WCCC's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[MOBS, INC.]

About 3 things that hold this back from being enjoyable long term, and I'm pretty sure most of it stems from the limited time frame, as there's less time for analysis and rethinking little details.

Regardless, here they are:
-Abilities are not randomized, meaning the play style is essentially linear.
-Enemies do not clear when you die, meaning the moment you spawn you're being ganked. At high levels where every hit has to go as far you can make it, this becomes absurdly annoying.
-The primary attack is not always accurate, don't ask me why, but especially at point blank it has a nasty tendency to miss, sometimes repeatedly. Most the time it's fine, and most attacks don't take part at point blank, but combined with the fact archers adjust to rapid shifts being needed in their aim with 100% accuracy, up until they fire their shot, this means you can be lining up to kill an archer at point blank, you have the drop on them, and the BAM! You miss, they fire, they hit, you get screwed. Sometimes even if they don't squeeze of the shot accurately (fired mid-attack and you dodged it) or haven't fired yet, you can proceed to reclick with cursor right on top of them cutting triangles around them for another 2 or 3 hits at a time, making this issue really just stand out.

I assume the lack of accuracy may relate to something funny with the way attack direction is computed combined with a minimum strike distance that occurs, but it will even rarer happen at longer ranges, but I have no theory as to why there. Thanks to the included reticule, it is incredibly easy to spot when it happens though, in case you ever decide to look into that a bit more for mathematical reference or what have you.

Interesting piece, excellent art, simple enough concept and plays solid, if not perfect, 95% of the time. Past those 3 bulletins, a skip button for the warning or promotion cinematic would make this more replayable as well, as brief and relatively entertaining as they are.

4/5, 8/10 ~WCCC

[Bullet Heaven 2]

I won't lie, certain levels on higher end difficulties just kind of pass this wall of idiotic difficulty.

Enemies, in my opinion, shouldn't forcibly emit projectiles on death. This creates a huge issue where even if you can kill them all properly, it's sometimes better to just sit there and dodge their puny alive attacks and not have to deal with their dead effects. Maybe that's intentional, I dunno.

Further, I'm at the 2nd to last desert bit trying it on heavenly difficulty, and there are some waves that just seem to cross into unfair. Giant wad of blue line shooters with shield bros is pretty devious. One wrong step and even the most creative tactics make their wall of lead completely undodgeable, and continues to be true even after you rush to wipe out one half.

That same level also exercises that whole shield deal, with intentionally leaving shields hooked up to multiple mage things, meaning you have to wipe out all of them more often than not, and then you proceed to delay bringing said group on screen by several seconds.

I end up just bombing the early rounds because of how stupid that gets in itself, but I guess Anna's bombs can't kill shielded opponents while Lance can? How in the hell does bombs have vastly different abilities make sense in balance I dunno, because all the characters have tradeoffs outside of bombs already.

Great game, but I feel a lot of the attempts to make the game harder just get god damned absurd and randomly seem to gravitate around low blows in short bursts, then not later. Weird shit.

matt-likes-swords responds:

Don't worry, it gets a lot harder later on!

[Stick Squad - 4]

Well, I'd be lying if I didn't say the presentation lacked polish, or dare I say is even sloppy, but let's not get into that just yet.

Firstly I feel this takes the genre of sniper and stick sniper games to a new level in some respects- one that's fun and has some unique points to it. I found myself spending a few hours on this without a care in the world, so the entertainment factor definitely delivers.

Here comes the bad part.

The game is loaded with grammatical and english errors (many of which are overt, such as missing periods), subpar voice acting, a simple and very poorly guided narrative, poor clarity for mission objectives, and worst of all: bugs.

I'm willing to give very few craps about the english/grammatical errors, as they likely indicate the developer(s) are not of an english speaking country, so 100% accuracy isn't necessarily a realistic or fair goal in that respect.

I'll start with the most objective of these points, the bugs. There were a few missions where revisiting had this sort of vomit lying around. It could be giant horizontal stripes of red lasers in the castle where snipers previously lased guns at you, or the pistol firing range with a HUD indicator over a single target rapidly flashing green and red.

Further, there was a unique firing range challenge thing that didn't work at all. Entering it would render the wrong gun half the time with a bunch of lasers, unused hud elements, and flashing junk lying around, with the controls locked shut. On top of that, a handful of levels had challenges where you shoot through glass at targets in target mode, but the glass is impermeable as far as I can tell. Someone already mentioned this, and while I would sort of suspect it's related to stats/rifle used, I'm increasingly doubting this, and have to admit if this WAS the case, it would be rather pointless and poor in choice, as these challenges are rather forgettable and used as disposable filler for getting better items, so why do them with top gear?

