Pokemon Glazed is a hack of Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire split into two regions.  Only the first region is finished and playable, but it has a complete plot, so it's like playing a full game.  The game took me 35 game time hours to complete, which is the average length of a Pokémon game.  Note that this game doesn't have a working in-game save function, so you'll have to do all your saving through save states.  Just as a little background information, I am a dedicated Pokémon fan and a frequent player of Pokémon hacks.  The things I look for in a Pokémon hack are new story and interesting additions or changes to the Pokémon games.  I really appreciate thoroughness and the feeling of a complete, new game.

Glazed is set, like many other Pokémon hacks, in a new region, this one called Tunod.  (It's donut backwards, as the NPC's will point out.  As far as I can tell, that's really the only explanation for the title of the game.)  But that's not where you start the game.  The first thing the game does is introduce the overarching plot with some purposefully vague explanation, promising more clarification later.  It's a good start to a game, and I appreciated it.  You then get ready to leave on your Pokémon journey, pick your starter, and head off to become a Pokémon Master, as per usual.  (Note: Many other players said that the game would not let them leave the lab even after picking a starter.  I did not have this problem.  I'm not sure what I did, but I can say that I talked to all of the NPC's in town and tried to leave town before entering the lab.)  The available Pokémon in this region are a hodgepodge mix from all five generations, so don't get your hopes up on finding a particular Pokémon until you've already seen one.  As you travel on your Pokémon journey, you meet the mysterious evil team up to mysterious evil things, a Pikachu that seems to really hate your guts for some reason, and also weird(er) things keep happening to you.

The plot of the game is refreshing at first, since you slowly figure out what's going on, but after the first few towns it gets very repetitive.  *Enter town, Gym Leader is missing, fight Evil Team instead, fight Gym Leader, get called to other town*.  Yes, every single town you walk into with a Gym has a missing Gym Leader when you first get there.  The game's creator uses this in order to direct you towards the main plot, but he uses the same method every time, and it gets boring and predictable quickly.  The final explanation of the plot is a bit of a letdown after all the mystery and buildup, but writing a good story is hard, so I'm just happy that the plot actually reached a climax and then concluded.

The difficulty of the game appears to be on a logarithmic scale.  The level jump between the first three or four gyms is considerable, and then there is no significant difference between the rest.  I was level grinding back when I only had two Pokémon, but by the time I had a full party of six mid-game I was just coasting with no difficulty at all.  The Elite Four has levels in the 40's, and the Champion has low 50's.  Since this game is supposed to have another region after this one, it sort of makes sense that the Elite Four isn't that hard (think like the Johto Elite Four in Gold/Silver).  Personally, I don't really like having to train that much while playing a hack since I'd rather be admiring the game, but I did expect more from Gym Leaders and Team leaders.  You don't have a regular rival in this game, instead having many quasi-rivals.  They tend to show up in inconvenient places, but like everyone else, they're never difficult.  Also, the recurring fights you have with Pikachu are what you would expect from fighting a Pikachu- as in, you only need to survive long enough to hit it twice.  The Pikachu is a cute character and all, but pretty mediocre as a pseudo-rival.

Aesthetically, the game is pretty nice.  The city design is great, and I really enjoyed the buildings and other scenery.  Routes are average-looking, but all of them are pretty short, which is convenient and cuts down on the tediousness of travel.   The Gen IV and V Pokémon sprites look good, but many redesigned Trainer sprites are a little messy.  Also, the female player character didn't have the right backsprite, which I found surprising for a complete game.  (Not enough female playtesters, I guess.)

There were a few features in this game that I liked that I hadn't seen before.  One was that every route had at least one trainer who would rebattle you as many times as you wanted if you talked to them again.  The levels of their Pokémon didn't change, so it was very useful if you just needed to train a bit for the next gym.  However, there was the case of one route where you were forced to rebattle the trainers whether you wanted to or not, and it was unavoidable if you were trying to get through.  Fortunately, there was no real reason to backtrack through that route to advance the game, but I was training there and wished I could have skipped the fights.  Another feature was a cute fossil game that let you collect all four available fossils for reviving later.  The problems with the game, though, were that it wasn't particularly challenging, and the four different objects you collected from it you then had to trade in for fossils.  So, your inventory filled up with both kinds of items, and you had to wait two more towns before you could turn the fossils into Pokémon and clear out your bag.  On a different topic, I found it very cute that the Elite Four members had Pokémon teams based around color instead of type.  It's funny and new, and also gives them slightly more balanced teams that are almost impossible to sweep with just one Pokémon.

