accuracy issues, and I found myself holding onto the Auto Rifle throughout the game until the Assault Rifle was unlocked. The flamethrower was a waste of time, in my opinion, and the Sniper Rifle was an incredibly effective secondary weapon, almost acting like a rail-gun. The bazooka was a tad underpowered, and the Chainsaw was an ideal secondary weapon for when you're primary has run out of ammo, and you need to get some distance for the reload with a quick swap. The laser was damned orgasmic. :D

I found myself often completely overlooking the pickups altogether, and focusing on the horde and everything else....if they actually DID affect the gameplay somehow, their effects weren't apparent to me.

The limited firing angle upped the challenge in a way, and made it absolutely necessary to maneuver...sometimes it got intense with the way I would have to weave in-between hordes on both sides, selectively firing immediate dangers to avoid taking damage, just for the sake of not getting overwhelmed. Though it doesn't make sense why he can't shoot downstage or upstage, it's not a necessary feature for THIS particular game. More on that in a bit.

The end-stage screen music was pretty cool; I liked it! But the utter lack of any other music was really a missed opportunity on your part. With different stages, I've always come to expect different stage music to accompany the new environment...anything from Metal, to Epic Chase music, Horror music, or even Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" would've sufficed...but instead, we're treated to ambient zombie groans throughout the level's run.

Incredibly, for as often as it would have to be done, the machine-gun fire and bullet's ripping through flesh sound DIDN'T get annoying. The sound effects for the weapons and explosions were well balanced...but I DO have to complain about the single zombie noise...it lacks diversity....and the Game Over line "Just a Dream" could use some polishing with better quality recording. Still, it wasn't bad enough to deduct on my vote.

The medals were a brilliant add-on to add replay-value for the hardened flash gamer, but by the time I hit the refresh page to see what I've collected, I found it's actually rather easy to achieve most of them...except for 100% Headshots.....that's gotta be worth more than 25 points. lol

All-in-all, I had a blast with this run-in-gun...there were memorable moments of intensity that genuinely required skill to get through, and that's what makes it stand out for me. I gave it a 5!

SUGGESTIONS:
-Music diversity between different stages.
-Flamethrowers should gain distinction from the rest of the weapons by physically setting the zombies on fire and slowing them down to compensate for short range/low damage.
-More special zombies! (Like uncommon jumpers that are hard to shoot, or fat one's that come from stage-right, or even bosses, etc...)
-Diversity in zombie sounds (HIT ME UP, I would gladly do zombie overs for the collab credit!)

Jimp responds:

Brilliant review mate, thanks so much! Really means a lot when people take the time to write an in depth review, Im glad you liked the game!

The 100% headshots is actually pretty easy if you do it on the first level, just kill 1 zombie then dodge the rest :)

[Neuron]

Addicting and stimulating!

ParagonX9 always does a good job giving us that warm, Newgroundsy feel of olde...years and years later, that song is still good, but I would have include an option for the player to choose between a variety of songs; it's strangely only a 1.5 MB game, so it couldn't take up THAT much extra room, could it?

I would also include a bonus for those who are accurate; if you hit, and hit, and hit, and hit, without missing, you can gain combos that intensify your score dramatically, or even unlock special, previously unobtainable perks...you could also see to Tom about implementing the achievement system in this game to unlocking achievements through NG accounts; some users like to collect those.

I quickly found myself opting for speed and rapid power favoring over a balanced health system...I stayed tiny, but when enemies started coming out in suffocating swarms, I quickly upgraded to rapid fire. When I blurred my vision, and kept everything peripheral, I could concentrate on the brighter shade of color as the enemy, and manuever in tight-patterns dodging enemies and blasting only what's nearby until they started to spread thin...I began dying rapidly around the color changing one's (white-to-purple-to-red each time you hit them) because that threw my strategy off.

...Oh, and that strategy also didn't work with the super-fast purple ones. :P

The strafing shooting enemies were interesting at first, but never presented a huge challenge. I kept glancing at my health to see if I were getting hit, and I don't think they landed a single shot on me after their first encounter. There needs to be more enemies with projecting attacks, or even proximity attacks to counter my close-up, or "chase-me" tactics.

The game is pleasing to the eye, and as distinct a noise the data collection "twang" was, it never got annoying for me. It all had a very good feel to it. Since this is an incredibly visual game, I would suggest enemies that could alter or play on that. One's that are two dimensional and seem to flip, to give the illusion that their visibility wanes off and on as they strobe their way towards the player...or flare orbs that emit and abundantly radiant light to cloak other enemies that could be hiding in the aura. Stuff like that wouldn't be too atrociously difficult to add, but could turn the tide of difficulty in the stage.

I think you're on the right track; I had fun playing this! Keep up the good work!

spectre1989 responds:

Thanks for such a detailed review, and I'm really glad you liked it. Those are some great ideas for possible sequels too, hopefully I can really play with the visual aspects next time :)

[Da Pink Knight]

Oh My GOD, what a beast...

It took me five tries to finally beat that ass-goblin, but I finally did it.

The level-down, boss-repair is a really interesting feature; really sets a sense of urgency when it comes to your stamina bar. "Oh shit, I'm getting low...better back off and play dodge-ball for a while until it recharges" because even if you press the crap out of those buttons, you're almost GUARANTEED one level down.

I mostly stuck with aerial attacks, hopping in up and down the stage, and almost never beside him because of that horrifying ground punch he does...and even when he does knock me down with one, I have to move to an area around him and quickly throw up my sheild incase of a cannonball...

...but what really messed me up was that buzzsaw...and holy crap, it has a reach to it...the only thing, ONLY thing that would make this easier is being able to move up or down in mid-jump, as that suits my strategy of attacking him in the air.

Even though this is one boss-fight, it's exhausting...when I found out you have to drain the PILOT'S health after you first break the armor, I shouted "NO!" because I thought I was coming close to beating it, finally...

...nope...not even close...lol

The challenge is refreshing, and I personally think you shouldn't dumb it down. As brutal as this giant wooden mobile suit is, it still contains a lot of comical quality in it through the details; the magic jump when I first did it made me laugh out loud, and the tiny expressions on the knight's face in the background and the pilot's "OH SHI-" draw a grin on my face while I'm intently manuevering and bashing away.

At no point in this game did I get bored with it, or just shove the keyboard away pouting "man, to hell with this game!" I wanted to play it to the end...and even after all that effort, I STILL haven't unlocked all the medals, so it's got some replayability to it.

Great job, MindChamber...and Happy belated Pico Day!

MindChamber responds:

thanks, Im really glad you kept with it, and even happier to know you beat it.

awesome