Sausau's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Alice is Dead - Ep 3]

Group Four

I hate to write reviews with a negative score for I must always make them long-ass so the fascist sympathizers also known as the newgrounds moderators don't take them down. Even more when the movie or game is popular and much loved by the community, although the community is clearly brainwashed to like it because it's featured on the frontpage. OH well, let's go to the review shall we.

First of all, I never liked the series. Albeit the first installment was captivating, with a truly disturbing ambience, it felt like you could never visually match the twisted world you want the series to be set in. Nor is the gameplay. Don't get me wrong here, point'n'clicks can be intense, but here it's a tedious work of collecting clues, random artifacts and informations about never-explained conspirations. And by "here" I mean the whole series. Which is only 3 episodes anyway, but I'll come back to that later. As I said, it's an American McGee's Alice wannabe (if you never played it, then you should, and I am of course talking about the original and not the upcoming remake/sequel). Admittedly, McGee's Alice also had trouble to live up to the creepiness of the designs when it came to the gameplay. Pretty straightforward game, but had its lot of crisping moments, and also, the game is like 10 years old. Yours is all new (yeah you didn't have thousand of dollars to make this I know). But what I mean is that it is never close to be anything epic.

And why ? Well, 3 episodes are kind of short, when considering that the 3 games altogether provide more or less 45 minutes of gameplay. This is way too short for a story with that much potential. The proof is, you have to answer everybody's questions on your profile. Now this isn't a case à la Twin Peaks, because Lynch had the time to put most of the story onto the film. And clearly you didn't put even half of Alice Is Dead universe in your games, which is utmost dissapointing, because it holds a lot of potential. Especially this episode, in which a very few happened. Not only is the pacing slow, but a whole load of new elements appear, dissapear, and are left unanswered. Don't go artsy on me.

Another point is of course the graphics, and the visuals. While the designs are oftentimes beautiful and polished, the text font is outrageously dull. It's what you can read on an 8th grader report. You could have at least put some effort into your own font. It sadly feels like you wanted to absolutely finish this series the soonest possible, no matter how much you would need to amputate the story. Sure, the final was not bad. The elevator part was good, that I can say, and you deserve that 4. As for the graphics, while some are beautiful, others look dull, most the times when it comes to the character designs.

Finally, the music is OK. It glitches sometimes when I switch screens. The dark ambient one, for the outside, tends to be repetitive and makes the game look boring, because it builds a tension that is never relieved since there's no climax whatsoever, nor is there a scary or disturbing part. That tune didn't fit so well. However, the bar song was good. It set up the mood, it's just too bad you didn't explore it further. You could have involved the singer into the story or at least made her person fully visible. The rabbit says he doesn't want to miss that show, and all we see is a vague figure in the background. Another dissapointment.

I think I said all I had to say, and I will conclude by saying again that this series had potential, but never you succeeded to fully develop it.

[ImmorTall]

Lead the ghosts astray

It's a tale before everything. A story you can't interfer with and however control. The Slint-like chords progression, reacting with the bullets hitting your body, the smooth black and white, instauring a somber yet nostalgic feeling, the purified design, leaving the merely faceless bodies of inhumanity prone amongst the chaos, everything about this game is great. I regret however its short length. I haven't added anything to my favourites in a long time, time that is over now thanks to this gem.

[Helen Keller the Game]

In the mausoleum

Apart the fact this is a post-surrealist masterpiece, I give a 10 just for the desperate kids below me.

[Dragon Boy]

1-2-1-3-1-5-1-4-1-2-1-5-1-2

Alright, I played this for a long time until I decided to eventually give a review. As someone stated below me, there are an incredible amount (and they're sometimes major) glitches. I won't write a novel and make it clear, the biggest flaw of them all is the unfair difficulty. Not only it's very hard on normal, but it's legendary on Hard. A regular moth (or whatever it is) takes like 50 hits. 50 hits plus the dragon's flame and azarec's magic. That's absurd. And the bosses, oh mine, that's way too hard man, it's so hard it just loses its fun from the other difficulties, and that's bad.

But also, why the heck would I die when I pause the game ? Why is the game still playing ? And for your information, I have a macintosh, so that can't be Vista. Some video games tried to make the game realistic by allowing the environment to still run while you pause, like Dead Space, and that was a horror game, the concept was to scare the shit out of you. But for this one, it's clearly not. So when I want to quickly give a maggot or another hp-filler, I can't, because I get owned by the time I press "i" and then drag the food to the character. That's a major flaw leading to excruciating frustration.

