Locked-Ghost's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Arthropod Armada]

What a bunch of pussies.

You bunch of wusses, this game is not THAT tough. Don't get me wrong, it falls into that category of challenging, without being absolutely brutalizing. You wimps complaining about this game being too tough, go play Ikaruga or Darius Twin and then we'll talk about tough shooters.

Anywho, back on topic, I like this game a bunch. It managed to kill about a solid two hours of my time since I started playing it yesterday.

First and foremost, this game is beautiful. It's exaggerated environments and lovable looking characters make me feel bad when I shoot them in the face. The bullet effects are trippy and the explosions remind me of Kirby 64, which is a good thing. Nothing is very visually distracting, I mean the clouds sometimes get in the way of projectile visibility, but it's a nice added charm to it, not a negative. My only gripe would probably be diversity: most of the enemies look the same with only colored differences. This game needs more varieties of the insect kingdom.

The music, though simplistic, does its job well enough, surprising in a game designed around murdering bugs. It has a sort of PlayStation esque feel to it, which I'm sure makes no sense, but is a compliment. The voice acting is charming and the sound effects are nice, I love the fire attack sounds and the boss laser noises. Pew pew, burn pew burn!

Now down to the nitty gritty, the game play. The controls handle smoothly, your character has the right speed for the games mechanics. The difficulty, like I said before, is a challenging mix. Recovering from death on bosses is a bit of a pain and the enemies do take more shots, but it's not impossible to rebound from. People are so soft nowadays, if these "gamers" had grown up in the era of Battletoads and Ghosts and Goblins, they would of shit themselves. The power ups are pretty interesting. The fire weapon is ridiculously strong (almost OP) in comparison to the spread weapon (take THAT Contra), but that's OK, I think thats mandatory in every shooter. I would say the amount of powerups is a problem, but, in all honesty, it's not. Games don't need to be super deep if they are simplistic and addicting. What I do gripe on is how the powerups fall. Sometimes I would find that super crucial fire weapon falling on the far right of my screen, I would sprint to try and get it only to rush into an armada of angry insects on the warpath, ouch. On top of that, my only other complaint is diversity. One of the things I love about shooters is the creativity and difference enemies can bring to make it, especially bosses. This game has one cool looking fun boss, but it repeats. Again, it's understandable given the games scope, but it does want you wishing for a more diverse set of enemies.

Aside from this, there a few minor bugs that pop up. For some reason one time when using the max spread, all of the enemies disappeared on the screen. And then none came up for a couple seconds after.

This game is great, I'm going to keep playing it after I'm done writing this review. Anyone who says this game is too tough needs to be evaluated. It's a fun, charming little shooter, that got me addicted and one of the better I've played from this site. It's actually inspiring me to get out there and make some technologies of my own!

Good work gentlemen.

DAIRYDOG responds:

What a fantastic review!

[Smash 2]

Better than Arkanoid??

Lemme tell ya, in all of the years i've been on newgrounds i've played alot of arkanoid clones but I think out of all of them this is one of the few that sparks some originality into it. Anyone can dupilicate Arkanoid with the correct amount of knowledge on actionscript but to improve on such a sucessful game type would be something indeed worth playing, and this is worth playing.

First off, yes the controls are a bit different than Arkanoid, in the sense that you can control in more than one dimension(xy) and your balls speed depends primarily on that so you have a much more powerful control of the ball, it takes some getting used to, but it certainly isnt a problem with this game.

I love the way some of the bricks are just so much more resliliant than others, and it actually means you need to put some force behind your bounces to make it break through them easier, if your not fast enough, you'll fail and the ball will probably be too fast to control, awesome deployment in this game.

Also the overall action of the game could be gerat for the genre, the multiball sequences are quite intense, and thats something you wont get out of more Arkanoid clones.

And overall it has a very nice futuristic look to it, everything looks and runs very smooth, even on my piece of shit 3 year old HP.

But it isnt without its flaws...

