WCCC's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[JelloTetrix]

If it doesn't fit, you haven't applied enough force.

[FRIDAY NIGHT FUNKIN']

The ability to press 1-4 instead of LRUD would go a long ways. SCGMDX had this in later installments, and while I didn't prefer it for its horizontal format, this vertical format has me thinking otherwise. I know it's more assets and such, but it'd be nice.

Also: Just cleared the game on a quick playthrough of easy, to see how it played. And yeah, skeleton dudes are somehow the hardest, even on easy. I think it's the minimal tells in body language and constantly shifting definition of what each note sounds like. I like that you experiment along the way, though.

[Adventures With Anxiety!]

A good story. I don't know what else to say, but it speaks a lot to people these days, myself included. But I guess this means Thanos was right.

[Plazma Burst 2]

Ah, yes. This brings me back. A classic then, and a classic now. The ragdoll physics and small screen size have certainly jarred me, but not as much as me realizing that I'd beaten the game with both alien and human gear on impossible back in the day. I figured out the Ctrl+Mousewheel trick. I was surprised that it was recommended to a reviewer, as it feels backend, but I guess that proves it's an established lifehack. Getting used the ragdoll physics again. I'm remembering how nice it was to be able to literally dive for cover, or grab onto ledges dynamically... Plus splitting your enemies in two on a sharp corner feels great. I've just gotta get my sea legs again.
You might recall, but I was the guy who emailed about player levels having broken level transfer syntax, some years back. I do hope it brings some new blood back into the game, as it's one I make a pilgrimage to every couple of years. Right on schedule!

EGurt responds:

Oh, my syntax errors could have been a right thing for one more spooktober :D Hopefully it got better :)

There been problems when moving to next levels too, I think I remember those.

[A Grim Chase]

Very clever ending. Wink. Moreover, a very unique game from pretty simple mechanics. Not punishingly hard. Not overly serious. Not a huge brain-breaker or reflex tester. Just a little slice of chill, and there ain't nothing wrong with that. Ice zombies got me tho.

[Tactical Weapon Pack 2]

Pretty good stuff. Simple, but funner than I'd have expected. Seems to have a lot passed down from MW2's sort of energy. Only complaint is the game memory leaks, seemingly leading to high score submission and achievement connection breaking. Then, things like having prestiged and getting X headshots or X kills don't register during that session, and are never registered again. Prestiged as level 50 yet I don't have 1K kills, 1K headshots, or prestige as my trophies. Odd stuff.

[Crypt Shyfter: Legend of Azmar]

No explanation needed. Masterful minimalism with a great bit of storytelling and a sense of fun.

[Surmount]

A great example of good mechanics but in a bad frame, added with a bit of jank.

I like the idea and a lot of what's going on here, but the difficulty climb becomes too steep, the controls are not clean enough, the jank is occasionally frustrating, and the amount of borderline frame perfect button presses you need, all stacked in small marathons, just becomes aggravating. Ultimately, it's not a fun experience, and there's a sense of dissonance between the atmosphere of the game and the demands of the game.

I hate to admit other reviewers are right in stating that the philosophy of the game does not help justify how the game itself operates. In a diegetic sense, the game is infuriating and built in a manner with high demand for precision and low output for fun. In a non-diegetic sense, the player is being told an enduring philosophy, but it does nothing to alter the frame of the game that does in itself teeter on the brink of utter futility.

Many platformers would circumvent this by accenting hard stretches with lighter stretches. They might also just have turf to use your powers in a way that's less linear and precise, thus giving you some creative leeway for a bit, particularly to take a breather. Giving checkpoints after particularly gnarly single or double sections is also commonly seen.

Issues I'd cite:
-Wall jump controls. In particular, it seems that the player, with enough velocity, can clip into objects for a frame or two when being thrown. For instance, it seems that holding left or right as appropriate when wall-jumping helps designate the direction you're jumping off of... But I had trouble learning the controls for this because I kept seeing examples where even though I'd be holding right, I'd do a left-sided wall jump. This process, in turn, had a far smaller window of operation than the intended method. It took until the level with you wall-jumping off of platforms for me to relieve how borked it was, and why I kept getting inconsistent results.

