arcanedragon-2004's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Megaman X Next - The Game]

As much as I want to like this game, I just can't.

I grew up with Megaman, so he's my most favorite video game character. Megaman, to me, is like his own genre of games, unique and different from other games, yet it can still be related to other games.

My first and foremost problem is that this game is not fun. Usually when a good game is made, you want to explore the levels and see what it takes to build something like them. This game, however, is not like that. I commend you for using your own graphics, but its not seamless and it lacks fluency and well thought out stage design. I constantly find myself trying to get through the stage as fast as I can, and not worry about anything until I get to the boss. Honestly, I can go into the ocean stage and hold down dash button and jump around until I reach the boss. When someone does this, then the map design has failed and is not worth taking a second look at the stage.

My second problem is the boss difficulty on NORMAL mode. You, AT NO POINT, never give the boss a one-hit-kill attack. At this point, it seems to me that the game discourages exploration, and punishes one for not being able to dodge an attack, even though you so generously gave us 3 health bars which means nothing if you can't dodge the boss' ultimate attack; it tears threw it like nothing.

The third flaw I found was also in the ocean stage. The part where you have to climb down the ladder to get to the next screen is most aggravating. If you jump off to the side, and I mean if one pixel is out of place, you are GOING TO DIE. I've never seen a game that requires that you gingerly make your way down a ladder as opposed to jumping off the side to get to the next screen when they both obviously take you to that same place.

Fourth, the spikes. I can understand when you make the spikes chew threw your life as if it were nothing, thats the point (however, in most cases, it means a one-kit-kill). But when you litter a stage with these things, its not uncommon that I want to get trough the stage as fast as possible without having to run into these things. They get annoying, and fast. Granted, I do like the fact that I get second chance if I get out fast enough. Still, it's a common flaw in stage design for people to over step where spikes should be placed.

What do I like about this game? Hard to say. Good attempt, but hopefully more games that wish to do something like this won't follow the same path.

(Since this game was made 4 years ago, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and assume that the owner has made something far superior to this.)

maelstormm responds:

- Stages are meant as filler and eye candy to me, I put them above menu's on my priority list usually. In the younger years of game making here I still hadn't quite got the balance down of obstacles, enemy placement and length (still working on it too). On the lower difficulty settings you probably can dash through a good few stages without dying, probably not so much on the higher ones. The other thing being is filesize. More stage sections = more file size. More fancy graphics to pretty up stage sections = more file size. More file size = more bandwidth used and in Newgrounds case you can hit the file size cap. So it becomes a juggling act on where priorities lie.

- The "One Hit Kill" thing is a false statement on two levels. Plenty of games do this, heck games like Contra give you only 1 hit period before you lose a life. The second reason this is false is because outisde of bottomless pits, no attack if the game kills you in one hit. Some attacks do "Damage Over Time" which can potentially kill you, but that's only because you sat in it to long. It's like they say in MMO's, "Don't Stand in the Fire". Don't blame me if you don't dodge properly.

- The Ocean Stage ladder thing is due to me not being a good enough programmer at that point to be honest. Though parts of your statement are also flatly wrong, mainly that they both obviously take you to the same place. The stage section you are coming from has a large bottom section, let's say 800 pixels. Now part of that obviously needs to be for the bottomless pits for the first part of the stage, but you'd technically want part of it to be available to proceed to the next stage section. The next stage section has a landing spot built into it of like 100 pixels lets say. Obviously directly translating a character's X position to the next stage when there's up to a 700 pixel difference in location is not going to work without drastically increasing the landing spot in the next stage section to accommodate the player's original X position. Now in later incarnations I've learned to do things like the invisible walls or just auto assigning the players X/Y position to force them to appear in the next stage section where they should regardless of where they were exiting the last stage section. Quick fix for me: make the player stick to the ladder for that part though it's not ideal (limits of skill are limits of skill after all).

- The spike comment is pointless and flat out false. I'm forgiving if you touch'm for a second as opposed to instant death, but if you want to rush through the stages and die while doing it that's your fault. It's not like the spikes get up and chase you down, they're just sitting there mind their own business. True there are some parts that have more spikes than others, but that's part of stage design and plenty of other games out there do it too. It's common flaw in players to blame the programmer for their own inability to adapt to the situation at hand because they don't want to stop doing something that's inappropriate at the time or not paying attention (ie: recklessly holding the dash key ignoring the row of spikes coming up).

Good overall review. Roll Next and Mega Man Next Remix are floating around out there with most of the technical parts touched up better, but if you still like to go charging gung-ho into spikes and standing in the fire they'll probably rank about the same for ya.

[Alien Hominid]

Great game but------------> last post is a hoax

Don't type that into your browser!! It's a virus!!

[Exmortis]

OMFG (spoilers)

I looked at a couple of submissions, then I went to play the game. I really knew this was going to be a scary ass game, kinda like a horror flick. I went into the game, looked around and found my way inside various rooms. I played for a little while until I started to see faces emerge from the shadows... I was like fuck this, I'm leaving. This game freaked me out, and I'm scared to play again... But I guess thats what makes games good.