Jradgex's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Newgrounds Redux: Metal Gear Awesome 3]

Something that tends to bog down parodies like this is Newgrounders obsession with themselves. Like I dunno what Alien Hominid even is and never was really into the tank man series, but what I do know is METAL GEAR SOLID and this is the furthest thing from a parody of that!

It's much much shorter than any of the other Metal Gear Awesome shorts (including Guns of Awesome by Cow Jedi) with really no other jokes beside the recurring Jesus joke and about four - five Newgrounds references that I sorta kinda remember.

I was hoping for some actual Metal Gear jokes, like fighting the helicopter, the invisible enemy in the elevator, actually seeing Metal Gear I dunno! How about bringing in Otacon again, instead of the dudes from Madness? Am I meant to look at the dudes from Madness and think "those are the dudes from Madness. Five stars." It's not like I'm expecting high art. At the end of the day, it's just goofy fun right? But ain't nothing funny about references, I'm sorry. That's some Star Wars shit, man.

To be fair, this is five years old, and everybody involved in this project has gone on to make way better stuff. Worthikid is such a cool dude and their series Big Top is a delight! Nearly every cartoon Phantom Arcade made after this was a banger on some level, and I love when he collaborates. Clearly this was just a labor of love toward the Awesome series and this site, and that's fuggin' cool, but I can't help being disappointed. MGSA was always gonna be a disappointment, but this feels like such low effort.

I see a comment down below asking for another parody of Metal Gear Solid 2, and honestly I wish there were more parodies of the MGS series. It's a funny franchise and has a lot of room for goofs and gaffs! Who knows?? Only time will tell. But if it's gonna happen, it's gotta be an actual parody.

[OUTSIDER: A Pokémon Horror]

From the concept to execution, this felt like a very 2010 video. It's always nice seeing Harry post again, but this edge-lore horror never did it for me, especially with Pokemon.

For what it's worth tho, it was very well directed, which should come as no surprise. The little touch of Pokemon character's staying in their own style, while the Outsider looks much different. All the music is on point and punctuates each scene without being over-bearing. And despite the edgy comedy, it's nice seeing all these og Pokemon characters rendered in Harry's style.

Pokemon is hard to parody, but this felt like treading all the same ground.
- Random encounters when spotted
- Video Game Characters are awkward
- Body horror
- "Pokemon is kinda messed up when you think about it"
- "Video games could never work in reeeeal life"
- Gory hospital scene with Nurse Joy

If you're really into this style, then this is every Pokemon parody of the early Newgrounds era mixed into one, so take that for what it is.

[Smash Bros Collab]

Goddamn, most of these collabs are great, but I'm sorry, this one fuckin' sucked.

It's that weird situation where nearly every person was trying to compete to be the most abstract or aggressive. Characters boredly talking to each other sitcom style, take a character and violently murder them, show a detailed guy looking scary, absolute silence for five unblinking seconds so we can REALLY understand how a w k w a r d this situation is!

The whole mood felt like nobody wanted to do this, so everything has to have a cake of irony on top. "HAHA I'm making a joke about Smash Brothers! It's been done to death, so I'm stretching the absolute limit to make a joke about ANYTHING!" It's like doing a Mario collab and the entire bit is pulling Mario's fingers off while looking to the camera like "you wanted this." I really didn't!

All the artists involved are super talented and I wanna follow tf out of 'em! I ain't knocking all the work put in, but it's drowned out by this cynical, junkyard humor. It feels like some in-joke I ain't getting, compounded by the ending with Rina-chan as a corpse. It's like... alright, yeah Brawl Taunts was in 2008, which was 10 years ago and they're making an epic return as a corpse, because that was such a long time ago. Gud bit.

I feel like an asshole, but it was oddly depressing watching this whole thing play out and not enjoying any of it, then it ends by reminding me of a different time when I was watching funnier collab projects. So I'm giving this a No Star, because it reminded me that someday I'm gonna die, which is not really what I was looking for.

The Final Fantasy one was pretty great tho! 5 Stahr~

EDIT: I'm sorry if I offended the animators who worked on this! I do animation work too and I know how difficult it is to make this stuff, only to get shut down for being "sad" or whatever. This is obviously fantastic, 'cause of all the love it's gotten, and I don't wanna be "that one comment that ruins my day" kind of guy. It just wasn't my thing, y'know?

EDIT EDIT: Yo that copy/pasta NigelNudeground did is fucking hilarious my dude, why can't I respond to comments!?

poptaffy responds:

wanna join my PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale collab

[The Zelda CDi Reanimated Collab!]

This is the first collaboration I've ever done and DAMN did it come out fantastic! Great job to everybody involved! I hope to see ya'll do more work in the future~

[Old Man]

The funniest story that could ever exist about an old man!
An incredibly original animation, with extremely good comedic timing. Definitely worth a watch, or two, or ten, and a pile of money, and subscribe to the Patreon, because I have.