Review Absolutely idiotic Gothic 3 review

[MacD]

You know what? I could have loved this game, and DeadAlfs has the correct score for this game for the wrong reasons.

I love the G3 world. It's real (MUCH realer than Oblivion), it's immersive, it has areas of grey and Orcs who have their own worldview and mindset. It has looks and it has style, and some cool quests which, even though they might be cookie cutter fed-ex quests, are actually interesting because they're wrapped in story; you actually feel like you're doing something.

But my god does the game have bugs. So many in fact that teh game is unplayable. Not just from a performance angle, although that in itself is really unforgivable (this from someone with a decent machine, 6800+256ddr3 and 2 gigs'o'ram...even on lowest settings, with ini tweaks to set it all lower, the performance is CRAP...so crap infact that setting everything to high [well, balanced high, you know what I mean, or at least the ini tweakers amongst us do] makes little framerate difference). This game engine IS SHIT. The lead programmer and all his slaves should be not just shot, but beaten up first, then hanged, then drawn, then quartered, and then, after a week, maybe, shot.

But the combat sucks. And this from someone who figured out easily how not to get stunlocked at an early level; I know the combat system...which is interesting if it were implemented correctly. But fuck me, is the whole game mechanic of combat utterly screwed. In combat, you autotarget friendlies (who then proceed to backstab you if you hit them whilst you tried, really tried, to hit those three orcs in front of you, but the autotargetting which you'd turned oof targeted them instead ).

I really tried to love this game...hell, I did. at level one, or two, when I first saw Vangard, domed in...wow. When I libereated my first city...cool! When I did some cool quest, and saw those amazing sights which looked SO MUCH COOLER than Oblivion's...I so wanted to play this game for much longer than the hundred+ hours I put into Oblivion.

But after going through the centre of the continent, the fucked up performance and fucked up combat just frustrated me too much. Trying to liberate Vengard was the straw which borke this camel's back...

This game, for all it's promise, for all irt's good looks, for all it's cool scenery and vista's and tableaux...this game sucks.

'Cause a game needs to be playable. It needs to be fun to play. But when the very engine it plays on is fucked, when it takes minutes to even start to play the game and damn near the same to reload when you die (and due to shoddy game performance, you die a lot), and when the combat just doesn't work due to stupid gamedesign decisions...that's when a game should be put out to pasture, delleted from the harddrive, and the programmers hsot and replaced.

But keep the art staff and the leveldesignersand the storytellers...they did a heck of a job. Too bad I'll never see what they wanted me to see.

 

[galsiah]

...But when the very engine it plays on is fucked...and the programmers hsot and replaced...

That'd be a reasonable perspective if the game performed like that for everyone. Performance being shit for everyone would point to a shit engine.

That's apparently not the case though. Performance is just shit for a significant number of users. That points to inadequate testing. It points to a game that's rushed out before the programmers get enough feedback to tune the engine for all setups.

That doesn't excuse the problems. It just means that blaming the programmers makes very little sense. Every engine (for a PC game) will have significant problems with some setups before testing. There just needs to be time to put them right.

If you must shoot, shoot the schedulers.


Clearly it's possible that the engine was designed inflexibly, and therefore became impossible to adapt. However, given all the release date srewups, I'd guess that lack of time was the most significant factor.

 

[OccupatedVoid]

If you must shoot, shoot the schedulers.

Shoot the guy who did the UML models.

Or was the game spaghetti code?

 

[Twinfalls]

Volourn, you need to realise something. You have long since worn out whatever 'silly forum mascot' cachet you might have had. Your continual, aggressive, mono-maniacal spamming of threads with the exact same shit, over and over again, is useless and disruptive.

You are, quite simply, a pest.

Take a step back and get yourself together.

 

[Volourn]

"Volourn, you need to realise something. You have long since worn out whatever 'silly forum mascot' cachet you might have had. Your continual, aggressive, mono-maniacal spamming of threads with the exact same shit, over and over again, is useless and disruptive.

You are, quite simply, a pest.

Take a step back and get yourself together."

R00fles!

 

[whatusername]

R00fles!

R00fles!

