Hack of the Year 2015 - Judging Round

Introduction

This is the third and final round of 2015's Hack of the Year competition. Five judges will play and rate all three hacks out of 10 in four categories, Graphics, Story, Gameplay and General Appeal. The hack with the best overall ratings wins the Hack of the Year award. This thread will remain closed, and only judges will post their ratings and comments on the hacks here.

Eligible Hacks

• Pok?mon Gaia Version by Spherical Ice
• Pokemon Adventure - Red Chapter by Aethestode
• Pok?mon Eclipse by Christos

Judges

• Mana
• seeker
• Hopeless Masquerade
• Bela
• FBI

Adventure Red

Plus Points:

• Cool to see updates on your rivals and other significant characters in the story
• I can really dig the relationships between all the characters. I think this is a case of a hack where it's better to have the main character speaking. In general, playing this hack feels like you're playing as a 3rd person, and just sort of guiding the player through their adventure. That's a perfectly fine and unique experience.
• Underwater bubbles, I like it!
• Player's talking is actually done well here.

Neutral Points:

• After every event script I'm facing downwards. My only guess is that you're warping or using facedown. You can warp facing the old direction too :X
• These trainer tips signs. "Poison hurts", "Pokemon battle". C'mon...lol.
• When you're running, the player's eyes (male) turn Red. :D
• Tiles instead of OWs for Staryu in Vermillion City? Why?
• BLUE KILLED THE ARBOK. THERE'S BLOOD. WHY BLUE, WHY?!?!?

Minus Points:

• Wild Pokemon battles using empty trainers. Please use ASM. Please.
• Intro platform has no one standing on it. But someone somewhere is introducing themselves as the champ.
• On closer inspection BG2 is a transparent image. I'm not sure if that's intentional, but it looks weird.
• In the overworld, the player sends out Bulbasaur, but I use a random Pokemon in the battle. A small hack would fix this.
• Dear lord. The ghetto Follow me that Misty does in the cave is giving me cancer.
• Lots of recycled maps, with very minor/bad edits. It's very obvious which maps are recycled. I know a lot of people recycle indoor maps, but outdoor maps are really noticeable.

Scoring
Final Score: 13.01

Gaia:

Plus Points:

• Music! I don't know if this is considered good music since I don't music hack. It does sound pleasant enough for my tastes though, so I will consider this a plus.
• Lots of mini games and mini features here and there. As an ASM hacker, I'm able to appreciate a lot of the invisible stuff!
• Consistent Graphics style which complements the hack very well
• Custom sprites, overworlds (for important characters)
• Customized battle graphics and battle modes. Cool-ish Battle Marsh I could do better, pfft.
• Excellent mapping! Really liked the maps. The scripts are OK too, but the maps were the superstar I felt like.
• Great ASM features. Gaia's ASM hacker is really dangerous. That guy is good.
• Character dialog is often without grammatical or spelling mistakes!
• SphericalIce put in tonnes of effort. It's very noticeable, things like the Pokedex expansion was done by hand and graphical reworks of various menus too! (OK, they're mostly recolors, but that's something!)

Neutral Points:

• One sentence trainers get a little annoying after a while. Literally, "Lets battle!", "Ha I saw you!", .... ect.
• The sheer amount of trainers you have to battle is kinda a lot for my tastes. I'd like to be able to avoid them at times

Minus Points:

• I keep getting lost. I find myself not knowing which way/where to go and often have to backtrack and re-explore every area. It's almost never immediately obvious what you needed to do. With the absence of a mission log, pathfinder or something similar it's very important to read all dialog carefully. Even if you do that, in the case you've missed something, there is no second chance to go back and review the missed material. Normally the NPC would say something like, "I'm counting on you /v/h01!" ect.
• Hero is interfering with evil team's agenda for no good reason other than, "Hey guise lets save the Regis".
• As you can see, I'm very salty about getting after every few events. It was common place for me :<

Scoring


Final Score: 13.25

Eclipse:

Plus Points:

• Music! I don't know if this is considered good music since I don't music hack. It does sound pleasant enough for my tastes though, so I will consider this a plus.
• I like fuzzy grass. Sure it's just a few byte changes, but it's so fuzzy and cool :3
• Christos highlights important texts and objectives with separate coloring in his scripts. This allows you to pay attention to the parts which matter while skipping through the decorative dialog which encapsulates the information.
• Use of an Overworld to give hints of hidden items in tree trunks ect. I find this pretty cool
• I like the mapping. The maps are pleasant to explore around and the world seems energetic.
• The Graphics style is very consistent. Christos has made/used a few custom tiles which aren't in the default ROM to enhance the graphical appeal of his maps
• Character dialog is often without grammatical or spelling mistakes!
• Characters have modified and/or customized sprites. It's the little things which add up.

