lordtac1's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Rebuild 2]

Epic

A wonderful improvement on the still awesome rebuild one. Almost every thing about it was better. However it wasn't perfect (scores first)

Gameplay - A true Turn-Based games that flows smoothly and keeps you interested 9/10

Graphics - A little weird but not horrible 7/10

Sounds - Not much else besides buttons clicking and zombie roars 5/10

Music - The single music track was great but it got old rather quickly. 5/10

Difficulty - I didn't play on the hardest difficulty but from what I did play which was "Challenging" wasn't a challenge at all, Horde attacks almost never seem to break through until near the end of the game (6/10)

Hud - Fast, Easy, Out of the way yet provides all the info you could ever need 10/10

Tutorial - Informative, wonderful, but I'm concerned that it dropped the difficulty either to far or didn't reset it after the tutorial was completed. 9/10?

beyond that here are some things that bugged me, (not actual game bugs)

1- Equipable items seem almost useless. they have such a small effect on stats that they are nearly pointless to give to anyone. I will admit however that "Some" items actually "do" have decent stats, however, most of them, I feel are garbage, those being the pistol, shotgun, binoculars, medical bag, and unfortunately even mooch the kitty who I thought was awesome until I realized she only gives you 2.0 through her spread out 0.5 all around boost.

2- The danger meter was a bit hard to read. On one had you have the danger meter on the hud, which for me seemed to always sit between 0 and 10 on challenging mode. However, if you start a "defense" mission in the police station, there is "another" Danger meter which is reminiscent of rebuild 1's defense danger scale. I would also like to add that the danger meter for the "mission" seems "much" more accurate then the one on the hud.

3- The town seemed smaller then the one I remember in rebuild one and not in a good way, I don't know if "Typical City" is "supposed" to be smaller then small city, but that's the impression I got, the game still lasted me a good 4 or 5 hours, but after the first 3 it went from "oh no i'm running outa food" to "now to capture another one... then another one... then another one"

4- The one time gustav showed up asking for one of my girls in exchange for 2 rocket launchers I had to turn him down, after that, he never made the offer again, and i don't know why. Not really a big deal, I'm just peeved that the one time I get within reaching distance of something awesome I have to give up my best builder (one of 2 at the time) to get it.

5- Equipables didn't really seem to have a point for people with 10 skill in any-one-thing. although the crow-bar did save my scavengers life, I can't help but think that event was specifically scripted to get rid of the crowbar and not to "kill off" a scavenger.

6- Speaking of killing off. Where's the death? I went through the entire game without a single person dieing (regardless of the fact that I got a hospital early on and maintained it) It seems like no mater what happened to my people they survived. I had 2 people literally get blown up by landmines and they survived (minus an eye + an ironic nickname) beyond that people were surviving zombie bights and infections all over the place. Again I'm not sure if the tutorial did this for my first play through or not but it made things... boring.

7- For some reason or another, after I started assaulting the gang, two very large chunks of my city got blown to bits. The message suggests that its the gang however it couldn't be them, because in a recent message before these explosions I have them pinned down in their own fort. Not to mention I had 15 well trained guards on duty, the entire city secured (even city hall and the large graveyard) and no previous warning of another gang or enemy other then the zombies or the gang I was fighting. To that end, I can only conclude that this is a minor bug probably after the drafting of the constitution or the cleansing of the entire city, that causes the gang to attack your town.

[The Last Stand Union City]

Not bad

I was really expecting something awesome when I saw it was a con-artist production, and for the most part you delivered. The game play was fun and addicted, the story was solid, and the weapons were both realistic and unique. Despite the bugs (which I'll list below) this was really fun for me.

Now for the not so nice stuff... The bugs...
NOTE: These bugs and problems were documented in story mode, not run&gun.

1- While having a companion is fun, its almost annoyingly difficult to get anywhere without them after a certain point, not only that, but if you die while their with you, they (as well as your weapon) are gone forever... To add insult to injury, if they go down, you can help them up... but they don't seem to care about you at all... just your gun.

