Nokomiste's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[A Gamer Torn]

"You shouldn't have done that..."

This is good. I mean... genuinely good. I mean... "I'm surprised you haven't taken time off machinima to make more short flash animations instead for the time being" good. I'd love a short series of these. Your first series of Arby 'n Chief was great because of their opinions of games and the humour coming from Chief, I'd love it if the comedy from that series (before you added "drama") was incorporated into your animations. For your first attempt as well this is actually kick-ass. Anyway. I have no idea if you're gonna read these reviews because you're too busy with the current series of Arby 'n Chief, but if you do, take on our praise.
I liked the art. It was simplistic in its design and given the concept of the video, I thought it was all the better for it. Voice acting was, as usual, sweet.
Seriously, make more of these.

---
Noko

[Sonic X: Cosmic Chase]

A worthy tribute to a mediocre anime.

Don't get me wrong, Sonic X is a great show in it's own rights, it's just the third series with Star Trek traits everywhere we looked was just ridiculous. Also Chris was a dick.
This flash however, was much better.

If Chakra-X had just not released Nazo Unleashed, I'm betting fans wouldn't have been disappointed with this magnificent piece of art. Only the potential was way better than the result. This seemed more like a music video than an actual serial. Maybe that was the intention? If that was the case then the trailer, released 4 years ago was perhaps a bit misleading, no?

You'd have to forgive us then for expecting several "episodes" of what we expected would be a whole series, rather than a one-off viewing experience. We expected huge battles on a planetary scale, magnificent voice acting (and NOT just sound clips from the games and make it sound like they were swearing, I'm looking at YOU Chakra!), and maybe less of a sudden "stop" of an ending. If this animation turned out to be that, I, and everyone else who gave this review a score less than 6, would have given much more praise. Again, it was that damn trailer that put us off. And what put me off giving you a "9".

For what it was in the end, it was fan-fucking-tastic. The 3D was a nice touch for the emeralds, a brilliant soundtrack, and the animation...

Nazo Unleashed had brilliant art, but the animation itself (I'm going by the literal term of "animate") was sometimes too clunky, yet fans were too distracted by the flashing lights and overused super transformations to notice. This on the other hand has better art, for most of the time, and the animation was... aww..... I jizz. It was amazing. Even though some of it was copied off the original anime.

There were a couple of plot holes here and there but seeing as this was by all means a music video, it wasn't a huge issue.

Closing words;
Damn you, trailer! Damn you to hell!

Bless your face,
Peace off.

I love a good Tobuscus reference.

[Mario Brothers - Part V]

Overrated. Yeah I went there

This review is to the series as a whole.

Well... what can I say? From the dramatic death of Luigi in the beginning which wooed us all (especially me) all the way to the suicide of Mario at the end. It leaves me speechless. Wait, no that's a big fat lie. It was terrible, poorly executed, cliched, and overall not very satisfying.

And yes I am well aware of the fact that not ALL movies and series' have happy endings. I should know, I've watched "Children of Earth". But this was not at all the great (or satisfying at the VERY least) conclusion I was expecting it to be.

Now I'd say something about the acting, but that's another thing since it's a sprite movie. VGDC's "Rise Of The Mushroom Kingdom" was (and still is) one of my favorite Mario series', and it was also clever in the aspect that it did not require voice acting for one second(excluding the occasional remarks from the brothers).

Reading text off of the screen for an 8-bit movie is not a very good idea. For the first 2 episodes, maybe. Even some mouth movement in sync with the text (if that makes any logical sense) would've been acceptable, and I wouldn't have ranted on like this.

Now CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT was mixed. As I said before, Luigi's death was heartbreaking (for a sprite movie at least), but then after that everything went sort of...naff.

...as you can probably tell that's NOT the word I was looking for, but nevertheless my point still stands. It was one emo speech after another. YES we're aware that Bowser is gonna attack the Kingdom (not the most ORIGINAL idea, but you still made it work well for most of the time). YES we know that lives are at stake, but you don't need to emphasize it so much!
We're also reminded of Luigi's death too many times it becomes an excuse for Mario to act all depressed and sad, and I didn't mind that. I can closely relate, I've lost relatives when I was a child but I don't spend the rest of my fucking life moaning about it.

We then have this action packed battle that we get to see (AT LAST!!!!!!!!) and I have to say, it was fan-fucking-tastic. Sprite animations were some of the best I've ever seen! But we are reminded that they ARE sprites and no animation or emotion on their faces, and that keeps making me feel unsympathetic towards the Toads. But then, when everything seems bleek, WOO! Peach is finally saved...

