Neophyte-Ronin's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Game of The Year Edition]

A classic satire against the overwhelming overcommercialization of "Premium Editions". Not a recent trend; Working Designs as a publisher banked its whole philosophy on these kinds of things, particularly with the Complete editions of Lunar and Arc the Lad. This can be extended to game remakes when consoles go the wayside but their games found themselves to be popular. It's all about the franchises!

Druox is under-appreciated or underutilized about here, and the sound quality was above par. The animation was solid and the pacing was there. Now if only we can remember that this isn't isolated to X-Box games, we can invite company insiders and designers (the promoters and marketers in particular) to watch this. It's rather telling.

There are other ways to yank out extra credit, such as patches and episodic developments, or playing the demo and then paying for a registry key to see the rest of the game and play it. This is not a recent trend and the use of episodes to expand upon content is just like Expansion sets for MMO's, except that they're easier to tack on once the essential assets are in place. If you're gonna pay extra, you might as well pay for a bigger sandbox, right? If the plastic is not in the form of a disc, you are getting ripped off. Also, the artwork asset and transcribed developer interviews can be sold separately for the art buffs and design enthusiasts who are generally interested in that stuff. Such comments and ideas will often fall on deaf ears, though, because it's not likely that they will be adopted with any real practicality or function by the companies. On the other hand, that ain't stopping the idiot independents from adopting their own marketing policies!

Anyway, good job for all involved. Druox ought to show up here more often.

[Lazy Writing 5]

Lazy Writing Five is another set of one or more brief skits from the mind of Yotam. It's a pretty swift and painful commentary in two parts that are actually separate from each other; most might get confused about if these are related, but they're not. Hence, they are treated as separate cartoons in this review.

Interracial Comedy

This is a broadcast about a previously recorded stand-up comedy routine by a bigoted black comedian, and a baneful, sibilant appraisal by the radio show host. The poster in the background juxtaposes with the man's description of his station. The content features the black comic, bigoted and stereotyping, and the host, whose response is painfully accurate as to the common response of the media despite any kind of changes made in public policy.

Verdict:

LazyMuffin happens to be quite correct, especially in how the host is white: the media will dodge confrontations with offensive, self-righteous pigs if that means they keep their ratings and sales intact and it doesn't matter what the color of their skin is. The comic--not a genuine example of all comics of a color, mind you--is both infuriating and arrogant in one package. The host glazes over the content, tries to praise the juxtaposition (which itself is horribly distorted), and goes to show us how much we've advanced over the past uh... ten thousand years of civilization on this planet. For a brief skit, it tells a lot, maybe too much.

Stage Fright:

Now this one's creepy. An innocent-looking kid looks beyond the curtain and consults with his seeming teacher about stage fright. The teacher suggests some silly but surefire change-of-perception techniques, such as looking as though they are all in their underwear, or his sister, or combinations thereof (but not sister-in-underwear, that's just disconcerting). Finally, one suggestion girds the kid's courage to head outside, approach the balcony, lift up a baby and toss to the ground below. After a shocked silence, the applause filters into his disturbed mind like it came from the bottom of a well.

Review:

It's a twofold shock ending, one from the act, and the other from the response. And it's also ironic, considering you don't expect it coming from an innocent child who suffers stage fright and requires reassurance. But oh my God, is it poignant anyway! This is the same exact occurrence when a leader of immature or immoral disposition tries to pull something to reel in the masses--the child represents this perfectly, while the teacher, oblivious to the act to come or otherwise, represents the aides and administration that comprises his advisory cabinet. The baby falling and dying, paired with the audience's response, delineates the loss of morality that permeates a nation that has lost touch with their morality, let alone pride. In short, it is a disturbing sociopolitical satire of the highest form, unafraid to push an occasional envelope to bend reality's veil for just a moment to uncover the clockwork truths running behind everything. It is likely inspired by Michael Jackson holding a baby out a window, almost seeming like he would have tossed it over. You wouldn't have "This is It" or anything from him before his death if that turned ugly.