 

[Twinfalls]

Quite a rejoinder there, Volourn. You wield the elegant riposte like a battering ram, your grandchildren will sing with much pride of your conquests.

 

[aweigh]

you assume he will breed.........???? r00fles.

 

[stargelman]

1. Europe cultural thing. British hate German people guts and everything they do. The German don't realy give a fuck about the Brits which hangers them even more.

That's most definitely a minority opinion. Some very good friends of mine live on the monkey island and they and many others don't hate Germans. It's just those bloody rotten tabloids that consider it cool to bash krauts and a few people who've not noticed that times and people change.

 

[Roqua]

...But when the very engine it plays on is fucked...and the programmers hsot and replaced...

That'd be a reasonable perspective if the game performed like that for everyone. Performance being shit for everyone would point to a shit engine.

That's apparently not the case though. Performance is just shit for a significant number of users. That points to inadequate testing. It points to a game that's rushed out before the programmers get enough feedback to tune the engine for all setups.

That doesn't excuse the problems. It just means that blaming the programmers makes very little sense. Every engine (for a PC game) will have significant problems with some setups before testing. There just needs to be time to put them right.

If you must shoot, shoot the schedulers.


Clearly it's possible that the engine was designed inflexibly, and therefore became impossible to adapt. However, given all the release date srewups, I'd guess that lack of time was the most significant factor.

Its a reasonable perspective in general. What if the developers decided to poor the resources they poorered into graphics into combat balancing and optimization of the game? Would the game be better or worse off?

ANy game that values graphics above all else is a tragedy in my opinion. This game didn't reach its full potential, shipped buggy, even unplayable to a lot of users, with unbalanced and crap combat, due to putting too much emphasis on trying to out0graphic oblivion.

 

[Twinfalls]

This game didn't reach its full potential, shipped buggy, even unplayable to a lot of users, with unbalanced and crap combat, due to putting too much emphasis on trying to out0graphic oblivion.

This, sadly, appears true. The question is though:

Was this a commercial necessity?

You see, I think it was. I suspect huge numbers of potential buyers nowadays are put off by comments on 'review' sites which say "the graphics are OK, but not as good as Oblivion" - heck, let's face it, the majority of reviews would outright say "the graphics suckz!" if its merely at the standard of the previous games, ie not DX9 shaderised and shit. At any rate, it's probably not worth the risk to the publisher for a game to not have the latest supa shinies.

 

[The Vanished One]

...I suspect huge numbers of potential buyers nowadays are put off by comments on 'review' sites which say "the graphics are OK, but not as good as Oblivion" - heck, let's face it, the majority of reviews would outright say "the graphics suckz!" if its merely at the standard of the previous games, ie not DX9 shaderised and shit. At any rate, it's probably not worth the risk to the publisher for a game to not have the latest supa shinies.

Agree. I also think that reviews in the 'review' sites you mentioned are too often only a point of view and aren't objective articles as they should be.

 

[Ladonna]

I don't agree. I believe that if the graphics are fairly good, the crowd will still follow. An updated G2 engine could have pulled in the crowds, as long as it was polished, had UI updates, etc.

If the graphics are shit, then the moron majority will leave it alone. Art, detail...these things tend to even the score. Check out how many people are saying 'NWN2's graphics are as good as Gothic3/Oblivion/etc' This is bs, but they believe it because they like the game, and the graphics are not bad.

As to the unfinished game; I believe PB stuffed up by trying to create such a massive world while using far too few people in its team. If it had another 6months to a year, it could have pulled it off in style, but the team was just too small for a game of this magnitude, in the timeframe alloted.

 

[VenomByte]

Quite well, I believe. Sure, some of you may get a kick out of laughing at him to yourselves, but I find the guy absolutely useless. Unless he gives in and finally blows his own brains out or chugs down a bottle of Tylenol PM, a ban would be an acceptable alternative.

-D4

Agreed. Volourn is (was?) tolerable when he at least bothers to explain or argue his points coherently, but more recently he's been about as coherent and useful as an epileptic claustrophobic retard stuck in a small room with a strobe laser light.

 

[The Vanished One]

...If it had another 6months to a year...

