Syncopated's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Little Life]

Old, but good

There's not much novel about the mechanics of this game: it's mostly a simple platformer. Still, it feels very well designed, with each level being hard enough to feel satisfying and easy enough to not beat your head against a wall. Everything about it feels smooth, and the story was compelling enough to me to keep me interested to the end.

Well done :)

[Jade Wolf 2]

Wow

A beautiful, content rich game; I don't see how anyone can rate this poorly. There is really so much to explore here, and such a variety of challenges that this is the most unexpectedly pleased I have been with a game in a long time. I just finished the game through with 100% (getting the third place score) and I enjoyed all of it.

Recommended to all, easy 5/5 and 10/10

[MonsteroCity]

Could have been great

I just finished up the game on the medium setting...I felt myself losing interest a couple levels in as I worked out a strategy of just jumping from one side of the screen to another. The game was an appropriate length though, so I still enjoyed myself and cool touches like the volcano made things enjoyable enough.

After finishing though, I checked out the other characters and they really do yield a completely different experience. Definitely not enough for me to play through the game, but they are so vastly different that I feel they deserve more attention. To be honest, I don't think anyone's going to play through all of the pretty vanilla levels more than once to master all the characters. What would have been best, I think, was if the character you played on each level changed. This would keep any one of them from growing old, and getting them all the attention they deserve. Definitely potential here for an exciting game, but I feel like the way content is presented will keep scores lower than they could be.

For early work, definitely very nice though.

[Bango!]

Nice work!

I love to see authors responding to reviews, so I'm more than happy to write one here. It's easy to see the amount of work that went into this game- the graphics fit well, the mechanics are great, and the whole thing stays fun and fresh throughout. Getting all of the medals was a nice challenge- not so bad that it made me crazy, but hard enough so I felt accomplished to yell "I AM THE KING OF BANGO!". I do wonder if that was your real top score, though in the gold medal. I always say that when users can do better at a game than the creator, the creator has done a good job, so I give you a pat on the back for that.

Only thing that might be nice would be more unlockables. New challenge levels were definitely nice, but maybe a change in character color or music could also be unlocked with achievements. In particular, I would like to see the last achievement give a reward.

But overall, definitely nice work! Thanks!

[Ultimate Tactics]

Meh

I wasn't going to bother writing a review pointing out all of the glaring flaws in this game, but since you were kind enough to respond to early reviews, I figure perhaps what I write will be read and considered.

All in all, I do not believe that this game was worth creating. It offers absolutely nothing original to the genre, and is TERRIBLY engineered. I feel this way about every game you have created. Time after time, you put out games with enjoyable graphics and gameplay that are truly miserable to play in the end because they are unbalanced and (I cannot say this enough) glitchy. I don't know why you put so much time into games and then just leave glaring flaws in them. It bothers me, and it should bother you. This game is no exception. Several times, I would click on a square and because of objects in the way my character would simply go somewhere else. Once, my character was blocked in and I tried to move everywhere, and the whole game just froze and had to be restarted. Often, it is difficult (if not impossible) to click on the square I want to move to because of characters in the way. Also, your movement system as a whole makes no sense. My characters can move to squares in a given radius, but if their path there is blocked then they take any way necessary to get there. Sometimes, this means my characters will move all over the board just to get one spot...they go to places they can't end up on. And this is not sensible at all. Either you don't understand the genre, you don't understand programming, or you just don't understand logic.

Now in terms of the unbalanced gameplay I mentioned before, examples abound. The damage done by my team and by enemies is simply pathetic. Like really, truly abysmal. When my characters have around 70 health and snakes are dealing them 2 damage per turn, it is an embarrassing sight to watch. And when enemies have 80 health, and I can only deal 9, it is equally embarrassing. Fights take FOREVER, and not just because turns are slow, which they are, but because I feel like everyone is attacking with foam swords or something. Just quadruple everyone's damage. Maybe I could have gotten to the 'recommended level' to do the missions, but the requirements are dumb because no mission is HARD, just interminable. It is physically painful for me to sit there whacking the same enemies for like 12 turns with very little depletion in health on either team. I feel the same way about experience. When I get an archer at first who needs 300 exp to level, getting 2 exp per attack isn't even worth the time it takes to flash across the screen. Where the hell did you come up with all of the numbers in your game? Did you roll a ten sided die and say 'oh that looks good' because your numbers are all miserably low. Unless I have to kill 300 enemies, in which case they're unreasonably high, because I'm not going to spend 5 hours trudging through your excuse for a game to get a sword that, even if it doubled my damage, would still be next to useless. Even the levels needed to open treasure chests are poorly thought out...I was getting medium level chests with a skill level of 4 with no easy chests in sight. It seems you intended us to grind for multiple battles between missions, but given how long, easy, and meaningless fights are, it simply isn't worth it. Also, the turn menus are poorly set up. I shouldn't have to click so many times to make my characters do such simple tasks.

