The Great 2011 Review Contest [Reviews: 200]

Make games! Discuss those games here.

Moderators: Bob the Hamster, marionline, SDHawk

User avatar
Gizmog
Metal King Slime
Posts: 2622
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 5:41 am

Post by Gizmog »

Pepsi Ranger wrote:I really like Giz's series. The 48 Hour review might just be one of the best I've ever read (well, I can't call it a review as much as a walk through history, but it's still one of the best accounts of the OHR's past to come around in a long time). This entire series needs to be duplicated for Hamsterspeak, especially the 48 Hour history lesson. Excellent job, Giz.
I don't know how duplicating it all for HamsterSpeak would work. A lot of the games I've reviewed have already had really good write-ups, and I don't want to be retreading an entire year's worth of games and taking up space/attention that could going to guys who're making games and want feedback in 2012. At any rate, I'm glad you're enjoying it.
Master K wrote:Yeah, I did make Labyrinth in half the time I had. I was going to be doing a lot of travelling in the next few days, some of which clashed with the contest. However, I had an idea and determination, so I said "Might as well try." and The Labyrinth came into existence after starting in the morning, working past midnight, and then polishing it up the next morning and eagerly launching it.

Ah well. It's another game on my list.
I feel bad about that review. It's always better to have released something than to have released nothing and I really hope you don't doubt yourself in the future because of anything I wrote. I kind of wobbled off into jokeyness at the end of my review, but I meant it when I said it was a good game for 24 hours.

That's really a bad part of this contest. It's inspired a lot of reviews which is great, but then 4 people review a game out of nowhere and it's like the whole world is dogpiling on it. There's nothing worse than getting lectured a million times about something, and I wonder what future review contests could do to try and minimalize this.
Charbile wrote:Master K and Giz are the best. I'd love to see more games by you two. I like reading what Giz has to say, don't get me wrong, but I'd much rather see him in action if you know what I mean~
I've been tempted to quit writing these reviews and make a game. It really seems easier at this point, but I think doing reviews and thinking critically about so many different games is going to make me a better game maker in the long run. Too bad your name isn't on my list, I bet you would've given me plenty of good stuff to think about.

What the heck's up with that, anyway? I thought I was the one who was semi-retired. Get back to work, you bum!
Gizmog is going to write/ wrote:*mean stuff about the rest of the 48 Hour games*
I didn't vote for the 48 Hour contest because outside of James' game, I didn't have much nice to say. Something just rubbed me the wrong way about all of them, even my own. I'm going to be just as hard on "Virtual School 2" and if you think I'm not or you think I'm being unfair, I'm willing to hear you out on it. Sorry in advance.
Last edited by Gizmog on Tue Feb 21, 2012 10:11 pm, edited 3 times in total.
User avatar
charbile
Metal Slime
Posts: 601
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2011 6:18 am

Post by charbile »

Making a game seems easier than reviewing them? Are you feeling okay? You don't have to write major essays about every minor release.

I'm sure most people enjoy seeing anything said about their games. I wouldn't beat yourself up. There are more makers than players here. I mean, which reviews have you felt like commenting on besides the ones about your own work? Look at everyone else.

If you're not jiving about wanting to make better games, I'd recommend reviewing better games. I've recently been playing through final fantasys and other rpgs i've missed. I could rip them as well as I could any game here, but the difference is they do a lot more right and it's worth more to study that, what keeps you playing and excited. Not knowing the author helps, it's why I ignore who made what as best I can for this contest.

You know what happens when you allow things to get personal with a girl. Games are no different. Is this the end of the giz?!

Where is Pedro Gomez! I can't find him online. So lonely.
User avatar
charbile
Metal Slime
Posts: 601
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2011 6:18 am

Post by charbile »

Star Quest
---

I couldn't resist this one and played it a few weeks ago. The game's found on a blog called 8-bit city, with a nice cover picture and copy-writing that will give any nostalgic minded video game nerd a rise...

- Retro graphics
- Inspiring philosophical storyline
- A promise to have a secret that will blow your mind.

As you can see, it's hard to resist. Great marketing. One problem though: the game has to be good for all this to work.

My first playthrough went something like this: liked the atmosphere, explored, explored, dead ends, no idea what to do, found a key, more dead ends, began using the f11 walk-through-walls cheat, no more dead ends but no inspiring philosophy, tried to find the part that would blow my mind, found weird places and bits and pieces of what could have been inspiring, quit the game and went into custom to read the text boxes and, well...

I'm going to look one more time real quick. I'm not finishing this review until I attempt a stab at the story... OK

ok...

You have to deliver the goods or none of this can work. I want to put this as bluntly as I can.