2- The spontaneous and mostly random horde attacks are more annoying then fun especially in later levels. While it is scary to have zombies come down on your head every once and a while, its both unrealistic "and" annoying. Not to mention that after a while all the falling zombie fright starts to lose its charm.

3- Ammo was almost impossible to find for the higher level machine guns. Wanna use a SAW? Forget about it. You'll barely have enough ammo for 2 clips if your lucky by the time you find it. Again this is where having a companion is absolutely "Necessary" because they have unlimited ammo.

4- Special weapons didn't really seem to have a place in this game. The bow looked like fun but it was by far overshadowed by the sniper rifle which I already got from the security quest. The grenade launcher and RPG also seemed useless. I was more worried about blowing myself up than the zombies, which lead to me just ditching them altogether.

5- The overall flow of the game was nice, but close to the end of the game I was catching some pretty hard lag. Which for a 2.4ghz quad core is pretty bad, I was able to muscle through, but only by the skin of my teeth, (The 2 soldiers almost killed me during lag I was expecting them to be passive and focused on the zombies).

6- The chainsaw was non-existent. For an item that was in both of your other games it was almost impossible to find in this one, and not only that, but the fuel was hard to find to. I think my best was finding 3 cans of fuel without ever seeing a chainsaw., Even with 70 search skill in the military base I found nothing.

7- This ones just a little bit picky on my part but I feel like the flash light had to much glare in it. I feel like it should have been more clear instead of having the "Shined through smoke" appearance no matter where you are.

8- The almighty "woops can't move" bug that's been mentioned in the comments "many" times as well, that forced me to restart 3 "three" freaking times. because the first time I learned you can't get your companion back, the 2nd time I lost them both (both to the same bug) and then the third time my ai died before I could exit the room to get me guns back.

Tip: For other people reading this you can escape this glitch in a few different ways.

#1 Search an object
#2 Close the game window (will reload a recent save) >Fail Safe<
#3 Exit the room your in

Now back to the bugs.

9- I noticed a "Helpful" bug in your save system which saved me from having to restart almost 4 more times, If you die (the screen starts to turn) and you exit the game window "before" the 2 options appear on the screen, the game will not recognize that you died and will reload to the last save point, which is usually when the horde that killed you appears. Doing this I also managed to duplicate an "M16A2 Scoped" but I was unable to recreate the effect.

I think that's about it, I only have about 400 words left at this point so I'm just gonna finish this off by saying you are probably one of my favorite zombie game authors and glitches or not I love the games you make, "Everything" will have glitches, nothing is exempt from that terrible truth. So take the bugs I pointed out with a grain of salt, and become even more awesome.

Sincerely Lordtac1.

[Saving the Company]

Sigh

I wasn't even able to play this game due to laggy controls. I'm sure its a good game and I'm sure I'd enjoy it.

But I can't even play it. So i can't give you a good score.

4 for a nice intro and graphics.
6 taken off for lack of options like quality control which would have really helped.

I hope you remember options in your next game.

[Aetherpunk 1.1]

Hmmm

Not bad... the weapons are original in most respects, the gameplay is fun and reminiscent of Nazi zombies, and the skills are actually helpful... however despite your updates there are still some problems...

1- The barricades may as well not be there, their so weak and they aren't upgradeable, the only thing their good for is holding back the aliens for a few seconds for a quick reload.

2- Ranged aliens as stated below are incredibly over-powered... in fact I was decimated by the first one I encountered, and I didn't even see it. Either make the bullets more noticeable or give the enemy a glow effect because as it stands their just plain impossible to see.

3- pistols appear to be much weaker then long-guns per-price even with their skills, they appear to reload slower and do less damage despite being more expensive then some long guns with far greater stats.

4- Whenever the aliens break through the barricades i couldn't help be feel... choked... what I mean is I feel like I had no where to run at all sense more aliens were breaking down the other 2 barricades at the same time... I would recommend either adding upgrades for the barricades, or making the building larger to remedy this little problem.

