Davoo's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Irate Black Man SB 2]

The board is the woard

Hey, another nice soundboard! Although offensive racial stereotypes aren't as funny as farts, so I can only give this a 6. Since there is hardly anything to a sound board, I'll go into real tiny details and complain about them:

You need a better font.
The guy in the picture needs to be mad, not seemingly trying to eat an invisible foot-long coney.
I would like it if you could have multiple overlapping sounds going on at the same time.

I do still like the spacebar cancelation, though. Thanks for having that.

[Coma]

Are you all asleep?

The whole "let's be edgy and weird, with surreal visuals and music, and an abstract story with improper narrative structure" is getting really, REALLY popular. And most of the time, it's laid on a little too thick, and can sometimes be a little pretentious.

For example: World of Goo is a fun game with great visual design and all that jazz, but sometimes I think it shows off its brilliance too much.

Other flash games that have gotten into this fad like "Every Day the Same Dream" are being 'surreal' in a horribly one-dimensional way with a strong sense of dishonesty.

But then there's the crowning jewel of achievement of this new style: Portal. The genius of which everyone is trying to imitate, but it seems that nobody quite understands it. But here's what people aren't getting: it wasn't a great game just because it's so witty and clever, but because it uses subtlety as well. For the most part; it looks like your standard FPS but a little cleaner and whiter. It makes the dangers you're in all the more scary and intimidating. Oh and you know what else made it so good? It also came with really good GAMEPLAY to compliment the fact that it was a game.

And on that subject; I can finally start talking about the game. Because its gameplay is fail. It's not a platformer. It's a walker. All you do is walk this way, talk to this person, then walk that way. Not fun. This game does slide a bit too much towards the pretentious side of surreal games, but for the most part it behaves. So, anyway... overall:

That was a total blast! I love it!

Yes, yes, as much of a bone I have to pick with the douchebaggy fad of 'bizarre games', I still love the shit out of them. And this one was excellent. It's obviously one of the best-looking games yet made, and somebody out there has to give the music a Goddamn medal, seriously.

So yeah, great effort. Just put a little more thought into the game part of 'video-game' next time.

PS: One more complaint; the ending. Why do the surreal games have such anti-climactic endings? Is it on purpose or something? Look; the game took about twenty minutes to beat. It warrants having something more dramatic at the end, rather than just going "ooh, the end, seeya!" It desperately was missing a final boss, or some sort of bang to go out on. Seriously.

PS2: Wait! Wait! I forgot about something. Can you tell me why I have to go through text with the mouse, yet move with the keyboard? Don't you know how awkward that is? It's a basic and simple rule that you have to keep all the controls on just one of those two devices unless you have no other choice.

PS3: YES I know you're actually supposed to write "PS, PSS, PSSS," but numbers look a lot better, don't they?

[Fartboard]

Impressive!

Oh... my... God. I've seen fart soundboards before, but nothing this epic. And thank you SO much for the "cancel all sounds" button, and even making it convenient for us by being able to use the spacebar. Seriously dude; going through that tiny extra bit of programming just to make better such a pointless toy is truly caring!

Although I sort of dislike the graphics. Pitch-red and green are ugly. Certainly you could've made something more appealing to the eye.

ChrisTobin responds:

Thanks Man :D + yeah , I know. It took me about 3 hours , nothing big. I knew it would get a low score. But I may do a updated version :D

[Every day the same dream]

3 more stars and you will be a perfect game

This is a very, very good game, yep yep yep. By my books; it's definitely art. But then again, by my books; almost every flash is art. Because, BY MY BOOKS; something doesn't have to be 'profound' to be art.

But I'm sure we all like some good ol' profundity, so does this game have it? (And God knows it wants to.) Well I felt sucked-in and engaged, for sure. The tedium of 'the daily office life' were definitely spread onto the player.

Actually, about that; can anyone over 13-years-old honestly say that the "trapped by life via working at office and living in big city" concept is very original at this point? For me; it's getting a little tiresome. What really bugs me about this is it makes me suspect that instead of speaking a real message from their heart; the developers just hit the 'random profundity generator' and called it a day.

