Delicious FruitElCochran90's Profile
Send a PMJoined on: Aug 25, 2018
Bio:
About time I updated this bio.
Name: Edgar Cochran
Country: Mexico
Currently living in: Mexico City
-God's servant and one of his blessed sons (John 1:12; John 3:16).
-Lover of the entire animal and plant creation.
-Film lover and reviewer for Letterboxd.com (https://letterboxd.com/elcochran90).
-Adjunct professor and personal tutor of Statistical Inference, Business Forecasting, Marketing Research and Portfolio Theory.
Fangaming experience began in August 2018, so only modest achievements here. However, I'll describe some relevant FAQs here made to me during my stay here since 2018:
Q: Are videogames art?
A: Yes
Q: Are fangames videogames?
A: Yes
Q: Why are your reviews long and unconventional?
A: I am a film reviewer; in a way, I sort of unconsciously dragged my style of film reviewing to the world of fangames. I often involve personal experiences in my writing. Expect that structure; I'm not planning to change it.
Q: How are you rating games? Do you compare fangames as normal games that your ratings are lower than all other people ratings or are you just a critical person?
A: My ratings are not lower than people's ratings all of the time regarding fangames, but they are most of the time. However, this is not my intention. I am rating them as normal games, as in, I don't have a different spectrum for rating "normal", "official" games than fangames. They are in the same scale, because they are all videogames. I don't like to think myself as a critical person; ratings are just subjective numbers. However, I have realized that I rate games more harshly than I rate films/short films, which I do more often.
Q: What are your favorite fangames?
A: I have not played enough fangames to make a comprehensive and representative list, but this can be answered by going to my Favorites list. Anything getting 6.7 or higher will be considered immediately as a favorite.
I've submitted:
382 Ratings!
382 Reviews!
792 Screenshots!
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382 Games
382 Reviews
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the Neptune
For: I wanna be the Neptune
Atrocious. I will briefly say why later but I must highlight something first.
I normally give the rating of the easier difficulty in all of my entries and then specify the difficulty of a harder mode in the review. Nevertheless, that is not the story here. You first walk into the game, and encounter not only astoundingly easy needle (consider a difficulty of 15 until you clear it), but the most bizarre and nonsensical level design ever. There are "skips", but then there are paths that you can take that have absolutely no danger. Why? Why is there a gate in front of me that I can easily jump over it? This is acid.
Then you clear the game with, most probably, 5 deaths or less, and you scratch your head, because it took you 3 minutes.
Well, this is not the game.
Extra is NOT unlocked by making the game on Nonono mode (aka Impossible). It is unlocked by going into the walls of the clear screen, particularly the right wall, climbing up to the text and entering the "G". Surprise! You stumble upon the same screens, but buffed; it turns out the game wasted your time with a prototype of what was actually the true game: TAS jumps, planes, corners, diamonds, diagonals and many 16-pixel gap drops. The most generic way to make a game harder has this fangame as a textbook example. The design still remains bad, although a wee bit more interesting. This is not saying much at all, since the game is bad by essence. Music is ok-ish and doesn't suit the mood at all, the background, although colorful, looks poorly designed and it actually resets(!), the bottom of the screen is black, blocking your view of The Kid's shoes to calculate your align and the tileset design cannot be seen sometimes because of the brightest spots of the animated background. Needle and visual design are a real pain.
Also, in this new section, the curve is such a mess that can barely be described, and save placement is endlessly head-scratching. The most notorious screen is the one I uploaded: no saves. The next screen after that (or two after that, can't recall and I just barely played the game lol) makes you go through to corners in succession. You hit a save. Then you make a diagonal and there's a save. My jaw dropped. What was world thinking?
Not recommended unless you're an incurable completist like me. I have no remedy, but even the fangames I rate this low, I somewhat enjoy playing them. I like fangames in general, so it's all on me.
I normally give the rating of the easier difficulty in all of my entries and then specify the difficulty of a harder mode in the review. Nevertheless, that is not the story here. You first walk into the game, and encounter not only astoundingly easy needle (consider a difficulty of 15 until you clear it), but the most bizarre and nonsensical level design ever. There are "skips", but then there are paths that you can take that have absolutely no danger. Why? Why is there a gate in front of me that I can easily jump over it? This is acid.
Then you clear the game with, most probably, 5 deaths or less, and you scratch your head, because it took you 3 minutes.
Well, this is not the game.