5- Whats with the HP? even with all of the medical skills you can still die in barely three hits... on-top of the barricades being as weak as card-board it seems like our hero is as frail as the man with glass bones. At the very least allow the player to purchase/craft aether enhanced armor to improve his defense or hp

6- the turrets seem pretty useless... their range is so limited that they can't shoot beyond the barricades (in most cases) I wasn't really able to buy many turrets because of the ranged alien issue coming up shortly after, but the one I did test (2nd one) was... well... garbage... despite its damage, it had almost no reach, and barely helped at all.

[Symphonic Tower Defense]

Nice

Very good idea, there are a few other rhythm tower defense games out there, but none quite like this, very original. Nothings perfect though.

Gameplay: 9/10 - Original, Innovative, Entertaining
Difficulty: 7/10 - Hard mode seems outright impossible early on
Menus: 7/10 - The menu's are good however there are little glitches here and there.
HUD: 6/10 - The in game interface offered almost no information about the turrets or even the powers, a simple attribute popup would have been nice.
Music: 8/10 - Very good, not annoying, and enjoyable, but needs a bit moer variety.
Sounds: ?/? - its a rhythm game... honestly I turned up the sound so high it overwhelmed everything else in the game.
Tutorial: 7/10 - VERY helpful... but a little long-winded... looked at the images and skipped the video, again, popups on the interface would have been nice.

Overall 8/10 it was really fun, and it kept me playing until I beat every song, which honestly every game "should" have the power to do, if it is worth playing at all.

Take all criticism with a grain of salt, Keep up the good work.

FrozenFire responds:

(This review was helpful despite popular belief)
Thanks for the Review!

[Operation L.O.A.D]

Not bad

I like the concept, its a very good idea, but kinda weird... It would be nice to have a bit more "In Game Back-Story" as to why your blowing up an entire planet, perhaps the "reasoning" for blowing up the hole planet. It doesn't seem like such a good idea.

As for the people complaining about clicking the character in the first level, that is not a design flaw.

It is a small game mechanic in the first level which btw, there is a tutorial for.

The hole point of clicking your character is to keep up with the missile that your supposed to be defending during its launch sequence because missiles during take-off travel "Much" faster to escape earths gravitational pull.

After the initial launch you may have to boost 1 more time during combat to keep up with the rocket, If it goes off screen, you lose.

[The Sagittarian]

Wow

An adventure worthy of having dead frontier's ads in it.

as it was in a recent comment, It has everything. But I was really surprised about the zombie scaling the fence at the private school.

And I was saddened that I couldn't save the girl (or maybe I could have and didn't figure it out)

Its always nice to have a psychotic cold killer during a zombie apocalypse, Did anyone else call him a red-neck, Hippie, Dirt bag? I did, laughs and then death were had.

[Customize an M4 II]

hmmm

its almost the same as customize an M4-1, There are some subtle differences in the available pieces (especially with the lasers and butts,) but its not new enough to warrant 2 years worth of development.

I hope CAG4 comes out well, good luck.

desertthunder responds:

Thanks man :)

[Thorenzitha 8]

Game Breaking Glitch

when on the ladders 2nd level (where the key-scan door is) if you hold tab and click to the right of the door, you will be placed in an inescapable game breaking room, presumably part of a cutscene or event.

I give you a 0 for not double checking your buttons and variables. Sorry.

programicks responds:

I missed that one. Will fix and re-upload.

[One Chance]

hmmmm

I'm a bit torn here... I don't know if I got the best ending or not... on one hand I did manage to save myself and my daughter, and on the other, everyone else is dead.

I think this game is very original, there are a few games like it but none capture the hopeless end of the world scenario quite like this one.

Good job on that.

But there should definitely be a replay button somewhere, One of my favorite things to do in these games is to hunt for all the endings. We play video games to escape reality, not to be bound by it *shakes head*