On the topic of clarity, I have to admit I had to scratch my head and mess around a bit on many missions, more so than comfortable. One minute you have dialogue explaining a level or the story to some tiny degree, and the next there's awkward silence with a mission text description you have to exit to re-read, and almost unanimously relates to setting and not actual objective. Finally, the tips employed were sadly non-randomized and often very poor, but I can understand, on one hand, wanting the player to figure things out for the sake of gratification.

I will admit in one case (where you have to shoot the light at night) this was important to the exploration and achievement to the mission, to back up that example, but outside of that you often have no idea who you're looking for, why you're at risk of failing some approaches, and what to do when your initial guesses run out, which left a lot of lopsided frustration and confusion, more so than necessary I would argue.

I think I got to a final-ish level, but it's extremely unclear quite frankly. I start on a rooftop with a 100% replaying, non-skippable cinematic that gets very old. I'm told very little about my situation, and then have to leap to adjust my gun's windage/offset (though the cinematic DOES let me do this, it's a colossal waste of time and a testament to bad design, as the cinematic gets incredibly annoying and shouldn't be used for adjusting, as it is basically cheating via controlling your character in what is generally deemed a non-control use situation) and then look across a very fast scene with my little scope circle to find what the hell is going on, maybe shoot 1 guy barely in time, then magically die from a large avalanche of bullets fired by gunmen I don't have time allotted to search for and anything static I can't identify no matter how many times I retry, and quite frankly it feels very cheap. In fact it's so insanely cheap, I'm largely convinced it may very well be a bug of its own, but it seems oddly specific to be so.

Additionally, this exact situation has heavily influenced my review's tone due to the emphasis on lack of clarity, objective, and what is being done wrong... which is what I most readily identify as this game's faults, sadly.

There are some fun concepts being employed here, and a good amount of content I would argue, but bugs, poor narrative, and poor ambiance drag it down to a game I would identify as barely above average, although it is definitely above average no matter how you look at it. If polished up, I would be okay with rating this 4 stars, but for now my verdict rests as this:

7/10, 3/5 ~WCCC

[Los Angeles Shark]

You know, the original concept was good, but I feel it's been milked well and dry at this point. Each next installment seems to add very little in the means of features, content, and new encounters.

A bit of fun and a few giggles, sure. Iconic at this point? Absolutely, but innovative or worth coming back per installment? I wouldn't really say so, personally

Hope to see more innovative works again off into the future... we'll see what happens.

6/10, 3/5 ~WCCC

[BUBBLEBOY]

The game gets extreme FPS hangups on later levels for me, which unfortunately just makes it easier since I get "bullet time" effect. Hilariously, the FPS hangups start only once I start moving in the level. Sitting in stasis watching the level lets everything run at top speed. Bad resource allocation over all, but a fun concept. Game even froze shut the first time I booted it up. No idea what's up there, but I have 8GB of ram to expend on such a small piece.

Chaz responds:

Weird, never heard that before. I guess that's AS2 for ya.

[Do Not Trust This Game]

I feel this is a good narrative on how poor or confusing design choice in games can make them excessively hard.

Seriously, I'd almost love to see a version of this game where the elements are as-is or maybe a "baby" mode with said default look/effects for items, default as in the otherwise industry standard. That would really emphasize how harder the game becomes from its deceptive nature.

It's a bit too trial and error, but at the same time it's charming and has this exploratory nature to it that's very lovely.

Solid job, but not quite a keeper (but nor is it intended to be a long-term ride, really)
7/10, 4/5 ~WCCC

[Super Rad Awesome]

Another kind of pixel-art click and learn sort of thing. My eyes hurt after 2 minutes of this. This game is excessively epileptic. Where's the warning for that? Holy crap man.

7/10, 3/5. While these do have work put in them, I feel the concept grows stale and isn't anything too mind-blowing to begin with. Sorry.

[Madness Descent (Demo)]

Wowie where to begin. This is as said a demo and you are open to features... so I can think of quite a few issues I'd like to point out and what really seems lackluster to me.

Actual Issues:
-Bullets only go the screen's length and enemies do not chase or exceed a very primitive path, if any. Combined with auto healing, this is highly exploitable and there is very little danger to the player.
-Almost no animating is present for characters or weapons, and the geometry is extremely bland and flat. The combat suffers from both of these providing less immersion, less thrill, and less depth.
-Five seven is bugged? Picked one up eventually and it held 50 shots to the clip. Holy shit man.
-Lots of recycled and limited sound effects, a single recycled bullet decal, and very apparent self-competition in the weapons pool, which was surprisingly large.
-No story and tutorial intro didn't mention the madness interactive style melee combat.
-Some weapons appear to be made exclusively for use against the player, when judging practicality vs player and vs goons. Sniper rifle, for instance.

