| Game Reviewed | Poochie, by 4 Eyes |
| Review Author | Vitiman |
| Created | May 13 2016, 5:30 PM |
| Pros | Incredible amount of effort for pre-2003 Graphics mesh well enough together Delightfully unique concept Actually pretty engaging! |
| Cons | Engine can be buggy Charge only works half the time, usually causing you to unfairly die |
Gameplay 6 / 10 |
Let's get something clear here: I can excuse using the default platform movement that plagues a lot of older fangames (for those unaware, it's the sticky, poor collision default movement that came with The Game's Factory / Multimedia Fusion - often considered a "staple" of older fangames, for better or worse). I can totally forgive it! But what I can't forgive is how badly programmed the charge is. It just *doesn't work* sometimes. Just outright refuses to work. Sometimes it does work while standing, sometimes it straight up won't. Sometimes it'll go the full distance, sometimes it'll barely move you forward. It's very finicky and usually results in you getting hit even when you KNOW you hit the stupid button and did the thing and it's not even your fault! With that out of the way, how about the good? This game surprised me with how well it was made otherwise: there was a really nice tutorial screen right before the first level that did a really cool inversion dissolve effect (incredible considering this hails from an era of absolutely NO shader effects in fangames, period - meaning it was made manually and cleverly set up as such). Aside from how cool it looked, it also served a useful function: to tell you what everything on screen was all about, and give you a quick rundown of the controls too. All in all: highly useful. The game also featured a brief cutscene before anything started, presumably setting up a story of some sort, but I wasn't too invested in it - obviously, the last thing that should matter is the story, but I thought it was worth mentioning regardless. Some of the programming in this game is top notch. For instance, there's functional, and relatively forgiving, KNOCKBACK! Yes, knock back in an old Klik game! Usually that would spell absolute disaster: if programmed badly enough, it can make a mediocre game become downright unplayable. But here, surprisingly, it actually never caused any deaths! Moving on to enemy movement, while the para-troopas and skeleton birds are basic path movements, the monkeys actually seem to have rather creative AI programmed that makes them move dynamically - again, this is absolutely MIND BLOWING for a game made in The Games Factory of all things. Tons of effort was put into this. Supplementary things also include overlaying clouds so that you're standing behind them, as well as leaves that fall off and disappear when you collide with them. This genuinely impressed me! Sometimes it's the little things, y'know? |
Graphics 7 / 10 |
Not the greatest, but they service the game well. There's some pretty noticeable cutoff tiling, but it really isn't that big a deal. Aside from that, the player and enemy sprites seem to be taken from a slightly Sai2X'd version of the game and ripped via screencapping. It looks surprisingly nice! I mean, I normally wouldn't approve of doing that but here it has a weird charm to it, I dunno. I like it! |
Sound 4 / 10 |
Typical stuff. Typical sounds, typical MIDI. Nothing special, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Etc. |
Replay 5 / 10 |
Unfortunately, the game's buggy nature with very specific things as well as it being scrapped leave little reason to play this again. It's a very well made thing, but it edges more towards "fun curiosity" than "fun game". I'd at least recommend trying it once, though! If only to see what fangaming could be like nowadays... perhaps with more well done charging, though! |
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One of the most creative fangames from an era filled with bizarre creativity and uniqueness. Surprisingly well made, albeit flawed quite severely, Poochie is a game that perhaps should have seen the light of day in a complete form, but alas - it was scrapped. |
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