Psychopath's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Lab of the Dead]

Eh...

The concept of humanizing a zombie is intriguing, but I find that all the good ideas and dynamics are quickly overpowered by the negative aspects. For one thing, you're not truly humanizing a zombie, you're just conditioning it's mood so that it doesn't feel like eating human flesh; should it's mood level drop by 1%, it'll start eating human flesh again. That's not humanization, it's not even conditioning it to perform specific commands, you're just making it not feel like eating people by keeping it completely satisfied; you're not actually teaching it to resist temptation because you're just removing the temptation aspect itself.

Humanizing a zombie would look more like hand and eye coordination exercises because you're trying to jog it's cognitive faculties so that it can begin to grasp moral concepts, not just handing it shit and hope that it associates it with an emotion; that might get it to develop affection for that particular object, but not affection with anything else, not that cross association is even an availability anyway; it would be difficult to get it to associate a specific object with an emotion to begin with mainly because this dynamic of associating emotions with moral standing relies on the flimsy assumption that the test subject might have a vague idea and/or memory of what the object even is because it very well may not even have the mental power to recognize the object to begin with considering how it's brain died periodically and was reanimated.

The game's dynamic isn't based around challenge, so once you've seen most of the basic reactions, the game starts to lose it's only entertaining quality, variety, and it becomes banal busy work because you're whole objective is to ascertain reactions based on emotional, physical and mental status' and most of your time is spent altering those aspects by abusing a single item until you're either penalized for it or you reach your target percentage. Soon the amount of busy work starts to outweigh the quantity of new reactions and the game goes from being interesting and entertaining and it escalates into becoming boring, tedious, banal and eventually vapid.

The only challenge aspect that ever comes into play is when you have to impress your commanding officer with a specimen you've trained, which if you've done all the busy work by this point, this point in the game should not be a problem regardless of what quality of specimen you're using.

I also agree with DiMono, I hate how the game has no true conclusion. You kill off the remainder of the surviving party and continue your research; what have you accomplished? Sure you avoided death but at least dying would be something. Continuing to perform tedious tasks repeatedly is nothing because you've already explored every possible reaction you could trigger, meaning that there are no new surprises to be had; without being able to advance forward in research, research ceases to have a point and so does the game. There's no closure to be had so there's ultimately no satisfaction in playing the game. It's not even an open ending where you can guess what happens to him next; the game never ends; we can't guess what he's gonna do next because we still control him and all there is to do in-game is to test more and more zombies and hit the wall of limitations constantly. The ending is not open because there is no ending to be had at all.

I really, really hate the animation; it's all motion tweened. Who animated the animatics in this game? Was it SickDeathFiend? It looks like his artwork; if so, then I'm severely disappointed because I thought he was starting to ween away from motion tweening and going with FxF animation.

Between the motion tweening, the sheer constant ongoing, time consuming busy work and shit for closure, this makes for a game with a lot of potential but with little substance and for what substance there is, the designer took something that ultimately should have only been a 30 minute game and dragged it out as far as he could.

[Madness Ambulation]

All Achievements

DAILY DRIVER: Drive into / shoot a civilian on a segway.

TRUCKSTOPPER: Destroy an armored truck [the round boss.]

ATHEIST: When Jesus appears & summons zombies, dodge every zombie on the field and never hit a single one.

UNDERTAKER: When Jesus appears & summons zombies, ram your car into every zombie on the road; no it doesn't matter if one manages to hop onto the car and attack Deimos, that one also counts, provided you knock it off the hood of the car at some point.

SHARPSHOOTER: An "Unstoppable" kill combo requires you to kill off all of the agents on the road in one sweep; there cannot be any stragglers left behind by the time a new swarm of agents appear to attack you. You need to score this combo while using and only ever using the pistol; you won't score this achievement if you swap off from using the automatic rifle with the pistol during a sweep. Do not fret if you miss one agent before a new swarm appears, if you kill off the straggler in addition to the new swarm, you'll score this achievement. If you actually make a serious attempt at getting the Improbability Drive achievement, the Sharpshooter achievement is essentially a package deal in conjunction to that; you'll eventually get it without really trying by that point.

IMPROBABILITY DRIVE: This achievement basically requires you to beat the game, that means I have to write a strategy guide detailing the games entirety.

In order to score this achievement, you have to disregard all of the other achievements, because by this point they serve as nothing more than distractions that'll eventually sap your health to nothing by the time you reach the 6th round. This means that you have to disregard; hitting civilians, dodging/hitting zombies or getting an unstoppable kill combo with the pistol.

You'll also have to learn to neglect targeting anyone, don't concentrate on one agent and stalk it until it dies; this is a good way to get other agents to jump onto the car and beat dents into it, or worse, fire bullets at it. Whoever's in front of you is in front of you; no exceptions, not even with the armored vans.