Other Issues:

The sound quality, with another Kevin McLeod soundtrack (does he even check out Newgrounds?), is on top as usual. Yotam tries hard to make caricatures of each character and does a good job at masking the single voice behind it; he's done these voices before, so it's not too hard. That's the prize of consistent output, kids: knowing what you're doing each and every time. Complain that he's taking the Ill Will Press route and you're underestimating the virtues found in both. Anyway, it's pretty obvious that he has achieved a peak in his animation style because he is comfortable with this approach; it is unknown if he does more detailed or artsy work, but who cares?

Lazy Writing 5 is just very short, but it speaks on delicate issues in a way that larger works cannot address as succinctly. Nice job! Seven of Ten.

LazyMuffin responds:

haha wow this is fun!

[FUCKING AGGRON]

HEY DO YOU WANNA FEEL SO ENERGETIC? TRY WATCHING THE POWERTHIRST SKITS!

So here, the plot is an advertisement eschewing all Pokemon except for Aggron, the "most bad-ass ********************* beast" ever. It is based on a voice-over track by Rice Pirate that Noam was slated to animate, but after that fell through, PhuzE gave it a shot. The inspiration delves further to a poster about Aggron found at the Funny Junk site; please refer to the Credits & Info section on the left-hand side of the fabulous new Newgrounds Display for details.

Powerthirst advertisements came to mind as a good benchmark of comparison. I mean the skits (found easily on YouTube) that lampoon sports energy drinks and vitamin/muscle-building powders (you know, "F-18 made out of BICEPS!"); there is an actual Powerthirst product these days, but it never got the hype that the fictional product made for itself. Anyway, the Powerthirst skits are brilliant as they lampoon every trick used in extreme testosterone advertising, like merging words together to instill masculinity in everything to hype up the product beyond its stated function. Here, it's no different: Aggron is presented to us in such an overblown fashion that it becomes infectiously ridiculous. Rice Pirate did an admirable effort to trim down the length (and coarseness--the original language is grating and often unnecessary) of the poster and adapt it into a short prompt that can be televised (at least for online viewing). Since the source material is stunted next to the sheer brilliance of the Powerthirst skits, it's already swimming upriver. Rice Pirate never went beyond what the poster did, instead of melding aspects of it with comic allusions of his own design. Thus, all Aggron has is its ******* profanity, vulgarity, and overblown attitude; Powerthirst, overall, is far wittier.

All of this input from Rice Pirate will tell you is that the sound quality and acting will be at the top of their game, which is good because I really didn't embrace the simplicity of PhuzE's rendering of it. I really didn't. It's all speedy and in-sync and all--everything you expect when the audio is produced first and the animation second--but it has no real heart to it. Also, the sequences containing a stock image of the creature in fashion clashes with the smoothness of the regular animation. It's great that the lip-sync and everything is up to par, but the announcer did not look cool enough or striking enough to warrant so much screen time. Meanwhile, the backgrounds were flat and the juxtaposition between the vectors and that picture of Aggron became glaring. Fact of the matter: Aggron should have been redrawn in vectors and animated. Was this cartoon done on a time frame?

In any case, yeah, this is sure to get a rise of laughter, but the original poster is outright insane, if a little funnier from the sake of being complete. It's nice how well Rice Pirate converted the wall of text into a passable extreme advertisement but PhuzE's lackluster and inconsistent delivery of its visual treatment leaves something to be desired.

[MVC3 F*CK]

This describes virtually every fighting game ever made: after you're sick of tired of being sick and tired when your buddy (or brother) keeps using the same damned tricks over and over without trying different things, you bring out the heavy sucker you know perfectly and rip his head straight off the shoulders. Then he gets peeved and now, you're both peeved; suddenly, neither player wants to play the game anymore. Yes, "MVC3 F*CK" describes that very feeling perfectly; the phenomenon is not exclusive to Marvel vs. Capcom 3--it's been here since fighting games became a genre.

