The /newstuff Chronicles #355

The only problem I had with the wad itself is that there is a distinct lack of impassable linedefs. It was all too easy to escape some levels and break the illusion when Erik could have simply added a impassable flag or disabled jumping. Small complaint, but I feel it bears mentioning.

Hahaha, what the hell kind of a retarded review is that?

Just a short while back "Does not work in intended sourceport" used to be the standard review when maps claimed to be for boom/limit removing when it wasn't.

Now the standard seems to be testing it in another sourceport then intended and complain when that port's added features interferes with the wad.

What happened to t/nc?

I hope this is just a case of one retarded reviewer, and not a new standard of t/nc.

I played it on the day it was released. ;)

REVIEW DOES NOT WORK IN INTENDED SOURCEPORT

Mr. Chris said:
It says the classical music wad was a copy already on the website, as the comments on it say.

Yeah, instead of commenting there people should just send Ty a message so he can remove the duplicate. It takes about the same effort, after all.

esselfortium said:

REVIEW DOES NOT WORK IN INTENDED SOURCEPORT

REVIEW DOES NOT WORK IN NINTENDO SOURCEPORT

Another small complaint about Scythe X - it refuses to run with Jaguar Doom. Not serious, but worth noting.

Ask PhilibusMo about his future review of Doom 2 Reload, because it's brilliant (first level is not so good, though). Who is Andy Stewart? Is that megawad his first work?

Yeah, the scythe review was hilarious. Also, I really liked playing through the Golden Eye wad (played it zdoom) - map32 could've been a big exploration, but I guess it's unfinished (maybe cuz of some sector errors?). Also, I like seeing 90's wads pop up. Also, I liked the other wads too.

entryway said:

Ask PhilibusMo about his future review of Doom 2 Reload, because it's brilliant (first level is not so good, though). Who is Andy Stewart? Is that megawad his first work?

I liked the sound of it just from the readme file and what I have played so far has been pretty nice. Agree with you on MAP01 though.

esselfortium said:

All I can say is that these reviews reeeeaaaalllly aren't making me look forward to when it's time to release one of the projects I've had in progress for the past two or more years...

In all honesty, TNC seems to be increasingly populated by retard reviewers who have run out of YouTube videos to make comments on.

Who the hell these people? They almost never post on the boards, it's like their only contribution to the Doom community is a few shitty gore-pack screenshots of recent maps and mediocre reviews telling you the map isn't worth playing.

Bashing Scythe X for "only" being 10 maps and playing it in the wrong sourceport is the height of idiocy. Even idgames is more intelligent than this, and that's saying alot.

There should be a fucking postcount limit for review privileges.

Super Jamie said:

There should be a fucking postcount limit for review privileges.

Some quality control by the people approving the reviews should be better. Postcount doesn't tell anything. There's idiots with more than 1000 posts but there's also reviewers that are good but haven't posted much.

But as long as reviews are approved despite questionable content these debates will continue.

TimeOfDeath said:

Also, I really liked playing through the Golden Eye wad (played it zdoom)

This did have some really fun moments, and it made me pick up my N64 controller and play single player mode for the first time in ages... even if only for that, I liked it. And I do think that DM with that wad would be fun.

Hey hey hey wait a minute now!!!

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post-hell/48215-should-i-review-wos/

Snarboo said:
If you think you have the skills to review it, review it. It's a lot of work, but that's the whole point of the review claim system: for anyone to review a wad.

Bloodshedder said:
This is a supremely dumb thread. Don't write a shitty review (as in badly written) and it won't get rejected. Simple as that.

Bloodshedder doesn't care if your opinion on a wad is stupid. It's still valid as it IS your opinion. But if it's poorly written that's another matter.

Anyway. I might point out that I wouldn't even have noticed that Scythe X was in the newstuff chronicles this time had it not been for the drama.

Graf Zahl said:

Some quality control by the people approving the reviews should be better. Postcount doesn't tell anything. There's idiots with more than 1000 posts but there's also reviewers that are good but haven't posted much.

Indeed. People like myself. I don't post much to the forums (Not really much for forums these days) but you've probably seen my reviews on some rather well-known wads in the last two years. And some others I pick up here and there. I always try to make a fair judgement when reviewing a wad, to the best of my ability anyways.

Also, if you don't like the reviews being submitted, you could always mosey on over to http://www.doomworld.com/newstuff/ and review a wad or two yourself in your spare time. that way, the next time a /newstuff comes out, your review will be published instead of someone else's.

Also, as random ideas, perhaps the name of the reviewer can be linked somehow, so that if you click on their name in the reviews page, or when a /newstuff is published and posted to the forums, you can click their name and browse through the wads they've reviewed in the past. Perhaps have a peer-to-peer rating of a review, similar to the ratings system used for grading wads that you go to download (Where 1 = Awful and 5 = Legendary)

Man, just by reading this weeks reviews has depressed me. Are modern doomers really that hard to please anymore?

Dude, Scythe X E1 is a fucking fine piece of Doom art, okay? I played that shit 3 times already. The review was done by a fucking idiot noob whose registration date was get this: June 2009! Two thousand fucking nine!

If I were to upload something that I've worked years on, I'd appreciate a fucking review from someone who can fucking appreciate Doom wads based on the standards set by the deep history of Doom for what it fucking is.

I'm mad on the behalf of Erik Alm, his work deserves better than some noobie reviewer whining much about nothing.

Seriously, if I were to upload DVII-2, I'd make sure to PM a couple of persons with at least an '05 registration date before letting it go. This review privilege sucks, I watch as the quality of review decline from newstuff to newstuff because there is no standard; any idiot noob from Steam could come on here and spam his bullshit as newstuff.