The flow of the game is smooth, with the NPC's helpfully pointing you in the right direction after every gym.  You also receive all the HM's through the plot from NPC's, which I always appreciate.  (Nothing is worse than finding out that you missed an HM sitting in a cave somewhere three towns back.)  Other than the starter Pokémon glitch I mentioned earlier, the only other glitch I encountered was after I ran out of Safari Balls in the Safari Zone.  I got called out of the Zone and then was stuck in a wall.  Fortunately I had a recent save state.  Leaving the Safari Zone just by walking out was not a problem.

Overall, Pokemon Glazed is a very nice hack, especially for an unfinished one.  The NPC's walking around town offer some entertaining dialogue, some of it cute, some of it funny.  It seemed to me like nearly every NPC had an edited script.  Not everything they said was a hilarious joke, but they felt like they belonged in this hack instead of being ripped from the original game, so I applaud the creator for his thoroughness.  The proofreading on the dialogue was nearly flawless; I caught a few minor errors, but nothing too distracting.  Undoubtedly, the first half of the game is the superior half, both story-wise and difficulty-wise.  However, since the story starts interesting and does finish, it's worth playing through the whole game up until the end.  You will like this hack if you like an original story, talking to town people, and don't mind the lack of a challenge.  I am really looking forward to the second half of this game.

Pokemon- A Grand Day Out is a "mini hack" of Pokémon LeafGreen, meaning that it's supposed to be short.  And it is.  Playing it through with liberal use of the speed button, the game took me 2 hours to finish (actual game time of 5 hours).  For a bit of context, I am an avid Pokémon fan and I play a lot of Pokémon hacks here on Vizzed.  I mostly look for Pokémon hacks with new story lines or settings.  I chose to play this one because I wanted something funny and easy to kill some time with.  Funny it was, easy not so much.

The game follows a new storyline in an ever-so-slightly modified Kanto Region where you leave on your Pokémon journey from Pallet Town and then get involved in trying to stop Team Rocket from blowing stuff up.  The story plays out with a few cutscenes and some battles, so the game is mostly text-driven.  The actual story is pretty uninteresting.  It progresses at a reasonable pace, but it's very simple and not terribly inspiring.  Other than your starter Pokémon, all other wild Pokémon you encounter are the regular ones you'd expect from FireRed/LeafGreen, although the levels are modified slightly.  The purpose of this hack, clearly, was just for the rewritten dialogue, which pokes fun at various aspects of Pokémon games, such as the uselessness of NPC dialogue.  Most of the NPC's have rewritten dialogue (about 90%), so it's worth talking to all of them.  

Since the premise of the game is so goofy, I was hoping that it would be an easy play and I could just breeze through the Pokémon battles, but this was sadly not the case.  The starter Pokémon you receive is Cubone, which may sound useful early on, but it becomes very apparent that he is not a terribly good Pokémon for this game.  The abundance of Flying Pokémon and Koffing (with Levitate) makes Cubone a frustrating Pokémon to rely on.  You have to train him from the beginning to make it through the first battles, and the levels only escalate from there.  You do have the option to catch other Pokémon, which I found was absolutely necessary to advance past a few fights as Cubone is useless, even at high levels, without the benefit of his STAB moves.  Also, the sheer number of Pokémon that poison you became a real nuisance and made the game annoyingly difficult.  Again, having an overleveled Cubone is worthless if he gets poisoned every other turn in a battle, which happens frustratingly often in such a short game.  I ran out of cash from continuously spending it all on Antidotes and Potions.

The game itself is finished.  The creator implies at the end that he only had a limited amount of time to complete the game, so though I would have liked to see more edited NPC dialogue, I can accept the amount of effort he put in there.  The grammar could have used a second look through, but it's not so bad that it really detracts from reading.  (For some reason, "Team Rocket" is almost always used as a plural noun.)  The game ends rather abruptly with a message from the creator and then a black screen, but you can actually keep going through the blackness and play through the final stage of the game again if you like.  Other than that, I found no glitches in the game.

Overall, the game is worth a few chuckles, but past the jokes there was nothing outstanding about it.  The time you have to spend level grinding really takes away from the comedy of everything else, especially since the game is so short that you probably won't even get Cubone high enough to evolve.  If you have some time to kill and don't mind taking time to train, you'll enjoy the rest of the game.

