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Bloodshedder

The /newstuff Chronicles #320

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Graf Zahl said:

Am I the only one who thinks that the stupid name calling in the ZPack 'review' devalues the whole exercise?


Highly likely. Am I the only one who thinks you said anything because it's a zdoom wad?


Patrick Pineda said:

Zportal was great, but I got frustrated with some of the puzzles


I actually took the time to update zdoom to play this. It's really good.

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Well, I was slightly put off by the fact that the reviewer totally destroyed the entire project, citing only all of one person who stood out and didn't even "bother" with the rest. A few more details as to why they didn't like it would have been nice, you know, which was what I had attempted with nearly all of my reviews.
Constructive criticism goes a very long way.

Still kind of kicking myself for the lack of screenshots, but nothing's going to change that.

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I agree with scuba, i thought ZPack wasnt that great and kinda overrated. all the maps were Tormentor 667 clones.

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I really enjoyed Beesong, Dead perfect, and slime base.

I think I should maybe try zero tolerance next.

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prdarkfox said:

Well, I was slightly put off by the fact that the reviewer totally destroyed the entire project, citing only all of one person who stood out and didn't even "bother" with the rest. A few more details as to why they didn't like it would have been nice, you know, which was what I had attempted with nearly all of my reviews.

Remiel's review said:

Rocket traps in small rooms, obnoxious conveyor belts, you-will-cry-blood-obnoxious boss fights, boring bare square room->door->square room layouts, repetitive textures, secrets stuffed five seconds into pools of acid, use of incredibly annoying custom enemies like the rocket zombies who are quite capable of killing you for looking at them funny, and so on and so on and so forth.


I mean, sure, he was probably a bit unnecessarily harsh, but I didn't think most of it was particularly good either, other than Vader's maps and a few others.

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I just tried Dead Perfect and it was quite entertaining.

I'm glad you people liked The Beesong. Really I just made that as a casual project because I told a friend I'd use his first Zdoom monster in a map so it wasn't intended for critical review, but I guess maps that aren't in the archive are still reviewable? Ah, well, if people like it, more power to it.

The Zpack is getting a lot of attention. I've yet to play it, but it sounds like I should download it just to see Vadar's map, though I'm getting the vibe that his stands out because the others are unimpressive. =/ Might as well see it when I have time either way.

As far as review styles go, I agree that some of them are pretty clearly biased against the WADs they're reviewing. However, many still seemed to have put some thought into them. If you can ignore the excessively critical overtone, you can often still find some good objective analysis. Same is true for people who are clearly biased in favor of a WAD. If you know their stance, it becomes easier to determine what's good information and what is not necessarily true about the WAD.

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Death-Destiny said:

The Zpack is getting a lot of attention. I've yet to play it, but it sounds like I should download it just to see Vadar's map, though I'm getting the vibe that his stands out because the others are unimpressive. =/ Might as well see it when I have time either way.

No, trust me, his ZPack maps would stand out in *any* wad. Play them now. :P

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i think the reviews remiel gave were rather harsh, as he should have played each and every single level, but who am i to complain?

anyways, Vader's maps are great, and i enjoyed a couple others in there, i found Tormentor 667's maps fun as well, and a few other people made some fun ones too. the beesong was also a kind of harsh review, but whatever, i think he is mostly right, even though the map really wasn't all that hard, and neither were the bees (although they did get frustrating). i still found the beesong fun.

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esselfortium said:
I mean, sure, he was probably a bit unnecessarily harsh, but I didn't think most of it was particularly good either, other than Vader's maps and a few others.

I think you missed the part where I said "constructive". Parts on "how to fix it" would have been quite nice.
Not only that, a per-map review would have been a lot better as well.

And yeah, I suppose it was a bit in a nasty tone, too, but that wasn't my point.

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Scuba Steve said:

Actually, I too found the cosntant "FPACK, GPACK" renaming to be ridiculously childish and confusing.


I had the feeling he did that just so that he could end up calling it Tupac...

When reviewing a community-made map pack with 30 maps, I think the review should be made by someone who has played all 30 maps. By his own admission, he played only half of them since he didn't finish episode 2 and didn't even try episode 3.

