shrugo's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Menu Screen]

Wait you wrote this in a Game Jam?
I am pretty impressed. At first I thought it was interesting, but not necessarily anything special, but having written this in a Game Jam implies a decent time crunch which is pretty impressive.

[Vectorverse (Song 1)]

This is interesting. Some parts have a very NES Nobuo Uematsu sound while others have a very Takashi Tateishi sound. And still others have a Robert Fripp type sound (around the 1:33 it starts).
I like hearing so much variation in a song, especially in a loop which potentially goes on forever. It keeps the listener interested.
The one complaint I have is the way this song loops. It almost sounds like ends before starting over. If the end of the loop were more seamlessly connected to the beginning of the song, this song would be almost perfect!

WarmanSteve responds:

Yeah, the person who asked me to write this wanted an "intense" NES sounding tune, but I have a hard time hiding other influences some times (I LOVE KING CRIMSON). And I'll admit that the ending was kinda a cop out, but I couldn't think of a way to cleanly loop it at the time. Thanks for the review!

[Retribution ver.2 (short game]

These are pretty good. I mean I would definitely like to hear them in a full song format, especially in a longer loop with more variation.
I do the same thing too. I've got dozens of short loops like this just as ideas that I might use later in a song. So keep it up.

[New World (Strings x Harp)]

It was pretty good, except the very basic chord-progression bored me a bit. It's just such an overused progression that it's hard to make the piece stand out against giants. Which is a shame since overall the piece is wonderfully constructed! So good work for what it is, but again, perhaps a different or more varied chord progression or even some changes in chord progression would have been nice.

[[s] John. Rise Up.]

Very nice!
I like what you did with the Doctor melody. It was kind of different, even though the notes were the same. The instrument choice there was pretty smart.
Though around the one minute mark it made it sound a little weaker, but everywhere else it was fine.

It really helps that this is one of my favorite songs from the entire Homestuck discography, so yeah.

Keep up the good work.

[SonicR Work It Out Remake]

I still have this game for my Sega Saturn!
Great game, and nice job with this remix.

[Kim - Experiment #8]

It's pretty great. I love you sense of melody. The song sounds a tad slow though. Like maybe up by 10-15 bpm and it would be about right. In addition the drums might sound nice if they were a little faster, but with a bpm increase that might be solved. Keep up the good work.

Kimken responds:

Yeah! I tried that on the midi file and you were right. It did sound better with more BPM! Perhaps i will re-record and fix the whole song later, since i got my headphones fixed :)

Thanks for the review!
-Kim

[Near yet Far Away]

This is pretty chill. Nice background music.

[8-bit Freeride]

The first 10 seconds or so reminded me of that Duck Tales song.
It's nice to hear something upbeat and chipper for once. So much music, especially in games, seems to lack something that is genuinely happy (not just calm or relaxed).
I suppose that's because there aren't too many situations in a game where it seems appropriate... Well Sonic did it good enough, so I dunno.
But yeah this is a pretty cool song. I approve!

[Lavender Town (Shift7Remix)]

Pretty interesting what you've got there.
If you haven't already, you should check out the Lavender Town song in Gold/Silver/Crystal, which essentially does the same thing you were attempting.

AmpersandKiD responds:

Thanks! You're right, I forgot they changed it in G/S/C.