Score: 9

"Totally slick"

submission: newgrounds xmas boner

date: December 28, 2009

Oh man, I had no idea that you could animate this well. This is some of the most aesthetically pleasing new stuff I've seen in a while, even though it's very short. The voice acting was good as well. Plus, it was funny shit.

Honestly, the only flaw here is the short length. I realize that maintaining such fluid animation makes even short flashes like these time consuming, though, so I won't take off much for it.

I'm going to look into your other stuff now, you've officially got my interest.

Score: 5

"Lots of effort, but the end product isn't worth it"

submission: Super Mario bros Z ep.8

date: October 29, 2009

Let me start by saying that this was not bad. This obviously required a lot of time to produce, and I recognize that. The scene select was also a good idea. However, despite the amount of work you put into this, I have some serious, SERIOUS issues with it as a series and as individual submissions that made me lower your overall score.

First, the sprites. I realize that not everything in this episode was ripped from games and that you did produce some stuff of your own as well as used some advanced techniques in the sprite animations, like filters and blur effects and all that good stuff. However, this doesn't change the fact that most of this stuff requires so much effort not because it is extremely difficult to make, but because it's so mindlessly time consuming to make that many symbols and make so many layers and tweens. You've definitely gotten better with flash, and this episode shows it, but it's just sprite after sprite after sprite. You did render the Doomship, but honestly, that kind of 3D modeling isn't that hard at that level of detail, and I wasn't that impressed. You tween very well, but it doesn't really satisfy me. The fight scenes are well choreographed, but the hardest part in a good fight animation is the frame-by-frame rendering of fast, precise movements. Sprites are significantly easier to make fight scenes with. You should consider making some animations without any sprites and make stuff from scratch. You can only push sprite animation so far.

The there's the story and dialogue. The memes came across as desperate attempts at humor, and of course, most of the fans of this series may find them amusing, but it's not real humor, it's just regurgitating something that someone else says, and anyone can do that. They just irritated me. The dialogue wasn't terrible, but then again, it wasn't really good, either. Average, really. Shadow's dialogue was the worst. Just typical contrived anime-style angst. That kind of shtick is overdone, and you should avoid it in the future.

Then there's the entire concept of the series. Mario AND Sonic AND DBZ? That's a huge stretch, and honestly, not that creative. Instead of just basing your work on a single franchise, you decided to draw from 3 franchises, all of which don't really have very good story lines (DBZ sometimes has good stories, but as the series goes on, it just gets ridiculous). It seems forced and artificial, and honestly just makes me cringe. Until the fight scene, when it was very dialogue heavy, I was forcing myself to read it so I'd be a better judge while reviewing it. I really just wanted to skip it. Even the fight scene seemed to drag on too long. It moves very fast at times, sometimes too fast. You can barely tell what's exactly happening with the fighting, it's just blurs half the time. I just started to get bored and waited for the fighting to end.

In the end, what we have here is a cartoon that will only truly satisfy either teenage gamers or people who are obsessed with sonic/mario/DBZ, and I'm not trying to be insulting, I'm just being honest. It's just fanservice for them, really, and it lacks substance. Sure, as far as sprite animations go, this is very good. But, that's its only honestly redeeming feature. Once this series finishes, you should really think about branching out into non-sprite animation, since you've pretty much exhausted your options with sprites.

Score: 9

"Pretty fucking brilliant."

submission: Pico's Adventure

date: July 14, 2009

I don't know what the fuck these other people are talking about, the animation in this was quite good, easily better than the majority of animation on this website. I guess they don't know what makes animation good.

I loved the female sexual imagery in the beginning, and your use of color and highly fluid animation was as aesthetically pleasing as ever. I laughed at the "high five" gag as well. Keep up the good work.

Score: 9

"This is my favorite piece of yours."

submission: cupcake?

date: July 1, 2009

Looking at this and comparing it with your older stuff, I can see that you're branching out into different techniques of animation. In this case, you're experimenting with glitching, which I LOVE. I love the glitchcore genre, and I hope that you keep experimenting with it and incorporating more of it into your work in the future.

