Gothic 3 trashed at GameSpy - 1.5/5
Gothic 3 trashed at GameSpy - 1.5/5
Review - posted by Vault Dweller on Thu 23 November 2006, 15:42:32
Tags: Gothic III; Piranha BytesEvery time I criticize a stupid Gothic 3 review, someone screams "Fanboy!". The truth is, Gothic 3 has flaws, but most reviewers who give G3 negative scores ignore those flaws for some reasons, and prefer to focus on something stupid.
The idiot of the day is Allen 'Delsyn' Rausch of GameSpy. Allen gave Gothic 3 1.5/5 for massive bugs, lousy combat, POOR ART DESIGN, poor interface, lousy dialogue, and generic storyline.
The very same Allen 'Dumbass' Rausch gave Oblivion 4/5 despite noting bugs and technical issues. He said nothing about the dialogues, so I guess he liked them. Here is what he had to say about Oblivion technical issues:
Never mind the minimum specs on the box. Those PCs may technically be able to "run" this game, but it's very possible they won't be able to truly play it. Even on our standard GameSpy gaming rigs (far from underpowered machines), I was forced to reduce my resolution and turn off some of the technical bells and whistles to get an acceptable frame rate.
If there's a real deal-breaker within Oblivion, however, it's the bugs. Lots of 'em. The worst have been problems running the game at all using Nvidia's FX series of video cards, and random, unrepeatable crashes to the desktop. I've seen creatures sometimes float in mid-air and "pop" around rather than turning to attack.Yet Oblivion deserves 4/5, while Gothic 3 is worth only 1.5. Good work, Allen.
Now back to the Gothic 3 review:
The difference is that while the basic design of the Gothic games is equal (and occasionally even superior) to Bethesda's offerings, they've also labored under terrible coding, a god-awful number of bugs and weird design decisions that make the releases (including Gothic 3, the latest in the series) fail to even come close to fulfilling their potential.
Gothic 3 puts the player in the armor of a nameless, goateed hero completely devoid of personality.While Oblivion's main character was loaded with radiant personality and other cool stuff.
The opening scene is somehow symbolic of the many offenses this game commits against the player. First, the game starts the player off in the middle of combat! It's difficult to find the words to express how galactically stupid this is,If Bethesda did it (and they kinda did), it would have been called "immersive".
The good news is that I had a lot of time to enjoy the landscape, as the game frequently hangs for long periods while the terrain loads. The bad news? The landscape simply isn't much to look at. THE ART DESIGN FOR THIS GAME IS PRETTY ATROCIOUS. The game is divided up into three climate zones: a temperate forest where the main storyline happens, a colder zone to the north and a desert to the south. Of the three, it's the desert that's the most appealing, with occasionally beautiful vistas of endless sand dunes, mysterious Persian-style towers and gorgeous skies. The main area is filled with villages and castles that are just squat and ugly with way too few textures and a whole lot of repeated walls, furniture and decorations."WTF?" is all I can say to that.
The game's story -- such as it is -- is a boringly generic fantasy tale badly told through atrocious dialogue and voiceovers that run the gamut from acceptable to truly dire.
...
For all the good elements in quest and world design, even here the game manages to screw up. Supporting one side or the other will eventually piss off the other side so badly that their strongholds will attack you on sight. That's fine except that in order to complete the main story, players must acquire certain items and complete certain quests from both sides. Since there's no way to go back after falling into one faction's bad graces, it's entirely possible to be unable to complete the game just by playing the game as designed!You can fight your way in and take the items by force, can't you? Too complex for you, Allen?
The bad part is the interface the player uses to do this. The player interface for character development (and inventory control and the quest journal and myriad other functions) is simply terrible. Character skills and player controls are laid out in confusing and counterintuitive ways. It's prohibitively difficult to tell exactly what a player's skill progression is and what the prerequisites are for getting a particular skill. This makes character planning almost impossibleWe can take this as a proof that prolonged exposure to Oblivion causes stupidity and inability to understand even the most basic concepts without help.
Spotted at: RPG Watch
The idiot of the day is Allen 'Delsyn' Rausch of GameSpy. Allen gave Gothic 3 1.5/5 for massive bugs, lousy combat, POOR ART DESIGN, poor interface, lousy dialogue, and generic storyline.
The very same Allen 'Dumbass' Rausch gave Oblivion 4/5 despite noting bugs and technical issues. He said nothing about the dialogues, so I guess he liked them. Here is what he had to say about Oblivion technical issues:
Never mind the minimum specs on the box. Those PCs may technically be able to "run" this game, but it's very possible they won't be able to truly play it. Even on our standard GameSpy gaming rigs (far from underpowered machines), I was forced to reduce my resolution and turn off some of the technical bells and whistles to get an acceptable frame rate.
If there's a real deal-breaker within Oblivion, however, it's the bugs. Lots of 'em. The worst have been problems running the game at all using Nvidia's FX series of video cards, and random, unrepeatable crashes to the desktop. I've seen creatures sometimes float in mid-air and "pop" around rather than turning to attack.
Now back to the Gothic 3 review:
The difference is that while the basic design of the Gothic games is equal (and occasionally even superior) to Bethesda's offerings, they've also labored under terrible coding, a god-awful number of bugs and weird design decisions that make the releases (including Gothic 3, the latest in the series) fail to even come close to fulfilling their potential.
Gothic 3 puts the player in the armor of a nameless, goateed hero completely devoid of personality.
The opening scene is somehow symbolic of the many offenses this game commits against the player. First, the game starts the player off in the middle of combat! It's difficult to find the words to express how galactically stupid this is,
The good news is that I had a lot of time to enjoy the landscape, as the game frequently hangs for long periods while the terrain loads. The bad news? The landscape simply isn't much to look at. THE ART DESIGN FOR THIS GAME IS PRETTY ATROCIOUS. The game is divided up into three climate zones: a temperate forest where the main storyline happens, a colder zone to the north and a desert to the south. Of the three, it's the desert that's the most appealing, with occasionally beautiful vistas of endless sand dunes, mysterious Persian-style towers and gorgeous skies. The main area is filled with villages and castles that are just squat and ugly with way too few textures and a whole lot of repeated walls, furniture and decorations.
The game's story -- such as it is -- is a boringly generic fantasy tale badly told through atrocious dialogue and voiceovers that run the gamut from acceptable to truly dire.
...
For all the good elements in quest and world design, even here the game manages to screw up. Supporting one side or the other will eventually piss off the other side so badly that their strongholds will attack you on sight. That's fine except that in order to complete the main story, players must acquire certain items and complete certain quests from both sides. Since there's no way to go back after falling into one faction's bad graces, it's entirely possible to be unable to complete the game just by playing the game as designed!
The bad part is the interface the player uses to do this. The player interface for character development (and inventory control and the quest journal and myriad other functions) is simply terrible. Character skills and player controls are laid out in confusing and counterintuitive ways. It's prohibitively difficult to tell exactly what a player's skill progression is and what the prerequisites are for getting a particular skill. This makes character planning almost impossible
Spotted at: RPG Watch
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