The plot? Two contenders play as Deadpool and Doctor Doom (XiruX). Doctor Doom keeps spamming a combo on Deadpool until Deadpool loses, despite Deadpool Player's complaints. Angered, Deadpool player gets out Hulk and obliterates Doctor Doom, either with actual finesse or mirrored tactics (never sure--fact is, he wins that bout). Then Doctor Doom doesn't feel like a rematch anymore. There, that was simple, wasn't it?

The crudity of the language and art design, not to mention the hissing, whispering aspect of some of the voice-overs, makes this seem like a lackluster affair, but you cannot help but apprecate the try. The facial expressions take us back to 2006 when Egoraptor became a household name and style, and here, they're totally priceless. Simplicity is a virtue that adds another half-star to the fold; you can't always capture an emotion with a painstaking classic animation, or even a motion-between affair. Sometimes, you just gotta make a few simple changes between each shot, which does the trick just enough.

Pretty sneaky to add product placement for McDonalds and Aqua Teen Hunger Force in there for good measure, but this is less a parody than a good slice-of-life observational skit. It could be reworked to neutralize any copyright infringement, but while it's here, it might as well be enjoyed for what it is. It's not terribly flashy, and we might have seen the style before, but I don't complain that someone besides VG Cats has addressed some of the issues featured in fighting games that persist even today.

XiruX responds:

Thank you for you wonderful well elaborate review sir!! :D

[Halo In A Nutshell]

This kind of animation can be recycled. That's right: this can apply to all kinds of games. That's the beauty of it: it stays true to Flash's purpose and can be reapplied with a little reworking of the controller design and voice-overs. Also, it's still poignant in regards to franchise stagnation, which is due to not innovating as much as keeping up with standards of graphical design. Hence, it is both commentary and ingenious in design all in one package.

In "Halo in a Nutshell", we witness the progression of a faithful game player's devolving into frustration and depravity as each new game in the Halo franchise debuts, from the beginning to not quite the end. The camera is fixed between the announcer, the player, and some crude text-based titles in the beginning and end.

The beginning titles could be "Centered" on the screen, because it looks like they were left-justified and not quite in the center. Also, use of a gray background is not as professional-looking as a black one.

The shading on characters' faces wasn't quite an issue if their faces were expressive enough. I would protest if you doused the den lights and used the monitor or television for illumination; that would require some tricky, contrasted shading. Here, it's passable because you don't notice it being gone. There are other things going for the design, such as the animation, as simple and to the point as it is.

To spoil the joke, the hanging scene does not contain any motion and it appears as though the corpse's legs are dangling at an angle. I'm not sure if the legs are supposed to be bent at all, since rigor mortis doesn't take immediate effect and the legs will have straightened out well beforehand.

Having it loop is something that can be forgiven; this is a first-time effort on part of JGNation and it's excellent for what it is, a far step above traditional stick figures beating each other, crew compilations and pranks, Madness, or really "trendy" parodies of Skyrim and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Overall, "Halo in a Nutshell" delivers a clear message not just to Bungie, but to game designers in general, who suffer the ill judgment of releasing franchise games again and again without truly improving upon or innovating with their design.

JGNation responds:

Thanks! I read all of this and I will take it all to heart. Thanks for the review, I'm glad you enjoyed it and I'll definitely be working on more from here on out.

The biggest thanks I can give just for going so far into the details!

As far as the legs go in the end... That's the first time I've drawn some one hanging and I did notice they were at an angle, but if you could see how bad flash was spazzing out, then you'd probably understand why I just tried to get what I had uploaded and be thankful for what I got done.

But again thanks for the review, it was very helpful and I think your rating of 3.5 was high for what I was expecting haha,

[Worst Roommate Ever!]

HA!

Okay, so this is called "Worst Roommate Ever" and it's so well put together you'll be blinking once or twice in how idiotic you are in not thinking this up sooner.

