Score: 8

"Best NG Satire Yet...?"

submission: You Love This Movie

date: November 18, 2007

Applaud the two authors: this is by far the harshest, most poignant satire on Newgrounds. Why is that? More than fifty percent of it is true. The fact that they employed interesting organizational techniques in developing the cartoons doesn't hurt their standing, either.

While it helped in making progress over nine months, it's hard to see two different artistic styles side-by-side. Perhaps each style is too primitive to make any distinction between the authors. Not that it's a failing; the two styles blended together perfectly, which ironically became a strength, even if the artwork is generally primitive.

Artwork isn't the concern--this is all about fun. Most people first entering the world of Flash have one or more weak links when handling the program; conceptualizing is hard enough, but actually making it work... well, those that did are creative and aesthetic, true, but they also kept things simple. Flash authors who become famous often get criticized for the simplicity of their cartoons, or how their cartoons use themes and artistic styles over and over, without expanding their technical repertoire. Yet, they repeatedly come out on top, because the loyal audience immediately sees the quality of those author's works, while neophytes usually end up scratching their heads.

The tale of two kids who resort to terrorist actions against popular authors, including a hostage situation mediated by the site founders and admin, all to create a guaranteed "Daily First" entry and lucrative merchandising deal, is perhaps the best satire plot in Newgrounds. It's also long and exhaustive, at exactly five megs--the site's original file size cap--hence carrying a certain irony along with it. The sequences of slaying Clocks, running down Retarded Animal Babies, and executing Tommorow's Nobodies, are all excellent examples of where the flash shines. The ending, ever leaning towards an utter lack of realism, manages to let the authors act out everyone's fantasy of fortune and glory through standing tall over the corpses of countless Newgrounds pet peeves and disillusionment. How poignant.

The only gripe is excessive sexual humor. Everyone masturbates to television and pornography; it's overplayed in this cartoon. Granted, flash authors aren't associated with romantic relationships, but it's stereotpical and overplayed here. Most cartoons work better without sexual humor anyway; it often detracts from the main message.

Still, this is Newgrounds. Everyone uses this stuff too much. They had to display it.

The jokes express frustration and jealousy over popular flash authors. Incidentally, the humor often leaves the authors themselves painfully exposed, as if to say the more aspirant authors harbor jealousy over popular ones. Such jokes tell the audience that all Flash authors prefer lazily masturbating over working on Flash (can't be the case if they've won portal awards); a gross, condescending misconception. There are lapses in an author's submission cycle for other reasons... like not being glued to the computer like we might assume them to be. It's trite to restate that, but remember how easy that is to forget about when you're frustrated over how popular authors excel.

It's just personal enthusiasm... something the community has in spades anyway.

Despite the masturbation/misconception issue, as well as crude styles rendering the audience unclear about who's doing what (without the credits), this collaborative satire and plot is an excellent cartoon... as well as a good example on how to collaborate in a team. By specializing and prioritizing tasks, the authors pulled through. This is an example about how to organize a project. Hence, if this idea catches on (being Front Page and featuring satirical content, it's hard to say it won't), then future submissions will have a new standard to surpass, with a new set of techniques to learn in order to surpass it.

So it's okay to be a little jealous sometimes. Like the authors, let's spend that energy on showing those popular authors something to fear...

Score: 5

"Stylish, but with Major Bugs"

submission: //NightGun: Prologue pt.1

date: November 15, 2007

For all the things I could say that are good and the ones thaat are bad, the bad would seem to outweigh the good. Fortunately, nothing from the multitude of bad things are well beyond repair, and should be cleared up in future episodes of the series.

For the plus side, Nightgun has an interesting urban style, with cool visual effects and decent animation complementing a good Anime/American hybrid of art design. The voice talent is varied and fairly competent at delivering lines. There is a sense of tension and also personality among the various roles, which immediately immserses the audience.

However, Nightgun's plot grows murky, plagued in constant confusion. The brief conversations offer little to clarify things, and the voice talents had to slough through a few awkward phrases (the discussion about height is one example). There's also a lot to swallow within six minutes of airtime, further adding to confusion.