I agree with this. It should have had more time.

As for the graphics, I think that a lot of people wouldn't have bought the game if it had an updated G2 engine. However this might have been better for the performance.

 

[Paranoid Jack]

Volourn, you need to realise something. You have long since worn out whatever 'silly forum mascot' cachet you might have had. Your continual, aggressive, mono-maniacal spamming of threads with the exact same shit, over and over again, is useless and disruptive.

You are, quite simply, a pest.

Take a step back and get yourself together.

Well said. I have been meaning to post a statement similar to that for months. I am also glad to see others are just as tired of his useless posts as I am. Now if we can get him to only post when he has a point and enough time to proof read or spell-check before hitting submit. With half a dozen typos per sentence... well, the majority of his posts are a hassle to read and usually not worth the time either way. Sad but true.

 

[elander_]

That's most definitely a minority opinion. Some very good friends of mine live on the monkey island and they and many others don't hate Germans. It's just those bloody rotten tabloids that consider it cool to bash krauts and a few people who've not noticed that times and people change.

But a big part of them still does and enough to feed those tabloids you are speaking of.

Since when does being a complete moron and an asshat constitute a ban on the codex? I mean, christ, kingcomrade's still around for fuck's sake. You gotta draw the line somewhere pal.

Volorurn just can't handle the truth that Bio didn't even try to make NWN a roleplaying game. Poor sad boy allways hangry at the codex.

 

[FrancoTAU]

No character creation? What the fuck? I’m forced to play a pre-made character, with a preset attitude, with really limited choices in game-play beyond who to side with? That equals bullshit.

What about Torment?

What about the Ultimas? And even Fallout you had to be the Vault Dweller guy who gets booted from his community to find a water chip.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Quite well, I believe. Sure, some of you may get a kick out of laughing at him to yourselves, but I find the guy absolutely useless. Unless he gives in and finally blows his own brains out or chugs down a bottle of Tylenol PM, a ban would be an acceptable alternative.

-D4

Agreed. Volourn is (was?) tolerable when he at least bothers to explain or argue his points coherently, but more recently he's been about as coherent and useful as an epileptic claustrophobic retard stuck in a small room with a strobe laser light.

We could implement a r00fles-o-meter, and after he posts r00fles another 100 times, it bans him automatically.

 

[elander_]

This is an interesting question. Giving a char with a certain pre-defined background (or the freedom to choose from some pre-defined backgrounds) may actualy improve role-playing than just having a completely unknown char. See Oblivion for example. You are an unknown that starts in prison so all quests have to be generic to fit any char choice the player may do. It's very hard for quest writers to create interesting adventures and role-playing opurtunities without knowing some traces of the chars that are going to do the quests. This said i agree that G3 is very limited but the game is sold as an action game with rpg elements. For this kind of game i think people are geting much more than say Dark Messiah.

 

[The Vanished One]

...Giving a char with a certain pre-defined background (or the freedom to choose from some pre-defined backgrounds) may actualy improve role-playing than just having a completely unknown char...

I never thought about this, but it seems right to me, as long as developers are able to invent good backgrounds for their pre-defined characters.

 

[Littlefizz]

Well, writers can simply create different quests for different characters and let you choose which ones apply to yours (possibly having consequences on your possiblities in the future) or give you a generic quest which can be solved in different ways depending on your char.
Obviously you can't have a story like the one in Torment but quests don't have to be shitty.

 

[Vault Dweller]

The problem my 'good buddy' (R00fles!) VD is that according to you there pretty much no legitimate complaint about the game unless it's one of your view dislikes.

I'm sure you have many a proof to back up such a wonderful claim. I'm not being unreasonable asking for proof, because when one's position is being criticized, facts the conclusion that one is an asshat is based on must be presented.

Whenever you are ready, Volly.

In fact, you white wash the stuff you don't like about G3. You yourself state that the game is 80% combat and basically say that's a-ok.

There are no rules stating what combat percentage is ok and what percentage isn't. Diablo 2, for example, is an excellent game and it's 100% combat. ToEE is a pretty good game and it's 95% combat. And so on, and so on.