This piece is also a bit darker than any of your other pieces, which I also like. It starts off with one of your quirky, affable little creatures who happens upon a cupcake dog (how lovely!), only to glitch into a lumbering green humanoid following a half eaten dog corpse that is trailing blood, which then morphs back into the half cupcake, and all is glitchy and well. I didn't expect to see you take such a morbid detour in this piece, since it's never really been your M.O., but I was pleasantly surprised to see it.

The only thing holding this back is the length, and I know that you're working with 30 FPS and glitching at the same time, so it's understandable that this would be brief, but I want to see MORE. I want more of this glitchcore bear going around eating magic baked delights, only to morph into a grotesque ghoulish entity that exists in a parallel existence with this bear, mirroring his actions and applying them in the ways that are appropriate in his environment. Or maybe the Bear is the monster. Or maybe the MONSTER is really the BEAR. All of a sudden, we're in this Hamlet-like "Is the ghost real" situation involving cupcakes and half-eaten domesticated animals, and I can't get enough of it.

Please keep doing glitchcore, or at least keep toying around with it. If it's a real pain to do, maybe ask around for help from people who do glitching often for tips on how to make it easier. There's an artist on NG called Morrowdays, I believe he was in a collab about sound that you were in as well. He's got a flash called "Break." that is a great example of colorful glitchcore. Maybe he could give you some pointers on how to incorporate glitching into your work without breaking the flow of your more traditional animation style.

Score: 3

"Just way too brief and sketchy."

submission: Dansen with the Devil

date: June 10, 2009

Don't get me wrong, the animation was pretty good, and I liked your choice of color. However, this was just too short to really get a good score. There's really almost nothing to even review, apart from your frame by frame work, which is good but too short.

This is more of an animation test than an animation, a rough sketch that isn't really a project in itself. I can't really give it a good score because of its brevity and lack of real substance, but I'd like to see you put together a full-fledged project, seeing as how you do know how to animate to an extent.

Score: 8

"Very well done, but quite difficult."

submission: inFAMOUS:Precinct Assault

date: June 3, 2009

This is a very well constructed and polished game, and it's definitely worthy of being attached to the PS3 name, as far as flash games go. The physics engine is good, the character moves swiftly but realistically, and the graphics are very good, especially for a game this demanding on one's system. I particularly liked the game over screen graphics and music.

I do have a couple of gripes, however. The difficulty is a bit steep once you hit the second level. The way it's constructed, the level simply becomes a trial-and-error experience, falling blindly into water at every other turn. I would have held off from water obstacle courses that early in the game, since the player had only just been introduced to the mechanics and didn't have an opportunity to really experiment with weapons and advanced terrain navigation without having to worry about falling into pools of water that are everywhere.

Also, the enemies seem to react arbitrarily to my lightning strike. If I'm very close and I'm using the lightning bolt on them, I use it over and over on them with little to no effect. But when I step back, it kills them in 2-4 shots. Meanwhile, the electric shove attack (hopefully you know what I'm taking about) works close up and from a medium range, making the bolt seem unnecessary, since its range is only a bit better than the shove. Try either making the bolt have screen-wide range or the same damage from any distance.

Overall, this game was very good, even when compared to other professionally commissioned games. The difficulty held it back a bit, since I got kind of frustrated after about a dozen deaths in the second level. Still, I hope you make more games like this in the future.

Score: 9

"Wow, you really nailed it."

submission: Old Mill Pond

date: May 28, 2009

McBean, I've been a fan of yours, and this latest project not only does not disappoint, it makes me like you more.

The animation was not only smooth and well done on its own, but it also lent itself superbly well to the subject matter at hand, really capturing Birbiglia's narration and style, adding to both the animation and the audio simultaneously. The scene change timing and lip syncing was all excellent.

The length of the flash was fine, and ended on a nice note. Ending where you did left enough time to make a decent length flash at ended at a departure point where the joke topic was able to conclude itself, so you didn't extend the flash beyond the logical concluding point, which is good.