Finally, and perhaps the biggest difficulty of all, is the utter lack of mixing, or mastering, of the audio track. The voices and sound effects often overpower the music, and certain terribly recognizeable sound effects are overplayed during battle sequences. It's hard to stay immersive when you hear the same slashing sound over and over as three separate hits strike the worm creature in the opening fight sequence.

None of the bad stuff will deter the audience, so long as they are remedied. Several hours of experimentation with a program like Audacity--a free sound editing application--should help tone down certain sounds, improve the music's bassline (a suggestion to add dramatic effect), and keep the voice talents from crackling over the recording registers. Adding further polish to the dialogue will also strengthen this series.

Currently, the concept and art style of Nightgun provide solid proof that the authors' faith and devotion are paying off in spades. WIth some added technical precision, and these episodes might just top the charts in the Flash Portal. Keep your fingers crossed.

Score: 10

"Finally! Someone who tries a cohesive plot!"

submission: Wayward Animals - Part 1

date: May 29, 2007

This almost looks groundbreaking compared to the drudgery of filtering all the evil abusive crew spam submissions and wayward and repetitive stick fighting scenes that abuse and rip off all the ultra-power ultra-violent animes. With that said, seeing your submission is like a gift from God. I'll still stay fair on technical points, as this could be better in a few things.

Graphics: 7. The only faults here were trying to maintain correct perspective and proportions in the human characters. It's probably a style thing, but remember that the legs are about half of someone's height. Or maybe the hair threw me off.

Style: 8. This covers both art style and writing, and even voice-overs. They're all good.

The style of art is a cartoony blend but isn't afraid to get serious (I expected a more funny cartoon to be honest). A few issues with the proportions might only be stylistic, but if you can draw that well in flash, no doubt you draw on paper. Either digital photographs or scanned images of your drawn work and then tracing them in flash might help you out--provided you have either a scanner or digital camera.

The writing doesn't try to be too smart or witty (honestly, a zookeeper steps in droppings), but sometimes you can get too clever for your own good, at which point you start ostracizing the audience. Trust me: the kids around here go for simple and crude over complex and witty. In the brief time we have, the writing reveals enough about the main characters to make us feel for their fates. That's impressive, considering most around here dodge any sort of plot.

As for voice-overs, they are believable. You clearly got good help backing you up, and it shows.

P.S. about style: I love the product placements, from coca-cola to Pantera T-Shirts. I figured this could also get airtime as a completed piece--once both parts are combined--on a big-time for-profit site. You might even get advertising cash out of things like this....

Sound: 8. Everything comes in clear. You even avoid the wind effects from people's voices. Few people remember to avoid that. If you want crunching metal in a chase scene, the Audio Portal has excellent metal musicians. Look for Xenogenocide, Bad-Man Incorporated, or Rocker206 for prime examples. Golgoroth and GoreBastard are also noteworthy choices. You get bonus points locally at the site by doing a little research in the audio portal. Still, everything sound correct, and it fit, so however you go about submitting at this kind of quality is perfectly your business.

Violence: 6. Subjective, true, though instances of blood and dragging the tiger into a back alley are pretty violent. This is probably why you'd request a move to the Serious Shorts section. I agree.

Interactivity: 0. Objective, actually; only a replay button. No need for fancy DVD bonuses when it comes to an animation; the designation is chiefly for games.

Humor: 5. The beginning is funny... then it gets serious. I laughed when the old bag gets swatted. I used to play Zeebarf and Fulp's "Disorderly" in the day, but these days I live in a building filled with old people... so some kind of karma thing occurred. Anyway, it has its moments.

Overall: 10. Overall ain't an average. This is more than just worthy of the portal. I hope you had fun making it as much as I had watching it.

Score: 10

"You Created a Time Paradox!"

submission: Mashi Gear Solid

date: May 20, 2007

Graphics: 8. Everything flows easily and it is a cartoon through and through--a crazy one at that.

Style: 10. I love that window filled with Major Zero stills. They are all insane! Everything's insane, actually.

Sound: 7. Well-acted, but sometimes you screech against the register, resulting in popping in the audio. Watch that.

Violence: 10. Oh, yes!

Interactivity: 0. Yeah, this has a few buttons... yeah, it's a movie. I use this heading to comment on a game's play control.