So these two guys (Pico and Darnell, let's be serious) are fighting over the bathroom. It sounds disturbing, but really, there's nothing here but a boatload of swearing, for good reason.

This was a storyboard found after years of caked dust that got the limelight it somehow deserved. Spartan to a fault, but brilliantly acted and with only the bare minimum necessary visuals. I doubt you'll find a better cartoon today than this one.

CheddarMoon should go spelunking in his hard drive more often, considering he's got nothing better to do.

CheddarMoon responds:

Haha that's actually what I'm doing right now! Thanks for the review!

[Tomb Raider Revolution]

Okay, let's see, um... if I have to go and watch something else to get an obscure joke and I haven't, I will likely just pass this sucker up and watch something else entirely. Not just saying, saying with a megaphone saying. It's bad enough how it downplays a classic character based on how she is objectified (like we didn't figure that one out), but "Tomb Raider Revolution" doesn't even bother taking jokes to their expected (and far more satisfying) conclusions.

Let's get started. Lara Croft is at the arcade. Hilarity ensues, I guess. Lara Croft was never featured in an arcade game, to my knowledge. It makes sense that she might mistake her handguns for the arcade ones and walk away quietly, trying not to provoke further attention, or have no problem mastering Dance-Dance Revolution's essential premise, or have a bunch of enraptured, enamored onlookers, but it fails to dig into my skull why she would erupt in a full-body explosion. Was this something about the game that I fail to recollect? Or, perhaps it's something about the whole "I BOUGHT A TOYOTA!" pose that causes it to happen?

Frankly, I'm just frustrated over feeling like I should know this. There is a certain tolerance level for so-called random humor and I reached mine. At first, I was impressed at the goofy style and the semi-return of a game icon amidst all the Skyrim and Minecraft we keep subjecting ourselves to, but MyFuckinMess seemed to have no real destination with this--no real clue where the joke is going. And that's rather sad; it played on our expectation that she would shoo off the onlookers after her game victory, but then she just explodes. No rhyme or reason. And Mess was cheap enough to not bother animating any reaction from the audience that just got splattered. This is just one big disconnect leading to another, then another. Is this what gets passed as comic gold around here?

Now we have to figure out what the link is, the one with all the answers. Yeah, this one's a lost cause. Look at it: no hypertext protocol, no site name, nothing. Just a bunch of letters, numbers, and symbols I assume are part of YouTube's address generator system, but even then, it's hard to say how the original code looked as part of the link. Do we even know what it is we're supposed to be searching for? This is just like leaving a message on a contractor's voice mail: "Hi, I am an eighty-seven years old retired financier. I wish to have the services of a carpenter to remodel my house. I am hard of hearing but I pay cash and have no relatives. Please reply as soon as possible." Sounds great so far, but the prankster here is leaving not just a fictitious name, but also an INCOMPLETE TELEPHONE NUMBER, meaning the contractor gets nothing but the shaft. Thank you, MyFuckinMess for drilling home the joke upon the audience. We understand that we cannot play as Lara Croft naked, too. You got any other nuggets of wisdom to share in the Author Comments? Why don't you just invite us all on a magical boat ride near Niagara Falls and run out of gas along the way? Oh wait, sorry, YOU JUST DID THAT!

Incidents like these are half the reason we despise crews and clubs, because they will resort to these stupid games: submitting inferior content and sending us on a rat race to figure out why it's supposed to be funny. The end result is that the piece is nowhere near as funny as it should be, and nothing but a "You're a Dick!" moment. Even so, the cartoon is funny during the first half, I concede that; yet it fails to know where it's going so it throws something in and crosses fingers. If that was deliberate, then I cannot decipher the motive. Either way, it's not where it should be, if you got any standards or sensibilities about the matter. Of course, it's worst of all because, to be quite honest, MyFuckinMess is capable of so much more than this. Check his back catalog, because this "Tomb Raider Revolution", despite a promising premise, is a depressing example of his work. Deliberate suck.

