Reviews for TOME Short: Hackers

[Zobot257]

Adds a bit of perspective to the first episode.

I respectfully disagree with some of the other reviews, particularly that of DragonXander. I think this short was actually pretty interesting.

In the original series this is loosely based off of, earlier incarnations of both these characters appeared, with a premise of being spammers in a forum or chatroom-based game. It was obvious that they were hackers (Given that TVTOME Adventures showed their stats upon initial introduction and that said stats were outrageous) and the fact that they were "Cheating" on the game and using that capacity to abuse other players set them as clear antagonists from the outset. They're not operating within the conventional boundaries of the game, and this gives the conflict between Alpha's friends and these hackers context, relevance beyond just a PVP conflict between players.

There's a chance I'm over-thinking this (especially given that the original series was very rough and somewhat amature at it's onset. No offense to it's creator but it's very clear that he learned a lot while he went along) but in the first episode of the new TOME the "context" I mentioned about the old series is somewhat lost. We see the hackers causing trouble. We hear them called hackers. One can presume that they've somehow "hacked" the game. But without a great deal of context as to how the virtual world works we don't really see that they've done anything WRONG. We see other players in the game fighting each other without provocation (see Kirb vs. Alpha in the very first scene for a good example). The only difference between the behaviors of the characters (that we see) is that one is destroying terrain while the other isn't. You can't claim that the hackers should be punished for what they're doing because they're being disruptive (because if we did that to everyone who was disruptive on WoW they'd only need half the servers that they have) and we have little basis for knowing how "bad" it is that the terrain of the game is being altered or destroyed. There's a large number of games that allow for destruction or manipulation of the environment in today's lineup of computer games.

This short adds that context again. It establishes what the hackers can do that regular players can't, and establishes that the hackers are clearly operating outside of the context of the game. It's all stuff that someone who thinks about what they see in the first episode would probably be able to get, but not everyone analyzes things like that. That I think that this could probably have been a scene in the first episode is probably indicative of how highly I rate it. In fact, the only reason I give it an 8 instead of a ten is that I feel this should have been in the original episode rather than added later.

On a lighter note, Rockoon and Doubling are just amusing. They make a great zany/straight man combo.

[kadonok]

Ok people, WTF?!

Ok, I get that this was a short and all, the voices were good, the charicters...less then memerable, BUT it was still a quality flash animation, despite what my fellow NG posters call as suckish animation. It was a quality short people! I KNOW some people have to hate, but what ive seen on this page makes me wanna blow chunks all over my computer in disgust. Guys, the negative comments wont be going ANYWHERE to developing a better flash! Keep up the good work everyone who worked on this flash, and haters...stop being so d@mn critical.

[Twinkel13]

racoons

racoon characters in general
why are they so awesome?
WHY ARE YOU FOLLOWING THIS STEREOTYPE D8 <3

[PreciousPretending]

Always interesting to see things from the bad guys' perspective.Despite villains being the main characters in this tale,the laughs are nonstop with those two.I can't wait to see what they'll do in the future.

[SoopaDoopaKoopa]

There we go.

First of all, I don't really understand the hate this short is receiving. It was character establishment. We see the guy who may be certifiably messed up in the head (I suspect he uses the game as an outlet for his violent tendencies that he can't sate in the real world) and the cynical guy who doesn't even like the game and wouldn't be playing it if he wasn't being paid to (hell, I wouldn't be surprised if he's renting his TOME setup) assert themselves as characters proper.

The duo are completely flat characters? Oh wow, no meaningful character development or worldview-shifting occurances have taken place during the course of like -15 minutes- of content, big whoop. Characters don't learn life-changing lessons in 15 minutes or suddenly feel the need to dump hidden elements of their backstory unless the situation calls for it. Give it time. If he hits episode, say, 5 or 6 without the characters developing any further, then feel free to bitch about it in your reviews, but keep in mind that he's probably writing the characters while taking into account that the series is going to be pretty damn long, and that he doesn't need to be in a rush.

I honestly don't think this short deserves anything less than a 5, simply because there're much, much worse piles of shit on this site and, even if you think it's mediocre or even shit compared to some of the things he's put out before, you literally cannot deny that this stands heads and shoulders above basically half the crap on Newgrounds.

See, this is what I was talking about in my other review. Elaboration. This short has more-or-less established the boundaries on normal players, as well as the boundaries that the two have hacked through. Affecting the game environment. Using said capabilities to grief players. Presumably they were doing so for a while, and thus provoked the organized retaliations. I hope that you will explain things a bit more during the course of the actual episodes, but the use of supplementary shorts is okay, too, if you can't reasonably fit such things into regular episode scripts.

On the art, I've sadly begun to get a little tired of it already. It's mostly the little things, though. The miniature poses can remain devoid of shading for simplicity and readability's sake, but the dialogue poses could REALLY use some shading. I understand that you are designing the art so that it will be easy to churn out animation on a monthly basis, but is it not common practice to make stock footage look as good as possible because the audience will be seeing it so often?

Besides the shading, it would really be nice to have the mouth animation be more detailed. If it were me, I would provide separate animations for "ooh" mouth opening and both "rrrr" and "mmmm" mouth closing, and sync them up to the voice audio. Time spent on reusable animation is time well spent, when it comes to productivity. The colors could be a little more saturated, too, but that doesn't really bug me that much. I don't bitch at real life for its clashing colors, I really shouldn't bitch about in in a series about a video game with customizable characters that is played by a wide assortment of people that have no knowledge of color theory.

Doubling's cussing. 'Kay, I understand that he's supposed to swear, but it's awkward. In most lines it just seems... forced. Dropping f-bombs for the sake of dropping f-bombs. His "HOLY SHIT!" in episode 1 was an example of a "good" cuss. His "big fuckin' deal" here, on the other hand, is not. The line itself was just not needed, much less the f-bomb. Also, I find that cursing is funnier if you censor as little of it as possible (f*ck, for example). For some reason, if you can hear everything except the vowel, it makes it funnier to me. Just something to keep in mind.

I like the concept of expository shorts and stuff. Anything you could really improve here is really an issue with the series as a whole.