Neutral Points:

• Intro is 1:1 With default FireRed. The titlescreen image has been updated though
• Is Coral town's gym leader a ghost? Cause her sprite is pixelated
• Small inconsistency with text colors. EX: The guy in the library with Kirlia doesn't use colored text, but points the player to the next location.

Minus Points:

• Titlescreen encorporates BG3, which is flashed and replaced by BG2. Results in a quick 1-10 frame flash of BG3. I doubt that's intentional
• That wild Pokemon tree in the forest is indistinguishable
• Guy being attacked by a Wingull. Guy orders around Poochyena that doesn't exist in the overworld. Guy leaves me puzzled.
• HMs like Rockclimb aren't implemented properly. Only on a script level, so they don't appear from the menu.

Scoring

Final Score: 14.5






Guys these scores are out of 5, not 10. The final score is out of 20, not 40. I did this because I wanted to look like a tough judge and give out low numbers. Also, 10 and 40 is too mainstream. As for why I rated Eclipse so high, it was because I was bribed. I feel like I've failed everyone who counted on me to be a fair judge, but the bribe tactics were very powerful.

Pokémon: Gaia

Graphics 9/10
Retaining the FRLG style quite closely here, it's hard to give Gaia points in terms of graphical originality. However new graphics aren't the be all, and end all of a game. The important thing is that a style remains consistent and that the visuals remain utilised effectively. In Gaia, I witnessed some mixture of new tiles and old, mostly old, but all of it felt seamless. It's preferable to see a hack lack innovation and pull a style off, than to see a large clash of different tiles that don't suit one another. For that, I can't fault Gaia. The hack itself improved from last year in terms of graphical fidelity. Adding new overworlds for the player character was a good step in the right direction. However, I can't feel comfortable giving a hack full marks without seeing complete innovation in their art style.

Story 6/10
The good thing about Gaia's story is that is has some intriguing premise. The earthquakes we learn about early in the game, the somewhat mysterious areas supposedly dripping with history and the ever constant desire to learn more about what is actually happening keep this one flowing. With that said, there's not much substance in Gaia's available plot. It remains to stay true to the framework set up by the official games we've been playing for over 20 years. It feels as if the hack would benefit from actually focusing on its story a little more and making gym leaders option. As unlike the official games, the desire to beat and face gyms isn't there. There's very little talk of why you're collecting gym badges, the player apparently isn't given much detail on them. Gyms exist, you can battle them (and must do, to progress) but they merely serve as progress trackers. The hack doesn't give you much reason to face gyms other than "you have to".

Gameplay 8/10
At times I sat there playing Gaia and said "darn, this was well put together". The events that happen in the game feel very well put together, the detail in each cut scene is very well looked into. The new features put into the hack really stand out and are, for the most part, a technical marvel. The addition of an integrated IV checker on the Pokémon Summary screen is very useful, except for the fact that IV's are pretty much useless in a game that has no difficulty modes, no online play, a fairly kind difficulty curve and no real incentive to EV train your Pokémon or breed one with "perfect IV's". Not something worth marking the game down for, but hopefully some of these things will come into play in further iterations of the hack.

Gaia is engaging. There's a decent amount of gameplay content to keep the player interested, and I found myself looking forward to coming home after a long day and playing it. It's certainly one of the most polished hacks I've played. At times I was extremely frustrated however. It became difficult to track what you were due to do at points in the game, when some places were vaguely mentioned yet you were expected to recall that you were meant to meet with a character there. Often these places are quite out of the way and easily forgotten. I felt myself wishing there was more prompts, reminders, or accessibility in terms of picking up from where you left off. There was a point in the game where I actually needed to ask someone who'd finished the game on how to progress. Turns out, it requires the player to Google the answer. Which wouldn't be so bad except it's not even obvious you need to Google it either since it's written in Braille and has a very ambiguous undertone.

Gaia's gameplay goes from being some of the most solid I've ever played, to some of the most jarring.

General Appeal 7.5/10
It may seem like Gaia is a hit and miss hack. Which is true to an extent, except that it's one of the most engaging hacks I've ever played. For the most part it's a solid, well balanced hack that follows the path of the official games quite closely. It brings in some new mechanics and ideas to spice up gameplay. Gaia is great for an unfinished hack, and I'm confident Spherical Ice will improve and expand upon it diligently. It's just unfortunate that in a hack as solid as it is, the blunders are just so noticeable and jarring. Thankfully the issues aren't consistently a problem and could be reworked without too much effort.

Total 30.5/40

Pokémon: Eclipse

Graphics 7.5/10
Attempting to stick to the FR/LG style, Eclipse is presented quite well. Eclipse has a lot of great maps that are aided by the traditional style of tiles. The graphics are mostly consistent, and there are some fairly decent new trainer sprites that bring about some originality and personal touch. However when the hack introduces a new tileset it can fail to impress. At times the tiles can clash from one area to the next, particularly in gyms. Some sprites from newer generations are quite rough, and once again the quality can vary in them.

