Review Lotsa love for MKA at GamersInfo

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Bandai Namco Entertainment; Mage Knight: Apocalypse

<a href=http://www.gamersinfo.net>GamersInfo</a>, a site employing and targeting people with low IQ, has posted a <a href=http://www.gamersinfo.net/index.php?art/id:1301>very positive review</a> of <a href=http://mageknight.namco.com/>Mage Knight Apocalypse</a>, praising "a well designed, well created, interactive story". Let's compare this review with what <a href=http://www.gamepro.com/computer/pc/games/reviews/82728.shtml>GamePro had to say</a>:
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<blockquote><b>GI</b>: I am very grateful to the developers of Mage Knight Apocalypse ... They created a game that was everything I hoped it would be and more, and it has been so much fun to play that I haven't wanted to stop long enough to write this review. ... Personally I have found Mage Knight Apocalypse to be one of the best rpg's that has hit the market in a long time.
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<b>GP</b>: What we have in Mage Knight is a poor attempt to hop on the WoW gravy train. The developer clearly flayed all the depth and nuance out of the formula that made WoW such a huge commercial success, delivering instead a soulless husk stuffed with empty promises and features that you wouldn't want anyway.
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<b>GI</b>: The storyline is, of course, the focus of the game and the reason for playing, and in this particular game the storyline is great. ... In Mage Knight Apocalypse it is the story that is the centralized focus of the game, and I really wish more rpg game developers would get that concept and make it a part of their games.
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<b>GP</b>: And as far as the plot goes, Mage Knight is linear like water is wet. The game's single player campaign follows a series of loosely connected skirmishes with the common themes of attack, rescue and invasion.
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<b>GI</b>: The more I use skills based on strength, for example, the higher my strength goes. If I need to raise wisdom, I can go out herb hunting and then make potions from what I gather. There is a pretty logical connection between each ability and the skill that raises it, at least from what I've seen.
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<b>GP</b>: In reality, however, all that clicking really amounts to little more than arbitrary skill increases that are minimally associated with your play style. For instance, we once received a wisdom increase for smashing open a wine barrel, an experience that was hardly educational or thought-provoking in any way.
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<b>GI</b>: ...the content adjusts to where I am, not the other way around. I can simply log in and play the game, experience the story, and enjoy the world.
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<b>GP</b>: Mage Knight, however, offers only rigid quests that end with dry, uninspired cut scenes. The ability to lose yourself in the world is almost non-existent.</blockquote>If you are looking for a logical explanation of this phenomenon, here is one: "I am usually an MMORPG player".
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Thanks, Vidder

 

[Bluebottle]

Gamepro didn't get their kickback in time for the review then?

 

[suibhne]

If only we could run a compare-and-contrast like that with reviews of Oblivion...except there weren't any good ones.

 

[Baphomet]

This illustrates a point the guys at Penny Arcade made way back in the day ... game reviewers should have some kind of a profile that includes the games they like and the games they don't.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Likes/dislikes are irrelevant, imo. What's important is actually reviewing a game, i.e. going through point-by-point and explaining each feature in details. Even though the GamePro review is far from being perfect, if you compare it to the GI review, you'll quickly see the difference and how much the GI reviewers has failed to mentioned. Sadly, most (p)reviews these days are all about emotions, without ANY details: OMG! The graphics are amazing! OMG! Combat is liek 4 real!!! OMG! Its teh best story of teh century (KOTOR1), etc.

 

[Direwolf]

Yeah, but you must remember that reviews can't be objective by definition. They are emotional by default.

 

[Castanova]

In my opinion, reviews should be mostly an objective, detailed description of the game that focuses on key gameplay components that would allow a reader to get the gist of the game and be able to reliably tell whether he would like the game himself.

 

[peak]

Wow. And here I thought I was a bad reviewer. Well, I probably still am but this made me feel better. Thanks.

 

[suibhne]

Yeah, but you must remember that reviews can't be objective by definition. They are emotional by default.

They may not be able to objective, but they should at least be useful to the reader.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

If only we could run a compare-and-contrast like that with reviews of Oblivion...except there weren't any good ones.

I think I misunderstood this post.

 

[suibhne]

If only we could run a compare-and-contrast like that with reviews of Oblivion...except there weren't any good ones.

