Reviews/Easter Avenger

For those of you who have not played Easter Avenger yet, I’m telling you: you have missed a lot! This game is one of the very well done games. I have thought it was great in almost every aspect: excellent graphics, great game play, nice music, and the game is very addictive.

Graphics
For some reason, most reviewers start by reviewing the graphics, personally, I don’t think that graphics are the most important, never the less, I’ll start by reviewing them! As you can see in the screenshot below, the game is very colorful, bright and happy, and at the same time: very well done. I like the childish and sarcastic flavor that has the graphics (and the rest of the game actually) has added to the game. I’m also very impressed with how smooth they are in terms sprite edges, as well as the details of the sprites themselves.

All of the graphics look very game-like; some of them even look more or less “realistic”, like the tree in the screenshot for example. I also liked how much detailed are all the graphics; this has reflected the skill of the artist and the great ability of paying attention to little details.

The excellent quality level of the graphics actually make the player unconsciously – and sometimes consciously – feel better about the game and enjoy it more! Also, the clouds looked very cartoonish and fun, I liked them a lot, and having them move slowly to the left gives the game a nicer feel.

In one word, I would describe the graphics as excellent! Now usually, I don’t like giving 10’s in reviews, because I believe nothing is perfect, but as I was paying attention to all of the details in the graphics, I have failed to find any flaw in them, so I have no choice but to give this game a 10 in graphics!

Music (Background)
The background music made me feel much more excited towards the game, and, in those rare moments throughout the game that lacked action: the music was what kept me going; didn’t even get bored for a second! The music very well suited the game-play, but I noticed it didn’t fit the storyline as much.

The story took place in another planet where chocolate was considered a deadly substance, and even though the music was really fun, it wasn’t of the same level of sarcasm as the storyline itself, which created some sort of minor imbalance. I have got the feeling that the music was more serious than the story, probably not like Josepho meant it to be.

As it comes to music quality, I think it was excellent indeed, very well-composed, found no problems in it, and as I said before: it was very enjoyable. The rating of the Background Music in the game is an 8.5, that’s excellent on my scale.

Sound Effects
As to the sound effects, I found they paid lots of attention to details, for example when jumping, there’s this well-done “boink” sound that matches the jumps. This bounce sound is also used for the enemy eggs’ step sound effect (since they moved by bouncing off the ground).

Sound effects are well used; they only exist when they are needed – no excessive use of sound effects, and no unneeded sound effects. Gunshots and bat-hits have interesting sounds indeed.

Another part of the sound effects that I liked is the baseball music that is occasionally heard in the background when you hit an egg very strongly and it gets thrown away hardly! I found that very funny and beneficial for the game’s atmosphere as well; it made me laugh in serious “stressful” moments during the game! With this in mind, I give it a 9 in Sound Effects; it’s great, because few people pay attention to the sound effects at all!

Storyline
One of the first few lines in the introduction part of the story contains the picture above and some text that says: “Egg with glasses: I’m innocent! I haven’t done anything! NO!!!” This is probably a good example to show how the tone and theme of the whole story (note the big chocolate “bowel”), and it’s really nice to have some fun once and a while. The storyline is fine, but from what I have seen so far as to high standards of the game, I must say I was disappointed; it clearly wasn’t of the same quality as the rest of the game elements. I felt as if the process of coming up with a storyline was rushed a lot, and, if the creator has thought of something better, the whole game could have been even better! As a storyline alone, I would give it a higher mark, but since it doesn’t fit the rest of the game very well I’m going to give it a 7.5 out of 10.

Game Play – Controls
The controls of the game play use a combination of keyboard and mouse. You can use the mouse for aiming, and the keyboard for movement, plus a mouse-click for attack. I think the controls are very smart but yet nothing new, but being “nothing new” is a good thing when it comes to game controls, because the more are people familiar with this control type, the better things are; people will get adjusted easily to your game and therefore bond more easily to the game. As it comes to controls, I give the game a 9, which is very good.

Game Play – Difficulty
Having a difficult game is a good thing in most cases, and this game is considered more or less difficult.

Things like one-hit death may sound really harsh but is very normal in platform games (remember Mario?). The difficult thing about game play was actually hitting the enemy egg, I would aim correctly at the egg most times, but I clicked either too early or too late, and because of the detailed sprites are animations, one may actually miss an egg if late for a few milliseconds!

The collision-checking is very accurate, and I do think that having a larger mask would be much better. For these reasons, I give the game an 8.5 – great!

Game Design
Game design includes all the previous elements, but I’m judging it here according to the co-ordination between the different elements. The game design is excellent! Very smooth, no bugs, colorful, and has all the most important characteristics of good game design. Background sounds, background graphics (e.g. clouds), detailed graphics, and colorful graphics; there are almost no moments where you only have to walk around!

Also, the movement system is very good, the terrain system is even better, I really liked the slopes and how you go up and down very smoothly. I also like the aiming system, and how the hand move with the aiming but on the opposite site so that when hitting it would move the right site – that was VERY well thought out!

I also like how the eyes change direction according to the mouse position and not the keyboard keys (pressing forwards or backwards). I like this great attention to details; I like the animations, constant movements of everything around, and basically – the whole atmosphere!

Game Design includes almost everything, it is a big category and this is the most important part of the game itself, no doubt. Anyways, my rating for the Game Design section is 9.5 out of 10! That is exceptionally good.

Overall
The game gets 8.86 out of 10! That’s excellent!