The reason why is because you'll need to pay the majority of your attention to dodging zombies, parachuting agents, agents leaping off of their bikes, agents leaping out at you from the back of armored vans, boulders, road blocks, yellow barrels & bullets.

Dodging parachuting agents is somewhat tricky, but remember, just as long as their parachutes are attached, you can pass under them freely without trouble. However, the point in which they detach their parachutes & begin free falling is the point in which you need to avoid them like the plague.

The Zombies are less trouble because they really don't do anything harmful beyond disabling Deimos' ability to shoot. As long as you don't directly drive into them, they'll either pass by or catapult into the far distance. But should the Y axis of the car align with the Y axis of the zombie, prepare to shake your mouse vertically.

If you get a more powerful gun such as the shotgun or the grenade launcher, don't waste it frivolously on the regular red agents, use it sparingly on either the A.T.P. agents or the armored vans. The red agents can be knocked off simply by ramming into their ass ends or by driving into their sides [X axis] until they collide with the wall/pit. The A.T.P. agents however, cannot be killed off so easily; although they really don't pose much of a threat until they align with the car's X axis, they cannot be killed unless you use a fire arm. Avoid using shotguns, automatics and grenade launchers on them as much as possible when the armored van appears on your meter at the top left, because when they do finally appear, they're a bitch to kill and they make it harder for you to survive by either opening fire on you, throwing red agents at you or by dropping explosive barrels onto the road.

REVIEW: My only real complaint is how much longer the rounds get as you progress, which would be fine if there was save points or checkpoints, but I'm expected to beat all 10 in just one sitting. BS.

[FPS Basics Tutorial]

It was helpful.

But I noticed that when the enemy dies and if you keep shooting at his transparent body it jumps back to the first frame detailing his death scene. I figure that after he's shot and fades away he should be gone forever. Now I know based on the action script examples you provided that there's a way to bring Movie Clip symbols into frame by clicking or via the bullet holes that generate when you click down, then surely there's got to be a way to get the Move Clip symbol of the enemy to go away after it reaches the end frame of his death scene.

[The Abusive Review Quiz]

I like the concept

I like the idea of creating a review system simulation as a method of training the NG user base to rate reviews accurately. It helps give a stronger grasp as to what's abusive, useless and helpful. This really should have been created years ago by the NG staff team for that purpose; because to be fully honest, a description merely explains it in theory; but it does not explain it literal interaction and for this reason could potentially lead to misconceptions.

I would critique the graphics, what with them simply being screen shots of the actual website, but then it became apparent to me that you created this in just under a day. So I can't really blame you for formatting it like that, although updating the graphics from pixels to vectors now that the challenge is over wouldn't hurt.

I foresee this submission reaching a somewhat critical high in popularity in the near future, just given the concept alone. I really can't believe no one has done this before, of if they have, just that it was so unpopular that it wen't unnoticed before is still unbelievable.

Hacsev responds:

Thank you for your review, phsychopath! It has been created before in fact by a user named RohantheBarbarian, I decided to make a quiz like he did, only it had medals. I actually started something similar to this 3 years ago, but I lost the file when my old computer crashed. So I had to redo it from the beginning and make it with AS2 so it could have the medals.

[Tsunami Fighter]

All Achievements

The first wave; space bar

The second wave; right and left arrow keys

The third wave; Q, W, E, keys

The fourth wave; A, F, H, L, keys

The fifth wave; Q, P, Z, N, keys

The sixth wave; Q, Z, keys

[WAT....NO!!]

Since this has passed anyway

I may as well review it. K so this is all pretty basic crap, you get to options, one is "good" and the other is "bad"; I quote those words because of how you [loopchocolateman1234] perceived the quality of the options "go home" and "leave". You don't get to see why they're bad, you just simply get yelled at either way.

There is an easter egg in which you actually do get to see stuff happen. I found it while toggling the tab button because I was dumbfounded at how little there was and wanted desperately to see if there was anything more to... well, this.

Needless to say it's hidden in his crotch and unlike the main material, the kid depicted next to the options actual does stuff, he runs and he trips over a jagged rock. Not much to say there.

All and all, it's not spam nor is it bad for what it is, it is well put together, it just seriously lacks substance.

It would be nice if we actually got to see why those options are bad/good though, you know, cause and consequence; to see what happens to the kid that makes said options good or bad.

loopchocolateman1234 responds:

agreed

[Call of Bieber]

Just... enough.

I've so had enough of Justin Bieber, just stop. Stop acknowledging him and he'll go away, it's not that I hate him simply because he's more of a success than I am like everybody else in this vastly immature world but I'm just tired of people ranting, raving and ragging on the kid. What did he do that was so bad that you just can't ignore? Matter of fact, if you really hated him, ignoring him would help ruin his career. But you see like the idiots that you are you're helping him by feeding him attention when your goal is to destroy him, because you're morons. You think record companies give two craps if you like their musicians or not? Fuck no, they only care how much attention they derive for theirselves, negative or positive, because it translates to record sales; and yes for that exact reason, most record companies are parasites.