But then, that's not all. About the furnitures. This is over expensive in the normal mode while, in comparison, it's ridiculously cheap in hard mode ! If that were all, then the issue wouldn't be that big. But that's not all mind you. No, while the items are cheap in hard mode, they are not better ! They barely change and the weapons are lame, basically they are what you get in the last chapters in normal mode. So when you have to kill the ennemies in hard mode, it takes one billion hits to take down one little insignificant baddie. And talking about this, why do you have to lose all your money when you quit the game and come back to your saved party ? It's horrendous, and as far I played, you also lose your XP.

And, of course, the controls. Oh gosh the controls. They are so confused, and still, there is only 1 thing to do ! You never know when an ennemy hits or can hit you. Sometimes the bad guy is way lower but he can touch you because on the screen, he waves his weapon on a pixel of your body, but perspective-wise, it makes no sense. And when you have to hit them, you never know when you can hit them either. Worse, you have a short range but the ennemies have huge one, so you're truly never sure who's gonna hit the other first.

And then, there are all these minor annoying glitch, like the eerie clicking noise when you turn the sound off. When you wander around or in fact, do anything, a strange sound appears and holy cow is that terrible. Or the minimalism of the universe.There is just this little village with 4 people to talk to and they're not really talkative or interesting. And when you beat the normal mode, the story somehow continues thereafter (or that's what at least you insinuate) but the king is still alive and the characters speak the same things they do on the very first stage of others modes.

All these glitches make this game barely playable or enjoyable, but in the end, I had and still have fun slaughtering ennemies, even though that's always a terrible pain at the same time to play.

[Colour my Heart]

Cyight of knidonia

This took me exactly 1 minute to beat. 1 freaking minute. I know it's not meant to be a "hardcore gaming experience" but hey, if you want people to experience at least something, make it more complex. Because of course you tried to visually render the complexity of love, yet the simplicity of loving someone (which might be your point by making this so short actually). But I can't care for a game that offers nothing but a concept. I don't mean that it's bad to build an abstract game upon a concept, but you didn't really add anything to the concept itself, which is my point here. And it's not meant to be a joke, so it's embarrassing. I know I may be just acting like an asshole right now but I couldn't feel anything through the whole game, which has been 1 minute of gaming anyway. Well, I am still giving a nice score because it's detailed and the music is pleasant.

[Hey Wizard 2]

High life

I wanted to love this game. The design is fruity and pleasant, the concept of spell magic is always entertaining and the maps are big. But gosh, the controls are awful. Using a fire or whatever spell to go up is a terrible idea for two reasons :

It's extremely painful to move around the level. It's hard to jet the wizard in the right place and it's absolutely not natural and realistic. It's anything but fun to travel across the maps because you just can't jump ! Even the smallest relief needs to be jumped over with a spell. I understand it's useful to fly long distances, but for reason's sake, just make him jump a bit. When it comes to dodge the ennemies' fire, you have to propulse yourself in the air by aiming down with your mouse. How sensical is that ? Instead of merely jumping. Dude.

And also, when you fire at a fiend, you go backwards ! You can't use the fire spell right. Of course there are others, but at the beginning of the game, it's a real pain. Charging the bolt takes too long and is totally ineffective, and the other spells are lame at the beginning. You'd need at least one good power at the start of a game. Here it wasn't really shrewd to put these spells.

I know what you think "Man, it's just a fucking jump why are you bitching about this and giving such a bad score", well it's also tickling you screwed up on such a basic level as jumping. When changing the very basis of jumping works well in a game, it's because the game is all based upon this peculiar way to jump. Here you make it sound like normal, but it ruins what could have been a marvelous game.

[You Only Live Once]

In the absence of lies

Another gem from the person who brought us Lars' Adventure
To apprehend all the genius of this game, just hit play, which, itself, is already something you won't forget.

[Ultimate Crab Battle]

Swarm Reigns Down

[Insert giant enemy crab joke here]

[OCD+]

The silence proves it

With such a concept, it's either a 0 or a 10. Your concept works pretty well and I likes cruelty. You deserved this 10.