Mushman's Reviews

[Super Mario Brothers ep 2]

Quality is there, but not Consistently

I remember watching your first episode of your series a while ago, and liked it. Now I feel inclined to review.

For a project this size, I'm surprised that you didn't really put much effort into the preloader to give the viewer something nice to look at while they're waiting for this to load. Draw up something nice and related to your movie rather than throwing in a static image and changing the person driving the tank in the Newgrounds box. This is a small ask, but it's generally expected.

Throwing in that montage on what happened last episode was rather pointless and really did more stalling getting to the feature than reminding. Link the previous episode in the title screen or preloader and you won't have to do this. It's not like the last episode was a huge as Super Mario Bros. Z Episode 6 was, so that's why Alwin got away with the intro in ep. 7, though even then it wasn't cinematic and it was skippable.

The size is pretty darn huge. Did you compress and cut your audio? If you haven't, when you're animating, after you've reached a point where you'd like that audio track to stop, cut it in Audacity and re-import it. This does a good job on cutting down the size taken up by unused audio. If a track loops, save it as a .WAV and THEN have Flash compress it to make it loop seemlessly. Also, make sure that you compress all of your audio. Set the global setting (found in the Publish Settings under Audio Stream / Event) to MP3, Convert Stereo to Mono and 32kb/s. There's very little or no quality loss and you still have a lean file size. For stereo music files, manually set them to 64kb/s without Convert Stereo to Mono on. If you think no one will mind listening to mono (it depends on the music of choice), leaving the global setting could help further. When testing, set the quality to Fast, and for the final product, set the quality to Best.

Now to the actual movie. One thing that you should really think about doing all the time is drawing everything with Flash's drawing tools. This is because it draws vector graphics, which are graphics that can be freely resized without getting pixelly. Images and bitmaps use raster graphics, that is, they're made up of pixels, and zooming in on them reveals their true nature. Use Flash's vector graphics as often as possible, as the quality isvery high and, in most cases, the end result is smaller in file size.

You need to work on the look of the characters. As a whole, they're accurate re-creations, but their colour is a little static. Keep shading areas according to the light that would fall on them for an extra graphical kick. Keep the detail high. Also, try to make sure that all characters that are shown are being animated to prevent on them looking static.

Sometimes the sound effects are repeated too much, like walking and such. But as a whole, it's all pretty nice. Oh, and that Mario voice generator sucks because of the unnatural sound of Mario's voice and the fact that Mario wouldn't even say stuff like "You go to hell," or "You suck!". The music, as a whole, was uncompelling too.

I've read and seen that most people were taken aback by Mario having a knife and using it in its full violence. The reason why people don't like this is because it's not true to the games, and, really, you do have to be true to the game. Also, The People's Mario gets away with it because the violence is in greater context in their movie. Stay true to the series.

The second scene was underwhelming for the fact that it didn't really mean much. Why did Luigi go? Why is Bowser attacking the place? These questions are nigh-on meaningless for a story that's not very compelling.

With all that being said, at times, the quality of animation and drawing is supurb and at a very high quality, but the lapses in that quality bring this down. If the attention to detail was kept consistent throughout, this would be something really special. The audio need improvement but the SFX were chosen well at times. The story's a little dry though. Up the quality and fix these and it'll be something great!

[Jeffrey Davis' Resume]

Unexpected, neat

I found your movie is 'cause I was interested to see what score was required for a daily tenth nowadays, so my view was more luck than anything. The description got my attention though, otherwise I'd've just left the page.
I really liked the creativity you put into it, and watched the entire movie. Your humour is certainly in the right place with good timing. I like the noir style you chose as well. One noticable weakness is your microphone. I could hear it crackling from time to time, which means you were probably too close. Use a program like Audacity to record, preview and edit your voice clips. The absense of the mug impact sound effect was missed, it'd help the slapstick.
All in all, a solid showing. Next time you might want to add in some background music. Don't worry, Flash will be able to compress it so that it doesn't hurt your small (and appreciated) file size.
Great work!

boinky33 responds:

Thanks for the great review. Also, I actually use Audacity.

