Review: Adventure Ponies 2

Adventure Ponies 2

 Somehow this review ended up getting delayed for nearly three weeks, partially due to a nasty headache on the day it was supposed to be written that caused it to be pushed back further and further until now; so as I sat at my desk and waited for everyone else to wake up, it seemed prudent to finally get this out of the way so I can get on to reviewing other stuff (such as the final version of MegaPony). Fair enough?

Following standard procedure, the review can be found after the break.


 For the most part it's fair to assume that when a video game sequel comes out, it will contain at least some improvements over the original. In this case, however, you'd be wrong. Adventure Ponies 2 is basically a buggier re-skinning of the first game with secondary characters instead of the Mane 6, terrible new levels, and really boring bosses. I almost wish I didn't have to stretch this out to fill an entire review, but since that's what you folks expect of me, here it goes...

 Somewhere along the line, somebody in the Hub's game development team fell in love with the colour brown and married it, not knowing that he was entering a polygamous relationship with the vast majority of generic "real is brown" shooters. He then proceeded to proclaim his love for his new wife by creating a game about her, and slapped ponies onto it so everybody would see it. Gone are the colourful backgrounds of Adventure Ponies, so you'd better get used to wading through stage after stage of boring brown badness. The only "upside" to this is that the objects on the stages stand out against the bland backgrounds, but that doesn't really help things.

Spikes and balloons are not a good combination.

 Meanwhile, the game is glitchier than ever, to the point where many people have been either completely unable to start it up or ended up with a screen displaying assets (??). Occasionally I've managed to get ponies frozen on the spikes and unable to get off, resulting in their death aside from one notable incident where I somehow managed to clip through the floor after hitting a spike. There was also an incident where a teleporter refused to work, and one of our most frequent commenters has mentioned that perfecting a bonus room can result in the camera getting stuck. I haven't been able to test that one out to see if it has been fixed or not, but regardless you should still be prepared for almost anything while playing.


 So are there any improvements over the original? Well...yes, there is at least one that I can think of. The controls, while still rather weird, aren't nearly as aggravatingly slippery as they used to be, resulting in fewer cheap deaths overall. Thing is, the rest of the game is so dull that you probably won't even notice or care that much. Since there are much better fangames out there already, I'd advise that you leave this one alone and play MegaPony or something.

...I was going to write a large paragraph on how the decrease in quality from Adventure Ponies 1 to 2 paralleled that of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic over the same period of time, but I won't bother for now.

Review: Moonstuck Part 2

Moonstuck Part 2

 So...Moonstuck. Quite possibly the fandom's most beloved webcomic, Moonstuck managed to win the hearts of many with its adorable main character and unique art style while it lasted. After it ended on November 4th in 2012, SylrePony decided to adapt the comic into a isometric fangame, the first part of which he released in March. Our reviewer Arctic Lux gave it an 8/10, and all seemed well and good, but now that the second part has been released and he's not around it seems that it is time for my take on the second entry.

Does this unofficial Moonstuck adaption live up to the charm of its namesake? Find out after the break.


 Now, it has always struck me as an extremely strange decision for SylrePony to adapt Moonstuck as a top-down game, given the puzzle-centric nature of the comic. Perhaps he was getting desperate for an excuse to make an isometric game in Flash, and this method would give him the most exposure out of all his available option, but regardless I'm still kind of weirded out.

 Moonstuck Part 2 begins with a dream sequence inside the observatory, in which the player can either go through a tutorial or a weird "dev" area. The inclusion of the latter is somewhat amusing, but probably not a very good idea since it means the player can skip the tutorial section and thus miss out on a very useful spell that will make your life much easier. After setting sail on an odd-looking boat, you wake up from your nap and things start go to downhill quite rapidly.

Dumb...rocks? Moon bubbles?

 You see, Moonstuck's gameplay consists mostly of wandering around rather bare environments with little idea as to where you are going or what is happening in relation to the plot. On rare occasions you are given a "break" from this monotony by tedious rock smashing and sphere-pushing sessions, which doesn't really help very much at all. Did I mention that in certain puzzles, messing up means walking a long ways back to the previous room, waiting for it to load, then going back and starting all over again? It transforms would-be simple problems into long, drawn-out affairs that quickly get on the player's nerves.