Take detailed graphics and detailed plot, where you can tell what's happening clearly, think it too simple minded, then make a game with simple graphics and a plot without any coherent structure, and call it inspiring and philosophical, in the hopes that nobody sees the 'retro' as 'lack of content and quality', and you'll have Star Quest.

I get that the author wants a work where it's up to the player in some part to decide what's really going on, and you can't say otherwise because THE GAME DOESNT GIVE ANY CLEAR RESOLUTION. As far as I can tell, the quest is to find the star, which is some guy named johnny, who is lost in the arcades. Is he trapped in a game? Is the game real life? Who knows, who cares.

Judgment: Blew my mind, but in a bad, let down kind of way.

There's a map that's worth mentioning: it's made up of wandering npc blocks, so when you enter it looks like a normal area, but then it's like the map breaks apart and becomes a moving maze. Best part of the game, besides the music.
User avatar
charbile
Metal Slime
Posts: 601
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2011 6:18 am

Post by charbile »

The HangovOHR
---

Want to hear a funny joke? Get this: it comes with gfx_directx.dll, SDL.dll, SDL_mixer.dll ... but no game.exe!!

It's a parody of the movie of the same name. Haven't seen the movie, but I'm pretty sure. I don't get it.

It stalls at what I assume is the end of a short scene. I thought maybe it had something to do with leaving the game window and coming back. Nope, stalls if you keep it focused. Maybe it's caused I used the wrong game.exe. Who knows.

Who can truly know anything.

Judgment: Nope.
User avatar
charbile
Metal Slime
Posts: 601
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2011 6:18 am

Post by charbile »

The Hall
---

No game.exe. At least it says 'fixed' in the rpg name. Always be thankful.

The title screen is funny cause it's a picture of a stick man holding a huge knife sword, but get this: there's a second color used anti aliasing the stick man's legs. Just the legs. And maybe the crotch, it's hard to tell.

Fist map looks like someone left on the 'show grid' in photoshop.

Starting at x=0, y=0, I float my way to what I'm told is *only* the first set of bosses. Boss 1: serpant. No music, no sound. The hall is a quiet and scary place.

Given I can only stab, I guess this was in the fight contest. At this point in the playlist, I think it's safe to say the fight contest showed us all one very important lesson: battles where you can only attack are boring. You silly game design wizards, it's like... a car making contest where you're only allowed to work with the ignition.

Judgment: Nope.
User avatar
charbile
Metal Slime
Posts: 601
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2011 6:18 am

Post by charbile »

Only 6 more to go, Giz. 6 more and I'm done.

I'm curious to count how many of these were or weren't in some contest. My guess would be... more than 60% of them in. Then count how many were finished. My guess would be... less than 6.

EDIT: actually 3 more~
Last edited by charbile on Fri Feb 24, 2012 5:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
charbile
Metal Slime
Posts: 601
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2011 6:18 am

Post by charbile »

The Tower
---

The readme says it's an entry into the fan game contest based on something I've never heard of before. The most exciting part is it has a game.exe! I want to hug it.

Hmm. The title screen gives pause. In large red text with ye olde font, "The Tower", and right next to the text, a tall gray cube. Surprisingly, the sprites in the game look pretty rad. The portraits not so much.

I know it's poor to say, but when I see the name "Firido" I keep thinking "Frodo" and given the tower and it being based on what I wager is a book...

The plot is Firido saying he's the bravest in the village and goes into the tower and gets locked in by his buddies. The first NPC hints at a problem here: he tells Firido there's a way out by going up to the top floor. And Firido's like, "okay." SUSPENSION -- unless the twist is he jumps off a 100 story tower?

The story actually seems to be about a witch who gets some fifteen year old to risk his life so she can make some money.

The game's kinda fun. You can choose to avoid all battles by avoiding NPCs, but there's no reason to since they give you easy exp. So far it could just as easily been put into the 'only attack command' contest.

Found a bug where you can fight infinite Relaxers. Not sure if I can use this to twink it up or not. What would Red Mage do...

END OF DEMO

Judgment: A bare-bones RPG dungeon crawler demo.
User avatar
charbile
Metal Slime
Posts: 601
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2011 6:18 am

Post by charbile »

There is Nothing Left
---

There is no game.exe.

The animating background is great. Pretty creepy game. The vulgarity kind of ruins the mood for me though.

I refused to attack and the narrator shoots himself. I then killed the monsters as far as I could and the narrator shoots himself anyway. Emo vibe here. I guess the monsters are supposed to be classmates?

There's not much else to this. It's neat for what it is, but at the same time it's like less than a tech demo. More like a proof of concept. I'd like to see a full game.

