My review of Volleyball(could they have picked a more generic name?):
Oh. No.
This game is HORRIBLe##e!#R!!!1!qfdgczxcv...sorry about that, I'm having spasms from the awfulness that I just went through. This game makes you wonder how bad bad design can get.
First of all, it boasts that it's a remake of the slightly more originally-named Arcade Volleyball for DOS(which, contrary to the "VGA" in the blurb, is actually in four-color CGA and looks hideous). That wouldn't be so bad - after all, there have been plenty of awesome remakes in the past(look at Ovine by Design, for example) - but the source was pretty bad to begin with. They physics and controls have been cleaned up, but they're still subpar, and the AI still won't let anything past. It also has no option for mouse control - something that I usually frown on, but is absolutely necessary in this type of game. Even the original had that!
The graphics are well-done - if you can ignore the late-90s screen resolution, jerky animation, and badly-done "scenery". It's like a retarded first-grader was somehow given the ability to use Photoshop, and they decided to draw everything that popped into their little shriveled brain. The graphics(or, rather, the character images) are a sterling example of wasted talent.
The sound is better left unmentioned - but this is a review, and I must soldier on. The music can best be described as the fitful voices in our hypothetical retard's brain, digitally recorded and set to a weak drum rhythm. It drowns out the surprisingly tolerable sound effects completely. There, I said it, now I'm DONE.
The blurb says that the theme is "based on Robotoys design", but that's a horrible insult to Robotoys(a quick Google search revealed a pretty cool site that sells robot kits and anime videos). What it really is is the original character designs(which looked like large-nosed, short-legged Pac-Men), redrawn by that retard(who got them mixed up with punks, skaters, and clowns), and superimposed on random, incoherent backgrounds. They also play "volleyball" with a beach ball. The color schemes are horribly garish, and only add to the general optical assault.
You don't even have to play this game to know that it's awful. Let's count the design errors in the main menu:
1. The title is in the upper-right corner. Are the developers Arabs or something?
2. The font used is hideous. The letters are cluttered with unnecessary lines and squiggles, and are hard to read at first glance.
3. The option to make a character player- or computer-controlled is toggled by clicking one letter in each choice, which took me ages to figure out Why not have something more logical, like being able to click the whole word - or, better yet, a BUTTON?.
4. To show the "Help" screen(which doesn't give any helpful information like key controls or where the developers can be found and killed), the player must hold down the "Help" button. If they click once, like a rational person, it appears for about a tenth of a second.
Bad show, Fly Games, bad show.
At least it works on Vista. Now, if they could just get those physics and player movements right...
Overall, I give Volleyball a score of three and two thirds out of ten(three for gameplay, six for graphics, three for sound, two for theme, two for presentation, and six for finish). There is absolutely NO reason to play this horrible excuse for a "game", and, even if it had better execution, the gameplay is just boring. What a waste.
Small side notes:
1. The graphics, sounds, music, and every other bit of data are in seperate folders - so it isn't too much trouble to swap them out for nicer things, like pictures of Hillary Clinton's head and Mariah Carey songs.
2. One could theoretically set the computer AI to Hard, make both characters computer-controlled, and have them play forever without scoring a single point.
3. It says "Game Over" at the end of every match, regardless of whether or not the player actually loses.
4. This game is made by Alawar. Yes, that Alawar. "Fly Games" is a fruitless Google query, but the "MediaResearchGroup" in the menu screen is actually a Russian branch of the well-known casual game studio.
Rant's over.