I think I misunderstood this post.

Let me try again.

If only we could compare and contrast poor reviews of Oblivion with good ones, as VD did above with MKA. If only.

 

[Anonytroll]

The GI-author suffers from Apostrophitis and Multiple-Exclamation-Mark syndrome. That's always a bad sign.

 

[Voss]

Yeah, but you must remember that reviews can't be objective by definition. They are emotional by default.

And once again I find myself hoping that the sarcasm just got lost on the internet, and will catch up with the post laster on.

 

[Vandreezer]

I think, having read through a lot of threads on this site, that I'm the only one who has actually played it. I picked it up yesterday and actually like it, shocking I know...

It's not BG, or Diablo, it's definitely not WoW lol, but it's fun and dammit I need people to play with online so someone out there buy it.

As for the two reviews, I think they're both smoking crack, just different kinds of crack.

 

[Direwolf]

Yeah, but you must remember that reviews can't be objective by definition. They are emotional by default.

And once again I find myself hoping that the sarcasm just got lost on the internet, and will catch up with the post laster on.

Don't worry. It will come to you.

 

[Voss]

No, I get it...its just that it could also be taken as a serious statement of pure idiocy. In a conversation, non verbal clues would make it clear, but on the 'net, 90% of the time you just have to assume the person is stupid.

 

[Drakron]

Pick a film review and then look at a game review.

Game reviews look more and more like marketing, granted you can easy find the same in films reviews but the amount of professionalism and objectivity is far larger in film review that in game reviews.

In a way I am ashamed that VD decided to pick up some retarded website that publishes reviews by people that likely never bother to play the game in the first place.

 

[Jim Kata]

The only way a review of any kind makes sense is if you list WHAT you dislike or like and then explain WHY, hopefully citing examples.

That is why most of the codex reviews are pretty good, whereas the bad review about had nothing but WOWEEE excpt the ONE line about attribute increases, which is fine but hardly something not done in a zillion games already.

 

[Direwolf]

My point was that game reviews in general are pretty stupid. There is as much sense making fun of a game review, because it is emotional, as there is in making fun of a ball just because it is a sphere. Only completely shit games usually get scores under 50% and that is very rare. Gaming websites and magazines depend too much on advertising revenues from various publishers to ever be useful. Sure, there are sites like Codex, but mainstream crowd doesn't read them. They read gamespy, gamespot and ign. And those guys are biggest corporate whores I've ever seen. So there is little wonder that gaming industry is going downhill.

 

[cutterjohn]

I've had the same problems with reviews and reviewers myself in recent years, or at least from more "mainstream" sites that review more than one genre. I find that today's reviews really don't end up telling you all that much about game, how it plays, it's mechanics, etc. Usually, I end up getiing more out of the included screenshots than the text of the reviews.

In the past, I used to like gamesdomain for it's RPG and strategy games reviews plus the fact that they reviewed all genres and IIRC didn't really score games but gave copper, silver and bronze medallions to the better games, but since they were swallowed up by yahoo, and what passes for whats left of gamesdomain is pretty crappy. In loght of all of this, I usually end up at sites that specifically review mostly one genre of games, and preferably ones that focus more on PC games than console games, and also tend to have reviews by a small group of people with possibly several reviews of the same game by different people, e.g. rpgcode, just rpg, rpg dot, just adventure, etc.

Actually now that I think of it after writing the above it appears that too many reviews are too focused on scores and scoring, and not talking about the game itself. Personally, I usually ignore the overall score/rating and look for the details in the text if any are available. Failing that I look for discussion in usenet groups, forums, etc. and even dev interviews if the game is so low profile that it hasn't generated any/much buzz.

(Seems like Mage Knight(and Minions of Mirth) are falling into that category. I've only see any real activity at their own forums, which make the game sound some what interesting, but $50 seems pretty steep for it. It really sound more like a $30 game to me, esp. when you consider that G3 I've seen listed at $40. It also seems like it's not that long of a game, as one guy on the official forums claimed to have finished it in 8h(probably rushed) while other have said 30-40h. Replaying with a different character through what would essentially amount to the same story(main plot) and game sequences just to see the other characters really doesn't appeal to me.)