Aardwolf's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[SHMUP]

Finally

I finally finished this game. It was hard. Frustratingly hard sometimes. But it was also a fun, smooth shooter, which is why I enjoyed it.

Imho:

The good: fun, the fact that there are upgrades, how you can custimize weapons and angles, challenging, fancy effects with the last boss, the music, ...

The bad:
-It forgets weapon angle when switching weapon.
-Selecting weapon from the list is tedious, why not just let you choose the type rather than let you navigate through equipped weapons first and then 4x each type if you bought 4 or each?
-Z and x navigation through menus sometimes confusing.
-Despite the existance of different weapon types, most are useless in later levels so you haven't got much choice.
-Once you're in the 4th area, you reach more than enough money, and in my case because I kept grinding, level 20, and getting exp and coins becomes useless after that. It's more fun if there remain things to look forward to to upgrade.
-No temporary powerups or superweapons.

[Colormixer 1.0]

Kind of interesting

It's interesting to learn RGB computer colors for non-programmers, non-webdesigners or non-graphics artists.

Though I think there should also be a subtractive color mode. I mean, like painters mixing paint. They start from white and have to turn it into black by mixing paints, rather than starting from black and turning it into white like in this game :)

JernoBill responds:

The CMY-Colorcanvas is in queue! :)

[Stealing the Diamond]

Great!

You produce some good stuff, man! While the previous one remains my favorite, I loved the humor in this one. So many references! Nice music too.

Press one of those buttons to deal with this... *puts sunglasses on*... pressing situation.

PuffballsUnited responds:

YYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

[Learn to Fly 2]

Loops

This is really cool, I like how you can try to go for speed or height or distance or duration or destruction.

I have one suggestion that I think is pretty great though: it's possible to make loops. Unfortunately they are not counted by the game. Making loops should give score too!

[Steampunk]

Disappointed :(

This is exactly the same game as the game with the chickens that was on the frontpage just a few days ago. Except the chickens and egg baskets are replaced by steampunk themed things.

The title Steampunk made me think this would be an RTS or action game :(

[RPG Shooter: Starwish]

I love this game

This game is fantastic. I love the story (it's almost a novel!), the art, the characters, the originality of some weapons, the many upgrades, the level design with obstacles, the level details, the length of the game, the different detailed endings, and the replayibility with new game plus. I've been playing this game for days, and while not playing it I was often thinking about the pirates in their space station :).

Small suggestions for improvements:
The ability to replay older story sequences, or at the very least replay the last one, in case you accidently pressed skip.
Make a sound or some other effect that makes it more obvious when overdrive is fully charged (more obvious than the little red bar in the corner).
Make the character talking in the cafe a bit more complex. Only rarely are there more than two characters in there, so making a choice who to talk to is almost never needed, which makes it somewhat simplistic...

I didn't earn the special ending yet and didn't try hard mode so far, man I've still got a lot of work to do! :)

[Plimpton's Video Falconry]

Cheese 80's

I just love that cheesy falcon sound. At first I thought the game was a parody of 80's games, but then I saw it was an almost pixel perfect conversion of a real 80's game.

Unfortunately the game itself gets somewhat boring fast, but the conversion, music and art is good.

[Hacker vs Hacker]

Good game

This game is pretty good, and not easy. I was enjoying the game most of the time, but the only sad thing was at the end. When beating the last level, the first time the game just ended the level normally without any end of story message, and there was no gold medal on level 17 in the level select menu (despite gaining the gold one). So I tried the level a second time, and this time when winning it, it did give some story at the end, but then suddenly Flash started consuming 100% CPU and I couldn't press any buttons anymore.

So, enjoyable the whole game through, unfortunately glitched at the very end...

[Doodle God 2]

meh

Too much illogical combinations, too little actual human history, and too much iPhone ads.

[GemCraft Labyrinth]

Good and bad things

There are some good and bad things I experience in this game.

The good:

-The 13x13 labyrinth idea is quite nice!
-I love the walls and mazes you can build, and the boost towers. The building of mazes isn't new of course (see Desktop Tower Defense), but in this game it's interesting because it adds yet another strategy to the already so many strategies. In the first game there were only gem towers, the second added traps, now the walls, and the boost towers were added. Yay :)
-The story is interesting. I also like those demon effects in the epic levels!

-The bad:
-The upgrades are quite bland imho. I found the upgrades in the first game the most interesting, in the second game they were already somewhat less interesting, now even less. You start with only two possible upgrades and then unlock more, and almost every single of the upgrades is to make a certain gem type better. The thing that makes the upgrades bland imho, is that they don't provide a lot of strategy. If there are a few more expensive but more "special" upgrades (special as in, do something more original than just make some gem type better of give more mana), it adds more strategy by letting you decide which one to take for this map. Basically, to me having more different types of upgrades with less possible levels for each, is more fun than having fewer types of upgrades which can each to up to 30 or even infinite levels.
-The fact that monster color order was always the same. I'm not sure if gems of opposite colors are more effective against monsters of the opposite color (I think in earlier versions it was), but if the monsters are going to start at green and end at red in every single level, it's kind of the same color strategy for every level... I kind of ignored this while playing though and just built my favorite gem type the most (the red ones), hoping they wouldn't be getting less effective against the red monsters appearing later.
-Is any of these challenges obtainable at all in the non paying version? I mean, 100 waves if you can unlock only 15 extra?

The Ugly:
-I have nothing against monetization of a game. However my least favorite type of monetization (below ads) is to have it so that a non paying user is greminded that there exists a paying version for the duration of the whole complete game. So this was a downer for me, I don't visit Newgrounds for this.
-The GamerSafe button in the bottom left is a real nuisance that is very annoying and in the way. It makes an annoying popup appear over the glass ball that reveals levels with challenges.