...and then she dies. Score 1-0 to "FUCK'S SAKE!". With all the emo atmosphere of the previous episodes though, who COULDN'T see her death coming? Well, I'll give you some credit since I didn't fully expect that the lava would be the way to go, and the clip of her death WAS pretty hardcore and executed quite well.

So the fans have their sad death. And what are we left with in the final 60 seconds? The final emo rant from Mario about loss and other emo crap (again from text which was almost a chore instead of entertainment and had no emotional impact whatsoever), and then...yeah. A suicide. Probably the most unimaginative way to go at the end of a series. And I didn't feel remotely sorry for him. Luigi's death was as far as I could go for sympathy, but this IS a sprite film, so Mario's goofy and pixel-led face made it more humorous and stupid, instead of depressing.

OK before I get too critical of this, I'll just fully round this off.

The Good
-Character Development (Episodes 1/2, and 3 to a certain extent)
-Extra points for Character Development considering it was a sprite film, and not many people can do that well.
-FANTASTIC animations and tweening. Your work with flash&sprites is amazing!
-The entire plot itself was one of the more original we've had, but...

The Bad
-...as a sprite movie, you can only do so much, and the plot didn't tie-in together all too well.
-Too many emotional rants that it eventually became stupid and tiresome.
-One of the more unimaginative endings I've seen in a series (and not just sprite series')
-Payoff from all the hype from previous installments just wasn't there...

The Ugly
-Ha! just kidding lolz (would ya believe it?!)

Overall Score (Episode/Series): 5.6/6.2

Phantasmagoria-crow responds:

I like your review and I don't think it is useless as people have voted. Consider not assuming Mario's death a suicide. Instead think of it as a surrender to the greater forces working against him. Mario didn't jump into the lava, he let it take him over. Also, there's a reason why it says "Game Over" at the end instead of "The End." Who's to say the 'player' doesn't just try again and win the next time. Late response, sorry...

[Ten Commandments]

Fantastic!

My favourite CD06 movie. I hope you will be able to finish making an even better one for this year!

The animation and art was brilliant. Smooth and beautifully drawn.
It was a wonderful take on the famous Bible story with great jokes (first baby being eaten) and executed in a great way, while still not being too offensive for Christians. Of course, I do feel it could've been a bit longer, but given the quality, it was still great.

My only major criticism is the absence of Metallica's "Creeping Death", which was just BEGGING to have been put in here during the "plagues" montage or the credits.

Never mind. Not as if anyone cares for the hardcore music genre's.

Any other words? Eh...w00t I guess.

[Halo3 Fun: a Machinima]

Fail.

The first rule of machinima: Use a capture card. I don't give a crap you put in the description you apologized for not using one. If you don't have one, don't make one! Simple as that. The quality looks like shit, head-bobbing is extremely unnecessary, guns pointing up in Halo machinima looks completely stupid (except for fight scenes of course), and I knew I was just watching gameplay footage of you waggling the analogue sticks all around the fucking place).

Of course, technically machinima IS gameplay footage, but you've got make some sort of cinematic experiance out of it. Just take Red vs Blue or Hard Justice as prime examples.

Keep the camera rested on one player's face, instead of flailing it about all around the fucking place in theatre mode, and you should try and avoid using the third-person view in theater, and and also NOT the first person.

Also, if you think about it, it's also a cut-corners way of making machinima, and if you put that little bit more effort, it will show.

I can't explain everything that you need to do to improve on your crappy machinima making skills, but I'd recommend searching up "DigitalPh33r's guide to halo 3 machinima" on YouTube. Maybe then you'll learn exactly why this is full of fail.

-Noko

PS. And please, don't come coming to me with things like "please stop being so mean if you dont like it dont watch it!".

Well, I might be being a bit mean, but this is what they call "CONSTRUCTIVE criticism" (look it up). This was full of shit, and you need to improve.

Sad but true.

[TANKMEN - The Machinima]

Good overall.

OK, I'm not gonna go into a full-blown review cause thats saved for the actual flash version of "Tankmen". Nice attempt at a Tankmen machinima, but somethings could have been improved

1. I don't know why people like headbobbing in machinima. I can understand WHY people would do it, but it looks silly. When you talk to your friends, do you bob your head like an idiot?
2. Try different cuts for each character. Like one shot on "Steve" for one piece of dialogue, then the next cut on the other character.#
3. Sound quality could have been improved.

