Zephyrxz's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Madness: Project Nexus (Classic)]

Amazing game overall, Project Nexus makes the original Madness Interactive look like Tetris by comparison.
Positive things:
The TAC bar system surprisingly fits in perfectly towards the main Madness series characters rarely being hit by enemy fire.
The story mode gives some plot to the Madness series, so appropriately titled.
Arena mode is very fun and will last at least several hours, and the nature of the game itself will have you coming back over and over again compared to to a lot of other shooter flash games that you complete the story mode and the other portions are so thinly designed that you stop playing and forget them almost immediately.
The violence and gun selection is very large, there are a lot of animations for characters to die, ranging from realistic deaths such as a Glock's 10mm bullet going through a skull to have them simply fall over, to hilariously ridiculous deaths such as a Glock making a grunt's head completely explode off their body and a sword somehow putting zombie bite marks into the body.
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Negative things:
Bullet time doesn't really fit in with the game and most of the time I ignore it.
While I said the TAC bar is a good and logical introduction of the series' invincibility luck, it does get somewhat aggravating when an enemy easily disposed off in the movies with a single bullet from a pistol aimed with one hand from somewhat long distances will take a clip or more from rifles at point blank range to hit.
The large enemies are somewhat boring, the Mag agent you fight at episode 1 is so easy to kill, he's not even well armed, just a giant Walther PPK, the red and black metallic golem was way harder to kill.
The final boss is so easy as well, you just spam the ranged magic bar attack until he dies.
The flow of the game is so uneven because of this one despised thing;
LAG
OHMAHGODTHELAG
I'm aware that not every game can run smoothly, but even with all the graphics at the lowest settings, the lag is still immense, when the enemies do the charge attack where you have to dodge before the red circle closes in you can't dodge in time because the controls become SO DELAYED.
Going on this, you also can't dash with lag, which is a necessary thing to do, when I fight golems in arena mode I can't stun them to knock their helmets off and I have to die so many times because the controls even with a small amount of enemies onscreen are delayed by a minimum of 5-10 seconds.
The AI is plain stupid, don't even get me started on the squad you try to build. Even when there's 5-20 enemies in front of 6 squadmates, they will not fire. AT ALL. There's even times where they walk to the corner and stay there in a walking animation and not do anything AT ALL.
The enemies will try going back through the door they just walked out of and stay there locked in a walking animation and not do anything at all.
Did I mention the lag? The fucking lag, THE FUCKING LAG.
Why do the enemies' bodies not disappear after they die? It lags the screen more than having 20 Youtube videos playing at the same time in HD, and yes I tried this.
There should be an option for the bodies to disappear, apparently the game engine is not meant for more than say 10-13 characters onscreen, because the speed is sporadic as hell because one second everything is as slow as when you activate bullet time, the next you can't dodge the red circle of an enemy and die because the speed is unpredictable.
I remind you this is on the very lowest graphic settings and nothing but the game playing.
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Overall, the game is amazing and perfect for Madness, it is just that Loser, Asshole Go away that I really want gone.

Krinkels responds:

Thanks for the thorough review. I feel your pain on the lag. Believe me, in discussing how we're gonna make a sequel to this game, we've talked many options with gameplay and graphical slowdown being the most important questions.

This game also started as more of a simulation and less of a game when we first were playing with the engine during creation. Trying to balance it by making the beginning fair but progressively more difficult as you advance was a challenge. For the sequel, this game has definitely taught us everything we need to know.

Glad you enjoyed it overall, meng