Things I enjoyed:
-Melee deflection was a thing.
-Very large weapons pool with a decent amount of variety.
-Ammo was saved between weapons in the form of magazines, and added some planning as to what weapons to use long term based on ammo availability and ability.
-Lengthy enough for how much combat was given. With more refining, this could've really been a bigger thing.

Things I didn't enjoy:
-Lack of character depth or customization. I hate to say being a generic guy vs even something like hank or some preset character is a little painful. But maybe you can produce an original preset later along with a story.
-All the major issues listed, of course.
-Weapons went in and out of use in a manner that seemed built to screw the player out of their ammo supply, which was otherwise pretty abundant with most weapons and calibers. Additionally, this kind of took away from variety and the potential "random" feeling of the weapons pool.

Things I would recommend:
-More depth to the terrain and combat. Maybe setting attack and defense modes for melee using fire button, so it feels a little more personalized and that you're not just waving a stick of death around. Maybe elevators, ladders, obstacles, traps, doors, etc. Lots of things to add depth and character to the environment.
-Animations for when guys gets hit, when weapons reload or fire (a bit of shaking and riding back, you know, recoil?), or maybe a bit of style to how melee interacts with the posing.
-More intelligent AI. AI is a huge talking point most everywhere these days in gaming. This incredibly linear and dumb style of AI is very non competitive and un-thrilling. They either maintain one path and route or stand still altogether and just point at the player trying to fire. Maybe along with adding depth to the terrain you could find good applications for AI to do new and daring things.
-More variety to firing sounds (and I know they can be a bitch to locate) and generally multiple decals for bullet wounds and some randomization for hit sounds as well.
-Reloading sounds coupled with brass and magazine drops, perhaps?
-Single shot loaded shotguns, and some solutions to the magazine size issue. Sadly more magazines capacity = that guy's weapon's clip size = mine, and in some cases it not only doesn't make sense but alters the weapon pecking order in odd ways.

That's all for now. I find this odd this got a mention, honestly, but I guess we'll see what happens with the demo tag comes off.

Elementalys responds:

This was the only Madness game this year, I won by default and that's really sad. Tom was very kind of giving a prize for this cheap demo. The Five Seven clip should actually be 20, I don't know how I missed that. In fact, this review is actually extremly useful with every points you make. Thank you very much for playing and writing this indeep review!

[Phoenotopia]

Wow. Where to begin. I can tell there's a lot of great, polished content available here so I'm forbidding myself to rate any lower than 4 stars. I'll admit I'm pretty pissed and irritated at a lot of mechanics and small things, but I can tell there's an otherwise near-bugless, very rich and fairly original game, so I'm gonna try not to lose sight of that. But let's get the ugly part out of the way...