   Something that I really appreciate in a Pokémon hack is how different it is from the original.  I've played the original Pokémon games through a hundred times before, so playing a hack that's really the same game with a few changes isn't very exciting.  Pokémon Fuligin, despite beginning innocently and typically to a regular Pokémon game, sets itself apart early as a completely different kind of Pokémon story-driven adventure game.

   This game is rated mature, and with very good reason.  Language is harsh, jokes are on adult topics, and the actual storyline is much, much darker than a standard Pokémon game.  Provided that the player is a mature person, however, this should not be a problem, as the dialogue never becomes offensive or (exceptionally) disturbing.  You will, however, experience a few "What did I just read?" moments after speaking to the NPC's.

   Speaking of which, talk to all the NPC's!  As mentioned in the title, this game is extremely thorough.  Nearly all the NPC's walking around town have rewritten dialogues which actually fit into the context of the game.  Also, a lot of it is really just funny.  The plot-centric characters also have appropriate new things to say, which really helps to complete and add to the story of the game.

   The story is very well executed.  Early in the game, when it still feels like a regular, innocent Pokémon game, you get little hints to the real plot.  The plot escalates from these hints, keeping you interested and giving you reasons to keep exploring the world.  As I said earlier, this game is story-driven, which is really spectacular.  Instead of simply wandering around the region with a vague idea of what you're doing, NPC's will actually give you reasons to go places.  This is best shown at the very beginning of the game, when, after you receive your first Pokémon, instead of just telling you to go into the world and do whatever, the Professor actually sends you out on a mission.  Already, the game has more purpose than most Pokémon games.  Another awesome thing is that you receive the majority of the HM's through the plot, so it's almost impossible to miss them and still continue with the game.

   Even better, in the occasions when an NPC hasn't told you what you're supposed to be doing, there are always clear roadblocks that prevent you from going farther than you need to, thereby forcing you to stay where you are or check out the available areas.  The game is always pushing you in the right direction.  The plot itself will sometimes bring you to a new area, and many transitions are very clever and make good use of the world.  The actual region is intelligently designed, and travel between towns is smooth and simple.  In one instance, the next town you need to explore is on the other side of one of the first towns you visit, and the map naturally leads you back there when you explore a newly opened route.  The majority of the confusion from not knowing where to be next is almost completely eliminated.

   The new region itself is beautifully created, with lovely landscaped routes and well laid-out towns.  Using data from both Kanto and the Sevii Islands results in an enormous map, and the towns exhibit many clever uses of their existing programming.  (My all-time favorite is what the S.S. Anne turned in to.)  The Pokémon found in each route, taken from Gen. I-III, are appropriate to their location.  Besides things like an abundance of water Pokémon in swampy areas and grass Pokémon in meadows, the Pokémon you find early in the game will be low-level, weak Pokémon you'd expect to find.  Many hacks try to "mix it up" by allowing the player to catch more powerful or evolved Pokémon early game, but from the region's standpoint, this doesn't always make a lot of sense.  Don't think, though, that this game forces you to catch bugs and weak normal-types only early on.  The Pokémon are all strength-appropriate for the region, but most of them evolve into strong Pokémon, and the spectrum of types you can catch early-game is more balanced than usual.  Finally, the region makes excellent use of weather.  Many routes have weather conditions that are appropriate to the landscape, as well as others that add to the atmosphere of the game.

   At the end of this glowing review, I must discuss my few complaints.  With a story so interesting and separated from the standard Pokémon plot, I began to wonder why I still bothered collecting badges.  Of course I needed some badges to use HM's, but in the context of the story, I wasn't entirely sure why I still needed to get all 8 badges and defeat the Elite Four.  Also, after all the climatic buildup in the main storyline, the end of the game falls flat.  The major threat is left unresolved.  After beating the Elite Four, the credits roll, and you find yourself back in your house with no direction, something the rest of the game did so well.  It's entirely up to you to scour the map and fully wrap-up the story, and in the end, the game didn't really climax I felt no real closure or sense that I had truly finished the game.

   And yet, as disappointed as I was, I thought back to how much fun I'd had playing the game.  It was difficult in some parts, so I never felt like I was breezing through the game.  The game drove me to complete it, and not once did I ever feel myself losing interest.  Whether or not you are dissatisfied with the ending of Pokémon Fuligin, I can assure you that you'll really enjoy the rest of the game leading up to it.