Extra is NOT unlocked by making the game on Nonono mode (aka Impossible). It is unlocked by going into the walls of the clear screen, particularly the right wall, climbing up to the text and entering the "G". Surprise! You stumble upon the same screens, but buffed; it turns out the game wasted your time with a prototype of what was actually the true game: TAS jumps, planes, corners, diamonds, diagonals and many 16-pixel gap drops. The most generic way to make a game harder has this fangame as a textbook example. The design still remains bad, although a wee bit more interesting. This is not saying much at all, since the game is bad by essence. Music is ok-ish and doesn't suit the mood at all, the background, although colorful, looks poorly designed and it actually resets(!), the bottom of the screen is black, blocking your view of The Kid's shoes to calculate your align and the tileset design cannot be seen sometimes because of the brightest spots of the animated background. Needle and visual design are a real pain.
Also, in this new section, the curve is such a mess that can barely be described, and save placement is endlessly head-scratching. The most notorious screen is the one I uploaded: no saves. The next screen after that (or two after that, can't recall and I just barely played the game lol) makes you go through to corners in succession. You hit a save. Then you make a diagonal and there's a save. My jaw dropped. What was world thinking?
Not recommended unless you're an incurable completist like me. I have no remedy, but even the fangames I rate this low, I somewhat enjoy playing them. I like fangames in general, so it's all on me.
Tagged as: Needle
Solar_system_series
[1] Like
Rating: 1.7 17
Difficulty: 60 60
Aug 8, 2019
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the Uranus
For: I wanna be the Uranus
One of the worst entries not only in the """series""", but in the more popular games of needle overall. Some jumps are ok, the rest are bad. Design is very lazy and it is very short. It really isn't worth playing, I'm sad to say, because the concept of a series of the planets of our neighborhood really excited me since the beginning. There have been a couple of decent games, however. Opt for them instead unless you want to kill time with fairly simple needle and hear an interesting track that I'm totally not downloading right now (I am).
[1] Like
Rating: 2.1 21
Difficulty: 45 45
Aug 7, 2019
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the Saturn
For: I wanna be the Saturn
A not so long and unfortunately disappointing entry in the series without the visual charm of Venus or its length. The game is full of questionable and exceedingly repetitive jumps culminating in a chase sequence that sort of redeems the game, but is also itself ruined by a very precise jump in the middle (I am even forgiving there is a TAS jump right before it simply because the game does give you the best align for it). It's too short to be enjoyed, the visuals are too ugly to enjoy the background (which is actually nice now that I REFLECT on it after finishing the game) and jumps are nothing special: just buffs for making the game "longer". There is literally a screen with four identical jumps in succession involving horizontal gates (please someone PM me for telling me the name of the jump where there are two sideways gates looking at each other enclosed by blocks, and you must get past them with small jumps).
Not recommended. There are better games in this ""series"". Good music tho.
Not recommended. There are better games in this ""series"". Good music tho.
Tagged as: Needle
Solar_system_series
[0] Likes
Rating: 2.9 29
Difficulty: 60 60
Aug 7, 2019
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the Mars
For: I wanna be the Mars
Jesuschrist! To begin with, why didn't this community warn me of this being an absolutely tough needle challenge? Seriously, two screens in particular gave me more than 1,000 deaths alone and three screens exactly gave me more trouble than the SECOND NEEDLE SCREEN OF I WANNA BE THE CONTRARY. 61 in difficulty prior to my rating? Get out of here.
So far, this is my second highest rated game in the Solar System ""series"" for two main reasons: it is consistently inventive with jump choices and the visual design is completely appropriate. Venus did well with the visuals, and so did this game for feeling "in another planet". The game consists in two stages. Stage 1 has the least interesting level design, but it is more pleasant aesthetically and the best tileset and background effects. It also includes an autoscroller "chase" sequence that, imo, should have been included at the end of the game for a better sense of closure; a climax, if you wish.
Stage 2 has horrendous visuals (again, why do people keep grabbing the brown standard ground tileset of IWBTG and make it transparent and of another color?) and a particular obsession with placing platforms beneath horizontal needles to refresh your double-jump ability and placing the hardest jumps right at the end of the screens. However, level design is more interesting despite the platforms obsession. It has unusual jumps, some of them overly precise for comfort, and each next screen is quite unpredictable, just like Stage 1. Again, the last platforming screen of this stage doesn't "feel" like the last one until you realized you just finished the game. The sequence I highlighted above should have been placed for ending this stage.
