Score: 2

"I got the high score!"

submission: [KK] :# The Game

date: March 26, 2008

My favorite part was when I realized I could double-jump. ... Or maybe it was when the wave of smileys went by, and a little icon spazzed out in the corner. I think those might tie with when I got to the end though, so I guess it was ALL great.

Then I turned on my speakers, and realized this was not a short flash game pioneering the no-joke joke with a refutation of assembly-line electronic entertainment tucked between the lines, but another shipment of music piped through newgrounds by a smuggling ring.

Dang.

Score: 6

"Uh, what happened here?"

submission: Master of Security

date: March 26, 2008

I've got to be missing something. I'm not the kind of Tower Defense player who makes it to the top of the scoreboards, but I usually can't stop playing until I think I have figured out HOW other people did it -- so why do I fail to complete this game on any mode other than Easy? I get overrun by Hijackers around wave 70 on Normal no matter what I try.

So the game's good points: the wide open terrain is fun to build on, and creating the creeps' path during gameplay keeps it interesting.

And the bad: This looks like a project which was cut tragically short of being *good.* There is no tower upgrade information, and upgrades seem simply wasteful after the first or (rarely) second. I still can't even figure out what half the symbols on the tower selection panel represent. And maybe the worst: plunking down all you've got to rebuild your defenses, just to see it destroyed by the "hard part" of the attack waves over and over again...

What if it had a purchasable or rechargable bomb to clear those Hijackers? (Heh, call it "HiJackThis.") Or some sort of heavy tower (unlockable? product of upgrades? or tower proximity combinations?) to help cut down things with many thousand hitpoints? Or a way to target a specific creep... Maybe not; that was a good challenge... Or a software upgrade to increase tower damage? ("Definitions Update?") Dare I suggest placeable Teleports?

So for (I hope) the first time, I'm going to blurt out Newgrounds Review Cliche #1:

This could have been so much better.

Score: 10

"Heh, that was funny"

submission: Penguin vs Monster

date: March 24, 2008

I'm tired of people saying "put more effort into it" ater watching a short. Thank you for the LACK of a sixty second scrolling block of text telling me that penguins survived nuclear armageddon, mutated into 2" clay miniatures of their ancestors, evolved an understanding of technology, developed thought-controlled tank tread-like machines for mobility through human environments which they scavenge, and did battle with alien claymonsters for possession of the Earth.