Score: 10

"AMAZING game!"

submission: IndestructoTank!

date: April 4, 2007

A very well constructed game. Interesting concept, wonderful execution, and a beautiful game all-around.

I do however have one complaint: If you run out of fuel while your experience is being added, it seems that you lose, even if your last combo would have put you over the threshold for the next level. Aside from that, it was an extremely entertaining game!

Score: 10

"Really good"

submission: Bloons

date: March 29, 2007

Overall, this is a wonderful addition to the Portal. The gameplay is solid and the objective is clear (and usually manageable). However, I've noticed that there are occasionally problems. For instance, on level 14 it is possible to throw your dart straight through the right side of the "maze." I'm not sure if this happens because it hits the wall at a certain angle or speed or something else entirely, but it created quite a bit of frustration for me.

Score: 6

"Reasonable Game"

submission: Bomberman Extreme!

date: March 29, 2006

Overall, not a bad platform game. I've got a couple of specific comments, though.

First, in the first level, walking into that bar that holds the spikes up in the air automatically jumps you to the top of the spikes. It seems as if you're supposed to jump over these spikes, so this would be a small bug.

Second, it would be useful to have brief directions before the start of the game. You wouldn't need a whole lot more than a picture of all the items and a short description of what they do when you collect them, but incorporating such a thing would be really nice.

If you add a little more complexity to your games (either in detail of the art or in gameplay goals), I think that they can be incredible.

Score: 10

"Wonderful Parody/Summary"

submission: Metal Gear Awesome

date: March 12, 2006

I'll be honest, I watched this flash when it was at number 1 and wasn't impressed whatsoever. I thought it was too scatterbrained and too quick; there wasn't enough time to follow what was going on and most of the jokes simply weren't funny. I thought that this flash was another of the strange fads that would drop out of the top fifty within a couple of days, as people started to notice its poor quality. I actually HOPED it would go away.

However, a few days later, a friend of mine asked if I had seen this flash. I said that I had, and he (correctly) assumed that I didn't understand the humor. The problem was that I had never played MGS before, and I really had no desire to do so. My friend loaned me the game, I played through it, then rewatched this animation. I've got to say that this is a very clean, accurate, and terribly funny parody of the first part of MGS. The author does a very good job imitating the voices of the characters in the game, he summarizes the events of the first couple hours of the game quite well, and captures the frustration with some of the "rule-breaking" aspects of the game (Meryl's Codec number, for instance).

Some specific critiques:
Graphics - Overall, very nice. The slight sloppiness adds to the character of the piece. Also, the fact that the maps were essentially identical to the maps of those areas in the game is incredible.
Style - Wonderful idea, wonderful implementation. My only gripe here is the brevity of the flash itself.
Sound - Nice use of MGS sound effects; it really supported the humor. Also, as I noted above, the most of the voices were extremely well done.
Violence, Interactivity - I don't think that these categories really need explanation.
Humor - The summary of the game itself is funny, but so are many of the jokes that the author put in himself. The sudden appearance of Jesus is an interesting twist, but is also fairly funny (maybe it's just his voice, but I thought Jesus was hilarious).

Overall - One of the few tens that I give, being a fairly critical critic. However, there are two final comments I'd like to make:

First, I wish (and hope) that the author finish the remainder of the MGS storyline. I think that the rest of the game is potentially hilarious in this format, and I believe that this author has the skill and talent necessary to successfully make such an animation. I'm particularly interested in knowing the author's interpretation of the Psycho Mantis fight, given his interpretation of the Codec confusion.

Second, I think that this flash will seem stupid and pointless, at best, if the viewer has never played Metal Gear Solid. As I explained above, I'm speaking from experience. One must realize that one cannot get anywhere near the full effect of the jokes in this animation if one hasn't gone through this first part of MGS. Although some may not find the jokes funny even after playing MGS, there's no chance in hell that you'll enjoy this flash if you haven't.

Score: 9

"Very Nice"

submission: School Madness

date: February 5, 2006

Overall, this was a wonderful tribute to Madness. The graphics and whatnot were comparable to the original Madness series. There are only a couple issues I see:

First, there isn't much of a storyline. Honestly, I have no idea WHY any of this school madness really happened; there wasn't any obvious event that triggered it (or, at least, there wasn't an event that meant something).

