Seriously? Rape jokes?

It started off being a somewhat dumb and immature attempt at humour until the ending glorified rape and kidnapping. There is nothing remotely funny about that.

Was that an Andrew Bolt reference?

Thing happens - Blame Left.

Wow.

Funny how the first truly artistically experimental Flash animation in ages to appear on this site gets such low user reviews.

I, for one, adored the concepts and visual metaphors employed in this video. The subject matter reminded me somewhat of surrealism, but also hints at modernism, formalism and abstract expressionism with its use of simplistic recurring images and motifs. An interesting portrayal of cycles within this film, evocative and thought-provoking. The sound worked with the movie brilliantly, bringing to mind experimental 20th century works of Cage and, for me, Penderecki. Gruesome matter and sound design contributed to create a distinctly disconcerting feel, expressing some level of inner turmoil reminiscent of the works of Munch and other post-Impressionist artists.

All in all, very nicely executed.

Oh. Wow.

Look, I'm going to do something that I usually don't do for Flash games, and that is assess them compared to the professional game market. Because, frankly, that's the only possible criticism I can offer this game.

Firstly, it would have been nice if the skills were streamlined a little bit more. That is, instead wasting 2 or 3 slots on different abilities that did the exact same thing, just have one column that upgrades itself and requires different skills to reach another level. This would have really been useful for Matt, whose three Earth based skills could have easily been streamlined into one that upgraded its animation and power with higher levels. While this isn't a huge complaint, one thing I did notice was that, on my first playthrough, I was slightly intimidated by the sheer amount of skills that each of the characters had - but by the end, I found myself wishing there were more levels and depth to each of the skills. It would have been really nice if skills had a higher level cap or added bonus effects with higher levels, like dealing extra fire damage or having a chance of freezing enemies - it would have made the late game grinding more enjoyable and fulfilling, rather than for the quite mundane task of filling the bestiary. Ideally, the heroes should only be at about 80% completion by the time they reach the final boss - necessitating some extra grinding to get to maximum level. As it stood, I hit 30 by the time I reached the Protector boss (kind of necessary though, I was playing on Epic) and felt that the Volcano and Space levels were pretty much redundant since I had no more character development.

Furthermore, some of the level design was a little bit frustrating. I remember the first time I played, being dropped into the town left me disoriented and I had trouble locating the first dungeon, which broke my attention span and lead me to quit the game before trying it again a few days later. Couldn't there have been an opening fight against Akron? It would have set the scene better than any written cutscene - it would have hooked the audience straight away, and immediately set a standard for the eventual level they would reach and surpass.

Also, there were a few control issues. It would have been nice if you could have either used arrow keys in combat or used mouse in the world map - as it stood, constantly switching between left and right hands started to annoy me after a little while. The control system in the fourth minigame was quite frustrating - it wasn't impossible to use, but just took more time to adjust to than was necessary, and I got very annoyed at losing because the two-button attack control scheme delayed my input. The visuals in the fifth minigame were also an obstacle - red and grey rocks that kill you shooting across a background of red and grey was quite tedious, and often I got hit by rocks that I didn't see because they blended in with the background too well.

That said, I've still put about 40 hours into this game in order to completely finish it and get all the medals. The visuals are gorgeous, the sound and music is fantastic, the minigames are challenging but ultimately fulfilling. I found the humour delicious and the characters rich. There is not a doubt in my mind that this is the very epitome of Flash gaming - there is nothing that even comes close to the scope and depth you've captured here, and frankly, this has been the most enjoyable RPG I've played for *years*, professional or otherwise. Truly a milestone - if the next title in the series expands upon this one with extra content and fewer problems, then frankly, I can see the series hitting the professional downloadable title market - and I would gladly pay for it.

Fair game, big problems.

I like the idea for this game. It genuinely has some great potential. But I just felt that there were a lot of gameplay problems that really bogged down the pacing and made me eventually quit at around wave 30 or so. Firstly, the knockdown of both you and enemies is a major problem. Against clumps of enemies, it makes them too easy to kill. Against you, it makes it sometimes impossible to break out of tight situations without taking 20 damage from random shotgun blasts and being meleed in the face when trying to reach a more favourable position. Being knocked down by every single bullet or punch taken seriously just broke up the gameplay and it ended up feeling awkward and stunted - the movement didn't feel fluid at all, and that wasn't helped by the extremely annoying lag. Also, a wider camera view would have been favourable - it's difficult to kill enemies you can't see but can still shoot at you. A lot of moments in this game wound up being mash click solution instead of actual skillful combat. Furthermore, the way that melees and shooting alter your movement in midair is extremely frustrating - it made me feel like I had no control over how my own character behaved. This wasn't helped by the fact that the enemies had the same melee animations and the lack of a contrasting colour meant that Hank was perpetually lost in a sea of grey. Another thing that really would have helped would have been gameplay variety - different levels, game modes, time attacks and challenges, things to keep the player interested. I mean, simple is good, yeah, but you still enough variety and challenge to spice up the gameplay - a greater control over upgrades, or different turrets, some more interesting and fun weapons, maybe upgrading melee weapons and other factors. It was a fun idea and generally done quite well, but the amount of problems that the game had, coupled with the fact that it just got boring really quickly, made me drop it before I finished.

This is a fantastic game

I finished it, without too much difficulty, and personally I really like the physics engine. No matter what anyone else found this game ran 100% smoothly for me, and the only problem was sometimes when travelling really fast I would get half stuck in the ground. But U could easily jump out of it and it didn't distract game play.
Good Job

Gorgeous

Top notch composition. I've been waiting for this song to be released since TB first came out. Although, just out of a personal preference, I liked the muffled effect of your voice in the film better. Otherwise, composition and balance is simply gorgeous. Keep it up, Hania.

Sheer Awesome

Nuff said, really.

Really cool concept

Terrific design, I love how you integrated samurai designs with the Tron aesthetic seamlessly. Really impressive stuff, I especially like the idea of the pixellated standard. Raises some other possible concepts as well, doesn't it? I'm curious to see how Renaissance-era armour would fit into the aesthetic.

Gorgeous

Absolutely gorgeous. Her expression is so perfectly emotive, really struck me as soon as I saw the icon. Pose compliments emotiveness also - an interesting balance of exposed and coy. Love how her eye stands out. Giving it a "7" for what it is now, but I can't wait to see the finished painting.

Very impressive, but a few problems.

Very nice work, the faded colouring and scratch/grain filters really contributes to the aesthetic. I really like your illustrative style and your skill with poses and shading is sublime. Just a few complaints - the composition seems a little unbalanced, top-heavy and leaning towards the right - I understand you're trying to bring out the Triforce in the background but, if you look at the original Raiders poster, it makes use of implied triangles with a busier composition down the bottom to create a feeling of stability and produce an even composition. The distinct lack of substance in the lower left corner makes the composition slightly uneasy. If you were to add another character or a temple or something there instead of crystals which seem out of place and overly simplistic compared to the overall composition, it would really make it a lot more harmonious.

Also, the scratch, grain and fading effects ought to have been applied to the "Triforce" and "Gods" in the title as well - as it stands, the words are crisper than their surroundings and therefore stand out a lot more and take away from the air of authenticity. And the text up the top was probably a poor choice, it looks like it was added as an afterthought and is reminiscent of internet-meme style text caption.

I really think the stars system for artwork rating is stupid, so don't think I'm giving you a zero - I just don't think it's fair to assess art based on a numerical system when art is an expression of ideas - to me, that would be like assigning a rating system to the different schools of philosophy.