Things that really bugged me about the game's presentation:
-Changing direction is fairly key and heavily problematic. I notice that there's threshold for starting movement in a "new" direction for the player where they can kinda go in that direction, but not actually change facing, so those of us that are used to more fluid and intense platforming mechanics are really disappointed to notice we can't dance on the hair's breadth as much as we'd want or would feel is natural. This makes turning around (which is key in using items such as slingshot) something that has to be done relatively slowly and occasionally just doesn't react how we'd think, this is a bit of a pain. Also, someone mentioned not being able to change mid-jump, and I'm not sure if that's true, but I could see that being annoying if you were doing something just after jumping, but otherwise mid air usage is very minimal, except for meleeing things out of the air, so on a second thought, I remember this pissing me off a lot with duri fruit and frogs.
-Slingshot becomes a matter of rhythm and not aim. I don't mind a bit of new ideas here and there, but this means it has to be used at a certain facing (or ELSE!) and that you have to play a mini-game timing your shots relative to angles. Why not just be able to place the angle yourself? This would reduce the bias at making very fine shots or very quick shots against high elevation targets. The slingshot seems more of a nuisance than a "fun" mechanic, but then again I am a huge player of shooter genres, so maybe I can't speak for the less aim-y and reflex-y persons playing, but in a 2d environment I imagine it'd be simple enough to pick up.
-Scarcity. Honestly, this should be number one on this list, but this game emphasizes scarcity in a really odd fashion, almost excessive if you will. Scarcity in health, scarcity in money, scarcity in information. This makes the player sometimes go out on gambles with their limited resources and get bit in the ass fiercely. Loot zones almost never replenish, health doesn't restore on travel and often healing stops just don't exist without paying cash, and mobs drop health/money extremely rarely, so they become very unreliable for anything other than making you lose money, meaning most often you just don't want to go into combat zones. There is one major exception to this rule: the forest, the first hostile area you actually enter. It has respawning duri fruit out the ass, so whenever short on health I find myself just stopping by there, because god forbid I spend money while dying or while stopping at an inn. Farming ensues, and a lot of the time there are respawning bits you can sell for cash... more farming ensues. This game just doesn't seem like it's one meant for or desired for farming, so this scarcity, at least to me, ends up whiplashing its entertainment value down, where previously fun things lose value incredibly quickly.
-Lack of clarity. I cannot stress this enough, but having shown up at the 2nd town and doddled around for 3 hours and looking up the faq page (Which was minimally useful, sorry) I finally get to where I needed to be, stacked with frustation, confusion, and lots of backtracking. Then upon showing up at said bandit HQ I'm dealing with health scarcity, mega aim infinitely-generated enemies, some traps that were a "fun" touch I actually liked, and then the cave of cock-punchery. Upon entering said cave, over a half dozen bats flying into my position and MORE infinitely generated little sand-shitters. There's also 2 switches in the room that don't seem to do anything obvious and particular, and the tendency to die in said shithole figuring out what all these facets are about, I come up with nothing and end up dying to its onslaught of baddies. It's a penalty area, I would be okay with this, normally, if not for the fact that upon dying I'm paying 10 coins per to show up with 10 measly health, that gets you absolutely nowhere. 10 health is like "shit son, better pop some medical items!", and you're only 3 or so hits away from dying AGAIN. I died 5 times in that cave from its shitstorm, mostly due to health scarcity coupled with respawning under siege from nearly a dozen enemies off the bat. I won't lie, I had a lot of cash on hand atm so I was "okay enough" with it and had a very high health cap going in. After backing out, I found myself farming the forest to get back up to 39 hp and bought myself a suit of improved armor, but either it's a quest item "that would look good on me" or it's functioning so minimally I've yet to notice it at all. Let's fast forward some after that entire barrage of crap, I come back to bandit camp, use the save point as I'm now broke with no obvious sources of cash I would enjoy actually obtaining and have to use every time, well that's why it's there, fine. Except here we go again raiding said lair and contending with utter mobs of guys, including some guys that have superb aim, occasionally attack in groups, and will throw knives at me through the god damn walls. I wouldn't mind if they either weren't so relentless and long range (a lot like the sand-shitters, honestly) and didn't hit through the flipping walls (and while it's very retro... why can't I do the same? Inconsistency) and I'm back in an exceedingly punishing death-loop with no health supply to be found, having already arrived at full preparation (Except buying food items, but that should be less necessary IMO), and by the time the whole affair is so done and over with I'm just disinterested in the game as whole.
-Bat has narrow swing range (more like a line, which is fine until you realize it's a VERY picky line that's bad against bees, bats, frogs, and spiders alike) and serious delay. The delay wouldn't be an issue, except midair, if it weren't for the combined narrow range. Most times the crap payout for health/cash with enemies and the excessive amounts of enemies that just dodge your main attack pattern in all but the most ideal of placements makes me not enjoy the combat as a whole, except maybe in the forest where health was less scarce, and even its less scarce sources had potential backfire that I found EXCELLENT for limiting infinite duri exploits.

I shouldn't even need to list the positives of this game for anyone else who has played it. Great art, decent sounds and music, okay enough plot, although a bit abrupt in intro and vague at times, and a lot of the general magic that makes a game like this glow and shine with quality and pride. I just wish what seems to be the simplest of progressions and the most commonplace of combat wasn't so damn frustrating and at times elitest or just plain saying "spend cash to do the thing" because it's incredibly stacked against you. Maybe it's just a taste in difficulty, maybe it's not so bad if you are familiar with retros with such familiar mechanics (bat = whip?) or were on the dev team that gave you a significant amount of experience playing the game as it was built and progressing. I don't know.

Came home to play this and "see what fun awaited" in my 2nd session, found several times more sorrow and agony than fun, and its minimal hook on me to begin with really just killed any of its playtime's worthwhile to me...

Excellent game in design, but not really my choice in mechanics and playstyle.
8/10, 4/5 ~WCCC

[Dig To China]

Okay playing this tiny piece, here's some stuff that stood out:
-Can buy multiple hats. Not sure why lol.
-Drill upgrade is bugged I think. Costs 20 diamonds and then uranium for level after, even though uranium is a lower tier element than diamond.
-Drills and Moles vs normal dig volume is VERY loud.
-Sometimes random explosion sounds on "dig again" usage, possibly bomb discharge.