Humor: 10. Self-explanatory....

Overall: 10. I'm surprised this went to the bottom of the list without any fanfare. It's one of the really good modern MGS spoofs.

Score: 10

"Only Two Reviews?"

submission: Negroid Prime

date: May 3, 2007

Yeah, this is number two (unless some punk beats me to the punch with a single sentence!). I immediately replayed this after watching it and started cracking up really hard because--for what it's worth--it's a perfectly evil satire and I like that stuff. Therefore, I'm partial. However, I'm still fair with my review:

Graphics: 4 (lackluster animation and sprite techniques, but they are sufficient in getting the message across).

Style: 7 (come on, this actually had a point behind all the deliberately excessive seediness; can you imagine Nintendo actually jerking around with its reputation so shamelessly?).

Sound: 8 (while the compression nixed the clarity somewhat, everyone performed their parts quite well, furthering this one's twisted charm)

Violence: 7 (not Madness material, but hey, almost every shot had something horrible going on).

Interactivity: 1 (press Replay once or twice... no, three times).

Humor: 8 (two point reduction solely because most people consider this brand very sophomoric and outlandish--not their thing--so only the ghetto fans and Monty Python crazies will actually get it. Still, it's infectiously funny, worth a couple views at least.

Overall: 10. Ignore the grumps behind me. Those praying for blams are not bold.

Score: 5

"Not Bad"

submission: Slash Returns: ramagi

date: April 17, 2007

A tongue-in-cheek music video, this could be done better but at least it doesn't suck.

Graphics: 3. Mostly ripped images and poor drawings. At least attempts were made.

Syle: 4. Not the most aesthetic things in the world.

Sound: 6. Perhaps the best strength is the choice of soundtrack.

Violence: 2. A little bit here and there.

Interactivity: 0 (just a replay button).

Humor: 7. Though I wonder if she'd find it funny....

Overall: 5. At least it's better than your previous submissions.

Score: 10

"Oh Thank God, something that isn't garbage...."

submission: Dark Era: Chapter 1

date: April 12, 2007

No seriously; when you're Dark-aligned and see the pranks that flash groups pull, you tend to get cynical. This is a very cool horror/drama that retains its sense of humor. Few can do that.

Graphics: 8. Everything is well drawn and blur effects are nice.
Style: 8. You got a good cartoon style, and you even change it up. A few things shouldn't be tweened, but the existence of frames done so well is worth checking out.
Sound: 5. I'm vexed. The music comes in clear, but it's borrowed and the voice-over is too soft.
Violence: 6. Nothing exceedingly nasty, but classic tension and surprise at zombie mobility make up for any alleged lack of violence.
Interactivity: 2. There's even a scene selection! Maybe it's best that it appears at the end.
Humor: 7. The sequence inside the fast food hut is worth the price of admission.

Overall: 10.

Score: 0

"It sucked"

submission: Carl

date: April 12, 2007

And I can't say why you insist on submitting it, other than messing with the works.

It all gets a bunch of zero ratings because this stuff gets churned out daily, perhaps simply under different titles, perhaps with no improvements whatsoever, without the intention to improve. If your intent is to make life a little more miserable for everyone else, you and your clique of reviewers have succeeded.

Score: 0

"Grotesque"

submission: SlashClassic3:FAP FAP FAP

date: April 11, 2007

Seriously, it was never meant to be this way.

Graphics: Zero. (Poorly drawn)
Style: Zero (poor taste)
Sound: Zero (what, no sound effects?)
Violence: Zero (who gives?)
Interactivity: Zero (can we keep this out?)
Humor: Zero (boring, really)

Overall: Zero

Score: 0

"Junk"

submission: SlashClassic2: Confession

date: April 11, 2007

If you're going to make garbage, at least make garbage silly. You would think fish in a barrel would be easier to shoot.

Graphics: Zero (poor picture quality, no effort)
Style: Zero (what is this?)
Sound: Zero (it came in clear, but what for?)
Violence: Zero (actually I don't care)
Interactivity: Zero (it's otherwise littered with bugs)
Humor: Zero (and I was in a good mood, too)

Overall: Zero