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Reviews for "Super Brick Duel"

Shot yourself in the foot

Concept: Combining pong and break the blocks to get super, mega, ultra, happy fun time Brick Duel!!! ( Sorry the voice actor makes a convincing asian accent)

Aesthetic: Not much going for it. While the saturation of black wallpaper and 8 bit music gives an appropriate retro feel. There's not much else worth mentioning. I which there were sound effects that represented the action going on in a game as well as a more inspiring presentation of a power up such as when your ball becomes a fireball it actually LOOKS like a fireball.

Animation: Well of course there's not much to expect givin what the game is based on. The speed of the ball is appropriate and the paddles also move at an acceptable speed. But as I stated earlier you could've put more effort into the special effects besides a temporary color swap so there's something that actually stands out from all the black backgrounds and stationary bland white bricks.

Gameplay: (Go ahead and grab a cup of coffee I'll wait.....)

Okay, your single player is really stale, For starters the game isn't very engaging. You can beat the AI on any difficulty without the power ups, it almost feels like they're just shunned in. The only time it beats me is when it gets a fireball, and even then it only wins because there's no break period between starting a new round leaving the player feeling cheated.

But what really gets me is you missed out on the bread and butter, FOURPLAY. I played it (even though no one else was available to join in) and let me tell you it was more satisfying and engaging than playing against the so called "hard" AI in classic mode. It seems like this is the mode that was suppose to rack in the 7-10's stars, but damn it all, you decided to get lazy. Do you realize how much better off this game would've been if you went that extra mile into your game design? The gameplay would be faster, more chaotic and more enjoyable than that bland classic mode ever could. Were all human but hell I'd prefer to at least see the PROOF in the pudding that you have the potential to make a better game overall, rather than FEEL you have the potential but put it off because "you got lazy or some shit like that..."

Not to scold or put you down but it's just a shame that you decided to miss out on a golden opportunity to create what could've the savior of this game as well as the possible inspiration of a new stand alone game on its own. "4 way Super Brick Duel" From the title alone who wouldn't want to at least consider playing this?At least you were honest.

Overall: Inexperience is an inconvenience, laziness is the culprit . What could've have possibly been a mediocre game with a huge highlight unfortunately is just an uninspired fusion of two classics that had potential but lacked the drive.

2/5

"Review Request Club"

JPB responds:

Fourplay was supposed to be the star of the show, it was, I originally made brick duel, which was just classic, training was a result of bored evenings, fourplay is the whole reason a sequel was made, I played it with four and its fun as hell, the problem is that by the time I was working on this, I'd already decided flash isnt my thing like all noobs imagine when they come to newgrounds, all I wanted then was to do something fun for myself and friends, so why didnt I finish fourplay? I really dont know, one day I was in this huge time demanding collab, and when I finished it, i gave myself a break which became a whole year, then two days ago I was bored and said to myself I would submit this, so I did it, I expected a better score, but the reviews from you guys showed me that this really deserves a 2. I don't know why I submitted it, I'll probably take another year to submit again something just as simple, but where I know I did what I wanted to do from the beggining.

You probably didnt understand anything of what I just said, it doesnt really matter though.
Just opened flash, I havent written a line of code for a year -- This is why I love review request club
I'm happy with this score, just mad at myself for making something so boring.

Essentially - Pong

Hopefully you don't mind a brutally honest review, but I'd really like to help you to make this game better. Unfortunately the game of Pong has been absolutely beaten to death by every website and game creator, which makes it hard to give a pong game a good score. So, here's an honest review.

Graphics/Animation: 2/10
Unfortunately you received a fairly low score here because there was nothing flashy about this game at all. Nothing really stuck out and hits the player in the face enough to make them say "WOW this is different!" It was basically a classic, more polished game of pong. The paddles weren't animated in a very interesting way to look much different from the bricks, which was a killing point. It's called Super Brick Duel - give the bricks some character! They need it. One of my biggest peeves in this game was seeing how the "power ups" just floated down the screen in a different color box than the actual background. It doesn't look good when you use a white powerup in a rectangular box just falling down in a straight line. There were maybe four colors used in this entire game. Just a few more colors to everything would have made it that much different. There could have been more polishing to make this better looking to your audience.