Eclipse isn't a bad looking game by any means, but it doesn't lack a more meticulous artistic touch.

Story 4/10
Eclipse suffers from lack of explaining itself. There is an ambiguous undertone of Pokémon acting strangely which the player gets roped into rectifying from town to town. A story should always be told in its gameplay, yet in this hack it has failed to shine through very much in the demo. At times there is talk of Oracles and mystical orbs, but once again there seems to be a distinct lack of knowledge given to the player. As of finishing the beta, I don't feel compelled or interested in what's going on. The Pokémon didn't seem to be acting all that strangely, they're untamed beasts attacking trainers. Isn't that what we were told would happen if we entered tall grass?

Eclipse lacks premise, there's no real drive behind the player's desire to delve deeper into its story. So we're left with the singular aim to simply go and collect gym badges. A trope which we've been suffering through for decades now, without a decent story it's difficult to keep trudging through. The entire story felt like a grouping of side-quests strung together with a vague pretence. Perhaps we'll get a better taste of the storyline in future betas.

Gameplay 6/10
What I loved about Eclipse was that it came up with new ideas. It doesn't fail to try and introduce new types of key items, interesting encounters and all sorts of small mechanics to keep things fresh. However despite where it can be original, it can also rely too heavily on tropes too. Often when speaking to an NPC I got the same dialogue I heard in previous Pokémon games, as well as much of the progression in the game being all too similar to the main games in the Pokémon franchise.

The main issue with Eclipse is its difficulty curve and unimaginative gym leader battles. Too often I found myself grinding levels against Pokémon more than ten or fifteen levels below the Gym Leader I was continually losing against. In some cases, the highest level of Pokémon I could face were half that of the local Gym Leader. It's understandable that a difficulty curve in a hack won't be perfect during beta, however this was a glaring issue. When I finally found that my Pokémon were at equal levels to that of the Gym Leaders, I still lost. A lot. Some Gym Leaders rely on infuriating movesets to win, too often I was being put to sleep or flinching every other turn. If a Gym Leader battle has to rely on tactics which prevent you from using yours; it isn't difficult, it's just annoying. A player shouldn't be forced to spend the little money they'll have from losing continually to buy copious amounts of potions and revives.

Eclipse teases the player too often into thinking there's a lot of exploration to be had in its beta. Blockades are a common occurrence in this hack, much of the routes and areas you explore in Eclipse will have seemingly many directions in which you can take to explore. However it quickly becomes apparent that a lot of these locations are locked off and you can't enter them until future iterations of the hack. Which isn't inherently a negative thing, but when there's so many of them it makes your path quite linear when you first enter an area. The same issue appears with some mechanics that just don't seem to be working yet, this is especially evident in Sienna City where you can end up giving all your money away to people for no reason. It seems they're meant to work as a Karma trope - you give them money, they give you a rare item -, but was never finished.

It's not all bad though, Eclipse has some lovely new ideas and the scripts are expertly handled with predominantly good grammar. However it's a roller coaster of good and bad for Eclipse in terms of how it plays.

General Appeal 6/10
With great maps, some sweet new ideas and genuinely charming instances of gameplay and characters; I wanted to love Eclipse. However the hack forgets the fundamentals in being fun and telling a story. It'll be interesting to see it take form in the future, since it is clear there is talent behind its creator.

Total: 23.5

Pokémon Adventure - Red Chapter

Graphics 3.5/10
Unfortunately the effort the creator has gone into inserting new tiles and sprites fall flat. This is primarily due to the fact that the tiles used clash massively and there is no clear attempt to maintain a persistent artistic style.

Mapping in Adventure Red isn't some of the worst I've seen, however it's bland and very loose. There is a lack of attention to detail here which really makes maps and their tile placement quite a chore to look upon and walk through.

The hack fails to stick to a particular style in its sprites, tiles and its mapping conventions. It neither compliments the GameFreak style nor really define one of its own due to its mixture of graphical styles and lack of blending.

Story 3/10
Not all Manga should be made into a game. In fact these are two genres which don't mix very well at all. The hack itself lives very true to the manga. This causes a lot of issues in how the story unfolds, a story should be easy to follow and in games should be aided by the gameplay itself. In Adventure Red it feels as if the hack is doing its best to rush from one plot point in the manga to the next without taking into consideration that not everything written and drawn on paper directly translates to in-game events. It would have been a better idea to adapt the Manga, change elements of it so that they work in a game. The story is told quite badly in Pokémon: Adventure, and fails to translate into a game setting very well.

