/Newstuff Needs Another Revival

[Snakes]

Well, it seems like that time of year again, but someone has to point it out - /newstuff is really backlogged at the moment. There are a few stragglers from May, but basically we have stuff from early July and on that hasn't been reviewed yet. What's more, it looks like there's been very limited activity recently (myself included). I initially tried to put in a significant effort into clearing out some titles before following to the wayside myself for multiple reasons (UR distractions, siblings getting married etc.).

So I'm going to try to hop back on to this bandwagon and simultaneous put in a request for some assistance. There are a LOT of wads that are just sitting there and there's only so much that I can do. I feel like we owe it to authors to get this stuff posted and what's more, keep the long-running tradition of /newstuff drama alive.

So yeah, please help clear this out. The last one was nigh a month ago.

[ArmouredBlood]

Oh hey I have a ton of free time, maybe it'll get me out of this funk.

[GreyGhost]

Shit - there's a lot! I'll take a look at some of them.

[schwerpunk]

I suck at reviews, but I'll see if I can give some of the outliers some attention.

[Springy]

I'll see if I can help, I'm not exactly great on the review front but it's better to give it a shot. Also, congratulations on the marriage.

[EvilNed]

I'll see what I can do!

[Jayextee]

I've started playing HYMN with the intent to review it; only thing is, claiming a review has such a short expiry time, there ain't the time to claim a review for some wads and play through the whole thing before it expires. Otherwise, I'd be game for this.

An example of this affecting me: I was totally going to review Doom 2 in a Nutshell, but I'd got halfway through when the actual review showed up. It's fair enough that I was beaten to it, but a mere four days to complete 32 levels AND submit a (hopefully) well-written appraisal?

Luckily, my first /newstuff review was one I'd already played twice (and only nine maps), so a third time was a breeze of a run that I spent little over an hour on.

Maybe I'll pick some single-map wads to give a shot.

[40oz]

I usually have a pen and paper handy where I usually jot down a few adjectives or adverbs to describe a wad, take a few screenshots, then go on to write down the full review on Notepad on my computer, when when I want to review the wad, I claim the wad, copy and paste my review over, then email the shots. I suppose the possibility of someone claiming your wad while you're in the process of reviewing it is there. In that case, I'd just repeatedly claim a wad to keep it reserved for yourself until you're ready to submit your full review. But it's not exactly ebay sniping. Usually stuff stays put for a while.

I'd be more inclined to submit reviews but the last few times I attempted to kill time with wad reviews, all I could find were megawads, Heretic or Hexen wads, ZDoom mods, weapon mods, CTF mappacks, or some kinda dehacked, decorate or ACS script examples, which are simply not in my league of stuff to review. All the good stuff, like short single player episodes and single vanilla or boom compatible levels were scooped up immediately when they were available.

[Jayextee]

Whoops, I just scooped up a SP Boom map. Don't hate me. ^^;

Also, second review incoming. Just readying the screenshots. On a related note, where's good to upload these things? Mediafire ain't so hot, Photobucket garbles the names. First lot were on my Wordpress account, but I don't want to rely on that forever.

[GreyGhost]

Jayextee said:

Just readying the screenshots. On a related note, where's good to upload these things? Mediafire ain't so hot

MediaFire usually works for me, or you can email them to Bloodshedder.

[Jayextee]

Might email them in future. Latest batch went up on my Wordpress again, it'll do for now.

I think I'm in the camp that would happily review more standard maps but don't care for little DECORATE mods and such.

[Memfis]

I'll review some 1994/1995 upload again I guess.
edit: or not, as I don't see any. :(

[40oz]

Memfis said:

I'll review some 1994/1995 upload again I guess.
edit: or not, as I don't see any. :(

I live for that stuff.

[Jimmy]

On an unrelated note, I just noticed that if I try to go here:

http://doomworld.com/newstuff/

I'm greeted with a "please enable cookies" page. Whereas this:

http://www.doomworld.com/newstuff/

...takes me to the review center.

[Clonehunter]

If there's still room to help I could pull some time for Doom reviews, as it is enjoyable.

[CorSair]

Kinda stuck with reviews for the moment. Will try to rectify that at some point. Like, now.

[40oz]

submitted my review for the day :)

[Memfis]

Slaughterfest 2012?! YOU'RE DEAD.

[Jayextee]

To be honest, I kinda had my eye on SF2012 too. I've managed to beat over half the maps on either skill 1 or 2 (I'm such a slaughtervirgin it's funny) but felt able to write about it from more of a balanced standpoint than "shit's too hard" all the same.


Fun stuff, I'm sure as my skill improves I'll think it's even more enjoyable.

[40oz]

SORRY FOR BEING CHARITABLE

[LordK]

If you have hesitations about reviewing, forget them. I'd rather have short, sucky reviews and a short backlog than the current situation.

I have a few days of vacation coming. Maybe I'll grab some of these.