-Attempts to raise skill ceiling also raising skill floor. In particular, I had issues with having to slip around bends and then double jump to freedom, but instead of double jumping, I'd wall jump off of the wall nearest to me and plummet to my death. Said maneuver would've likely just let me jump coincidentally next to the wall, and then continue rightward momentum once clear of it. This is a small one, but it's one that made me hate wall jumping even more.

-Nearly frame perfect demands. This one has a great example with the wall-jumping between spike coated grey walls, with a small white spot. I swear I had to be within 1 or 2 frames of perfect to get "peak" jump and get the icicle to stick to the white section without suiciding against the spikes. Then, if I actually got that to work 1 minute later, I'd still have to double jump at the right height, hit the wall at the right elevation and arc, wall jump off of it, wall jump off of the ice-cicle, and then barely clear the platform. This would take me on the order of several minutes just to essentially start the level, and then when I'd try the actual level, I'd die for a fact because of my inability to practice its demands at any real rate. Thus, the cycle repeats itself, and I'm spending another 3-6 minutes trying to just get 1 more attempt. Absolutely. Undignified.

-Level bounds having bad physical characteristics. The same level with the BS icicle jump is the same level I found this out. You can stick icicles to the bounds of the level, since they're treated as stickable walls, and then stack those to jump all the way around that BS section, essentially saving you 5-6 minutes per attempt at the level. By the time I'd figured this out, however, I'd already spent 30 minutes just trying to figure out the first half of the level, so I was bored to the point of just walking away 2 or 3 deaths later anyways.

-Icicle spawn jank. Icicles don't let themselves be fired too close to walls, presumably for physics reasons, but most often this triggers too easily, just being an obstruction. Meanwhile, I've had cases where icicles still spawn inside me and shove me back (or rarely, trap me inside them), and even cases where I'd fire an icicle to the right, with my back against a left wall, and have a right-facing icicle spawn, wedged inside the wall to my left, shoving me aside.

-Platform "snapping". This one's pretty ugly, but a common sight in platformers. In particular, I noticed in one of the early levels for double jump that to make a particular gap, my jump needed to be near-perfect. Being the major roadblock for the level, that was actually acceptable in stride, but the only attempt I got off clearing the gap was me "snapping" onto the platform after I'd fallen too low to land my feet on it. This would later come back to haunt me as I'd be walljumping near spikes and just snap onto the platform above me, and die in the spikes.

-Loss of symbolism later game. It seems like the metaphor descended into a half-baked state, and lost meaning, instead giving way to the essence of the game. If the essence of the game is to deliver a message, then it should focus on the message and not be afraid to cut gameplay out of the picture once the story is told. Maybe there was a long drag about when I quit, but it seemed like the messages were padding for time as I just completed more levels. This drift between message and game further compounded me questioning why I was even spending time on this piece, which was extremely counter-intuitive, since I ended up just dropping the game halfway.

The game functions well enough, but could use some polish. The message in the first half dozen levels had a good flow and heart to it, but also fell off. The platforming and powers felt fun for a while, but only to be railroaded into a bog of difficulty and low reward.

On most every level, there's a lot good in this game's core, but I just feel like across the board it could use improved execution. I'd give it a 6/10 and a 3/5, if we stick to the old NG scoring system. Wish there was more to here to keep me satisfied.

[RAKUGA FANTASY]

Playing this, I find the concept is interesting, and the execution is technically well done on several levels... But my god, is nothing ever explained, and the broad catalogue of things you're expected to figure out in a matter of centiseconds is absolutely infuriating to no end.

The instructions are often obscure, I must've seen about a dozen minigames thrown out, easily a half dozen if I'm misremembering, and usually there's only 2 or 3 words, at most, to describe what's going on.

Hell, I didn't even notice the instructions existed at all, due to their brevity, and the complete lack of time given to read them. Combine that with nothing attempting to bring your attention to the instructions, (flashing, color-coding, a tutorial, etc) and you're just looking at pictures wondering what your input does in this bizarre instance.

Meanwhile, even after having realized the instructions field even existed, some games have you push buttons in sequence. Some buttons are labeled outright, others, such as the wheel washing minigame, give you less direct instructions. Others seem to display a single, constant control, only for it to suddenly change with an instant cut. Not flashing, or fading, or any sort of obvious transition. Some instructions give you plenty of time to complete them, after figuring out what you're looking at and glancing the instructions. Many are extraordinarily time sensitive, to the point where you have almost zero chance of victory the first attempt.