Judgment: Good execution, but not much here.
User avatar
Spoonweaver
Liquid Metal King Slime
Posts: 6461
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 7:07 am
Contact:

Post by Spoonweaver »

MY doodle quest review
http://www.slimesalad.com/forum-devo/vi ... php?t=4958


MY Castle on the Night Land REVIEW
http://www.slimesalad.com/forum-devo/vi ... php?t=4957


As for Don't Push the button I'll review it right here.

REVIEW: Don't Push the Button 2011
Image
This is basically kind of silly and pointless. This is a game about making the game that it is about. Though I get the meta behind such a thing, I wasn't really entertained at all.

The sound is annoying and the random tick tocks are interesting, if only because it shows some interesting ways one can use the ohr battle system.

As other reviews have said, the original was better. This game lacks any sort of point really. We get that you feel pressure to make games giz. You can stop telling us about it now.

I don't recommend playing this game.

Score: 1/5
User avatar
Spoonweaver
Liquid Metal King Slime
Posts: 6461
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 7:07 am
Contact:

Post by Spoonweaver »

I've also reviewed
Doom: Evil Unleashed
http://www.slimesalad.com/forum-devo/vi ... 9722#89722

&
Dungeon Quest
http://www.slimesalad.com/forum-devo/vi ... php?t=4960



EDIT: felt kind of bad after reading this review back... but, oh well.
Escape from Strong Castle
http://www.slimesalad.com/forum-devo/vi ... 9764#89764




Escape the Wolf: OHR
http://www.slimesalad.com/forum-devo/vi ... 9801#89801

Fat Frog the Movie
http://www.slimesalad.com/forum-devo/vi ... 9802#89802
Last edited by Spoonweaver on Wed Feb 29, 2012 4:19 am, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
Spoonweaver
Liquid Metal King Slime
Posts: 6461
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 7:07 am
Contact:

Post by Spoonweaver »

Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone,
& Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

(the ones by JSH)

These three films are all very similar so I figured I'd review them together. So I learned from JSH that these things were his attempt at making a Harry Potter knock off as a protest to how Rowling handles book bootlegger. These tings are so short that they could only ever be considered a summary of the books though.

Anyways, the graphics are really bad. As is the voice acting. The game might have honestly been better without either of these things. Maybe just a text based OHR harry potter book would have served JSH's cause better. In any case, these films are terrible.

I'm not sure these were ever meant to be enjoyed. I don't think anyone should actually watch these unless they're just interested to see how silly they really are. If you choose to skip this film and download something else on slimesalad, you won't be missing much.

Score: 0/5
Last edited by Spoonweaver on Wed Feb 29, 2012 4:35 am, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
The Wobbler
A Scrambled Egg
Posts: 2817
Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2007 8:36 pm
Location: Underwater
Contact:

Post by The Wobbler »

Spoonweaver wrote:Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone,
& Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Anyways, the graphics are really bad. As is the voice acting. The game might have honestly been better without either of these things.
Without the voices and the graphics there wouldn't have been any joke at all.
Last edited by The Wobbler on Wed Feb 29, 2012 5:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Spoonweaver
Liquid Metal King Slime
Posts: 6461
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 7:07 am
Contact:

Post by Spoonweaver »

Fair enough. I mostly meant that as a joke myself. I was thinking of saying it would be better without the text too. Basically meaning it would have been better had these not been made. :V
User avatar
FnrrfYgmSchnish
Metal Slime
Posts: 741
Joined: Thu Jun 18, 2009 4:37 am
Location: Middle of Nowhere

Post by FnrrfYgmSchnish »

Re: the Fat Frog review, I actually was planning to make a whole series rather than just one incomplete part (actually the first part was supposed to be longer than it ended up being... I kind of underestimated how much time it would take, or maybe underestimated how lazy I would be toward the end. The original plan was to have it end at or near the end of the Vomitus battle, rather than cutting off right before it really started!)

I just haven't gotten to any of the rest yet since I've been busy with school and working on other stuff (...but mostly school.)
Last edited by FnrrfYgmSchnish on Thu Mar 01, 2012 3:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
FYS:AHS -- Working on Yagziknian NPC walkabout sprites
User avatar
charbile
Metal Slime
Posts: 601
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2011 6:18 am

Post by charbile »

I thought the voice acting movie games were a great way to show how overrated voice work can be. It's hard to do it well, just like doing anything well in making a game, which there's already enough to worry about there.

It doesn't add anything. Instead, it changes the dynamic of how the player interprets text. There's a reason why the audio book isle is usually pretty small. Also, can read faster, and unless there's acting to go along with the voice work, why bother waiting around.

And dang, Spoon. I really need to give Castle on the Night Land another play. I never made it anywhere in that game. It seems like there's a lot there.
Post Reply