Valio's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Lily Allen , The Fear!]

Interesting approach, some improvements needed

I think it's a smart marketing approach in several ways.
1. Through viral marketing you achieve spreading the music album.
2. Instead of waiting for someone to make fun of her (as in case of amy winehouse "rehab game" ), she's the first to make fun of her with a video game; so it's unlikely that someone who comes up with a bad quality lily-allen-rehab-game will get that much media attention.

About my impressions of the game:
I played it until I was in level 10, but haven't managed to finish it. It motivated my enough to try it several times again.

The drawing were nice and fitting; except for the alcohol bottles, that looked like bad resized photographs.

The controls were ok; I found it only somewhat annoying that I could not jump onto ladders.
It seems as if there are some minor code bugs. Once a level started pitch black until I died; another time I managed somehow to fall all through that "fear wall", without getting killed. But that obviously occured very rarely.

I think it's a good idea to tune down the music, instead of completely stopping it inbetween levels.
I would like to have an option to let the music player stuck to one song. Actually I prefer the instrumental version while playing the game.

I haven't become a fan of Lily Allen music, but at least you got me to look up her Wikipedia article, because of this game ;-)

Matmi responds:

Thanks for your review. I'm glad we got you researching Lily

[Guy & Buddy]

great idee, some problems though

The mouse/ghost got almost uncontrollable after some deaths if you started the stage right away. However if I waited sometime before restarting the stage it was ok again. I'm not that expert in Actionscript but I assume it might be a garbage collection problem, e.g. you eventually add a listener object like Mouse.addListener(Ghost), but you don't remove it with Mouse.removeListener(Ghost) before deleting the Ghost-object or reinstantiating it's pointer; this ultimately leads the Actionscript execution to send mouse events to unused objects, until the garbage collector realizes that those are no use anymore and removes the mouse listener of it.

The story seemed quite random, but I liked it (I dislike games with no story). But I found it a pity that there was no real conclusion at all (even if it's would have been sth very simple).

The drawing was a little bit childish, but it fitted the game quite well.

The music was ok at first, but got annoying the more I played, because it seemed to get more and more nervous (and did not stopped when I died). I was a little bit disappointed that there was no option to disable sound effects and music separately.

[The Rise of a KING]

Loved it!

This is really a step forward. While "Rise of a Knight" was merely an action game, this is already quite an RPG, but without taking too much action out of it.

I found it a pity that there was e.g. no way to save the poor man's girl in the side quest...like using the freeze spell or something :-/

I can fully agree on the points Tonash (comment below) brought up, except for point (1) maybe. The world wasn't that big, that the transitions got on my nerves yet.
Additionaly I think there was a "Quest Tracker" (Key O). But a map which actually displays the game routes and show's where to find the next quest, would have been really helpful.

SeethingSwarm responds:

Okay, cool. Yeah I agree with all your points and the ones of Tonash. Thanks for the review and glad you liked it!

[Mad Vlad II: Revamped]

Great game till the end...

The music was decent and there were no sound effects but because of the catchy storyline you could really overlook that. Apart from that the level design was good and I liked the art style (it reminds a little bit of Yoshi's Island). As said the story was very good.

Now to my rant: In the final fight (flying around with Derek) the controls seem to lag sometimes completely and sometimes Vlad stops to move for about 5 seconds or more. I know this doesn't have to be a classical programming bug, but it's like saying "you know what player?`I hate you that you've played through the whole game and now I'm gonna frustrate you totally".
So if there's anyway you could improve the player controls I'd be very glad...

[Castle Crashing the Beard]

scnr (to the melody of It's Raining Men)

Hi - Hi! We're your Castle Crashers - Ah-huh -
And have we got news for you - You better listen!
Get ready, all you lonely players
and leave those umbrellas at home. - Alright! -

Humidity is rising - Barometer's getting low
According to all sources, the street's the place to go
Cause tonight for the first time
Just about half-past ten
For the first time in history
It's gonna start raining toast.

It's Raining Toast! Hallelujah! - It's Raining Toast! Amen!
I'm gonna go out to run and let myself get
Absolutely soaking wet!
It's Raining Toast! Hallelujah!
It's Raining Toast! Every Specimen!
Tall, white, dark and lean
Rough and tough and strong and mean

God bless Tom Fulp, he's a single player too
He took off to heaven and he did what he had to do
He taught every angel to rearrange the sky
So that each and every player could find his perfect bread
It's Raining Toast! Hallelujah! - It's Raining Toast! Amen!
It's Raining Toast! Hallelujah!
It's Raining Toast! Ame---------nnnn!

I feel stormy weather / Moving in about to begin
Hear the thunder / Don't you lose your head
Rip off the roof and stay in bed

God bless Tom Fulp, he's a single player too
He took off to heaven and he did what he had to do
He taught every angel to rearrange the sky
So that each and every player could find his perfect bread
It's Raining Toast! Yeah!

Humidity is rising - Barometer's getting low
According to all sources, the street's the place to go
Cause tonight for the first time
Just about half-past ten
For the first time in history
It's gonna start raining toast.

It's Raining Toast! Hallelujah! - It's Raining Toast! Amen!
It's Raining Toast! Hallelujah! - It's Raining Toast!

[Grid16]

Great idea but...

I think that game wasn't tested thoroughly.

1. There were quite a lot of collision errors. I lost a lot of avoidance games although in which I clearly didn't hit some obstacles. In another case I slided through some walls with my ball at higher speeds.
2. It's quiet hard to remember if some object was going up or down just 2 minutes ago, especially if I hadn't moved it myself. You could say that this is also some kind of rememberance skill that is tested. I count it as a usability error.
3. There were AFAIK some situations in which it was inevitably to loose. It seems unfair to say you rate the abilities of the user in cases in which he can't win.

For these reasons I gave it only quiet a decent rating.

[SimianLogic's Filler]

It lags

It's a great idea but the controls lag on my PC. I hate to loose because the controls are delayed :-(
I doubt that it's a speed problem of my machine.

[Teddy in the Bush]

Controls are getting on my nerves

Whoever told it's a good idea to use only one key for all the actions...was totally wrong.

[Sonny]

Ability Bug

I was on the ship and fighted for some time the last battle there (Louis died several times ;-) ). I was on Level 4 and went to the beach. When I leveled up suddenly all the abilities in the tree were gone. At least I got the ability points back.

Apart from this: Great game. Especially that I can play it in German ^_^