The only redeeming aspects of this game are that it is somewhat addicting. I want my mage to get all his spells, and I want to see what the sword is like. However, I am never going to muster the will to do any of these things because of the rest of the game is so awful.

Honestly, I do not know if you are meant to create games. Clearly, the current score of this one shows that others would disagree with me, but I am entitled to my own opinion. Your games are repeatedly shallow, unoriginal, and badly made. Either work with others who compensate for your flaws, or save my mental well-being by leaving the industry.

*END RANT*

[Epsilon Strain]

Very fun...but buggy

I would give this game 10/10 for sure if not for 2 main things...the first is that the store is confusing. Why do some of the items have locks over them initially? For the longest time I thought I couldn't buy them and thus used terrible weapons through 5 areas. Also, I ran into the same major bug that others seem to be hitting, which is that the game repeatedly freezes during levels ranked 6. I've tried several times now and same thing each time. On a minor note, I think that the word space is missing in the instructions when it says what to press when near a door.

Overall, a great piece of work but I was displeased by easily fixable yet glaringly wrong parts of it. Fix it up and its a perfect score for sure.

[Cage Tibet]

Original concept

could have used more variety between levels, and earlier ones could have been easier though.

[Portal Defenders]

AWESOME work

First: CHEST CODE. I don't know if anyone's posted it yet (I checked every review last night) but I got it and it seems to always be crown, poop, thumb.

Review time...really a very very well done game...I'm sure others have given all the compliments I have. Still, I'm not completely satisfied with this game. The adblocker thing is a problem for me, and for some reason my progress keeps getting lost when I come back. I've never had this problem with another game on this site before, and it bothers me because I've lost all my unlocked characters. =(

[Bumper Boat Battle]

Nice work, but needs work

I really do like this game; it's probably the best of its kind I've ever played. It has compelling challenges, interesting customization options, and some satisfying moments. Yet I can't feel like there's too much missing to call this a great game.

Really, all of my complaints lie in the 'challenge' system. Challenges should, by nature, be challenging, not completely impossible. EARN $10,000,000?? KILL 5000 HENCHLINGS?? I've been playing for a fair amount of time and I'm nowhere even NEAR those numbers. And the rewards aren't even that good for such insane accomplishments (using the word loosely) either. Even the sniper badge is probably harder than it should be in my opinion. And why do I need to do something as difficult as go through the first five waves without a hit to unlock something as integral as the selection screen? The way it should work (not that I want to tell you how to do your job...obviously you're a better programmer than I am) but the way it should work is that different achievements unlock different characters. Not having all of them grouped into one, unnecessarily difficult achievement.

Also, none of the challenges extend past level 5! Once I hit this level, I was really not compelled to go on anymore. IF you put challenges in a game, you have to expect that people are going to measure their success off of the awards they've received. After hitting wave 5, part of me feels like I'm done. This feeling intensified once I go the diamond boat. Why keep going on after this? And why get rid of the upgrade screen? I need a brake every once in a while even after I'm fully upgraded. Why don't you allow the player to buy health between levels at this point? Or extra characters? Or new mine types? You need more cash sinks.

Sorry to rant, but I feel like there's so much potential in this game and yet I barely want to continue playing it. I feel like you can do better, and will do better. In my opinion, this project is worth continuing to a sequel. Maybe new arenas, enemies, weapons, statistics, characters, character storylines, powerups...all of these things could make a really awesome game. I hope some of these suggestions are helpful.

urbaniac responds:

You're right about the challenges. They were designed for the users on our site, who play these games over and over every day to earn Urbos. I should have adjusted the challenge numbers for casual gameplay sites like this.

[Time4Cat]

Ah very nice

Haha I had a lot of fun with this one. First of all, this game has, without a doubt, the best name I've ever seen. Time4Cat? Perfect. It's adorable, fitting, and somehow works well with the whole lolcat phase the interwebz seems to be going through. The gameplay itself was also very smooth and everything looked great. However, I found the beginning a bit slow. Maybe I was playing more defensively than I should have or something, but I felt like I just had the walking people for a while. Then once I got the bikers it wasn't long before I went for a food on the side and got smacked by a bike. My own fault though, I guess.

Also, the stats tracked at the end seem weird. In particular, I wonder why amount of time spent playing is recorded. If I wanted, I could just leave the game alone and get a huge play time. That doesn't make sense.

Anyway, still a great avoidance game even if it's nothing incredibly new. Certainly better than my current efforts at making one...which looks much more similar to your prototype lol (it is written in java, though, if that makes a difference).