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prdarkfox said:

I think you missed the part where I said "constructive". Parts on "how to fix it" would have been quite nice.
Not only that, a per-map review would have been a lot better as well.

I agree that detailed constructive criticisms are great to give (to both new and old mappers, as we all still have some room for improvement), but to me it seems that the /newstuff chronicles are more focused on telling potential players what's likely to be worth their time. If someone wants to tell a mapper all the things they can do to make better levels, that'd be great (I try to pass along knowledge like this myself, whenever I can), but I don't think it has much of a place in a review that's primarily intended to be read by random site/forum users who are not the mapper in question.

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esselfortium said:

I agree that detailed constructive criticisms are great to give (to both new and old mappers, as we all still have some room for improvement), but to me it seems that the /newstuff chronicles are more focused on telling potential players what's likely to be worth their time. If someone wants to tell a mapper all the things they can do to make better levels, that'd be great (I try to pass along knowledge like this myself, whenever I can), but I don't think it has much of a place in a review that's primarily intended to be read by random site/forum users who are not the mapper in question.

You bring a decent point on that one.

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Use3D said:

Highly likely. Am I the only one who thinks you said anything because it's a zdoom wad?



Somehow I was expecting such a response...

Just to make one thing clear: I haven't played ZPack yet but this review only tells me that the review is worthless because the reviewer quite obviously was more interested in acting like a jerk. Is this a serious review or just a failed attempt of a joke? I can't tell and that's why such reviews don't help me.

TawmDee said:

I thought the ZPack review was awesome. Do moar reviews Remiel



I sure hope not that he puts out another such mess. Having fun bashing a project one doesn't like is not a good review - even if it's an entertaining read. It's the closest we have been to deathz0r's trash style in a long while and I was really hoping that was gone for good...


(Disclaimer: I am not associated in any way with ZPack nor have I ever played it. It's just the style of the review that put me off, not its content.)

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Graf Zahl said:

I sure hope not that he puts out another such mess. Having fun bashing a project one doesn't like is not a good review - even if it's an entertaining read.

Too many guts reviewers like those have.

On the other hand we can't differentiate them before they post the review.

Remember to check the /idgames anonymous reviews when the Chronicle fails. More people vote, the opinion is more general.

If the wad you (not Count von Count) authored and like so much only got 2.5 stars, then very likely it could get better. Try better next time.

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printz said:

Too many guts reviewers like those have.


So it's guts now to emulate deathz0r and bash the product being reviewed instead of writing a proper review? OK, the one thing I get from the review is that he didn't like it. But I also get that the style of the review makes it impossible to tell what's factual and what's exaggeration (I tend to dismiss most of it as exaggeration due to the pathetic bashing that's included.) In other words: It doesn't help me.


If the wad you (not Count von Count) authored and like so much only got 2.5 stars, then very likely it could get better. Try better next time.



Are you talking about the not-so-great WADs I uploaded a few years ago?
I'd even admit myself that they are not masterpieces in any way.

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Graf Zahl said:

Are you talking about the not-so-great WADs I uploaded a few years ago?
I'd even admit myself that they are not masterpieces in any way.

Ah, I fail making myself precisely understood. I used "not your-translated-nickname" in paranthesis just to express the opposite of what you observed: it's not specifically about your wads. :)

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printz said:

Too many guts reviewers like those have.

?

Reviewers like those (Remiel & Deathzor I guess) have too many guts? Well, I know a Doomguy who can fix this kind of problem with his hands. Rip and tear!

Seriously, I can't parse that sentence. Best I can tell you mean is "Too many reviewers have fun bashing mods they didn't like" but I'm not sure...

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They have too much passion (ie gutsvisceral behv.) criticizing what they want, but too little interest in searching for what's still valuable in a wad, and weighing it out. I guess Remiel did mention the better maps, but I hear he avoided others. It may be pretty fun to be malicious, as well.

As for the doomworld /idgames file comments: only believe them if they're many ("for we are many").

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printz said:

It may be pretty fun to be malicious, as well.



That's a problem. Especially when there's encouragement from the general public to do so (see the post from TawmDee I quoted.)

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ZOMG /Newstuff drama is back. :O

Seriously though, all these reviews are way too long for my personal liking. And when guys like Prdrkfx (sp?) say that there should be map by map analysis I just can't imagine anyone except the creator actually bothering to read all that.

