Xopods's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Oiligarchy]

Perfect, except for the fun factor

I love the theme, humour, art, music and subversive nature of this game. I especially like the oil well animations and the way their pumping noises become a beat as you develop an area. The electoral race animation is also very well done... dropping the money while they vacuum it up - brilliant!

The only thing is that the game just isn't that much fun. Maybe if you're aiming for a really high score, there are some tricky balancing acts later, I don't know... I only played through three elections, and it seemed like there wasn't much to the game other than survey, pump, survey, pump... I know later you'll have to spend money to oppress foreign nations, but it still didn't feel like it would be a big strategic decision, just another thing to spend money on.

Anyway, I'm giving it 9/10 even though it's not a great game, because it is a great political statement, and aesthetically very pleasing.

[Ultimate Gamer Challenge]

Kind of ADD...

...even by NG standards. Why not make one good game instead of 20 crappy ones? There were a few good ideas in there, like the gravity reversal in the second rocket car game, and the Incredible-Machine type game... most were pretty boring. I did like the "white dot" trick in the Simon Says game... it really stumped me the first time.

[Splitter]

Brilliant

Love these physics games, and this twist is very cool. A lot of the puzzles are ingenious too, though some are perhaps a little too fiddly - I like it when puzzles are misleading, but easy once you get the right idea. In this game, you often know exactly what you have to do, but it can take a dozen tries before you cut off exactly the right amount, at the right angle, at the right time. That can be frustrating.

Still, the concept and execution are enough that I would have given it 10/10, except I had to dock a point for sound and graphics. Simple is good, especially for this type of game, but you can still be simple and stylish... style is what the game lacked.

[Jump !]

A bit buggy

Simple but fun. Could be addictive if I let it be. Kind of like a side-scrolling instead of vertical Icy Tower - try playing that game, if you haven't... could give you some ideas.

There are bugs with the score screen though. First time, my flash debug player gave me a warning. Second time, no problem. Third time, I submitted a score, and it seemed to be okay, but then when I went back to play the game some more, it crashed Safari.

[Gravity Grid]

Good concept, needs polish

I like the idea a lot, but the music and graphics make it very repetitive. There's also a game design problem, which is this:

1) The nature of the puzzle makes it hard for a human to visualize things more than one or maybe two moves in advance, so when the correct solution is more than 5 or 6 moves deep, it's hard to see why the correct first move is correct. A puzzle much longer than that is almost impossible.

2) There are only 3 options available at any move, one of which is always obviously wrong, assuming no pieces were destroyed on the last move... I'll leave the proof of that to the reader. Therefore, for puzzles with solutions shorter than 5 or 6 moves, it's entirely possible for a person to get a solution by brute force.

3) Taking these together, it becomes clear that most puzzles are more easily solved by brute force than clever thinking, which is not good for a puzzle game.

That, combined with the weak presentation leads me to suggest that this game would be better off used as a single puzzle within the greater context of a Myst-like game, wherein part of the puzzle will be figuring out the rules. It's a clever idea, but I don't think it's strong enough to hold up as a game on its own.

[Hunted Forever]

Interesting game

I really like the graphical style, though it's a bit derivative of N. There's something a bit wonky about the animation and physics, and the controls can be frustrating, especially when trying to do multiple wall jumps. Still, fun game.

[Air Battle]

Dig the style

Fun little game, love the style of art... physics is well done. Solid effort. Music is a little annoying and the gameplay is not THAT innovative, so I can't give it a perfect 10, but I don't give out many 9s either, so you should take it as pretty high praise.

[Soul Core]

Decent game

Not bad... some of the puzzles were better than others. The lab door was cool... fuses were a good idea, but too easy... maybe better if you had more fuses. Using the chronoporter was annoying, though, as it involved too much running around, copying stuff down. Maybe if you had a camera-type object to take a shot of the relevant sources of information.

Most of the art was decent, but you need to learn to draw faces if you're going to have humans in your game. The protagonist and the clone are really ugly. Never figured out what to do with the lazer [sic] or how to get better than 85%... had a good time playing through the first time, but not enthralled enough to bother trying for 100%.

[Crunchdown]

Good concept, but the execution could be better

I love the concept, and the graphics for your character after he changes into various things are hilarious. I love the element of surprise, as you never know exactly what's going to happen when you eat something.

However, the fighting is kind of repetitive and frustrating, as you move too slowly to dodge anything, so the only effective strategy is just to walk in and hit A as much as you can, unless you have a super power, in which case you use that.

I find the humour of the cutscenes really infantile, though based on the maturity level I see in the majority of reviews here, I can see how you're appealing to your demographic. The quality of the art is also not up to the standards of the in-game graphics. I imagine that's just because you didn't want to spend the majority of your time on stuff that most people will skip, which is understandable.

[Mazenetix]

Could be better

It's a decent effort, but the gameplay could be much improved. I'd enjoy it more if the challenge focused on pulling the ball through a lot of twists and turns, more than avoiding moving obstacles. I also feel like the ball should have more inertia, although this would make the game more difficult. Perhaps you need different kinds of surfaces with different amounts of friction.

In any case, I think it's the sort of game where it should be easy to get through a level if you go slowly and carefully, but if you want to try to get a fast time, you need to take risks. As it is, it doesn't seem much riskier to go fast than to go slow, and some of the obstacles are hard to avoid even if you're being careful.