wut?
I only enjoyed the voices, and the animation was good too but idk about the story so much...
Reviews for "TOME Short: Hackers"
Definitely needs some work...
I was reading Redfeather's review and agree on many of the notions revolving around the humor, the coloration, and of course more natural characters, but I do feel like he spent far too much time bashing you then really helping you through criticism.
So on to the review.
The humor was very forced, dry, and I think a large amount of that would be that the timing is off and the voicing used for the characters isn't really working. Also the graphics don't really seem to match up to the comedy either. When you watch horror movies they have specific lighting, sounds, music, and background design in certain parts of the film to help build up anticipation or to cause great amounts of fear...when telling a joke or making a scene of epic proportions it is the same. You really have to focus on what is in that particular scene. You need to feed a stimulus of the same type to all the different senses.
Now, it's obvious you are a big fan of the dot hack series as you don't even try to hide it. I don't care if your idea isn't original, because originality is dead, but you should at least attempt cloaking the general look of your gameplay. The series fall far too much along with the general concept of dot hack, and it makes me feel like I'm actually watching a series I've already seen before. You should try to focus more along the lines of gameplay and character interaction then anything too intimate with a storyline I'd rather not have to witness again. Essentially, make things that aren't plot too plot focused. This was still very plot focused, when I saw the animation I was expecting there to be an in depth to who the hackers are, instead you just exemplified their role in the plot.
Then there is the hackers. This whole episode was built on the effectiveness of trying to exemplify the reason for why the hackers are there on T.O.M.E., however, you didn't really give much explanation other then they are suppose to "blow up" graphics and steal some item. Being a witness to hacking I can tell you their 'jobs' honestly don't generally follow into that "line of work", well, not to the degree of a hacker actually having to traverse an online world. A hacker, more notably, is a thief in mmo games. A hacker's job is to steal high level accounts and sell them to people on the internet who are obsessed with that particular video game and don't want the trouble of leveling up themselves. Hackers steal information in order to screw you over and make money. When you get a computer virus it generally is designed to attempt blocking you out of your computer while examining things that have your social security, debit card number, passwords, and anything else that may be used to acquire wealth. And then you have anti-hackers, who know how to do what a hacker does and use their knowledge to the opposite effect and there are hackers of different professions, because hacker does have several definitions. Now, these characters are obviously Black Hat hackers, but they just don't come off as hackers...mostly because their I.Q. levels seem far too low to hack and neither of them seem to have much of an interest in their job. Also, being hackers they don't actually have to traverse the world to find a particular item, they can just get in the system and look for a particular coding related to the item itself, and if they do have to actually find the item in the game, they can just move their characters to the item of interest. They need to be much more of a "hacker" type, and less of being really tough players.
Generalization. Character design flawed, boring, could use more color to their attitude and a certain level of depth. Color and animation flow needs some tinkering. Plot and scheme require some rebooting, and extra flare, something that sparks attention. Work on background effect for your humor or other various scenarios.
4/10 and 2/5.
~Damon
Ps- You have quite a large group of collaborators with a very impressive history in flash, you should try working their magic to it's best.
This was horribly obnoxious
I'm sorry, but that was just embarrassing to watch, I had to lock my door to make sure so one came in and thinks that I watch this kinda trash regularly. To say that the jokes were poorly timed would imply that anything in this mess could be considered a joke. In everything you do you actually manage to stuff in these really lame forced gay "jokes" that actually make gay really.. gay. The voices were really annoying too, I'm sure that was your intention, but there was way too much dialog in this "short " for it pass off as just these are bad guys and their supposed to sound like assholes.
I don't really want to go in the the characters or the story, I just didn't like them or it. One was really enthusiastic about breaking stuff on the internet and allegedly making "mad money" for doing so, and the other who was monotone was very cynical on the matter and for some reason brought up how this was cutting into his time playing sports(why?). I think the moral was you can still find enjoyment even if you hate your job, out of other peoples misfortune, even if they don't look like people and in fact deformed abominations. So yeah, I guess this had a point, messing with people is kinda fun. But regardless I found the characters very unlikeable, uninteresting and annoying, and that your portrayal of "hackers" to be very lame.
The animation, even if it's mostly tween's and awkward movement, didn't really bother me too much, I try to look past that and base my opinion off the content. But those colors are just ugly. From what a gather their supposed to be in some internet realm, but my god it just looks depressing, something similar to how I picture your imagination looking like. I know your colors take a lot of heat in reviews, but your characters just look dull and sad, it would be better if this was in black and white.
I almost felt obligated to review this just because the already shamefully low quality standards on this site manage to dip lower just for you. For most flash's that I dislike because I don't like the characters, voices or the plot, I can at least understand how some people might like it, but this? It blows my mind that theirs actually an audience that enjoys this. This is offensively bad.
awsome job
this was kinda cool i like how he did start likeing the game after killing some one on the game that was pretty cool
same
I agree with Dragoonblade on pretty much everythingl, including taking FuzzyPinkGoo down a notch or ten
and seeing as everything i have to say has been said by dragoon, and more besides, not worth me typing everything again = )
Summary: Nice work
nuff said