Score: 7

"I liked this, very short but intense"

submission: Blot goes to Hell!

date: July 6, 2009

This recieves my 4 for: getting my blood-pressure raised slightly!

Well, all the thrill of breaking out of hell in the time it takes for lunch-break to finish!

It was very short, but it was definitely on the intense side of things. I had to really concentrate on what I was doing to avoid death, and it took me a while to work out how to beat the boss (around 4 tries.) Point being, it was short, sharp and kept me interested.

I can't really say much else about this game. The storyline was basic, the action your standard sidescrolling fun, made all the more intense by the one-hit-point-wonder character. (good idea, health slows things down somewhat in these games.) Overall, its an incredibly simple concept but it worked like a charm. Well done.

To my fellow gamer:

During the level:

Stay away from the borders. If one of the scenes that stops the camera from scrolling forces you close to the edge of the screen, double back until you can see properly. You'll need it to see enemies coming.

Preserve your lives at all costs. I know it sounds obvious but the boss is hard so self-preservation has to come at the top of your agenda.

Grabbing the ammo drops is worth it for the auto-fire. It'll keep you safe for a few screens as you can just hold A and let the game do the work... don't rely on it too much though, and whatever you do, don't get caught out when the auto stops, otherwise you'll be hoist by your own petard.

Watch out when the screen stops scrolling the 1st and 2nd time. Bomb incoming. Get out of the way of the radius before it lands. (radius is around a third of the screen, a sixth in both directions) Jump as well for good measure.

When the screen stops a third time, something bad is coming...

The boss:

Here's the mantra to remember: duck, dash, jump-shoot, repeat.

When the boss starts to float from one side to another, note that he floats UP AND DOWN SLIGHTLY. Believe it or not, you can JUST SQUEEZE UNDERNEATH HIS ROBES! without getting killed. Once over, dash to the far end of the screen, jumping if necessary to avoid a quickly thrown fireball (don't stop until you're basically at the screens edge or said fire will catch you. Then jump and fire until he starts to cross over, before running under again. Keep this up until the boss falls (It will take a while.)

Score: 5

"Eh, its alright. Main thing is it was funny."

submission: stick art

date: May 11, 2009

This gets my 2 for: bog standard but passable art with a little touch of originality in places.

Nice bit of school yard humour there. Its alright, nothing great. By the way, even sticks don't mysteriously teleport from one area where they were standing to another. Another thing: if you see a guy made out of blood, don't draw boobs on him!

Ha, slow down there picasso! Alright, the arts not great, but it could be worse. I'd normally give this 4 stars and a standard pass but I'll give this one 5 for one good reason: some original humour. Ok, its not exceptionally funny humour, but a guy coming out of blood while the other guy looks on in perplexion before drawing boobs on him is something I've not quite seen before... I wouldn't call it amazing work, and you need to work on your art skills, but hey, its not bad for a beginner. With practice you could become quite good at this!

Score: 10

"Game over..."

submission: Black Mages 4

date: May 10, 2009

The only thing missing from this was a bit at the end saying "game over".

Other than that it was brilliant, really funny bit of numbskullery on the part of the characters. Well done, especially since this is an old flash with less effective technology.

Score: 9

"Hey, this is... good! Its actually good!"

submission: =aDarknessInApril=

date: May 10, 2009

This gets my 5 for: The first time we've seen a good serious short from Pico, and on top of its uniqueness, very atmospheric style, realistic graphics and good choice in music makes this among the top Pico productions so far.

I liked this. Its not the first time I've seen this kind of thing, but of the 'Pico reminiscing about the incident' type movies its the only one that hasn't ended in a suicide/massive gun battle, and that doesn't have any masturbation jokes. It also went through the different traumatic scenes quite well. Overall, I liked this alot.

I think I'll favorite this, in the hope that I'll see more flashes like this one in the future, and who knows, maybe one day we'll even see a whole 3D Pico series born someday! I have to admit I'm almost crying out to see a serious Pico series thats taken from the start of the school incident, but it hasn't happened yet.

Overall, excellent work here.

Score: 5

"Feeling a little touchy today are we?..."

submission: Don't Press Me!!!

date: May 9, 2009

This is good fun enough to pass. It burned up enough of my seconds anyway. Good job. I liked the comments...

Swallowing my own words here, but I can't really see what you could do to improve this kinda thing... Stuff like this make for good gimmicks to throw in at the end of a movie though.

Score: 10

"Review crew pick... I can see why..."

submission: Skeleton Jack

date: May 9, 2009

This gets my 5 for: awesome action, quirky and cool environment and seriously awesome characters.

Well, that was... original. The best thing I can say is that there was never a dull moment... eh, I realise I'm kinda jumping on the bandwagon saying this is awesome, but it was. The setting for a start was dramatic, if in a slightly humourous way, and the action was something else, where else do you get a guy pole-vaulting across a massive chasm before beheading two enemies, jumping across another chasm before running out of the building getting chased by a massive sweet fireball. The ending was a nice twist as well, as you find out that the evil emperor ghost wasn't so nasty after all and in fact the main character was the asshole stealing his kids, at which point the ghost gives him the now-empty artefact anyway. It was a nice cheerful end which was a hundred times better than it would've been if he'd just died or gone DBZ balls up or something like that. The ending in other words was perfect.

