Unforgivingness Rivaling Jungle Joe

Review by moolatycoon on Wednesday, August 27th 2014
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Click to play Protonic Reaction XT

Protonic Reaction XT is a game created by demonxz95

Hey everybody welcome back to my review, today I will be reviewing Protonic Reaction XT by Demonxz95. "Its back and with a new EPIC (T_T) boss battle." This is partially true because the boss is far from epic but more on that later. Lets delve in to the game that awaits shall we?


Creativity


Personally I think this game is brilliant and successful in what it tries to do. The game revolves around the player removing blocks that activate balls that must be delivered to their tubes respective of their color. Certain events are triggered by a ball being collected in its proper area such as a ramp or a bouncer moving. This forces the player to consider their order of operations when they decide to remove a block or activate the sliding ramp. I certainly haven't seen anything like this before so I guess that gets it some points. The main issue I have is that after a while the game gets a bit bland because demon doesn't introduce us with really anything new, he just adds in more stuff we have to move around.


Design/Scenery


Demon claims that all of these levels have scenery and they all have names but I'm not even sure why its necessary. The first level, volcanic fields, really has nothing to do with volcanoes and instead is just red. Well sure, you could also name the level bloody fields and I'm sure people would get the same impact volcanic fields has. I don't really care about what I'm doing and I'm just more invested in playing the game, which is ok I guess but it lacks that submissive aspect. What am I doing under this cave? Why am I in this tomb? Why am I fighting this bleepty boss? None of that is explained in the game through the scenery or the little play game tab.


Gameplay


I have a real issue with a lack of directions. There were some points where I had no idea what I was doing, or what certain things meant. Take level 7 for example. I was a bit overwhelmed when I noticed that Demon had actually introduced a slightly (but admittedly more lazy) concept of multicolored tubes that allowed for several balls to use it. I didn't know what it meant and I was curious whether or not something would work. How am I supposed to fight this boss? I guess I'll just die 10 times just so I can figure out how to play the freaking game. Demon just expects you to know how to do everything, which doesn't pair well with a game as unforgiving as his. You see, if you make one tiny error, or your mouse click is off by a split second in certain situations you lose and you have to start the entire level over - which is a pain if you have to wait for certain events or sometimes things don't work in your favor the second round. If you make one mistake then its gameover, have fun playing it again. Its not really a flaw in the game as it is in the concept because of how demon set up the game to work. Remember how I talked about the lack of submersion in the game? Whatever submersion I might have been started to get was quickly taken away as I clicked the restart button for the 20th time because my mouse lagged for a second. I wish he gave the player more of a warning to where an object would move so we could plan accordingly instead of the excruciating process of trial and error. AND THE BOSS T_T oh the boss. I gave up after a couple tries. Basically you have to send the balls into the different faces of the bosses, respective of color. But you see the faces are spinning around and the balls move really slowly so you REALLY have to pre-meditate when you release each ball, HOWEVER...HOW - EVER, he gives you TWENTY SECONDS to beat this guy, meaning any strategy is thrown own the window as you are forced to release the balls quickly since they move so slowly, meaning that you have to keep playing through the boss until you have mastered the perfect timing on EVERYTHING in an efficient method, provided you make it far enough in the boss to be able to do anything before time runs out.


Level Design


Despite all of my grievances I think that this game is very clever. It makes you feel satisfied when you do something right and the puzzles are admittedly pretty cool. To someone who is playing the game for the second time the experience was not very enjoyable but to someone who knows the game and is experienced with how everything works, then they may have a bit of a better time than I did. If it wasn't for the unforgiving nature of the game I feel like the levels would have been a lot more rewarding to correctly solving a puzzle, rather than having to hit reset a dozen times before finally catching on to an obvious pattern. One issue I did have was that on some of the levels the balls wouldn't go where they were supposed to and it would already be to late to correct, rendering the previous work I did in the level useless. For that reason I found a lack of enjoyment in the game.


Ratings

Creativity: ****/***** -> Good concepts but flawed

Scenery: *.5/***** -> Weak effort

Difficulty: **/***** -> No Idea what I'm doing

Gameplay: **/***** -> Satisfying when right, frustrating when wrong

Level Design: **.5/ ***** -> Good effort poor execution

Overall: **/***** -> 'Meh'


Ranking Reference

1/5 -> Poor

2/5 -> Meh (Where Protonic reaction is ranked)

3/5 -> Fair

4/5 -> Good

5/5 -> Excellent


Conclusion

Well, this review was written in roughly 15 minutes so I hoped you liked it, was a nice break from my AP Homework. I'll see you all next time reviewing whatever game I can get far enough in to criticize.


Moola

 
 


Protonic Reaction XT Reviewed by moolatycoon on Wednesday, August 27th 2014. Unforgivingness Rivaling Jungle Joe - A game review written by moolatycoon for the game 'Protonic Reaction XT' by demonxz95. Rating: 2