Review Information
Game Reviewed Hello Fangaming Collection, by Hello
Review Author RaymanFan1995
Created Sep 1 2015, 5:56 AM

General Commentary and Game Overview
Well, it's been a while since I did a review, and I also feel that 2.9 (the current average score at the time of writing this review) is a bit much for this game, so I figured I'd try to lower it to a more reasonable score.

Seeing as this is an anniversary title of Hello's game making over the years, why don't I start this review with a little history lesson? This game is basically the result of a completely ignorant and egotistical man flipping the bird to everyone who tried to help him and make him better. If you're aware of a YouTuber who goes by the name of DSP (DarkSydePhil), this may sound familiar to you. Rather than simply keeping an open mind, listening to peoples' feedback, growing as a developer by putting those critiques to use, and admitting when he's wrong, Hello decides to completely ignore everyone who doesn't say that his games are great, and, not surprisingly, it ends up biting him in the ass, and quite rightfully so. His ignorance often results in his games receiving low-to-mid-level scores, negative reviews, negative comments, and he himself receives lower and lower amounts of respect from his peers.

But what makes his games so terrible, you might ask? Well, while the physics are, at best, okay, the level design is usually entirely the opposite. "Super Mario Dynamo", a game released November of last year, was famous among the MFGG community for having a horrible difficulty curve. The first stage alone forced the player to overcome ridiculous obstacles such as spaced-out note blocks (blocks you bounce on, mind you) under a low ceiling over a bottomless pit. More often than not, players would fail this section and fall into the pit, making the stage practically impossible to complete. There was also a section where you were required to do some wall-jumping over another bottomless pit, with many Piranha Plants and Venus Fire Traps blocking and attacking you. Again, most players died from Piranha Plant bites, Venus Fireballs, and--surprise, surprise--falling into the bottomless pit.

If a Hello game's level design isn't bad in terms of unreasonable difficulty, it's most likely blandness; Hello uses nothing but SMB3-esque art assets in all of his games. Now, I for one, am a HUGE fan of Super Mario Bros. 3; in fact, it's my favorite Mario game of all time. But after seeing the exact same art assets used over and over, it gets a little annoying. Even though Hello uses a mix of both graphics taken directly from the game and graphics other people have made in the game's art style, he can't seem to make the graphics look interesting for the life of him. The more of his games you play, the more visually bored you're probably going to be.

Well, I think this history lesson has gone on long enough. I guess I should probably start talking about this game in particular now. That's the whole point to this review, right? *deep sigh* Well....let's-a-go...
 
Pros You'd think after ten years of game development, there'd be at least one pro in this game. Sadly, that's far from the case. While the game isn't entirely flawed, the few good things about this game don't make up for the many bad things. I guess I could say that, like all his games, the player physics aren't horrible, but there's a ton of room for improvement. And the music selection is fine.
 
Cons -Horribly-implemented and unnecessary lighting and filtering effects that causes eye sores
-Bad level design that comes back from other horribly-designed games with no improvement whatsoever
-Enemy placement that can be hard to avoid
 
Impressions
Gameplay
1 / 10
Like I said in the "Pros" section, the game's physics aren't horrible, but they could be a lot better. But even if they were solid, the bad level design and enemy placement do not make up for it. And each level in this game is just a level ripped right from a past Hello game. If Hello's past games were better designed, this wouldn't be much of a problem.
 
Graphics
1 / 10
Like all of Hello's games, this game, once again, uses nothing but SMB3 and SMB3-esque art assets. While that wouldn't normally be a problem, the fact that these graphics are overused by Hello (and even the fangaming community in general) makes the game's visuals worthy of an eye roll. There's not much that's visually interesting about this game, though there is a second reason to this: the horrible filtering. In "Super Mario Eclipse" and "Super Mario Dynamo" (the two games that were released directly before this one), Hello implemented lighting effects which caused eye strain. It wasn't much, mind you, but similar to the Virtual Boy, your vision would get messed up the longer you played the game. Unsurprisingly, people complained about this issue, and unsurprisingly, Hello didn't listen. In fact, not only are these strenuous lighting effects back in full force, but now, most of the stages seem to have horrible contrast and saturation filtering. This, of course, causes the eyes to strain even faster than the damned lighting effects.
 
Sound
3 / 10
The music selection is fine, and even pretty catchy at points. But the vanilla sound effects and overused Mario voice clips (that are used in pretty much every Hello clone, by the way) are pretty irritating. Since these sound effects and voice clips are overused, they really bring down this section's score.
 
Replay
1 / 10
I wouldn't touch this game again with a 10-foot pole. And seeing as this game is just a collection of levels used in past Hello titles, that means I wouldn't touch any of those games again with a 10-foot pole, either.
 
Final Words
1 / 10
The few "good" things about this game (which aren't necessarily spectacular to begin with) do not make up for the many bad things. I expected yet another Hello Clone from the master of Hello Clones himself, but I never expected he'd stoop so low to the point where he'd literally copy and paste bad level designs from past games, AND make the visuals even worse while he was at it. Hello, if you ever wake up from your fantasy world and come back to reality by actually listening to peoples' advice and making an actually GOOD game, PLEASE have someone let me know. I highly doubt it'll ever happen, but if it does, I'll be impressed.

Oh, and to those reading this who think I'm being rude, you probably haven't read the entire review and therefore have no right to point fingers at me. And if you have read the entire review, you clearly haven't been around as long as I and other critics have.

Comments
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Cruise Elroy
Sep 1 2015, 11:31 PM
I would normally say you need a better reason to give such a low score to bring the game's average rating to your own desire, but at least it's on someone who would be more obviously inclined to this kind of treatment.
 
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AsteriskX
Sep 20 2015, 7:41 AM
You make some of my favorite reviews on the site. (including the review for the abomination of a game
Super Mario: Attack Of The Fangamers)
This wasn't exactly your best review, but you covered certain aspects that really stood out, so nice review. ;) Keep it up, Somari.
 
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