Score: 6

"Viewable"

submission: Public Transportation

date: April 12, 2008

Interesting as an animation excercise, though obviously had its lacks, like not really having a plot, being short and didn't hear much music either. Still nice to watch but I wouldn't give it an award :)

Would be a good start to build on and expand though. But overal I appreciate it was pleasing to the eye.

Score: 8

"Why doesn't this have an award?"

submission: Animatic Breakup//

date: April 12, 2008

It's good to see something different and new once in a while. I found it an interesting experience to watch, since the video had its own style. Someone might think its choppy, but I see it as an animating style. Character art and poses were actually very decently drawn.

As for the negatives, you probably know already: bad speech, sometimes hard to understand, atleast for me. Also durring the scene where the two start 'throwing old garbage at each other' the camera should stick to the person currently speaking, rather switch at a seemingly random pace. Though I understand the increase in speed in switching from one face to the other was made to indicate a gradation of emotions, you still should stick to the face of the current speaker (and perhaps make the lines of speech gradually shorter as to indicate an increasing tension?).

Oh and I missed some kind of interactive feature in the movie, like scene selection, or perhaps atleast a pause button.

Overal nicely done, voted 4 and will definitely remember the animation for its uniqueness.

Score: 9

"Epic"

submission: Tainted Kingdom

date: April 11, 2008

This is a game worth playing for a great multitude of reasons.

Firstly the original combination of turn-based strategic map, with the fast-faced real-time individual battles, makes the game enjoyable, wether you prefer action or strategy. I would like to point out the authors ability to balance the speed of battles and lenght of missions, as well as vary missions that require more strategy or more tactics, so the game does not become repetitive over time.

Secondly the well-balanced missions, which are generally not so hard to pass, though in some cases (mission 6 especially) the condition for a swift victory achievement is just too extreme. Nonetheless, the difficulty bar isn't so high (I was refularly getting deadly commander on my first play, at my first playthrough had 7 and I'm not so good at games that require reflexes either), so even if the player doesn't have much skill in this kind of games, it's still playable.

Technically speaking, the graphics weren't really so bad, the sound did not offend me either and the animated cutscenes between missions were nice too, though perhaps I missed in game cutscenes and events that would increase the pace of the missions even more (for instance the enemy deploying their hero in the last battle, the arrival of an additional hero to your ranks when things are becoming grim, sources of gold that get uncovered/exhausted and so on).

On the other hand probably the main lack, was the unoriginal story. While I didn't feel offended, I wasn't thinking I never saw this kind of story before too, but it had some nice twists that kept my attention so it couldn't have been that bad.

There was also a slight balance issue, concerning the stats of ancient and human units. It seemed to me, even though ancients had a better access to ressources, human units, unless having substantially lower upgrades, could fairly easily overpower the ancients. Ancient units, while not really weak, were too specialized, the more versatile human units could often handle unpredictable combat situations much better.

Speaking of units, passing the game did not really even need you to use all kinds of troops, but quite the opposite, specialize on a few powerful ones and deploy them as is seen fit in combat. In my case I just used mostly crusaders, supported by a few royal guards, a tower or two perhaps to slow the advance of enemies and the remaining units were used only as a cheap way of damaging the enemy base. Not sure if this is good or bad, but didn't need much strategy to win most battles.

Also the computer is quite slow at deploying his troops at the start of the fight, you can easily get one to two fast troops to his side before he can even deploy his first, this should be fixed.

Oh and big plus for the bonus mode of play for earning all the deadly commanders, doesn't look like it, but makes the game quite more difficult from what I seen so far.

So overally, great game, not worth a 10 yet, for the above-mentioned problems, but coming dangerously close to it. Thumbs up for the replayable missions and fun tactical battles.