Great reviews lately!

http://www.drunkduck.com/Anything__Goes/

Ooh, looks like I'm first up :)

Anyways, before we begin, I need you guys to know that my experience with sprite comics is severely lacking. Nevertheless, I'll try my best to do this review as fairly as I possibly can.

One more thing, when I reference pages it'll be in the form of (X-Y) where X is the chapter number and Y is the page number.

Artwork:

I'm pretty sure most, if not all the the sprites are original creations, and if they aren't, at least their not painfully overused FF sprites. Regardless, they do look bloody good and Rengori has gone through considerable effort to create additional poses for his/her sprites which s/he puts to good effect in pages such as 4-8.

Admittably, the early stripes were rather small and text too small for the comic to be read comfortably, but that problem was omitted from (2-1) onwards when Rengori opted for larger pages and fonts.

Also, I never thought I'd say this for any comic but, Anything Goes has the prettiest bloody speech bubbles I have ever seen.

Ultimately though, AG, especially in the later strips is a great looking comic which very effectively stands out from other sprite comics through its use of highly original sprites rather then relying on the old standards.

Story:

For the most part, quite enjoyeble. I particular like the episodic nature of the chapters where the heroes partake in their incredibly bizarre adventures which include meetings with the Four Horsemen of the Apoclypse as well as run ins with the NARC Squad.

As you can see from the above examples, most of the chapters in Anything Goes are very strange, which creates an enjoyeble, if surreal atmosphere for the comic.

The originality and sheer strangeness of these story arcs are probably the comics greatest strength, as it keeps the story fresh and enjoyeble...and definately suprising.

Humour:

For the most part, it doesn't really click with me. I'm guessing I'm just not the target audience, as its not that the author is without humour. Often times I can see the joke, but its just now my thing I guess.

Whilst this part of my review may sound really negative, I still strongly suggest others check out the comic for themselves, as I said earlier I'm probably not the target audience and I'm pretty sure there would be many who would appreciate the jokes better then I do.

Characters:

This I believe is the weakest link in AG. Whilst the premise of having a bunch of morally ambiguous heroes is appealing, there is too little to differentiate them in terms of personality. Until about halfway through chapter 2, I effectively saw all four main characters as basically interchangeble.

Even now, having read the entire archives, I only have a basic understanding of the different personalities.

Overall:

I tried to like this, I really did. Anything Goes isn't just some comic, a lot of love and effort has been put into it and it feels like an insult to not enjoy the fruits of Rengori's labour, but it just isn't for me.

Again I stress, this IS NOT A BAD COMIC, whilst I did not enjoy it, it was merely a matter of personal taste and I strongly suggest that others take the time to look at Rengori's very strong offering to the world of webcomics.

I finally got some time to review a comic so here goes:

Plot: 8/10
Being a fellow sprite comic myself, I never even looked at your comic, just guessing it was about a group of swordsmen on a quest. I was shocked to see that the story was about 4 guys living together, and their wacky drug induced adventures with Satan. There seems to be no apparent plot, but you keep your story flowing together with some hilarious jokes, and of course Satan.

Artwork: 10/10
This category gets an automatic perfect score because you make your own custom sprites. It's very rare to see a sprite comic using custom maps or just edited characters, but its even rarer to see what you have achieved. The background's are great, the character's for the most part are good, I was just confused because I thought Ray was a girl for the first 1/2 of the comic.

Your effect's are great. You use blur's perfectly. You have some of the greatest text bubbles I've seen in a sprite comic. The best effects, were the meth scenes with the walruses, you captured them perfectly!

Characters: 9/10
You seem to have captured a typical steiotype for each character. The serious one, the peaceful one, the druggie, and the drunk. A combination like this can only work out well. Like I stated before I was confused a little about Ray being a guy (probably because of his hair). Also, I was confused in the beginning, I felt like I beagan reading it from the middle of a story.

Overall: 27/30
Your doing an excellent job, keep up the good work. It's funny how I thought I wouldn't like your comic, but after reading it I can't wait for more. Good luck!


~FuzzyMuzzy

Anything Goes in one sentence: Generic final fantasy-like sprites hang out with the devil and do a lot of drugs.



art:
(+) Self made sprites. Self made backgrounds and accessories? Kick***.
(-) The characters need facial expressions. Even slight expressions like angry eyebrows work wonders.
(+-) Panels are okay... I like it that they became bigger as the comic progressed. Made it easier to read.
(-)I would like to see some different view poses for the characters. Maybe a view from front and back, and side view like 8 Bit Theater. The quarter view gets boring after a while.

Characters:
(-)Meh. Not that appealing to me. I'm not much for generic fantasy characters nor butch of druggies living together characters. The writer need to set the character's dialogue more apart from each other to make them sound more different as if it's a totally different author writing each character's dialogue. The author needs to get into the character's heads more.

Story:
(-)It's not very unique and there isn't much of it. Okay there was an apocalypse attempt, some characters sold their soul to the devil for cruddy things, and lately the characters are making and selling drugs. Wow.. um.. I'm not this comic's audience is all I can say.
(+) I do like the fact that it's not the heroes going on an adventure to save the world story. I like it that the final fantasy-like characters are so out of context with the fantasy genre. The author should push that... make the scenarios less typical of a RPG fantasy world.

Humor:
(-) Sorry. Didn't hit me hard enough. Much of the humor the author is using is the kind that would be more funny in a detailed drawn circumstance. For instance the blunt and/or fake sword joke: the sword is spite. I can't tell if it's sharp or not. It's not that funny having the words fill in everything.
The thing that make most sprite comics funny is the dialogue. Dialog that sticks to a character's personality (like Red Mage's constant role playing references) to witty dialogue.
I did chuckle at the cigarette joke.


All in all 4/10. Not my cup of tea. For sprite comics 7/10. Much better than adverage sprite comic.