Scratch

My Personal Worst-Best Games

This is a self assessment I made for my own projects, and believe me I pretty much hate the first three on the list. I'm hoping that other scratchers will look at their work and give themselves self-reviews for others (including me- I'm interested what scratchers think of their own projects) to look at. Sorry this is so long, but anyone who is interested in this sort of thing may enjoy it, and anyone who isn't too fussed about self-improvement won't wanna read all this. If you have a self-review, please post I here! It's amazing how scratchers learn from their own mistakes. Sorry if the two best projects on here sound more like advertising, but I had to mention the good stuff as well as bad stuff. I hope this helps people know what I am looking for when writing reviews about games too!

InterCarny Inc:
Such an ambitious game, a scrolling game with day/night cycles and multiple speeds, with lots of attractions (60-odd to be precise) but unfortunatly it lacked in fun and hardcore business tactics, which is usually what makes the theme park genre so fun. Featuring some rushed, unclear buttons (including a few recycled ones from Entertainment Inc) and a fair few weird birds'-eye-view buildings, you can clearly see how quickly each item was rushed just to reach the 60+ region and scrape in a few extra views. This was the last game of the Inter-Inc series, and ended the series on a bad note. Overal, lots of stuff, but nothing you can to do with it.

Entertainment Inc:
The most popular of the Inter-Inc series, which reached a staggering 500 views is suprisingly the second-to-worst on the list. Yes, it can be fun to build and manage a cinema, but this was too simple. The game is probably the most repetitive of all of them, where as soon as the week is up you buy a new film (choosing the most popular genre wisely) and then waiting until the cash comes in to build a new cinema screen. The unclear 2D buttons return with their dull purple-grey backgrounds, and the glitches make matters worse. No way could you enjoy such a glitchy game, which would either make you lose tonnes of money or immensly increase your cash for no reason what-so-ever. Overal, not hard, not pretty, not even working, not worth playing.

Rayman-Prehistoric:
The hardest of all games on the list, and one of the most glitched. Even though it is not as glitchy as the infamous Entertainment Inc game, it still has a heck of a few problems. Starting with the graphics, some areas look fresh and cartoony, whilst other areas look rough, unfinished and tacky. The yellow dot used to represent Rayman in the hub world is somewhat shameful; only the side-scrolling hero looks any good, needing a whole 7 different sprites just to get all of the different actions for this one brave character.

The levels are challenging, but not addicting-challenging. Most games are challenging but make the player want to return again. However, this game is glitchy-challenging, meaning that because enemies are not working properly, it is hard to work out their patterns and it makes the game literally impossible in some areas. Overal, OK looking, deserves middle-place in this list, glitchy-challenging and good to try out once or twice.

International Inc 2:
This second-to top project is an absolutly brilliant little game, and a sequel too! Being released around the 10th of August, it is the second game ever to have been made by me, with the first being the classic International Inc. Sure, it may not be as technically advanced as Entertainment Inc with it's moving windows, and the map that could move and scroll at the same time, but it is still a fairly intelligent game, considering as well that it was only the second game to have been made.

The timetable screen is certainly not a glitch free system, but it nearly does the job. There is no scrolling map, the interior objects do not change colour between day/night modes, but is it all necessary to enjoy a game? This is fun, and it probably has the best looking buttons and one of the tidiest looking graphics out of all the games made by me. This game has a wise advisor who gives off random hints in the game, and he also comes with a moving mouth! Overal, brilliant graphics- if not the best graphics, good sound effects, help is given throughout the game, the timetable screen is probably the only problem for the game. Finally, this is worth playing a couple of times and it is also one of the most enjoyable ones.

Generation:3000:
This is one hell of a project. It was made in three parts, SCDG, FCD and finally, Generation (with :3000 added to mark it being the third in the series). There were too many changes to class it as one game, but too little to class them all as each individual games in a trilogy. This is a city builder, with zones and many other buildings to construct, all actually doing a job unlike other city games where each one merely adds a bit of income. You can build roads and avenues, and yes avenues do have higher capacity. The intelligence is so much higher then in the other games, never mind the fact that there are tornadoes and spaceships to play around with! Want to drive in a car around your city? You got it! Want to build a futuristic city and build hover-car factories and auto-investigator machines? You got it! It has a clean and tidy interface, which is actually quite geometically-stylish too! You also get to see the sun move across the sky, which I think makes the day/night transition even beter to marvel at.

There are problems though. There is no little advisor, nor is the scrolling as advanced as the ones that amazed many in Entertainment Inc (one of the few things that did not glitch in that game). Also, from the very start you can easily tell how much the game is doing, this is indeed very "laggy". You see, when SCDG and FCD came out for the Panther system, the amount of land was HUGE! Driving around your city was seriously fun, mainly because you could actually go very fast. However, as you added more and more buildings (which all used the clone system which Scratch failed and still fails to have) the game slowed down, until it became unbarable.

The brilliant thing about G3000 is that even though the game is laggy from the start, it is guaranteed to not get any slower, because everything is to it's maximum from the beginning. Music is a bit random, with a bit of the Bust-A-Move theme-tune at the beginning, and then a remix of the Simcity 3000 and 4 soundtrack. Overal, fun, great graphics, random music problem, laggy (but never slows down further) but in the end it is a masterpiece, and I just hope you agree.

Last edited by Borrego6165 (2011-12-17 09:24:26)