Second, it's a bit odd that he managed to slice straight through people with what appeared to be the dull side of his sword.

Other than those two things, I have no gripes about this flash.

I do, however, want to point one more thing out. I was looking through some of the other reviews, and I noticed that there was one individual that asked you to "check up on the laws of physics, specifically kinematics." I then re-watched the animation, specifically looking for violations of physical laws. I saw no kinematic problems; the only obvious law violations that I saw would have been in dynamics, but your errors were no greater than all the similar errors in pop culture... I just wanted to make it clear that, although one person accused you of somehow ignoring physics, it didn't seem as if you really did anything of the sort.

Score: 6

"Reasonable."

submission: Ford Model T

date: January 17, 2006

I could stand to see better graphics, but it wasn't bad.

My only real complaint (which is the only factual error I really noticed) is that, near the beginning, you say that the Model T is 1200 kg, then later (at the bottom of all the scrolling information), you say that it weighs 1200 lbs. Both cannot be true, and since you start the flash by stating that we ought to prepare to be educated, it would probably be best if you corrected that contradiction.

Just to show the problem, on Earth, 1200 kg would weigh about 2646 lbs, and 1200 lbs would have a mass of about 544 kg.

Score: 10

"Absolutely Amazing."

submission: the ugly

date: December 18, 2005

I spent close to an hour on this, finally figuring it out, and enjoying (and being creeped out by) the game. I have only two complaints. First, although this is somewhat a symptom of the type of game, it was too much a "guess and see if I'm right" than a "let's try to figure out how to do this" game. Once all the obvious options were exhausted, it got a little tricky finding the "real" ending, but until that point (and after that point) there was absolutely nothing in the game to indicate how you should proceed. I think that games like this should be possible to complete on your first, second, or third try, rather than having to work at it ten or twenty times.

Second, the "real" ending seems a bit strange to me. Mainly, why do you have to do what you have to do before it will work (sorry for the vagueness, I'm trying not to give too much away)? I mean, I see the importance, but I don't know why doing that would change the outcome that you would have gotten if you'd just gone straight for it. I hope that makes some sense to those that have completed the game, but again, I don't want to give too much away...

Overall, though, excellent game. Great graphics, chilling sounds, thrilling story. Wonderful.

Score: 2

"Not worthy of a spot in the Portal."

submission: 000S

date: December 17, 2005

Your animation was excellent, the only problem was the fact that there was absolutely nothing to this flash. To be honest, aside from the graphics, it seems as if you spent only twice as long on this as the typical Barney Bunch animation, which, as you imply, is virtually no time at all. Please, if you're going to create a flash aiming to bash a certain group, put some real thought into it and make it a good flash in its own right.

Score: 0

"Poorly executed."

submission: Deletejn23

date: December 17, 2005

This was an extremely poor attempt to convey a misformed opinon. First and foremost, "protest" flashes like this may gain sympathy from those that already dislike the illwillpress franchise, but it will just get hatred from illwill fans. You accomplish nothing by creating a flash like this, as nothing really changes. Second, the animation was of EXTREMELY poor quality, and the sound was destructive. Not a quality flash by any means, and it does not hold up to the standards of the portal. Even if you ignore my first point (which I'd be surprised if you didn't), this won't have much of an impact because it is terrible quality. Thirdly, after watching, I took a look at several of the recent illwill toons, and noticed an important fact: Germaine's breasts are only larger in toons where there is a specific reason (related to the plot) to draw attention to that area. In the other animations (including the most recent one on their page), her breasts remain the same, reasonable, small size. You can dislike illwill all you want, and you can go ahead and create flash animations to attack it (assuming you create higher quality animations), but you really, really, really ought to make true claims about their content while you're bashing them. It hurts your image quite a bit by presenting misleading information as you did.

Score: 7

"Pretty good"

submission: Clock Topics

date: November 19, 2005

It's painfully rare that a decent clock flash comes along, but luckily for us, this is more than just decent. The incorporation of voices that are not obviously computer generated is a huge plus, and making fun of that crazed trading spouses woman is nice as well. The biggest problem I see with this one is that it's fairly short, and the jokes aren't nearly as well developed as they could have been. Otherwise, this flash is a wonderful breath of clock fresh air.