MyFuckinMess responds:

I understand your frusration. I was just thinking that the joke was popular. Maybe it was in 1997.

For exemple, in O Skyrim, a lot of people understand the jokes because both of them have played this popular game. Maybe some people don't get the jokes because they don't even play the game, but these people just move away from the movie and don't say shit. But these people are a minority of the audience.

Conversely, here, the joke doesn't seem to be as popular as i'd imagined. That's why most of people are mad with that.

But there is no way random humor in it. It just refers to a certain part of the game that some gamers has known in their childhood. They are apparently not many, but i'm glad to see i've reach some of them. You just don't belong to them and it's not bad. I'll just try to reach most of the audience next time :)

[My Little Sky Craft]

"My Little Sky Craft" is an amalgamation of everything that has debuted over the past half year. Well, maybe not, but it covers a wide arc. Being that the collection sections devoted to each one must have reached the "Abyssal" stage, I suppose it's fine to complain about the sheer pervasiveness of cartoons about Skyrim, My Little Pony, Minecraft, or Sonic. Just to be fair, I would tack on Stick Figures, Madness, and anything that belongs in Dumping Grounds to prevent strings of crap submissions flung the Portal's way. Okay? These aren't THAT great, or warrant such exposure. So, Croire decided to deal a low blow against all four. I just wish he was aiming better; you'd think fish in a barrel would be easier to shoot.

This cartoon examines the daily effort pulled into tributes and parodies of Skyrim, Minecraft, My Little Pony, and Sonic, and then postulates when we're ever going to see original content. Sounds like a viable piece of propaganda, an appropriate kick-in-the-head for authors to reconsider the excess of parodies and tributes and just try something different for a change. Now, "My Little Sky Craft" captivated my nods and laughs at first, but then it completely lost me when it made a paltry snipe at autism; it insinuates "that crowd" is responsible, or is an unadulterated major contributor.

Of course, non-participation from disgruntled viewers is responsible. Not bothering to submit original material or have the brains to vote for something different come monthly voting time is what causes these cartoons to get such exposure. It has always been this way because Newgrounds enjoys a good parody, and parodies are under fair use as well. It's safe to pick on popular media and it gets you fives in the process.

It's also safe to complain about minorities and developmental disabilities, because they don't have the capability to fight back. That's right: it is easier to judge by the number of developmental disorders one has than by the content of their soul and character. If you are considered autistic, then that puts you in the lowest bracket in terms of the Newgrounds creative community, alongside crews and stick movies. And there's little you can say about it, because now you're just part of the problem--it's very source, in fact--so the only place you have if you ever come around here is to go right back the way you came, only you have to ride in the back of the short bus.

This cartoon is too much.

Let's be honest: this is just a whiny protest soapbox. Also, I'm surprised nobody blew the whistle for administrative review for being hate-driven or stereotyping, which is something that can be done, see. It's too bad, since everything else is pretty good. There are no glaring technical issues or pacing problems. It's short, sweet, direct, poignant, and almost thought-provoking. So, if Croire stepped back and considered whether or not he was stepping on a specific group's shoes, I might be more inclined to embrace the general supposition that these cartoons based on niche media should be reeled in and set aside for something a little more original. I would not object.

Instead, he fired at people with Asperger's Syndrome like they're responsible, so I say, "Fuck this, submit whatever the fuck you want!" Remember: this is Newgrounds, "Everything by Everyone."

Croire responds:

Hey there friend,
I don't suggest that people with Aspergers syndrome are responsible for all of this, I merely imply that everyone that plays minecraft is an aspie. No offense but an internet cartoon shouldn't effect you as much as this review seems to reveal. i'm sorry you're so sensitive buddy

[Tricky Hot Dogs]

No, you're not.

Nobody is cool for making an animation where the funny part is someone dying. The death wasn't funny at all. It was pretty much expected. Firing up the grill, on the other hand....

