cableshaft's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Russian Affairs]

Pretty good, but unfair at times.

First of all you could probably safely take out the holster/deholster key, as well as the speed key. I ended up keeping the gun out the whole time and running constantly. Your gameplay isn't dependent on these functions, unlike Flashback, so unless you're planning on expanding the gameplay, I wouldn't keep it in.

I like the split screen effect, where you basically get to see what's coming up without having to engage the enemy first. Reminded me a lot of Oddworld in that sense.

I had some problems with the gameplay. First, it seemed like the only way I could get more ammo was to let myself die. I might have missed something, but I didn't see any way to gain more ammo. If there is a way to gain ammo, you should explicitly state it somewhere in the instructions. Second, once you die once, usually the enemy will kill you once or twice more after continuing before they even let you get your gun back up to shoot them. Third, one time I came out of a cave facing the wrong way, and the three guys there killed me before I got turned around.

Work on these and the game will be a lot better. It'd be nice if there was a little more variety to the gameplay, as well.

alexander-b responds:

Thanks Man, "R" is for reload, it's in the How to Play section!!

[Pest Attack]

Clever Game.

Nice simple game, great graphics, smooth controls, somewhat original idea. It feels extremely well done. I wish your team good look and I'll be sure to keep an eye out for more work from you in the future.

[Road Blocks]

Well made.

Adding the portals and directional tiles really made an already difficult classic game a lot harder. I really had to rack my brain on some of those levels, and I eventually got stuck. The game played really smoothly also, and the controls were very responsive. Good job :).

[SPACE ACE]

Some suggestions...

The game doesn't look or play too bad, really, even though the concept/style is way too bland and derivative, but there are a few things you could do to make it look more interesting.

First of all, the ships should be animated. a single solid image moving slowly on the screen looks just like that, and not like a ship that's attacking you. There should have been some minor ship animation.

Also, the A.I. should have been more active than sitting still, or moving back and forth in a tight pattern and shooting a spray of bullets periodically. The ships should react, the ships should speed up/slow down, they should try to line up their shots to where the player is/will be. As it is, they seemed very dull and very lifeless.

Another benefit would be if all you had to do to keep shooting was to hold down the shoot button. I don't particularly enjoy tapping the space bar many times and repeatedly; it adds extra wear and tear on one particular key and I know with a few lines of code it could be made so you shoot continuously. It's not a skill to tap a key quickly, especially in these games. The skill is in avoiding, and your control scheme just distracts from the game.

Otherwise the game was well made. I liked the classic feel of the sounds, and none of them were especially annoying (as classic sounds can be). Having multiple modes was cool as well, even though both were classic gameplay that's been done hundreds of times before (and better). Overall, it's fun for a couple minutes, but it's not really worth playing twice.

terrypaton1 responds:

what have you done for new zealand hip hop lately?

[The Deadline - Part 1]

Not very fun.

It's kinda cool, but not very fun. One reason for this is it takes way too long to reload weapons. It takes longer to reload than in most survival horror games where you can move around to avoid the zombies while you reload. This is especially troublesome once you get the shotgun and have to reload after every shot.

Also, the lighting system is pretty poor. I understand why it moves differently from your crosshair, but it confuses the brain, and it means that in order to aim at the zombie that's coming at you, you can't see what you're shooting at. And you only have the flashlight when you have the pistol, so with the rest of the weapons you can't see much of anything.

When the zombies start attacking you, there seems to be no way to kill them either. Because of the damn reload one got to me and then I couldn't do anything but watch him bite me again and again until my health dropped to zero.

I'm not a big fan of this incredibly linear style of gameplay either (fmv of moving to the next spot, then stay in one place and shoot), but that's just personal preference.

It's not a bad attempt, but because of the above issues, I didn't have any fun playing the game.

RVWD responds:

do i have 2 repeat everytime that corsshair and flashlight stuff...? read some earlier reviews... thnx for the review anyway :)

[Pacman Killer]

Kinda cool.

Kinda interesting concept.

I wasn't too interested at first until I noticed the instructions started wanted me to hit certain colors of Pac-men, then it got more interesting (speaking of which, don't bury that information in that text. I musta overlooked it for three or four levels). Trying to hit only specific colors made it more challenging and more fun.

Did you realize you can change the size of the flash submission when submitting and editing? I know you can at least get 800x600, as my Proximity game is that large, and your game doesn't look much bigger than that. It's the two fields under the field you enter the SWF file into.

[Doomed]

Good, but Smash TV is still better.

This is a faithful reincarnation of Smash TV minus the theme, the variety and number of enemies, and with randomness, mild puzzles, and ammo management. Unfornately you took out some key elements which made Smash TV so damn cool, and added some elements which weren't really necessary (although random maps is never a bad thing).

Otherwise, everything was extremely well done. You hit the Newgrounds demographic perfectly in design, and it's well programmed. It just really hurts the game that there's no real variety in the enemies (The look different, but they simply chase and shoot you. Wow.) and that the theme is so lifeless.

[Analog Pussy - Future]

Interesting idea...

Interesting message, but the interactive flash suddenly stopped becoming interactive after a couple minutes without any warning whatsoever. The music kept looping, but everything else just stayed still. Maybe that was supposed to be an added message, but I just got confused.

So, this is what Analog Pussy had in mind when they asked for a game to help promote their music, huh? Damn, I would have screwed that up. I assumed they were wanting something that could spread virally through all the flash game portals, but this doesn't really qualify as a game, so I don't really see this doing that.

[Ammunition Mission Lvl 1]

Fairly simple game.

Except you've got to ditch the whole "rotate and move" concept in favor of direct movement, Zelda style. It's too hard to move the guy to dodge those bullets. Other than that, it was decent.

isthatlegal responds:

The reason that the curcular motion is in place is becasue it makes it harder... If it was 'Zelda style' it wud be way too easy