Audio: 4/10
Basic audio soundtrack for a pong style game. The typical 8-bit soundtrack to fit the game was nice, but you were missing the meat of the game. Sound effects. The amount of difference the sound of a ball hitting one of the paddles or destroying a brick is astronomical. The difference small sounds of actions are a big deal. Even on the main menu there were no sounds of clicking the boxes. It was all too bland.

Gameplay: 3/10
Although things ran fairly smooth there were a few things that really bothered me about the gameplay. Firstly, how slow the paddles moved on each difficulty. It didn't matter whether I was on Hard or Easy mode, the paddles moved the same speed. It wasn't even a challenge for the most part. Even the CPU was moving the same speed as I was. The powerups are a good idea, but making them fall in a straight line is fairly boring. They should bounce around for an even bigger challenge to both the CPU and the player. You received a low score here only because the game wasn't capitalized on here from both the sound and the graphics perspectives. I liked the idea of each side having bricks in the way of the score to be made by each side, but again, the difficulty comes into question here. If you have an easy and hard mode, give the hard mode cpu more bricks to go up against than your own side. Add four rows instead of two. Make it a real challenge for your audience. On the more positive side, things ran smoothly, which is a big deal. Every flash needs to run nice and smooth to be considered successful by me. No bugs or glitches from what I caught.

Originality: 2/10
Unfortunately this was your biggest downfall. You took pong and added brick barriers. That was a cool idea, but you didn't capitalize on your great idea with more effort such as sounds and challenge. The idea of pong is for it to be frustrating and tough to beat the opponent. This was fairly easy on each different mode of play. You have a great idea, you just need to work hard to make it more original.

Overall: 3/10
I know it may seem like a low score, but compare this game with some of the other top games out there. What do you think would make the Top 50 in a game like this? A challenge? Medals? Sound? All of those things contribute to a high score. You have an awesome idea here, just build on it! Keep creating flash, you have a good ability with a good thought process. I hope to see more from you in the future.

JPB responds:

I'm completely ok with a honest review, theyre great, and I understand why you gave it a 3.
With the powerups, the sound, the graphics, I agree with you, I didnt exactly design the game, I added something the way I wanted it and once it worked I left it that way, and so I paid a price for that, this is my first actual game (not an excuse for anything), and all of those are little things that make a game yet you dont normally notice, so when youre developing you forget about them.
The one thing I disagree is the gameplay: Yes, it could be more challenging, but giving the cpu more bricks or making it faster is in my opinion not more challenging, or fun, but more cheap, when I see rpgs where all enemys are just stronger versions of the last, I hate it, whats the point, its lazy design, same for every single pong game I see, each enemy is the last one faster! WTH? Thats why I made the cpus more inteligent, easy is your average follow the ball cpu, but medium makes sure it doesnt have to walk a lot for the next hit, runs away from the ball when its behind it, and knows when the ball is gonna bounce from the wall so that it doesnt follow it down then up. Meanwhile, hard actually knows where the ball is gonna be and actually aims like a human would. I suppose for a challenge I should've added a "IMPOSSIBRU" mode, with the hard cpu, but with extra blocks and more speed, that wouldve certainly been a challenge and make the game better.
I didnt meant to make a top 50 game and am happy with the score I got, but I see that a great game needs more challenges, medals, sounds, graphics, its what makes it memorable.
I wanted to make a simple multiplayer game that was fun and memorable, but I took the simple part for granted, and ended up with a bland multiplayer game that is fun (and it really is in multiplayer!) but far from memorable.

Thanks for the review ;)

Not bad!

Nice idea to improve an old game with some new abilitys.
Great work!

JPB responds:

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.