This is a Sprite spoof on Burger Time, a very old arcade style game. It happens to be a conversation between a predatory hot dog and a harried chef who sprinkled salt on him. It's an okay effort for something that took six hours, but it's nothing we haven't seen before. The sound quality is okay but you may with to turn down the volume near the end. Or just click out before the credits start. Take your pick.

MegapiemanPHD responds:

I'm glad to see that someone agrees with me on the fact that death isn't funny. I constantly see animations that invovle death, violance, and gore and are considered funny to people. I find no comedy in it, it is purely disgusting. That is what this animation is about.

[Hairless]

Without any prior knowledge of context, "Hairless" is nothing but a suicide cartoon that tries to pass itself off as comical, starring a creature worthy of nothing but our pity. Taken as symbolism in light of recent developments, however, it makes a great deal of sense. It can be taken as a very obscure political cartoon, one very personal to the authors. Spazkid and Redfeather have contrived a desolate horror story where one's pathetic existence reaches a boiling point where he must leap a tall height into the deep end. However, it's one really big and drawn-out in-joke that requires research. The embedding is very subtle. That poses a problem.

The plot is simple: a hairless, fat, retarded missing link of a wretch is in a sty with a caged bird named Dinner and countless happy oinkers. The flat is bombarded with filth and decay. To top it off, this guy wears a strange neck brace. When he receives correspondence from a familiar soul named Dex, who has been costume playing to pass the time between their next shared project, the fat man (evidently the author) grows incensed and breaks through his shackles. After he has packed up, a businessman shows up and warns him about what happens if he jumps out that window. The hulking brute leaps off.

To a casual observer, this is a messed-up cartoon and, if you didn't know who Spazkid is portraying, you'd see it sail over your head completely. Dexterboy124 and GuitarmasterX7 tag-team the "Sanity Not Included" racket, and have done so over many years via a contract with Machinima.com. Apparently, the fine print of the contract terms and conditions--if you do not read carefully with a lawyer present--are designed to screw over content providers in various insidious ways (ask Oney, among others). It is very similar to what David Mustaine (aka Megadeth) endured while under a contract from Capitol Records; his last album on their label--a compilation--was called "Capitol Punishment". Anyway, this entire cartoon, "Hairless", is a biographical satire of GuitarmasterX7's miserable contract, which has strained his own sanity to the breaking point. Apparently, by the promotional phrase, there will no longer be any "Sanity Not Included" thanks to Machinima.com's machinations intruding upon these guys. Good God, that's a miserable outcome.

With that in mind, transitioning into Flash seems rather fluid. The simplicity notwithstanding, this is a surreal, colorful and well-scripted cartoon, with excellent sound direction, pacing, and symbolism. Yet, the last bit is perhaps too obscure without people doing their research about what the little nuances mean, from the neck brace to the very title of the cartoon, which means different things to different people. That poses a problem: I was lost for several viewings until I browsed other reviews to see what was up; perhaps people would drop hints about what was happening, right? Sure enough, a few people figured it out, but what a pain in the neck it was to search around the net for confirmation. This is a political cartoon through and through, and with those cartoons, the message has to be made as clear as possible, within a single panel in fact. Anything less and the audience is lost and feels stupid, and will continue feeling stupider and stupider the more they try to decipher it. Then they click no stars and blam, blam, blam out of frustration more than genuine dislike of the flash.

Hairless is strange, messed up, racy, features a half-naked fat-man scrambling for freedom, and not a whole lot of lucid context that helps us sort things through. At least it doesn't snipe at a specific person--rather, it snipes at an organization's creepy manipulative contract--and it has fewer collaborators than what they're used to, so overall, it is a step up for Spazkid and Redfeather. Casual observer: hot mess. Schooled observer: poignant and gut-wrenching in its self-deprecation. GuitarmasterX7 is better at Newgrounds than Machinima.com, anyway. Here, we have no contracts.

Spazkid responds:

Please write my Movie when I die.