[Twilight Princess Review]

Misleading, not an actual review, but entertaining

First off, congratulations on your Daily 9th. It's the only reason I know of this.

I was expecting a review, but this isn't really one. If I was actually considering buying the game and watched this, I wouldn't know much more about it. The title might trick people, and possibly disappoint them.

But it was supposed to be humourous anyway. And yeah, it's funny! Some good short punchy jokes. Not hugely insightful but whatever. Appreciate the image slideshow to accompany your bits.

There's a few things you could improve on. The icon doesn't describe anything about the movie. It's just your logo, and it's been poorly resized. You need to improve on the overall visuals. Most are very basic or Google images. Not so good

Glad you spoke in the review instead of putting it all in as text. You could include some of the music from the game though.

Overall, I was disappointed it wasn't much of a review, but calling it a 'funny review' would be on the nose too. It was watchable, but I wouldn't watch it again. The jokes are kind of unfocused, making fun of Nintendo or the series rather than the actual game. Y'know, typical stuff plenty of others have done before. It's a bit all over the place in general. But hey, stay at it. If you can get a Daily 9th for this, think of what you'll get if you keep improving!

WILIZIN responds:

Thanks for the long review, I will keep these pointers in mind for the next flash I do.

[Doom Triple Pack]

Very good for Flash, but PC source ports are better

Remaking a 4 MB game down to 2.4 MB in Flash is a cool achievement. Doom is just one of those legendary games. However, after playing through a bit, there's a few bugs.

BUG: Sound effects are too fast
Very noticeable, and although it makes the chaingun almost sound better, it's annoying everywhere else.

BUG: Controls are clunky
Unlike in the original Doom, the controls aren't very responsive. They work well eoungh, but it feels like you're always lagging. They remind me of the PlayStation version.

BUG: Automap
I tried opening the Automap with the Tab key. However, Tab is also the select button key in Flash, and I couldn't exit the automap unless I saved and re-loaded. Then I couldn't access the Automap again. Please change the key.

FEATURE MISSING: Switch in Level 1
In the first room in the first level, there's a switch on one of the pillars before the stairs leading up to the green armour. This switch opens up a wall to the radioactive lake where the blue armour is. Although it's not a big deal, it should still be there. I think you said this was a known issue.

POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENT: Ditch 8 Bit / 256 Colours for high bit depths
Yeah, yeah, Doom used to run in VGA, but those days are long gone. Source ports allow you to display the game in True Colour. The difference is clearest in dark rooms.

This was just in my playthrough of the first two levels. You nailed the enemy AI as well! Very impressive! But to be honest, I don't see the point compared to native source ports for the ultimate Doom experience. Check out Doom Legacy for instance. It has so many awesome features. For instant browser play if you don't have a copy of the Shareware or full versions, this is a pretty solid effort. Well done for a classic revival!

[MAX Tutorial 1 (buttons)]

You missed a few points

That wasn't a bad tutorial, but it wasn't fantasic either. Unfortunatly, it doesn't cover all the steps. For example, how would a flash "noob" know how to convert the circle into a symbol and button? You just got to the menu like magic. Yes, maybe you can do this with ease, but sometimes you need explain it as if the user had just installed Flash. Otherwise they'll get confused and unhappy.
The next thing you need to do is include real screenshots. Just a drawn version of what it looks like isn't really best. When the real UI looks different to your drawings, people might think they're in the wrong place.
Also, in your movie, could you put some music that isn't so large in filesize? Tutorials don't really need music, but it's fine if it's not invasive.
Can you make clicking the music button toggle the music on and off instead of needing to hold the button down? Also please prevent the music overlapping itself when interacting with the on switch.
Also, how about teaching us how to stop music if it's playing? I think it would be easy to put in some action script like on(release) stopallsounds;() equiped to the button to do so, but I'm not sure myself.
Like I said, not bad, but needs some work to achieve full potential.

Greenkupo responds:

thank you im gonna prove with another screenshoots and explain more in my second

[Mouse Adventures 2]

Tight...

It's nice, but it sucks that that if you click you go back to Level 1. I know you're trying to stop the right-click cheat, but many people will accidently click and be sent back to square one unfairly. Please resolve this problem before submitting a game like this again.