Case in point: I have played the Fast Food Register minigame 5 times. I know there's buttons correlating to arrows, and that each button represents food, and I am supposed to give a chain of 2 items as the order. NONE of the controls are labeled, and even after having put in combinations, including without error, I still have no idea why victory isn't achieved.

Am I expected to push down arrow for that? Z? Confirm them by double tapping? I honest to god couldn't tell which it is, and I've completely run out of patience to keep trying. If it's "High punishment, low reward"... Why bother?

The visual design, in terms of how intuitive things are, has one foot in "simple, I guess", and one foot in "raging dumpsterfire". I honestly can't speak as to what it is in any single moment, but it's by no means only the latter.

Against enemies, I found I sometimes won flawlessly, sometimes lost without dealing any damage, and plenty of inbetween. These results ranged greatly, even when against the exact same foes, and I think that shows a level of potential inconsistency, due to the interpretation and execution of each minigame.

The end product is extremely obtuse, dictated often by RNG (particularly in regard to which challenges are or are not thrown at you), and offers little reward, once the minigames are done... Other than having won a cute minigame, I guess.

I sat down and gave it 9 goes, and for 9 goes I saw what happened, thought "eh?", and then died in some bizarre, obtuse circumstance that had me saying to myself "What? Fuck that.", due to a starvation of instruction/information paired with fairly hard difficulty, even on "lame" mode. Not sure what the difference between the 2 even is, having tried them back to back...

If you're trolling with this game's very existence. It's working.

I've had a grand total of almost zero enjoyment playing this oddity, but on a technical level I can tell it's all quite sound and that love and care were put into it. On that level, it doesn't deserve a zero, or anything close, but I can't personally give it any volume applause, at least relating to entertainment, either.

Clearly something here... But not an inkling of it suits my tastes.

[Leap Jet Bear]

You know, I feel the experience is 50/50. Overall very good, don't be deceived, but I feel like there's some drawbacks to be had.

Let me just open with praise. Great music, great sounds, great visuals, original concepts, EXCELLENT level design, and a good breadth of content. It's masterpieces like this that make me dig around in the platformer section of NG to begin with. I could not rate this piece anything less than 8/10 on a clean conscious as proof of how damn good this piece is at its core.

The problem for me is style and philosophy. It gets hard as all hell. Borderline impossible in some feets. I'm straight up resigning on level 17 due to my dry eyes and cramped as hell wrists.

My single biggest gripe: Memorization and stealth spikes.

The timed spikes are one thing, but the proximity spikes have fast deploy times (needing to reaction in over 1/4 of a second or so is simply fatal, if even that), completely invisible nature, and eventual spam-tacular overuse simply grows absurd. I'm fine with a few levels using it, or maybe once or twice per level, but it just grows to a point where every other place you could set foot suddenly decides to murder you completely and utterly without warning.

That's fine, but they start appearing in places that are central to any kind of reprieve, or places where danger is not a theme. Adding a need to remember one trap laid out near blue switch X just makes you die and restart.

Does it add to the game's lifetime? Sure. But does it add any fun or true challenge outside of memory? Not really, in my honest opinion. And that's what gets me. I'm being kicked to curb out of almost pure sadism, and I get nothing in return out of the trade. Maybe it's just my tastes expecting something else, but for me this is a constant nuisance.

Secondarily: Long, long stretches of actions with no reprieve. I have never seen a platformer with as long of rapid fire hazards as this. It gets to be very exhausting, and you want a moment to catch your breath and recenter yourself, but that ends up not being given for considerable expanses of space. Moreover, even if it just comes down to memorizing it all, doing a few dozen chain actions to clear an area over 20 seconds requires immense focus and quite frankly leaves me wanting to blink one hell of a lot. It just ends up drying out my eyes more than I feel overtly challenged. It's really a cramp in how much I get into things before just feeling that the insanity is growing oversaturated. And after you clear one of these giant reflex piles? Well, you can bet there's another one waiting for you of comparable length.

Truth be told I'd love to keep digging into this game, but it's very taxing on the wrists and comfort to keep pursuing, and everything that goads me on to keep pressing myself just gets met with a lot of small annoyances that drive me further away.

I imagine I am the exception, but either way it's a good piece at it's core.

8/10, 4/5 ~WCCC