Stupid-Owl's Reviews

[*We Didn't Start the Fire]

Nice Animation, Stupid Song

This is another one of those songs that you have to listen very closely to in order to properly interpret the lyrics, and this is not the first montage to it I have seen which completely ignores the song's refrain.

For those who've never figured it out, Billy Joel is making an excuse for his generation, (The Baby Boomers) an excuse which goes on and on and on. The message of the song is essentially "Things have always been bad, so it's not our fault if the world goes into the crapper on our watch."

It's not just a harmless song. This widely-held attitude is why we now have over ten percent unemployment, severely depressed wages among those who are employed, have skyrocketing costs in educational and health care systems which do as much harm as good, and are so mired in two foreign wars that we no longer have the capacity to defend our own shores.

This flash animation would have been much better, in my opinion, if it did something to address THAT aspect of the song.

[discgolf quicky]

Catchy music, nice animation, too short.

"...whether it get's blammed or not..."?!

Dude, this animation has absolutely no business getting blammed. It's not an epic or anything, but I am far, far, -far- from resenting you for wasting my time with it.

It really liked the visual style and the music was very appropriate. I believe a short movie with this same style and an actual story would do very well.

Failing a story, you could at least go for a series of consecutive events. Just animating this guy leaving his home, walking through the park for two minutes, with other people doing amusing things in the background, and then having him go back home, all to the same music, would be fun to see. Maybe he's walking his dog, or meeting his girlfriend or something. Make it very basic. Have you seen the Another Day movies, the The_Super_Flash_Brothers? Something like that.

Keep up the good work, man.

synsacrum responds:

well i'm glad you liked it, the reason i put that in the header, is because sometimes you just can't tell who's gonna get to an animation first, and it seems like a lot of people don't like 'em if they're not an epic, but i'm glad i'm getting the response i am :D

[white shadows]

Great but incomplete.

Dude, you should totally finish this. It would be an awful shame for you to get this far on a project and then just give up. This is a great video, it has a very distinct style. I love the use of shades of brown and grey, but maybe remove the one or two instances of bright colors.

Keep at it!

[I wish I were the Moon]

Beautiful!

I don't know who Italo Calvino is, I guess I'll have to go look him up. But this game was beautiful and sweet, I enjoyed it very much! It has out standing potential, please consider expanding it. It could use a loading screen, just for polish, and some sort of special "all endings found" screen or event or animation or something. If this is based on a poem or a song, it would be awesome if you could include it in the game somehow, so we'd have the context. Ambient sound effects would be nice too- like the sound of the water.

[The Impossible Quiz]

An Open Letter:

Dear Impossible Quiz Creator

Allow me to give you a bit of advice on this game
The point of the game is of course painfully simple, but
@#% by the time you have used your eyes to read this lovely review, more reviews decrying the difficulty of your game will most likely have appeared on the bottom of the game's page, burying you in shameful chastisement.

Oh, well. It was fun for as long as I could stand it!

Best Wishes,
Stupid Owl OO

p.s. With your talent for confoundment and misdirection, I must wonder whether you hold employment with your country's foreign intelligence service.

Splapp-me-do responds:

Bahaha! Thanks a lot! :p

[The Maccabees]

Hidden Moral: The Macabees were wimps.

I don't know if it has occured to anyone yet, but this game makes the macabees look completely helpless.

Imagine a similar game where unarmed US soldiers march blindly into oncomming Iraqi insurgents, and only the president, operating his super-secret orbital weapons platform, can save them.

It's that, and other aspects of this game- like needing six holy lightning bolts to kill one man- that make it not so much insensitive as stupid. The interface is simple, yet somehow remains counter-intuitive; it took me quite a while to guess what the '5/9' at the bottom meant.

The sound is solid, the graphics are satisfying, the programing adequate- clearly somebody put a lot of work into the game. But as far as gameplay, it's horrible. It should not already feel repetetive on the first level.

You'd be better off just making a Flash clone of Lemmings with new levels.