I agree with Super Jamie: set at least a post-count AND registration time bar to filter out the influx of retards at the doorsteps.

It was all too easy to escape some levels and break the illusion when Erik could have simply added a impassable flag or disabled jumping.

Disabled jumping? It's for limit removing ports and he tested it with prboom, which last time I checked, doesn't even allow you to jump. So what you're saying is, it's his fault you managed to fuck up by cheating? That's almost as retarded as saying a level is too short because you were able to turn god mode on and noclip to the exit.

Doom Marine said:

Seriously, if I were to upload DVII-2, I'd make sure to PM a couple of persons with at least an '05 registration date before letting it go.

Influencing reviews like that is nothing better than having a n00b review. Both are not informative.

We need some standards, e.g.:

- if it's obvious that the reviewer uses an inappropriate source port or it's obvious that he used features not meant to be used by a map a review is rejected (even worse than Scythe X in this regard are reviews of GL-port mods being reviewed with a software renderer.)
- if a review fails to understand how a map is supposed to be played it's rejected (see Operation Overlord for an example of what I mean.)
- reviews that don't reflect a proper analysis of a mod are rejected (for example, you can't review an episode in one paragraph. Such mods require more than just a short summary.)
- reviews that clearly indicate that the reviewer did not play a map (e.g. obvious cheating) are rejected unless the review states a valid reason for the cheating (e.g. bad monster use.)
- Multi-level mod reviews must review all of it, and not stop after the third level or so. Doing this and claiming to write something objective is an insult to the mapper(s).

I think other obvious rules can be thought of as well. On the other hand, even the staff reviewers were frequently guilt of the above points so I don't really expect anything happening based on DW's history.

It's the same with the news page. There's no news due to the stupid submission rules. Instead of having the staff check submitted news based solely on content there's this idiotic non-self-promotion rule in place. Who else but the people wishing to post about their stuff are better qualified to submit news? This rule basically means there's no news because the people who would submit them aren't allowed to.

Graf Zahl said:

- Multi-level mod reviews must review all of it, and not stop after the third level or so. Doing this and claiming to write something objective is an insult to the mapper(s)

I don't really agree with this. As both a player and a designer, I'd prefer a more generalised overview than a detailed walkthrough or level by level critisism (that's what testers are for).

Internets, the serious business.

Khorus said:

Graf Zahl said:

- Multi-level mod reviews must review all of it, and not stop after the third level or so. Doing this and claiming to write something objective is an insult to the mapper(s).

I don't really agree with this. As both a player and a designer, I'd prefer a more generalised overview than a detailed walkthrough or level by level critisism (that's what testers are for).

So, you'd be fine with a review like this one?
Whispers of Satan
WOS is a big megawad with more than 32 maps, somehow. But who cares, the first is kinda boring. There's a secret "ZDoom-only" exit that leads you to a sucky level that let you skip a lot of maps. No way to go back to map 2, bummer. I didn't want to play map 1 again, so I stopped there. Verdict: it's more like a meh-gawad, amirite? Avoid.


Disclaimer: not my actual opinion of this mod. :p

If someone reviews a mod with many maps, he should first play all maps, and do so seriously. There are some mods where the quality improves with the levels, so if you play just the first three maps it seems to suck, but if you played just the last three it would be very great. Inversely, the first map could be absolutely awesome and the following rubbish. It's not a question of making a detailed walkthrough, it's a question of saying how the mod stands up, both as a whole and as a collection of discrete maps. It can be as simple as saying something like "on average, a good collection of maps; maps 03, 12, 15 and 27 are especially great, though I found maps 06, 16, 18 and 30 quite disappointing."

Gez said:

If someone reviews a mod with many maps, he should first play all maps, and do so seriously.

I didn't say otherwise. I said that I don't want the entire experience written down.

all this crap-talk might be diminishing the reality that the review of scythe x is, most definitely, a crap review...oh, wait a minute...

Don't get me wrong, I thought the Scythe X review was silly, but if people who think they know what a reviewer should or should not do would simply do the reviews themselves, this sort of problem wouldn't occur. I mean, it seems some folks go through an awful lot of effort and time to tell someone his review sucks and point out what he should have done, while they could just use the same effort and time to write what they consider to be a good review.

How can that be done if the first come, first serve rule stands without quality control? Most of the time the WADs one wants to review are already taken, sadly often by people who deliver crap.

This is true. The times I've randomly browsed /newstuff/ to do some reviews all that's left is deathmatch maps, skins, and stuff for obscure sourceports which nobody has anymore.

Graf Zahl said:

It's the same with the news page. There's no news due to the stupid submission rules. Instead of having the staff check submitted news based solely on content there's this idiotic non-self-promotion rule in place. Who else but the people wishing to post about their stuff are better qualified to submit news? This rule basically means there's no news because the people who would submit them aren't allowed to.

I don't suppose you noticed that this was clarified over a year ago.

I was holding the Scythe X review slot for a while but had to drop it due to time constraints. Perhaps we can take this as a general alert for the more savvy people to check up on the review center more often and grab something once in a while.

Another thing people can do is, if they feel they could deliver a particularly interesting review, message anyone who took the slot and kindly ask them whether they wouldn't mind freeing it. I've done that before and it's worked. In fact, if anyone sees a WAD I've claimed and they'd like to review it, let me know. In some cases, I won't mind giving it up.

It's not so bad when some nub picks up a nondescript WAD and delivers a poor review. That's an acceptable sandbox for them. But when it comes to releases that deserve a good look from a more tactful person...

Bloodshedder said:

I don't suppose you noticed that this was clarified over a year ago.

Good to know. But it seems that it was missed by many (I know I did.) How else can you explain the lack of news submissions?