In my review I simply warned people that G3 is 80% combat because it's an important factor and could be a turn off for some people.

But, you completely trash other games when you (mis) calculate them as 80% combat (KOTOR has many weaknesses ala too much combat)...

Link?

Here is my KOTOR impressions. Where did I complain about too much combat?

Your threats of bannage are just hilarious. Either do it or don't. I've been banned elsewhere. Soemhow I managed to survive just fine.

Now that you've given me the courtesy of a multi-paragraph post, there is no reason to worry about that, is there?

ps2 'Good buddies' don't ban their 'good buddies' nor do they threaten them with it. So, stop spreaidng lies about us being 'good buddies'.

You repeatedly asked for it lately. Sometimes you behave like a dick (which is what earned you the title). I still have no clue what your last "episode" was all about. You could have talked to me if you had some issues, and I did offer you my help, yet you refused and kept spamming the Retardo Land. Anyway...

 

[Volourn]

"You repeatedly asked for it lately. Sometimes you behave like a dick (which is what earned you the title). I still have no clue what your last "episode" was all about. You could have talked to me if you had some issues, and I did offer you my help, yet you refused and kept spamming the Retardo Land. Anyway..."

Whya re you lying? I haven't asked to banned for a long while. All i said was if yre gonna ban me than go ahead and stip whining about. Offer your help? What do you think this is? Helper's Anonymous. I don't need the Codex's help. R00fles!


"Now that you've given me the courtesy of a multi-paragraph post, there is no reason to worry about that, is there?"

Oh, i see. As longas someone writes paragraphs they're a-ok? Give me a break. Lots of people here and elsewhere use parargaphs and they're still morons.


Link to your 'impressions' all you want. You know full well that you have made fun of BIO's games because, to you, they have 'too much combat'.


"Diablo 2, for example, is an excellent game and it's 100% combat. ToEE is a pretty good game and it's 95% combat. And so on, and so on."

Diablo isn't professing to be an atcual RPG; is it now. It's an action claim. It be like whining that a game like BGDA is almsot all combat or Gauntlet. And, you don't complain about TOEE having so much combat because we both know about you feel about Troika.

Hey, we all have people whose posts we dislike. Suck it up, and deal with it. Or ban me. Or whine. But, as long as you attack the majority if not all G3 negative reviewers as 'stupid' or 'brainwashed'; you get what you deserve. Espicially considered that G3 is probably the least tatical of any RPG I have ever played and that includes the KOTORs, BL, or even POR2. *shrug*

As for your posse, they are funny too. :D


P.S. If you want 'proof' do a little search of all the G3 threads around here. They ain't hard to find. And, I'm not the only one who has pointed your obvious bias/fanboyism aside. But, i forgot, only a moron would accuse The Great VD of such a thing. He's *never* bias* and only states the truth.

R00fles!

 

[Vault Dweller]

Link to your 'impressions' all you want. You know full well that you have made fun of BIO's games because, to you, they have 'too much combat'.

No, I haven't. I criticized Bio games for the lack of meaningful choices, and certain other design decisions, but not the combat ratio.

Diablo isn't professing to be an atcual RPG; is it now.

It's a well done action RPG. You have a shitload of skills that create and support a shitload of unique builds, which creates and supports a shitload of different ways to play the game.

And, you don't complain about TOEE having so much combat because we both know about you feel about Troika.

I feel that way about ToEE because it's a great dungeon crawler featuring the best turn-based combat todate.

Hey, we all have people whose posts we dislike. Suck it up, and deal with it. Or ban me. Or whine. But, as long as you attack the majority if not all G3 negative reviewers as 'stupid' or 'brainwashed'; you get what you deserve.

Let me worry about that, and you worry about not getting what you deserve.

Espicially considered that G3 is probably the least tatical of any RPG I have ever played and that includes the KOTORs, BL, or even POR2. *shrug*

So now "tactical" is a new requirement for an RPG, is it?

But, i forgot, only a moron would accuse The Great VD of such a thing. He's *never* bias* and only states the truth.

Well, if I'm so biased, how about a simple link or some quotes? Shouldn't be hard to find.