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You guys really need some sort of general Cii discussion board...
Anyway, be warned, the following review is harsh. I hate writing harsh reviews, but I felt it was called for. There's is a lot that needs to be improved on. If any of the creators are particularly sensitive about their work, I recommend they stop reading now. If you continue, do not flame me, or ban me over this.
For those of you with short attention spans, scroll to the bottom.
First impression:
Well, I started up the game, and immediately noticed the game maker icon and loading screen. Definitely something you need to change at some point; all of the more professional GM apps avoid making it obvious that they were made in GM. Minor issue though, not a big deal. I open the game, and I'm greeted by an aesthetically challenged plain, pixelated text logo with what sounds like loading music in the background. Highly lackluster, and poorly designed, this is something you should change, and soon. Now we come to the big point of the system, the menu.
The menu:
So it's a gray background with the Cii "logo" drawn, tiled, diagonally. To be honest, it's bland and ugly. It can (thankfully) be changed, however, this is the first thing the user will see, and it looks lousy and unpolished. The icon for the different channels looks very tacky; mostly plain text and rainbow, ugh... Moving right along, for whatever reason, I chose to try out paint first.
Paint:
I was not impressed. The user interface was very poor; the buttons were merely gray rounded rectangles, and the text was, once again, that ugly pixelated font. After drawing a squiggly thing, I went to switch colors. The paint program uses the default windows color switcher every time, which is a bad move. Sure, as an option for say, custom colors, but for everything? This game really needs some sort of pallet. Anyway, when I was satisfied with my squiggle, I decided to reset, and was greeted by something awful; the default GM dialogue box. Granted, it had a custom background, but it was still quite obviously just a show_question() box. Bad stuff there, really unprofessional.
The complication:
Anyway, let's go back and... Uh oh... How do you close this thing? There's no exit button? Aww, that stinks, well I don't wanna exit the whole application just yet, but I suppose I have no choice... So I pressed Esc, and guess what, nothing happened! As a matter of fact, I pushed every button on my keyboard, and eventually had to end the process in Task Manager. That's really, really, bad. Very user un-friendly. I don't even know why the creators would do this, as you have to turn OFF setting Esc to "game_end();".
The shop channel:
"Oh goody, maybe I can "download" an edited pong or 1945 example..." Or at least that's what I was expecting at this point. So I click it, and I'm greeted by an ugly, oval shaped gradient... This desperately needs a new background, but I suppose that's the case for every graphic on here. We have the Wii's actual shop channel music here too... Copyright infringement is bad, mmkay? So let's see what's actually on here. "Target Shooting," "Brick Break," "Super Stack?" These all sound like games that were thrown together in about ten minutes. After playing one, I find that that's actually pretty accurate. None of these games are any good, or any fun for that matter, they're simply there to accumulate Cii points, which can only be spent on buying more unfun and dull games, which are also only there for the accumulation of Cii points. (A vicious cycle, no?) At the very least, I was able to exit this channel without the task manager.
Internet channel:
I was expecting a tinyweb browser window and some more MS Paint navigation buttons, but I suppose I was being too hopeful. A link to google? Are you serious?
Settings:
Woohoo, I can change my background to one of three amazing choices. There's the Game Maker background ripoff with the Cii logo, an eye burning gradient, or a black one with some curvy lines. In fact, the last one is the only one I would actually use; it's passable.
IN SHORT:
The Cii needs a lot of work. It's essentially only a menu right now; since that's all that's been worked on, it should look great, but it doesn't. It's buggy, dull, and unprofessional. The games aren't fun, and the whole app feels like there was not a lot of work that went into it. Everything about the game screams "first GM game without copying an example," and that isn't good.
I'd be willing to lend a hand polishing it up if anyone's interested.
Anyway, be warned, the following review is harsh. I hate writing harsh reviews, but I felt it was called for. There's is a lot that needs to be improved on. If any of the creators are particularly sensitive about their work, I recommend they stop reading now. If you continue, do not flame me, or ban me over this.
For those of you with short attention spans, scroll to the bottom.
First impression:
Well, I started up the game, and immediately noticed the game maker icon and loading screen. Definitely something you need to change at some point; all of the more professional GM apps avoid making it obvious that they were made in GM. Minor issue though, not a big deal. I open the game, and I'm greeted by an aesthetically challenged plain, pixelated text logo with what sounds like loading music in the background. Highly lackluster, and poorly designed, this is something you should change, and soon. Now we come to the big point of the system, the menu.
The menu:
So it's a gray background with the Cii "logo" drawn, tiled, diagonally. To be honest, it's bland and ugly. It can (thankfully) be changed, however, this is the first thing the user will see, and it looks lousy and unpolished. The icon for the different channels looks very tacky; mostly plain text and rainbow, ugh... Moving right along, for whatever reason, I chose to try out paint first.
Paint:
I was not impressed. The user interface was very poor; the buttons were merely gray rounded rectangles, and the text was, once again, that ugly pixelated font. After drawing a squiggly thing, I went to switch colors. The paint program uses the default windows color switcher every time, which is a bad move. Sure, as an option for say, custom colors, but for everything? This game really needs some sort of pallet. Anyway, when I was satisfied with my squiggle, I decided to reset, and was greeted by something awful; the default GM dialogue box. Granted, it had a custom background, but it was still quite obviously just a show_question() box. Bad stuff there, really unprofessional.
The complication:
Anyway, let's go back and... Uh oh... How do you close this thing? There's no exit button? Aww, that stinks, well I don't wanna exit the whole application just yet, but I suppose I have no choice... So I pressed Esc, and guess what, nothing happened! As a matter of fact, I pushed every button on my keyboard, and eventually had to end the process in Task Manager. That's really, really, bad. Very user un-friendly. I don't even know why the creators would do this, as you have to turn OFF setting Esc to "game_end();".
The shop channel:
"Oh goody, maybe I can "download" an edited pong or 1945 example..." Or at least that's what I was expecting at this point. So I click it, and I'm greeted by an ugly, oval shaped gradient... This desperately needs a new background, but I suppose that's the case for every graphic on here. We have the Wii's actual shop channel music here too... Copyright infringement is bad, mmkay? So let's see what's actually on here. "Target Shooting," "Brick Break," "Super Stack?" These all sound like games that were thrown together in about ten minutes. After playing one, I find that that's actually pretty accurate. None of these games are any good, or any fun for that matter, they're simply there to accumulate Cii points, which can only be spent on buying more unfun and dull games, which are also only there for the accumulation of Cii points. (A vicious cycle, no?) At the very least, I was able to exit this channel without the task manager.
Internet channel:
I was expecting a tinyweb browser window and some more MS Paint navigation buttons, but I suppose I was being too hopeful. A link to google? Are you serious?
Settings:
Woohoo, I can change my background to one of three amazing choices. There's the Game Maker background ripoff with the Cii logo, an eye burning gradient, or a black one with some curvy lines. In fact, the last one is the only one I would actually use; it's passable.
IN SHORT:
The Cii needs a lot of work. It's essentially only a menu right now; since that's all that's been worked on, it should look great, but it doesn't. It's buggy, dull, and unprofessional. The games aren't fun, and the whole app feels like there was not a lot of work that went into it. Everything about the game screams "first GM game without copying an example," and that isn't good.
I'd be willing to lend a hand polishing it up if anyone's interested.
