R1665's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Sonic VS Quote]

Whenever I see a "Sonic vs whatever" video title on the portal, my first thought is never positive. When I do decide to watch them, it is usually because I am curious as to how much it will suck.

You, sir, have created the rare random Sonic fight video that doesn't suck. In fact, it does much more than simply not suck. It was creative, entertaining, and masterfully produced.

I tip my hat to you, sir. Well done.

R1665

SquirrelKidd responds:

Wow, thanks a lot man ^_^
Also thanks for giving the animation a chance :D

[Venom vs Shin Lvl2 Akuma]

I see that you're new on the sprite scene, so I'll be gentle.

First of all, "slow and short" is not a path to success in the sprite world. There was only a twenty-five second span between "fight" and "boring-and-overused-as-fuck guy wins". Of those twenty-five seconds, about eight of them were used up in powerup and slow-motion sequences. That gives you about seventeen seconds of actual combat by my count, 75% of which went to Akuma. Of those seventeen seconds, I'm pretty sure it would only be around 12-13 seconds without the browser slowdown that comes from not having your background music streamed.

...and that brings us to the subjective portion of the review.

Akuma sucks, pure and simple. There is little to nothing that can be done with him that hasn't already been done long ago, many times, and much better. I can't even call you on using some stale choreography with Akuma because, at this point, stale choreography is all anyone can do with him. You had a decent choice in Venom, but decided that his only real role should be to serve as the punching bag for the boring guy.

I give you a 2.5 review for effort and a 3 vote for having the patience to even create something like this in the first place. However, you still have a long way to go.

R1665

[KOF: New NESTS]

DAAAAAAAAMN, SON!

Welcome to the club!

R1665

[Street Fighter Epic Final]

I'm just now discovering this? Damn, was I ever late to the party...

Anyway, the only strange things that I noticed were the relatively low compression rates of the fight anthems and that weird Ken stance. The former wasn't a big deal at all, but the latter caught my attention every time it appeared and took me out of the atmosphere a bit. Nothing worth a score deduction, though.

Anyway, welcome to the "Sybreed Battle Anthem Club". You should get your official membership card in the mail within five business days...

R1665

[Madness Flageration 6A]

Slow?

The only part that moved slowly for me was when they were pulling the guns out of the crate. Other than that, it was fine. I might simply be on a better connection, though.

I noticed that your background music was set as an event sound. You should set it to stream. Streaming forces the video to keep pace with the audio and should eliminate your speed issue. Without a stream sound keeping time, a flash will always lose speed when played through a browser.

R1665

DriftLV1 responds:

Thanks for the tip and the 9! And yes, for me (and my shitty computer) it's slow lol.

[SU: The Mugen tournment]

Hmmmm...

Not bad, but you could use some improvements.

The thing that kept pulling me out of the movie was the sub-par sound and music compression. A lot of your sfx had that "crackly" quality that comes from too much compression and/or peaking.

This movie weighs in at under 1 MB. Standard upload limit is 10 MB. You had PLENTY of room for decent-quality sounds and music. Next time, don't be afraid to upgrade the quality. This is especially true if you're nowhere near hitting your limit. A few extra seconds of load time is worth it.

R1665

marti031 responds:

I know, i didn't do the quality right in the flash video... it was suppose to be down more but whatevas

[Anime fight!]

lol

You are correct, sir.

Please enjoy your 10.

R1665

[Psylocke vs Arcueid]

I love these enexpected match-ups

Excellent work.

The only blemish that kind of stood out for me was the sound quality. I don't know whether it was the compression or the source sounds themselves, but they did have that "tinny" quality that comes from having the bit rate set too low.

I do believe that is the only real bit of constructive advice I can offer at this time. Well done, sir.

R1665

TechLeSSWaYz responds:

Why thsnk you.

[Mugen Infanite Chronicals]

Not bad, but there is room for improvement

The choreography, while technically sound, seemed to lack a degree of hard-hitting ferocity. It was colorful and quick, yes, but it didn't look like any of it really HURT. It all went by too quickly. You shouldn't just stab. Take the time to twist, as well.

Personally, I don't think that interrupting action scenes for frivolous dialogue is a good practice. Once punches start flying, the time for textual banter is over. It just serves as an interruption at that point. If you have a particular feeling or thought you'd like to express, do it physically using body language if possible. That's just one of my nitpicky pet peeves and is purely subjective. Feel free to disregard.

As for the presentation, you should zoom in a whole lot more. Resize your stage floor area if need be. The entire fight took place on the lower third of the screen. Your action should always be somewhere near the center. It obviously doesn't have to be exact, but you at least want to try to match the screen position found in the source games if not more centered. If the issue with that is that your vcam can only go so far down before it shows blank space under the stage, then scrap the pre-existing stage sprites and build one yourself. Either that or find a thicker floor.

Also, your menus are a bit buggy. I had to click around a LOT to get your bios and other extras features to work.

Your preloader looked pretty sweet, though. Kudos for that.

R1665

[Cage vs Scorpion]

remarkably good!

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much when I first clicked on the link. However, you have very pleasantly surprised me.

Your choreography is innovative, but I believe that your small arena size is a bit of a hindrance. It starts looking less like a spontaneous fight and more like a choreographed dance when almost every move becomes a complex series of juggle combos. Give your fighters some elbow room. It also wouldn't hurt to throw in some uptempo music for the action.

I'm sure you're aware of it, but that bit of stage showing through your arena floor is a bit distracting. It's an easy fix and you're going to want to take care of things like that before release next time.

Good show, all in all. I look forward to seeing what you come up with next.

R1665