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I agree with Kristus. Unless the review is like 1-2 paragraphs, I tend to just skip to the last paragraph for the final assessment unless the WAD is somehting I've been meaning to play, like DVII. With the exception of community projects, map-by-map analysis tends not to be overly useful since a lot of things will just be repeated most likley.

As for Remiel, it does seem like he's dead-set on being a troll (he was loser'd for trolling AFAIK.) It's a shame, as he actually seems pretty bright and it would be good if he put his talent toward something productive instead of aspiring to be a troll...

I do follow the arguments that many of the reviews are being excessively critical of a WAD. What with spewing insults, the reader will understand that the reviewer is doing their utmost to demean the WAD. Even if the review has objective information, it is hard to take it seriously since the reader already knows that the reviewer does not like the WAD and therefore makes it difficult to differentiate the likely exagerrations from the more factual information.

What I do is use subjective statements to glean objective information. If the reviewer says "not enough detail," well that's subjective, but you know the WAD has less than avergage. If they say "too many teleport ambushes," same deal, but you know there are more than in most maps... and so one and so forth using this method to get a fairly objective idea of what's in store.

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Patrick Pineda said:

I agree with scuba, i thought ZPack wasnt that great and kinda overrated. all the maps were Tormentor 667 clones.

question, if the rest are 'Tormentor' clones then may i ask how my episode 3 map looks like a clone of one of his maps.

i ask this so i can amend my style of mapping so that it does not look like im trying to be a Tormentor wannabe *which im not*

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b390/hnsolo77/Screenshot_Doom_20080717_003132.png

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b390/hnsolo77/Screenshot_Doom_20080717_003244.png

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b390/hnsolo77/Screenshot_Doom_20080717_003329.png

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On the Zpack thing, Remiel chose to review that WAD. He put his name down and said "I want to do it". He was not forced to do it. He presumably knew the size of the WAD and what would be involved in reviewing a WAD with that many maps in it - and that he might not like some, even all, of them. That's just tough shit for him. If he realised he wasn't up to the task, he should have passed it on to someone who was prepared to at least look at all the maps.

The point has been made that it is possible to tell a lot about a map by only playing the first half (even though I'd say that you really should see a map through to the bitter end if you are reviewing it). However, I'd say that it was a much less safe bet being able to tell how good 10 or more unseen maps by various authors were just because he'd played others, by other authors, in the pack. People spent time and effort on making those maps: more than Remiel did in writing his "review". The least he could have done was to idclev to each map and play them for a bit rather than make sweeping generalisations about what he supposes they might be like.

Like I said, he signed up for it. He chose to do it. However, he wasn't prepared to see the job through and, as a result, the map set didn't get a full review, mappers didn't get feedback, potential players got an incomplete message and someone else who might have been prepared to give it a full review for /newstuff didn't get the chance.

And I thought the epack fpack thing was a weak joke that didn't really make sense much sense other than to allow the reviewer to feel smug and use the 2pack line, which could have been done a lot better too.

Short version: if you sign up to do something, do it. If you can't do it, butt-out and give someone else a chance.

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Enjay said:

Short version: if you sign up to do something, do it. If you can't do it, butt-out and give someone else a chance.


That's only one side of the coin. Someone approved the 'review' for release so it should have been caught somewhere down the line and put into the virtual trashcan where it belongs.

Of course, this style of review is not without precedent and it has been done before... [hint]KDiZD[/hint].

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It is interesting that this only really comes up whenever a Zdoom wad has been "unjustly" reviewed.

The internets is serious business.

That being said, I think Remiel's review did what it was meant to do. It reviewed the wad, you found out what he thought about it, and that he found it to be crap except for a few maps by one author in particular.

He may or may not have ben successful in his attempts to be funny. I think that's something everyone will have to decide for themselves. But he did write the review, and he did play the wad. He didn't play all of it, but he had played a considerable amount of it.

Now, you people who directly or indirectly got connections to this wad. Or simply just liked it anyway will of course not agree. And it's custom practice to go after the reviewer on the trend-setting newstuff chronicles who badmouthed it. There you can pick apart the review and talk about how it's not professional or whatnot.

Seriously though, get over it.

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