...There isn't much more to say, really, because there isn't much to praise or criticize Moonstuck part 2 for. It's just dull monotony for the entire ride, like taking a road trip during a drought in Saskatchewan, with nothing but dry, flat ground for hundreds of miles. The project's only saving grace is the engine, which looks fairly promising and doubtless could be used for far more interesting projects.

 To be honest, I feel kind of bad for SylrePony. He's a pretty talented person, but everybody slips up once in a while. Perhaps he'll fix up the game's issues in a future update, and then it should be well-worth revisiting.

Fnagame Review

Fnagame
No, this is not a serious review.

 Hot on the heels of the last fnagame comes another game in this brave new genre (introduced by Stable Softworks in their BronyCon panel announcement), and again it stars Twibright Spankle and her magical pony friends. Lovingly crafted by a dedicated artist, Fnagame is a homage to RPG classics such as Lennyage of Harmoney and Gates of Tartarus, and promises to stun the world in a similar manner as the recently uncancelled Fighting is Magic did (more on that in a future post).

Our review on this revolutionary new fnagame can be found after the break.


 Though it may not have the deep and intricate plot of the genre's prototype, Lennyage of Harmoney, Fnagame still manages to interest the player with its incredibly meta postmodern tale of stolen undergarments. As is tradition with all good fnagames, it tackles the pressing issue of women's rights, as Twibright represents the typical working-class woman, her right to privacy being stolen by a figure who obviously represents the NSA with their dastardly PRISM program. Obviously the mere act of protesting will do little good against such a powerful foe, she chooses several of her closest friends to penetrate deep into the enemy's stronghold and strike the chauvinistic pig right where it hurts the most.


 Part of the fun a fnagame provides is interesting gameplay, and Fnagame delivers quite well in this area. Unlike most RPGs with gameplay divided into separate maps, Fnagame's gameplay takes place inside one large map, with no loading times to get in the player's way. In a way this is sort of like the other Fnagame, except it actually has a real ending. Endings are good because otherwise the player would keep playing the game until they starve to death, which is kind of sad.

 As most of you know, any good game has violence in it. This is because there are many problems which cannot be solved by talking or protesting, so we have to take up matters in our own hands and beat the crap out of our enemies until they give in to our demands. Running is always a bad idea, as winning your battles gives you lots of experience and a bunch of epic new skills to use against the forces of Republican evil.

The graphics are absolutely stunning.

 Dangerous creatures lurk in Twibright's expansive basement, and before meeting your main opponent head-on you'll have to slice your way through Hentais, Buts, and Fangarms (among other creatively-named enemies). These presumably represent the various trials and challenges a modern woman must face. Additionally, a good portion of their attacks are phallic in nature, hinting at the well-known fact that man is the female's greatest enemy. In a way it's a shame that the creator didn't have the courage to stand up and state such a fact publicly, but at least she found some way to insert it into her works.

 Doing battle against horrible monsters isn't the only thing this fnagame has to offer, however. There is also plenty of exploration for the player to participate in, although it does strike me as more than a bit odd that Twibright would have such a large basement when compared to her small house (as briefly seen in the introduction). Then again, she does have a lot of books down there...

 Like any good game, Fnagame has graphics. Since the game doesn't have any credits, I therefore presume that the author made them all herself. Good for her. They look really professional for the most part, except for interface. I'm pretty sure that she stole it directly from some other game, although I'm not sure which one. Still, it's not like anybody minds when you use art without permission, right? It's just a stupid drawing after all.

Every good game also has music. So does Fnagame. Its music is kind of boring, but since it was taken from Gates of Tartarus I really shouldn't complain. Besides, most of us play games on our laptops with the audio down because speakers probably drain battery or something.

Twibright, Colorful Speed, Pearity, and Pokey Pie exploring the basement. Their so cute <3

Sadly, fnagame is not perfect. It has a really sharp difficulty curve as the game goes on, staring off real easy and then getting hard soon into the game. I couldn't figure out why though, as I was leveling up really fast whenever I won a battle. The boss was also kind of hard, and I couldn't beat him. His attacks were also self-depreciating in a stupid kind of way. Also, the main characters are really boring OCs that are just recolored versions of the real pones.