Gameplay 4/10
I immediately felt thrown into the World without so much as an introduction. This is a hack that should focus on telling a story, yet the first thing that happens after you choose you and your rival's name is that you appear on what feels like a programmer's test map. It's wide, open and dotted with NPC's you only feel compelled to talk to because you're not sure what's actually happening.

The game suffers from a lot of mechanical issues, there is an evident lack of ASM used where it needs to be. The level curve could do with some work, I feel that anyone playing without the speed button would struggle to work their way through the more difficult battles in this hack, and even some wild Pokémon are quite highly levelled.

At times, events in the hack can be well scripted, but ruined by badly composed sentences and typos. It's understandable that hacks aren't going to have perfect punctuation and grammar, however frequent misspelled words, regular use of improper punctuation, typos and so on really held this one back.
The most commendable part of this hack is the sheer volume of work gone into it. You can really tell that the creator has worked hard on making a fun experience. However the use of the player speaking, badly composed jokes and jarring railroading of moving the player around during scripts threw me off more often than not.

General Appeal 2/10
Interesting idea, however it is just one that does not work as a game. The talents of Aethestode are misguided into and impossible project. Pokémon Adventure – Red Chapter is something Manga enthusiasts may enjoy, however it does not translate well as a Pokémon game in this setting. A hack inspired by the manga that adapts many of its ideas may have been a better direction to take. However this hack is not one for those who aren't interested in the Manga and have a keen eye for well-placed details.

Total: 12.5/30

Pokémon Gaia by Spherical Ice

Graphics: 8/10

The vanilla FireRed style has grown on me. Coupled with them, there are many custom tiles that compliment the style very well. It all seemed to fit very well together. Also, the heroes are edited now! That's always good to see. I also liked the custom battle graphics a lot, it's definitely something I'll consider for my own hack!

Story: 7/10

The story is still a little of a tease, since we don't get a proper resolution in this release. However, it was very well executed. Gaia's story is fairly tame and well grounded in the Pokemon universe, which is nice to see. No insane inter-dimensional hi-jinks here!

Gameplay: 8/10

Gaia's gameplay is fairly well polished, although I have a bit of a gripe with the early game. While I'm glad I had a dozen Potions on hand for the first Gym Leader, I really wasn't counting on his Level 8 Togepi to give my Level 10-12 team as much trouble as it did. I managed to pull through, but it was a real struggle to do so. I feel like the difficulty spiked a little too much at that point, but it was still managable.

General Appeal: 8/10

Overall, I think Gaia has significantly improved since last year. A lot of work has been put into this, and it really shows. There's lots of goodies and features put in that compliment really solid gameplay. It feels like a real Pokemon game. This has been one of the better hacks I've played, so good job Spherical Ice!

Total: 31/40

Pokémon Adventure - Red Chapter by Aethestode

Graphics: 4/10

I can tell the maps were changed around and made different. Different is not always better, though; the layouts of many maps are somewhat awkward to play through. A lot of the palette choices are questionable for maps, with the trees in Viridian Forest being an eyesore.

Story: 7/10

As I said in my review of Adventure Red last year, I like the Pokemon Adventures manga. It's great that there's someone who has attempted to use hacks as a medium to portray it. I think there's a lot of untapped potential to make this work well.

Gameplay: 5/10

The actual battles themselves are a real chore to play through. Since this is an RPG and the main combat are Pokemon battles, it's not good to make them all frustratingly difficult to play through. I also can't help but notice significant, recurring spelling and grammar errors throughout. This hack really needed a proofreader.

General Appeal: 6/10

Like I said last year, I like the idea of this hack, and admire it taking priority to tell a story--the manga story in this case. However, it would have done better to address its mistakes as they really do stand out to me.

Total: 22/40

Pokémon Eclipse by Christos

Graphics: 6/10

The game is mostly vanilla FireRed, with very few custom tiles and sprites. There's also lots of 1-tile width gaps with ledges that are a real pet peeve of mine. I did like seeing neat little touches like hidden items in the overworld represented by flashing stars.

Story: 7/10

I wish I was given more details about what's actually happening in this game. It all felt like a series of unconnected events that I just happened to experience sequentially. That said, it was enjoyable enough. Christos, I hope a future release of Eclipse does more to clarify and focus the story!

Gameplay: 6/10

The level curve needs to be addressed. Level spikes are not fun to play against. I know the Gym Leaders are supposed to be a challenge, but there's a point upon which this starts to become absurd. The events were fun to play through. The text neatly highlighted relevant portions of text, which was a nice touch. There's definitely a lot of creativity on display in Eclipse, it just needs some fine-tuning to get it right for playing.

General Appeal: 7/10

I feel like Eclipse has a lot of potential to be a really unique hack, if more time is invested into focusing the story and properly immersing the player into this world. I hope to see more from this hack!

Total: 26/40