Corrections? I do have suggestions. First, I know the version 1.1 was buffed, and the Read Me reads "minor level changes". I just watched a YouTube clear of this and the minor buffs make a whole lot of difference, especially in the first screen of Stage 2 (SPECIFICALLY the last jump before the warp), which was hell itself (felt like Needle Satan in terms of cruelty). They were a detriment to the game. But I will accept the possibil... err.. the fact that I do suck at needle. The rest of the corrections are spoiler-related. After finishing Stage 2, the tileset changes to the original one again, but with a more pleasant color and effects. This design for Stage 2 would have been beautiful. Finally, they implemented a low-gravity gimmick towards the ending. "Awesome", I said. "How will Stage 3 be with this? It should be exciting?" It turns out it doesn't exist. It was only a tease.
Music is nice, design is nice, difficulty is brutal at parts and the overall difficulty curve is a post-apocalyptic mess. It feels like several people did their homework separately without knowing who did what and how, and one guy just put everything together in a questionable order.
Despite this, I recommend the game. Be warned that the average difficulty, at least for me, does not fully reflect on the complexity of the jumps. They are well made, but buffs did harm the game when they were evident and overtly repetitive.
So far, this is my second highest rated game in the Solar System ""series"" for two main reasons: it is consistently inventive with jump choices and the visual design is completely appropriate. Venus did well with the visuals, and so did this game for feeling "in another planet". The game consists in two stages. Stage 1 has the least interesting level design, but it is more pleasant aesthetically and the best tileset and background effects. It also includes an autoscroller "chase" sequence that, imo, should have been included at the end of the game for a better sense of closure; a climax, if you wish.
Stage 2 has horrendous visuals (again, why do people keep grabbing the brown standard ground tileset of IWBTG and make it transparent and of another color?) and a particular obsession with placing platforms beneath horizontal needles to refresh your double-jump ability and placing the hardest jumps right at the end of the screens. However, level design is more interesting despite the platforms obsession. It has unusual jumps, some of them overly precise for comfort, and each next screen is quite unpredictable, just like Stage 1. Again, the last platforming screen of this stage doesn't "feel" like the last one until you realized you just finished the game. The sequence I highlighted above should have been placed for ending this stage.
Corrections? I do have suggestions. First, I know the version 1.1 was buffed, and the Read Me reads "minor level changes". I just watched a YouTube clear of this and the minor buffs make a whole lot of difference, especially in the first screen of Stage 2 (SPECIFICALLY the last jump before the warp), which was hell itself (felt like Needle Satan in terms of cruelty). They were a detriment to the game. But I will accept the possibil... err.. the fact that I do suck at needle. The rest of the corrections are spoiler-related. After finishing Stage 2, the tileset changes to the original one again, but with a more pleasant color and effects. This design for Stage 2 would have been beautiful. Finally, they implemented a low-gravity gimmick towards the ending. "Awesome", I said. "How will Stage 3 be with this? It should be exciting?" It turns out it doesn't exist. It was only a tease.
Music is nice, design is nice, difficulty is brutal at parts and the overall difficulty curve is a post-apocalyptic mess. It feels like several people did their homework separately without knowing who did what and how, and one guy just put everything together in a questionable order.
Despite this, I recommend the game. Be warned that the average difficulty, at least for me, does not fully reflect on the complexity of the jumps. They are well made, but buffs did harm the game when they were evident and overtly repetitive.
Tagged as: Needle
Solar_system_series
[4] Likes
Rating: 4.7 47
Difficulty: 75 75
Aug 7, 2019
ElCochran90
For: I wanna destroy the venus
For: I wanna destroy the venus
This was close to a 70 in difficulty but it wasn't a particularly long experience. However, it was sort of tiresome, and the issue is simple: the saves. This minor little detail affected both the rating and the difficulty a great deal. Place two saves in each screen (except maybe the last one for providing an interesting challenge) and this rating would go at 20 points up at the most, right up there along Thenader2's needle games. Ef's "destroy the solar system series" is definitely more enjoyable than the "Be the [planet goes here]" series. His style is soothing, calm, has great music (this one in particular is great) and jumps are creative. The game does sin of placing frame perfect jumps in the middle of screens and, with only one save per screen, you're likely to get salty at times. Unlike Destroy the Mercury, however, this one doesn't have screens with intricate level design where you have to think where to go next, and those normally elevate the quality of level design.
I do recommend it but be prepared for screens that represent endurance tests, especially when most of the times the harder jumps are placed right at the end for reaching the goal. Bummer.
I do recommend it but be prepared for screens that represent endurance tests, especially when most of the times the harder jumps are placed right at the end for reaching the goal. Bummer.
Tagged as: Needle
Solar_system_series
[0] Likes
Rating: 4.4 44
Difficulty: 65 65
Aug 5, 2019
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