Weekend of Zeux 2001 Judging Sheets:Exophase

These are my scores. - Exophase

Game #2594, "Big Fast Electric Ballz!"

Graphics - 2.5/5 Very simple, but clean. Little variety.

GamePlay - 2/15 Hmm.. I couldn't figure out how to play it, despite the vague instructions. I gave up quickly. Very confusing.
The start board had horrible control, you had to either switch to speed one to move or mash the keys like crazy, this was VERY frustrating.

Creativity - 5/10 I've never seen anything like it, but I couldn't figure out how it worked either. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it *did* work but my inability to use it hurt this score a bit. Really uncreative title too.

Presentation - 2/15 (sound being 5 of those points) No sound, automatic 0 for that. The menu looked okay, but it was so confusing, plain, and short, and I can't see how it followed the topic. At all. Fortunately there isn't a category for that or else it'd be in even bigger trouble than it is right now.

Completeness - .5/5 Well I couldn't get it to work... seemed to lack any ending, but also lacked a beginning so it pretty much worked out. Menu worked but it was so horribly coded I felt like shooting something.

Overall score- 12/50 (that's an F.)

This was little more than a confusing engine that probably didn't completely work. There was really very little "game" to this and whoever entered it was obviously not very comitted to the WEoZ and probably spent little time on it. If the judge sheet had more robust categories, such as plot and theme, it would have done considerably worse. I was being a bit generous, but it doesn't really matter because I can tell that it will definitely get last place. Now one to something hopefully a bit better...

Game #82896, "Fourth Power"

Graphics - 5/5 Amazing. Simply amazing. Very well done animations. Some of the best seen in MZX, easily.

GamePlay 13/15 Thouroughly fun and entertaining. There were a few bugs, though, that kept some things from being fully appreciated, but nothing fatal. Level design was great, and everything had a polished look. Some areas were a little difficult, but nothing beyond reason. Respawning enemies were a little annoying but they kept me on my toes. There was one irritating but subtle and often overlooked design flaw, however, and that was allowing saving during the boss battle. I entered with 10 health, and it was very difficult winning. Fortunately constantly resaving when I made progress and retrying made me through it (a technique that has saved me in a few MegaMan X games..).

Creativity - 8/10 Well, it's a sidescroller. But I can't resist giving credit to such creatively done robotics to pull it off. The story was creative, and pretty funny too! And nice title.

Presentation - 14.5/15 First, sound. It used sound from other games, including Caverns, but its usage of it was quite clever and funny. The original music was very well done. I did have to take off a .5 though because one of the authors used a MOD they had used in a previos DoZ game, and that's pretty cheap, not to mention a dead giveaway. The other components are an easy 10/10. The story was pretty well done and despite being funny it wasn't too stupid or silly, rather satirical. The cinemetics were austounding, the artwork very well done and one scene, making fun of another popular game, was side-splitting (I won't spoil it.). The end parts were a little cheesy, but the way it had been handled surpassed any other time an MZX game had done something similar to that. Very polished and profesional looking game.

Completeness - 4.5/5 Hey, it actually had a concrete start and ending. ;) It wasn't a breeze, but anyone interested (and it's a very interesting game) will be able to beat it with a little work. A few annoying bugs kept it from recieving a perfect score, but none are fatal; the biggest one (not being able to restart the level) can be worked around by saving at the level select menu.

Overall score - 45/50 (A+. I don't care if it's not > 97% :))

Game #55975, "Komplot"

Graphics - 5/5 I was contemplating giving it a little less for not having char edits as impressive as #82896, but the ANSI graphics were just too good to give any lower.

GamePlay 11/15 This game is a little strange, mechanically. It's fun, and challenging.. the puzzle was interesting. I had a hard time using the mouse to shoot the guys, though, and that really made little sense. People appearing out of nowwhere was a bit.. annoying. The inclusion of difficulty levels was a very good thing. I was a total loser, of course ;)

Creativity - 9/10 It was a shooter, but using the mouse was definitely creative, and a change of pace, if not rather akward. The whole "look" of the game was pretty creative, as was the puzzle.

Presentation - 11.5/15 5/5 on sound, easily. Great music, great sound effects. Now.. for the 6.5/10. That's mainly because of lack of plot and relation to the theme. The game also wasn't very cinematic. It didn't really require these things, as a game it worked fine without, but these are typically expectations of *oZ games (to keep in line with the subject). The author did try at a plot in simple text but it was extremely weak :P Other than that, the game flows well, looks nice, and has an ominous but interesting speed meter in the title screen (it's actually pretty simple, the higher the rating the more difficult, with speed 5 being about a 10. Not sure how he calculated this though.)

Completeness - 5/5 I couldn't notice any bugs. Very full and polished, had a distinct beginning and an end and wasn't lacking anything major that I could tell.

Overall score - 41.5 (I'll give this one an A-, not really based on the score but my own personal taste.)

That's it. If you have any questions or deaththreats send to exophase@earthlink.net or find me on #mzx. Till we DoZ again...