I really can't see many flaws in this flash, if any. The only thing I can even pull out of my ass to whien about is that you didn't make the jokes yourself, but I really can't complain about that for two reasons: one, it was still funny, and it's meant as a sort of tribute/homage, which is the whole point, and two, your animation itself was funny, since you added your own sight gags that weren't included in the dialogue, effectively adding to the foundation of the humor.

Very nice work. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and I look forward to anything else you make in the future.

Score: 5

"Shows promise, but too unpolished to be great."

submission: fire man 2

date: May 21, 2009

First, the good: the graphics are decent, the premise is simple but fun, and there are other little things like volume control in game that make this game nice.

I like the idea behind it, but the game sort of suffers from a couple hindrances.
First, the difficulty. The difficulty in just the first couple of levels absolutely skyrockets. The first level was quite easy, but then you introduce several turrets and the like out of nowhere, and the level with the bats, while a nice idea for a level, was too frustrating to be fun. Try to ease into the difficult levels more slowly so people have more of a chance to get into the game. If you make it too hard in the beginning, people will get too discouraged to play for more than a few minutes.

Also, I found the controls to occasionally be unreliable. When I was on the bat level, I'd often press jump while on top of a bat only to fall through without jumping at all to fall to my death. Then, when I got far right and then died, the bats wouldn't be under me when I respawned on the left, virtually making me lose 2 lives automatically. Combining this with the two turrets on the bottom makes that level a chore and a pain. I really want to play some more, but these levels are too frustrating to make the game enjoyable.

You have a good game foundation here, it just needs some polishing and revision to make it more fun and playable.

Score: 10

"Gorgeous work."

submission: Don't Look Back

date: March 18, 2009

Wow, what a game. Excellent minimalism, use of pixels, controls, level design, gameplay, atmosphere, color scheme, sound, and personal meaning.

While the graphics were very simple, I liked them that way. The blacks and reds are in high contrast to the enemies and character, which increases visibility and looks good, too. The scenery you made using such basic tools is stunning. The entire "Don't Look Back" concept was really interesting. It added an extra challenge, but not so much as to become irritating. The end was very creative and clever, as well.

This flash is an excellent example of deceptive simplicity in flash game design. To make a game with this much depth and feeling while only showing a surface of spartan, old school graphical interface is challenging, and you fucking NAILED IT. I hardly EVER give 10's in reviews- I mean EVER. During my time as a member of this website, which spans just under 6 years, and over a hundred reviews, I've only given out about 20 perfect 10's. The last time I did was January 2008. You managed to break the drought, man. Kudos.

I'm hard pressed to think of any criticisms, since I don't think I really disliked anything about the game. The final boss was pretty tricky unless you knew exactly how to do, and if you can't figure it out, you're screwed. Even if you know what to do, you still may not be able to physically pull it off due to difficulty. Of course, this issue is greatly diminished thanks to the respawning system, which worked very well, I might add. Even still, I can see some people having a really hard time with it, and some people may give up at that point and not get to experience the glory that is the rest of the game. Maybe make the boss a bit easier after 20 or 25 deaths would be a good thing, if you could possibly implement it.

I eagerly anticipate anything you produce in the future, and hopefully it will be another game like this. Congratulate yourself on a job superbly executed.

Score: 8

"Nostalgic and good on it's own."

submission: Free Board

date: January 15, 2009

Not only a good tribute, but also a fun game in it's own right. Had that skifree feeling, but a bit more bare bones, but the graphics were smooth.

Mys suggestions: add the other elements of skifree to this one, but maybe not identically. For example, the snowman. When the timer runs out, you could have the snowman "unleashed" upon the player. However, you can keep playing and collecting points while staying away from the snowman until you finally hit an obstacle.

Then there's the dog that pees, who I have always affectionately referred to as "Peedog". You don't have to use a peeing dog, but in the original skifree, it served a purpose other than humor; it added variety to the obstacles. The dog was mobile, unlike the trees and rocks, and added an element of entropy to the game. Try to implement a moving obstacle (maybe a mountain goat that runs around taking shits) to add to the variety.

You could also consider different difficulties by allowing players to choose between a few options of beginning time, so beginners will last longer.

Overall, thank you for the game, and I think it would really improve the game even further if you implemented at least a couple of these suggestions.