I'm torn on this one. I LOVE this kind of surreal, mess-with-your-head, not-really-a-game type of game. But I also look at myself playing this and think "I'm holding down one key 90% of the time." This game is basically just about being 'artistic' and nothing more. No entertainment value beyond the (excellent) music. I feel that, like a meal, games shouldn't consist of just one ingredient.
If you want a nearly perfect game in this category; look no further than Don't Look Back. Not only is it the same kind of thing, but it looks better, the music is even better, it's more unique story-wise (based on a Greek myth I believe), the ending doesn't make you go "whaaaa...?" as much, and it actually has gameplay! Damn good gameplay at that.

Oh, and about that 'ending' thing: it did--in fact--make me go "whaaaa...?" I don't care that it didn't make sense. It just had to be longer. This game took a good 10 to 15 minutes to play, I deserved something more climactic.

So overall: despite being very good, it's not going to be well-remembered. It'll be buried by the hundreds of other games of its kind.

[Super Mario Coin Catch]

I'm pleased

You know what I like about this game? The fact that I saw it on the list of UJ flashes, and thought to myself,
"Ooh, 'Super Mario Coin Catch'? I wonder what this is."
This is the first time I can remember ever being intrigued by the title of any movie or game on this website. The first time I ever remember wanting to click on something just because of its name. And isn't that what a title is supposed to do, after all? So you definitely get an extra star for that.

The game itself is pretty standard, with below-average psychics and animation. Although I actually like its bizarre choice of music, it doesn't fit Mario at all, which for some reason just works perfectly. And I also like how simple the game is. I guess I'm tired of most Mario flash games which are all big with levels and such, whereas this is just one screen with a basic, uncreative goal. It's kind of refreshing.

Whatever, I'm just focusing on the positives for this one. Probably because of what a good mood that title put me in. This game is still mediocre. But I totally encourage the programmer to not stop here.

[Epos]

Epoc fail

Menu screen looks nice, at least. But I'm afraid the presentation only gets worse from there. This RPG is so standard, so basic, so unoriginal, so uninspired, so run-of-the-mill. Everybody knows that. It's unassailable.

I got bored right after the first battle, and finished battle 3 before I snapped and couldn't take it anymore. I know you'll think that it's not fair for me to review a game I barely played, but here's the thing. Flash games are supposed to be exactly that: they begin and end in a flash. Campaign-based flash games should never be more than a few hours, and are required to start entertaining you immediately. So really; Epos doesn't deserve a full review from me. If it failed to be interesting from the get-go, it fails entirely by technicality.

Still, I can see this is a very big game that took a lot of effort, so yeah, I can still call it 'good' by these standards, just not interesting.

[Jungle Plunge]

Take the plunge!

Wow, I must say this game really surprised me. I take one look at the menu screen and go,
"Ughh... another generic jungle-setting game."
Then I take hold of the controls and go,
"Bleggghhhhhhhh... another 'move left and right to keep up with the screen' game."
But then as I continued to play, I found that it was really quite fun.

The various hazards and obstacles are all very fun to work with, and the level design is great. The physics are good enough as well. Having the spikes at the top and bottom are a great design choice to keep the difficulty balanced. Most of all: only six levels. That's a very good number. Lots of developers think they're making a game better when they give it ten times more levels than it needs to. Six is just the right amount here.

I still have some problems with the game though. Like I said, the jungle setting has been done to death, and it wasn't pulled off very well either. And the song it comes with is pretty bad (thanks for the mute button.) So yeah, presentation is pretty lousy, and the gameplay is also rather slow (but I think it would be too hard if it were sped up,) but overall this is a good game.

[Kiwitiki - Tikiwi Rescue]

Eye-candy for the birds

Gameplay wise; it's nothing special. But it knows to not be too long, and it has a good score system that encourages you to do a good job without downright punishing you. Music wise; the main theme tune and the death tune is annoying. But the victory and ending tunes are great.

But obviously; the thing that everyone is going to appreciate most here is the art design. Visually; it's total win. The way the characters are designed, the way they're animated, the menu design, ext. Everything works here.

This is a pretty systematic review; but that's because I'm eager to see you make more games and have them be more fun to actually play.

[Quick Sand]

Grooooaaaannnn...

This game is mediocre in pretty much every way.

Slippery, clunky controls + lousy hit detection
Muddy art
Annoying music
Completely disposable level design
A one-dimensional, uninspired, pathetic claim to 'original concept'

Oh, and you can't even program the "press play to skip level" out for some reason. That's preeetty bad.

[Daft Punk HBFS Creator V2]

The best bad thing ever

Awesome! I mean, technically speaking it's pretty mediocre, but it's Daft Punk, nothing's more rad! I love it!