MFGG - Mario Fan Games Galaxy

Review Information

Game Reviewed	Collect 'Em All, by Mors
Review Author	Cap'n Coconuts
Created	Jun 28 2014, 4:08 AM

General Commentary and Game Overview

Collect 'Em All is a Mario platformer made by Mors Fangaming. In it, you must search for and grab eight purple coins that have been disguised as generic yellow coins. To help with this task, the background music increases in pitch as you approach a purple coin.

Now how does it perform at that premise? Well, I can't say it's terrible, but I can't say it's spectacular either.

Pros

+ Looks kinda pretty
+ Nice BGM remix

Cons

- Gameplay lacks depth; feels like an engine clone.
- The game is apparently poorly written, using almost all of one of my logical processor cores and suffering from memory leakage which WILL eventually crash the game
- The use of audio in this minigame comp entry feels superficial--the game could be played just about as well without it.
- No HUD indicator showing how many purple coins you have
- Occasionally problematic level design

Impressions

Gameplay 5 / 10	Gameplay isn't much different from any other platformer, which isn't particularly exciting. Indeed, it feels like an engine clone. At you're doing something other than saving Peach for the 9001st time. The variety of enemies is very limited. You've basically got a choice between Goombas, those fish with scuba masks (I forget what they're called), and spikes, some of which are unfairly placed. Speaking of which, let's talk about that unfair placement. In the first room, there's a bit of underground water which you have to swim through. Eventually you will come across a whole wall of advancing fish which is next to undodgeable--kind of strange considering the difficulty in the rest of the room. The second room has spikes in a cramped space and some of the falling ones cannot be dodged. Later in that room you come across invisible spike traps, which I assume must be avoided by trial and error. At the end of the second room you can fall off the right edge of the screen and die. I suppose you wanted me to backtrack all the way back to the beginning, which I am reluctant to do because of the freaking spikes everywhere. The game does not tell you how many purple coins you have in your possession. You seemingly aren't even told if you have them all. Well, I think I might have had them all. I didn't know for sure because the game wouldn't tell me anything. It tells me how many yellow coins I have, sure. But purple coins? Not at all. The game will eventually crash on you. It uses too much CPU for what it is doing and the amount of RAM in use constantly increases, suggesting poorly written code. All in all, the gameplay fails to impress, and the eventual crash only makes things look worse. Some of you might enjoy the game's premise but I'm just not feeling it.
Graphics 8 / 10	The main menu animations are nice eye candy. It doesn't do anything special, but it looks nice. The tileset and background are als nice, but other than that it's hard to think of anything to say. I think you could try using different Mario and enemy sprites, as their color depth doesn't exactly fit with the tileset.
Sound 7 / 10	This competition had to do with the use of audio to enhance gameplay, so this category had better be good. The game uses a remixed audio track which isn't used everywhere, which is nice. Sound effects are borrowed from official games so there's nothing special there. I feel that the theme of this competition was only used as a gimmick. The BGM increases in pitch as you approach a purple coin--but honestly, is this really necessary? Wouldn't any decent player try to collect as many coins as possible, therefore rendering the change in pitch useless? I imagine this is part of the reason why it didn't get many competition votes.
Replay 1 / 10	I don't see any real reason to play this game again. It wasn't clear how to FINISH it the first time, and if on the off chance you know how to finish it, your game may very well crash from bad memory management before you do.

Final Words

Nothing particularly new or interesting. Well, the game crashes on you eventually. That's interesting, I guess.

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Comments

	Syr Jul 18 2014, 10:12 AM
You took the review right about of my mouth haha. I'll second to this.


	Cap'n Coconuts Jul 18 2014, 3:55 PM
If it wasn't for the spikes, the lack of polish, and the memory leak, this would get at least a 6.

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