The main reason that I'm giving this a 5 and a ten is simple: for once I can't find anything to fault, something I'm glad to say is happening more and more often on newgrounds. The action was slick, graphics and atmosphere perfect, and characters and ending both paragons of awesomeness. There really isn't much more I can say, well done!

Score: 8

"About as good as stick animation getsW/Ostoryline."

submission: The Unpresented

date: May 9, 2009

This gets my 4 for: excellence in stick fight construction and superb, almost cinematic connection to the music plus superb background construction/destruction, but lacks connection or storyline of the castle series.

The thing that stops me from giving this a full 5 stars is that there's no storyline or feeling of connection with the characters like there is in castle, but the animation is perfect and it obviously fulfils its purpose fully. There's never a dull moment as you watch people kicking the complete turd out of each other with various mean-shaped implements of death in some of the most awesome 2D backgrounds I've ever seen (kudos to who designed the cave). There's no clear winner though (not necessarily a bad thing) so these guys seem to be going through an over-enthusiastic sparring match rather than actually fighting. Excellent music video style which fits the action seamlessly (its that which makes this unique and interesting enough to give a 4 as opposed to the usual 3 I give out for outstanding graphics with little new material to actually contribute to the flash artstyle. The music video style is of better quality than anything I've ever seen on newgrounds, this is now an example of how stick fighting should be done.)

My suggestions for how to make it better? That looked almost deceptively like an intro, especially at the end where the green and brown dudes walked off at the end. If you really want my 5, keep the awesome fighting and give it a storyline, and make this the intro. You could make something worthy of Castle, the greatest stick story on newgrounds, if only you got your pens out and started writing a story to use all these awesome stick characters to their full potential for kickass!

Nonetheless, despite not quite getting full marks well done. This is still an exceptional piece of stick animation, and its possible that after Castle repercussions I'm spoilt for a good story. You get the highest 4 for excellent drawing and music going together to make a perfect fighting video, you just miss out on the 5 for lack of context or story. It doesn't have to be a long elaborate story, just give us an excuse for seeing sticks chop each other up (not that most people need that excuse.)

Hope I don't come across as too harsh, I did give this a 4 and its my job to criticise stuff in reviews you know!

Score: 5

"Eh... passes, I guess."

submission: powered fight

date: May 8, 2009

Well, you got a 2, hope that's good enough. Its passable and it burns up a few seconds, but its hardly star quality. Nonetheless its better than some of the barely working crap I see pass through every time I come on. Good enough job. To improve it, make it longer, give the sticks some funny expressions, and spice up the combat a little. Also, make it clearer what's happening. I didn't see anyone die as such and the ending was there before I knew who'd won. Its still not 100% clear now.

Score: 4

"Passable..."

submission: Joe's Quest 2

date: May 8, 2009

This gets my 2 for: passable but bland, ridiculously easy gaming and poor story.

I swear to review 5 new submissions every time I'm on newgrounds seeing as thats how we police what goes through the portal and what gets sent back to boot camp. This is passable. The storyline is poor and it's way too easy but as far as I'm concerned if it burns up a few minutes and doesn't make me want to kill myself because reaching for the close button would take longer its passable. Improvements? You need to work on your storyline, and make the levels harder. Much harder. and the game longer. You'll need to work harder to get a three, or even a 5 star 2. But I'll let it through. You have my vote.

Castle went from sheer mediocrity to being the best stick story ever told. Lets see if you can pull the same with smiley faces.

Score: 10

"Ah, the bastard child of f.f, pokemon and DBZ..."

submission: Epic Battle Fantasy

date: May 8, 2009

This recieves my 5 for... Insanely kooky but very fun to play with world and the best battle setup ever seen on newgrounds.

Ok, that was... slightly insane. I got conked out on epic mode around the time the pokemon attacked.

Complete lack of storyline not withstanding... that was something else. We have a pair of completely random but awesome adventurers, one who can carry seven swords around in his underpants and is hard to classify by gender and another one who carries around more magic than a master magician at a magicians fair run by magical elves who carry spare magic with them at all times... whose boobs bounce when you click on them should you get bored and need some random comedy value. The enemies are awesome (If hard to beat, I periodically end up spending as much MP healing my characters as I do on spells.) and seem to draw on everything from pokemon to DBZ to Duke Nukem in a bastardised hybrid of epic proportions.

If there is one complaint to register it is that it is perhaps a little bit too hard, but then again that was my second go so no doubt there could be a very valid reason for that. Annoyingly you get sent back to battle one if you die but that makes sense because this isn't so much a battle engine as an incredibly flashy strategy game. If you make good decisions regarding items and don't throw away all your MP at the starting battle, you're going to get a lot further than someone who casts legend and the strongest summon every single term without fail.

There really isn't anything I can fault... And that is extremely rare coming from me (anyone who's seen my recent review of a certain Pico movie knows I prize full marks highly.) Excellent job!