I don't have a problem with people capitalizing on the success of others such as this flash here, good for you, but the only reason why this person is able to capitalize on Biebers success is because people hate him. That means he's capitalizing on him for the wrong reasons.

I'm done. I'm so done with this.

[Justin Beaver]

I'm so tired of this.

I zero bombed the fuck out of this submission not because I hate Justin Bieber, not because I intend to defend him but because I'm absolutely sick and tired of hearing about him.

The only real reason why people hate celebrities is because they're more successful in life than you are; I've yet to see anybody give a clear, distinct reason why they hate him, only that they hate him.

I've seen people harassing the kid over youtube visiting every possible metal related music video trying to rally up troops to help them zero bomb the kid's music. It's gotten so fucking old I can't fucking stand it.

But enough of bashing the premise, onto the game itself; it's a broken mess. You never gave instructions on how the game worked so I was left to click at the screen randomly and mash all the keys on my keyboard until I found that the only way to play the game was to click on items and use them on other items, the very instant and reason I stopped playing.

I don't like it when I can just simply break the game by taping the tab button multiple times to reveal where everything is and basically exploiting everything possible about the game.

[Blockhead: The Game]

Easy to break. Way too easy to break.

But it's damn near impossible to play, which is why I had to find a way to break it. Blockhead's Conscience becomes extremely angry over the slightest little thing Blockhead does, especially when he's breaking an object in his environment. but luckily there's a way around that, have Blockhead break everything in sight, just after you tell him to break something hit the Bad Idea button so Blockhead's Conscience doesn't blow a major artery, thus ending the game. This way Blockhead will destroy everything possible in his environment leaving no ability to break anything further, Blockhead harmless and therefore allowing you to trench through the level [almost, what with civilian interaction and all that.] effortlessly. Every item is available to interact with twice; first Blockhead will do something harmless with it and the second time he'll break it. Unfortunately Blockhead is more likely to interact with a person than he is to break an object and it takes forever for him to do either one. The only real backlash to this is if Blockhead's Conscience returns while he's breaking something or interacting with a civilian, which will render you powerless to stop him or to hit the Bad Idea button again thus resulting in Blockhead's Conscience building anger; if this occurs and all that's happening is that Blockhead is harassing a civilian, consider yourself lucky because it pisses his Conscience off way more if he's interacting with an object; doing something harmless with it or breaking it.

Also on the fourth level, you have to dig up all four of the holes in order to get the keys. there is no specific hole that they're placed in; it's based on the process of elimination.

Also, the fith level screwed me; all you have to do is avoid the FBI for 3 minutes. Not too hard, all you have to do is idle at the starting point for 3 minutes and move an inch everytime Blockhead starts acting like a jackass to avoid suicide. The FBI never come to that part of the screen, you're safe the entire time, it's how I passe-- wait, the level didn't end... and the clock is still counting, all the audio stopped, my anger level has reached the game over point and I'm not dead, every command I give to Blockhead immediately depletes ALL of his attention, talking to the FBI does nothing and I can't exit out using the menu option. What the fuck? I actually broke the game. Now I have to close it out and start from the first level. Great.

*Middle finger*

[LARRY: Gnomergeddon]

All Achievements

Pot Shot Larry:

Get into a crowd of Small Gnomes and Sling rocks at them. The Small Gnomes die after one hit with the sling and consistently supply more ammunition after they die. The maximum amount you can carry is 12, so it's okay to miss a couple of times.

Anger Mismanagement:

On day 12 you'll be faced with a large group of yellow Pacman. Dodge them and the Gnome Dogs until the majority appear on screen. Then let them beat the ever lasting crap out of you and activate rage mode [W key] and kill them all.

Gnome-Whacks Are Crack:

On the day 1, run around and waste some of your energy with Sprint Leap Attacks, get exhausted, wait for everyone to appear and to beat the ever lasting crap out of you, run to either end of the screen and use the Sprint Leap Attack on them all.

%u3000

Corpse Looter

Day 3: The Fat Bastard Gnome that appears from the left side of the screen by the end of the day.

Day 5: The Power Gnome Wizard that appears to the right side of the screen.

Day 6: The Fat Bastard Gnome that appears from the right side of the screen at the beginning of the day.

Day 7: The Fat Bastard Gnome that appears from the right side of the screen at the end of the day.

Day 13: The Power Gnome Wizard that appears to the right side of the screen, just before the fuzzy Pacmen appear.

Day 14: The Fat Bastard Gnomes that appear from the right side of the screen, just before the day ends.

Day 15: The Gnome Miner that appears from the left side of the screen at the beginning of the day.

Day 16: The Fat Bastard Gnomes that appear from the right side of the screen, after the four Miner Gnomes make their appearance.

Day 17: The Gnome Miner that appears from the right side of the screen during wave 6.

Day 19: The crowd of Gnomes that appear after the Wizard Gnomes and Pacmen.