I dunno, do a remake of the complete Tankmen story (0.5,1,1.5,2) and it will be awesome. If you don't actually want to, then that's fine though :L, but it WOULD be pretty cool.

[My First Flash Submission]

Good for a first submission, if it was a bit short

I know it took you 5 hours, but hey, alot of great stuff comes from people who work day and night. Like me, but my movies always comes out looking like crap (Windows Vista keeps closing down my flash and not saving it CONSTANTLY), but if you put an extra hour into that, I'm sure you would have had something close to brilliant. Er, although some people might hit the "This movie is stolen" whistle since it is very similar to "The Cliff", so I'd try and be a BIT more careful.

Final Word(s)
Good enough, maybe make a sequel or something without making the finished movie look exactly like the original (by which I mean the actual "The Cliff" movies.

[Sonic: Nazo Unleashed Part 3]

Well...

Ok, I usually find most fanfics a bit stupid, but this movie could actually be classified as "close to brilliant". But that's the problem. However, it seemed to be rather stupid at the same time. For example: Nazo reveals his plans to the heroes which have already turned into their super ultra forms. Ok, first, wouldn't it be clever NOT to reveal his plans like it wouldn't matter (of course you would have to reveal it somehow, just not in a cliche fashion)? And second, a lot of the movie seemed to be one super transformation after the other. Never ending;

Super Mega Hyper Gondamon Sonic: Oh no. "Super Mega Hyper Gondamon Nazo" has turned into: "ULTRA Super Mega Hyper Gondamon Nazo!"
Super Mega Hyper Gondamon Shadow: Don't worry. We'll use the power of plot devices to transform another level.

I apologize, that was a bit TOO dramatic, but I hope you know what I'm trying to get across here. Lovely fight scenes, but some of them were just random "super lasers" which take about 10 seconds to fire after another, the inclusion of Amy and Cream could have been considered just to serve the fans as it does the plot no real good (except for the rings=Massive win part).

I know this review seems mostly negative, but that's just because I'm disappointed at what this finale COULD have been. An awesome epic fight with fists more powerful than Falcon PAWNCH, but it just seemed to be one massive long and boring laser beam montage.

OK, on to the good things, and there are quite a few:
The art was absolutely fantastic. It's amazing how someone like yourself can fit all that in one flash. No frame rate slow downs which is brill, awesome graphical transformations and transitions, decent storyline (even if it was a bit dull in the end), and a couple more cool parts also.

Right, this review is going to attract ALOT of fanboys/girls to my house hoping to kill me, but that can't this reviewer from expressing his opinion. OK fanboys, say I'm gay or an ass-fucker, or whatever (what do you have against gays? It seems to be the most overused comeback the the internetz), but I guess I'm just not that big of a fan than any of you.

Final Word(s):
Disappointing. Sorry, maybe more plain fighting scenes could have done this movie good but all-in-all, when a highly anticipated movie appears not to be worth the wait, you can just feel like life's being a jerk.

Overall:
Story: 6.4/10
Art: 9.3/10
Action: (limited sorry) 7.1/10

Final score: 6.8/10 (rating was rounded to the nearest whole number)

[Super Mario bros Z ep.7 (old series)]

Another successful addition to the series!

The thing that makes this series great, is all the insane violence. So an attempt to add a bit more of a story to this eagerly awaited episode must have been a very big risk to take. The -1 World "legend" wasn't like all other dried out obvious fanfics, which is good, considering this is the SMBZ series.

But it did take up QUITE a bit on file size, which could have been used for more senseless violence BUT, it's your movie, and it was still decent nonetheless. Loved the 8-bit custom sprites, combined with MegaMan music was almost ingenious. But it did seem to last quite short with ALL the characters fighting Mecha. However, you STILL don't cease to amuse me with the overworld map and Luigi's humorous antics :).

The things that didn't impress me QUITE as well, was all the pointless story parts. Such as the Koopa and Goomba getting lost part. I didn't really see the point in that. The humour has seemed to change to appeal to children since the jokes didn't really make me laugh. Except for the Petey Piranha costume.

Violence was good
Humour didn't stand out QUITE as well
Plot twists are always refreshing (especially the starting scene)
Overall, I don't think this was as epic as Ep 6. I mostly saw this episode as an attempt to appeal to a younger audience, but that's just what I think.

Sorry Alvin :(.

[Clock Crew Collab - Light!]

Great messege at the end for that flash.

Great work from all of you guys. Emm... Nothing more to say than keep up da good work!

Sonucais responds:

sweet