sonicmeerkat's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Space Pips]

fast paced, enemies are easily recognisable from each other though helpers and pips can make visibility a bit hellish when things get intense.

it's extremely addicting though the enemies spawning is a bit troublesome, they just pop in with a half a second white ring, and noting the enemies, pips and your own helpers are brighter and more numerous it leads to a lot of hits.

[BotArena3]

grindy but very enjoyable (if you like accumulating shit)

the weight limits and the progression of unlocking shop items are quite interesting.
in order to not go bankrupt i wound up spending a surprisingly high amount of money in a low weight, high damage machine in order to grind since i sold a lot of items to make room for better ones quite frequently.

though the weight limits get surpassed by the max bot weights near the end, leading me to purposefully down grade which made the ending levels easier since instead of maxing my 2 bots the best i could, instead i just maxed out the damage and filled the rest of the weight with plating, even the final level is like that so you can't even test out your end game shop items, shame too since the highest damaging weapon and highest armoured plate perfectly fill up the weight cap of the final bot.

ignoring difficulty though it's a mix of the satisfaction of watching a game play itself with micromanagement of making sure you have enough money to progress (or creating a grinding bot that can survive in the highest paying arenas possible)

fun game, though it's a shame there isn't much space for experimenting with additional bots, the enemies never go above 3 so you can more than make it by with just 2 bots.

[Generic Defense Game]

the game is indeed generic though aside from the customizability in the beginning plays the parody straight instead of saterising it.

even the worst tower defence games give you enough money to buy something on the first shop screen, the gameplay is more akined to a fixed top down shooter than a defence game, basically the novelty dies pretty quickly for those who'd get the parody and just plays like yet another carbon copy flash game designed to make ad space for kids to see.

the game is functional at being a crappy defence game as intended though, it works but isn't anything special even including the self aware title.

[Awesome Tanks]

the game is painfully slow, and not in the sense that it's a tank game, in the sense there's an entire level full of red brick blocks that take a while for even the laser weapon to break and the health bars are so large taking out even the weakest enemies becomes a slog.

with max speed you still can barely strafe explosive attacks, without max visibility you need to go head first into danger to even see what is attacking you, without max turret speed aiming even becomes tedious, and good luck surviving without armour upgrades unless you invest in the weapons.

the tanks scale in health as the type increases, which in itself isn't a bad thing, until you realise explosive tanks make up most of the game, only changing in the final levels where they're along side laser tanks which are basically impossible to avoid (though at that point you'd have all base upgrades and other weapons so fair enough) which leads to the game spiking in difficulty as you're facing end game enemies early on turning battles into a grind with the base weapon but because they appear so early are made manageable with the basic turret destroying the challenge when you buy better weapons.

overall it's solid functionally but in terms of being fun, it's a time waster.

though the level editor is nice, though without codes it can only be used for self imposed challenge in a mode with infinite ammo and everything max upgraded.

[Genghis Khan]

it's a decent game, definitely good for its time and quite good functionally now just one big issue.

the game has a save system? so why can't it save your formations?
the battles are so short that arranging formations becomes the bulk of the gameplay, you can't just send units into battle as is because they'll get swarmed.

i get that building formations is the fun part, but having to rebuild the same formation over and over for battles that don't even last a minute isn't very rewarding, especially since the game has the ability to save progress.

of course this is pretty petty but if a fundamental mechanic of the game isn't fun then the game isn't, especially when age means the graphics and music loops don't hold the game up as well.

but as negative as this review is i'll give credit and say for what it is, it's well built and could be rereleased with modernisations and an auto save feature.

[Shekateka]

quite fun game, the concept is very imaginative and the music is very fitting.

though the game is very basic as is, which isn't a problem but it does hurt replay value combined with other things like the respawn system being way too forgiving and the boss being very exploitable (stand to the top wall side corner of the protective wall, when rock is thrown move to the opposite corner of the socket) the game is so short and easy it doesn't have anything else to discover, not even RNG to mess around with.

again it's a very competent game, fun for one playthrough but not much else due to a lack of content and punishment for death.

[Pretentious Game 5]

amazing execution of a simple premise.

the logic puzzles were a lot of fun and some being challenging, people saying the mountain puzzle doesn't work but you have to jump at it, you can't push something you're standing on.
though the border level is annoying noting there's no walls under the stage stopping you from falling off when you go far even though you have to go out of visibility to complete it and the waiting one is just boring.

[ACCESS CODE: HEAVEN]

the music and asthetics are top notch, the story (not very far, not much time) has caught my attention, i'm really curious about those spores origin and the design is great for the most part.

i say for the most part because of the control, it's very solid for the most part and is responsive, it's just whenever you turn you move backwards a bit meaning you can't readjust on a ledge to avoid falling off and in the case of the second boss i kept on walking into spores by doing small adjustments that would work in most games, and of course also falling off the platforms since they're 3 wide and the spores can spawn in the middle and to the sides of them.

i'd also like to mention the hitpoints since 1 hit kills at the beginning of a game can be very cheap, but with the saves which can be a bit far apart leading to a bit too much backtracking the layout of the obsticals are fair and you get plenty of time to react to them coming up so by the time you do start seeing lasers and spikes being mixed you'll have an extra hit at that point (or right after as a reward).

overall from what i've seen thus far it's a solid metroidvania that's quite fun to play.

[Infinity - To The Top]

very solid space shooter/endurance game.

the game has a very nice sound track and visual design, the hit boxes are nice and small making the heptic situations survivable and the encounters are a great way to introduce players to stronger enemies that randomly appear later on.

the 1 hit kills on hard modes would normally annoy me but since this game's pick ups spawn fairly early on it's not really an issue for this game, it's pretty nice for killing off a bad run quickly actually.

the shop system seems a bit tacked on though seeming like arbitrary replay value noting the length of most of the missions and how little money you gain from them compared to the prices in the shop, plus with the purchases like 1 + 1 = 3 makes the high score system a bit more favourable towards grinding rather than raw skill, of course it's not game breaking but since leaderboards are built to encourage competition it makes an impression that you should grind the missions like getting arbitrary items instead of ones that can benefit your current run the most.

though even with that it's still a fun, difficult time killer with a skill based competitive edge.

also i like how this scoreboard works like arcade machines of just entering a name instead of having to have an account for the site it's made for.