 As if that wasn't bad enough, if you look in the equipment slots Pearity is revealed to be wearing...a corset. That's right! The worst of all ways for a man to hold a woman in bonage is being worn by an upstanding modern girl, which is outrageous. Also, upon unlocking the Magic Ice skill it makes a really offensive joke about the 99% and our not being rich. At first I thought the creator was a model feminist, but now we see her for what she truly is: a lame internet fathead who pretends to be a girl just to get a rise out of us. But I'm not falling for it!

Xcept for a few good things, this game totally sucked. Also, I pity you if you actually thought this was a serious review.

Review:Future Twilight

Future Twilight

Most fandoms have a rather localized following within a few countries. For example, Doctor Who has a large fandom in Britain, USA and Australia, yet it is not as well known outside those few countries, which is often a surprise to fans within those countries. However, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is an exception, having a large international following, and one of the largest being the Dutch Bronies (for their country size, which is tiny). And it is from that far away land that the game Future Twilight comes, and it is intended to win a Dutch game maker competition with its turret-shooting gameplay.

Does the fact that it's foreign automatically make Future Twilight awesome? Find out after the break.

In Future Twilight you play as the title character in a plotless adventure to blow up some turrets and defeat Discord. And you impossibly walk on your hind legs while somehow wielding a pistol, which is really weird (and not in a good way). Ammunition is limited so you'll have to conserve as much as possible in order to survive, although thankfully you can refill both your health and ammo with reusable green powerups. And all enemies are turrets which only differ in colour and in the amount of punishment that they can take.

Look ma, I actually made this jump!

Sounds simple so far, but not too bad. After all, there's beauty in simplicity, right? Well in this case, wrong. The all-important controls are rather unresponsive to the player, which can often waste time and cause needless deaths in otherwise easy situations. However, the worst issue seems to be the turret hitboxes, which seem to to act strangely at times, with shots at point-blank range somehow missing the target. In a game that mainly consists of tight corridors crammed with turrets this is simply unacceptable! I found the music to be quite annoying, although thankfully you can change it to a quieter track with the press of the "M" key (or just turn off your speakers). Despite serving their purpose the graphics are rather ugly, and trust me, Future Twilight looks terrible while standing on her hind legs. At least the developer had the common sense to make her eyepatch asymmetric, a detail which even many professional development companies somehow slip up on.

So what did I think of the game? To quote a certain television show, "Pitiful, just pitiful". The gameplay is dull, the music is downright annoying, the sprites are poor, ect ect. Hopefully the controls and hitbox bugs will be fixed in the next update (which is apparently coming tomorrow), although don't  expect much from this rather poor fangame. It may be able to beat some of the other crappy game maker projects in that contest, but there is no way I can rate it higher then 3. Sorry Dutch Bronies!

I know this review was a rather boring read, and I must apologize. Many games can inspire legendary reviews through their sheer badness, but this game isn't quite that bad: the problem that it isn't good either. So once again, sorry for wasting your time, have a nice day, and go watch some ponies, OK?

Luna Game (CREEPYPASTA)

Luna Game (CREEPYPASTA)

On April 3, 2011, A game was posted on Equestria Daily labeled Luna Game. It seemed harmless enough, so a few people downloaded it, only to quickly realize it was not what it seemed.



The game starts out as you playing Luna on a simplistic platform level, you are able to jump and move around using the arrow keys. But after about thirty or so seconds of playing, the screen cuts out into one of two creepy images; Pinkie Pie Zalgofied or just plain creepy Applebloom. At this point, a creepy song begins to play, and you realize the game doesn't close with the esc key (And the alt+f4 did not work for many people either). The mouse was stuck at the bottom right of the screen too, and the game would always stay on top of every other window. The only way to close the game at this point, was to open Task Manager via Ctrl+alt+del, navigate to the program using the arrow keys, and press delete. The game would automatically close after a while on it's own.

Here are two videos of the game:
The End is Neigh
The end is neigh.avi

When the user looks at the location he saved the game after it's closed, they find a bunch of pictures and text files labeled 'The End is Neigh', the text file's text also reads 'The End is Neigh'

At first the program was thought to be some kind of virus, but after a while (And a few dozen virus scans), it was confirmed to be a rather mean prank. The game itself would not modify or delete any files on the user's computer, simply save screenshots and text documents. Though when the user downloaded the program to their desktop, deleting all the pictures and text documents generated would prove to be quiet annoying.

The Download Link for this game is here. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

The platform game itself was interesting, but the creepypasta was an unexpected surprise, and because of it, there was very little actual game. 3/10