Sound primarily i wasnt too much of a fan of. The music was just O.K it didnt really sweep me into the game as I thought it would especially from Dustball, and after awhile it got too repetitive for my taste.

Also the sound effects were too quiet and in some cases just not too exciting, even with the music off they didnt sound all to exciting or anything.

And it was just too damn short, fun games like this should be more than 30 levels long, kinda reminds me of Arrow Tag, fun but too short. The Ball Revamped series is up to about 100 now, and most professionally done Arkanoid clones usually have upwards of 100's of levels, a good example would be Ricochet probably the best Arkanoid clone out there.

Other than that some more powerups introduced would also be cool, but not essential, I was content with what I had to work with, although more would of been nice.

This is a great game, and one of the best games of it's type despite its flaws. This is like Arkanoid 2.0.

[Arrow tag]

Your games fail to dissapoint

This is by far in my opinion one of the most addictively fun games on Newgrounds so far. Like all your games it has a level of class and smoothness that many games on newgrounds do not have. I'm just shocked its not scored higher than it is, because it deserves it

Something happened with my sound loop though, it stopped looping halfway through the game.

[Saving Wade 3]

Great Game

If you overlook the god awful collision detection. The horrible repetitive music loop, the 2 enemy scheme and the sound effects you stole from windows pinball.

But seriously, its great after that.

[Four Second Fury]

A nice take on the Wario Ware series

But unfortunately it falls a bit short. 20 Mini games really isnt alot considering that Wario Ware Touched has over 150. The mini games are nice though, but theres just not alot of variety, and they get boring kinda quickly. The 4 second rule doesnt help out very much because it limits the games you can use. And yes the sound loop did get on my nerves on occasion. The clapping was nice though.

[HAMU]

Good, but its all the same

This game has the look. But because of its lack of features it just becomes another Arkanoid clone. No powerups? That really hurts the game. And the whole brick falling thing occasionally interferes with the ball causing it to fly another way.

Its just too... similar

[DCK: Drunk Klunk]

Nice game ol' bean

Like i've always said, when it comes to flash games 2 things matter; depth and fun. Usually the 2 go hand in hand, but for flash games depth is hard to find. This game happens to be fun however so depth doesnt matter. I like this game, it was very fun, and challenging too. Excellent work indeed.

[Mammed Udi Soundboard]

LOL

To consider IWP's creations to be hard work is a friggin joke. The same character models from the past 35 cartoons, put together with some sound clips is not what i consider hard work, considering that this flash with the guy tweening across the screen has the same amount of animation as the average foamy cartoon proves my point. For gods sake man look around. There are cartoons 50x better than Foamy, and its people like you that pay Johnny's rent every month.

Dont get it, I'm not surprised you will.

P.S its not MY community its the NEWGROUNDS community.

Buya responds:

I really don't care about other flash cartoons. I happen to like "IWP" . If you don't think coming out with a new flash cartoon every two weeks is hard work than apparently you have never created a flash cartoon series.

[Germaine Soundboard]

Spend a few more months in the community

And youll understand eventually, I dont want to ruin the surprise for you.

Buya responds:

I don't need to spend any time in your "community" to know that there are a whole bunch of lamers who have nothing better to do than criticize, complain and mock people for their hard work. I ALSO already know that many of these aol using, smart @sses are foamy haters. so what?! Millions of Foamy Fans can't be wrong. Besides, what have you done lately that is so great?

Thanks

[Foamy Soundboard]

Was it possible to take foamy down another notch?

Yes and its with a soundboard... Ill make this quick because the dozens of drooling foamy fan reviews are beginning to make me sick... This deserves a score no higher then 1.60. Stop building on someone elses undeserved fame.

Buya responds:

Why is J_I_M's fame undeserved? His cartoons make MILLIONS of people laugh. If you don't like FOamy than don't watch it. As far as me "builing" off of his fame, this is a soundboard. NO soundboards are tottally original. The sounds have to come from somewhere. Besides I gave him credit on the credits page.