[schwerpunk]

LordK said:

If you have hesitations about reviewing, forget them. I'd rather have short, sucky reviews and a short backlog than the current situation.

I have a few days of vacation coming. Maybe I'll grab some of these.

Is this the general consensus? Because so far I've played a few, and since they're outside of my usual domain, I decided to leave my brief impressions on idgames rather than crap up the newstuff area.

[Jayextee]

LordK said:

I'd rather have short, sucky reviews and a short backlog than the current situation.

I'd rather write and see something balanced and well-considered, but thanks for playing.

[Tristan]

schwerpunk said:

Is this the general consensus? Because so far I've played a few, and since they're outside of my usual domain, I decided to leave my brief impressions on idgames rather than crap up the newstuff area.

Seconded. Imagine this as a /newstuff review.

EDIT: Yeah, me and Springy already ranted about this over Steam. I mean, another death match wad? No fucking shit!

DOUBLE EDIT: Heh, I enjoy reading the stupider idgames reviews. Always good rant practice.

[schwerpunk]

As I don't think I'm the only one who's about to take a stab at writing some reviews, would there be any interest in starting a thread reviewing reviews? It could help us get some critical feedback on our feedback, and provide some further incentive to writing some good reviews.

[Gez]

Jimmy said:

On an unrelated note, I just noticed that if I try to go here:

http://doomworld.com/newstuff/

I'm greeted with a "please enable cookies" page. Whereas this:

http://www.doomworld.com/newstuff/

...takes me to the review center.

It's because you're logged in on doomworld but not on just doomworld. Cookies are sensitive to that kind of things.

[Phobus]

Good thread, Snakes. I'd help out myself, but as people in the Megawad thread have probably noticed, I'm a bit short on Doom time... Maybe in the near future my miniature essays will make their return. I imagine there will be plenty of megawads for my attention.

[40oz]

When I'm writing a review, I do my best to generalize the overall experience and expose some critical information that wouldn't be able to be known without having played the wad, and hopefully entice the reader to download it and give it a try.

I hate reading reviews that are kinda pedantic and overly hair splitting like "I hated the part where you had to fight two archviles with only a rocket launcher, WHY WOULD YOU EVER DO THAT" when in my mind, that seems perfectly fair, and in order to feel the same about it, you'd pretty much have to recreate the experience the reviewer had with it. In most cases where those points are addressed, I'd actually have to play through the wad while stopping periodically to read the review to understand what the reviewer is talking about.

I also don't like megawad reviews where each individual map gets its own bullet point. If you download the megawad, you download the WHOLE megawad, so it's not like were gonna download it and only skip to the good levels or something. Tell me about the megawad as a cohesive whole, not these minute details.

If you like the wad, try to sell it to the reader. If you don't tell them that it's got bugs or design flaws or other game/fun breaking behavior that might be best not wasting your time with. In short, when you're writing a review, just reread it briefly and check to see that all parts are responding to this question: "What the fuck am I downloading, and how will I know if I'm going to like it?"

[Springy]

40oz well done steak said:

In short, when you're writing a review, just reread it briefly and check to see that all parts are responding to this question: "What the fuck am I downloading, and how will I know if I'm going to like it?"

I fully agree with this, I hate the extremely long reviews that describe each map (I just skip them), just give us a review of the experience of the megawad as a whole seeing as we'll be more inclined to play it (I would anyway).

Regarding the shitty reviews on idgames: we know it's a death match wad, it doesn't take a genius to work out what it is when it's in the DM section and specifies that it's for duel in the text file. I noticed one review got removed for saying "yes indeed". How am I (or anyone else who gets these reviews) supposed to improve the mapping skill based on that? It's like when someone put "1994 map" on my thread, I don't see any 30 foot doors that would make the people on bargain homes fill with rage, or any slime trails, what are you trying to tell me? Be more specific and stop stating the obvious or just leaving a few words of useless feedback as this won't improve your experience with it when it gets fully released.

[dew]

Springy, I think you're bundling what's not meant to be together. /idgames comments are definitely no platform for mapper feedback. They're almost tweet-sized, how could they possibly hold anything truly useful? They're short hints for players by players, that's why the system doesn't allow conversations there. Mapper feedback belongs to project threads, even /newstuff reviews should rather focus on describing the good and the bad of the project, not dissect why it's that way. Reviewer is not obliged to explain why he thinks "fights are poorly designed" or "texturing looks sloppy".

It's only a shame that many mappers don't receive proper feedback in project threads and have to rely on the kindness of the reviewer to shed subjectivity and play the playtester. That may be inevitable due to the size of our humble community though.


On topic of this thread: I haven't reviewed very many projects, but I don't really bother with setting modus operandi for myself. I just compose the text so it's (hopefully) informative and perhaps even enjoyable to read. So if I may be so bold, I recommend you to read your reviews back and think if that's really something you'd read without zoning out if it was someone else's review on a map you've never heard about. Or on a high profile megawad where one slip will bring a mob with torches and pitchforks at your doorstep.