Review 1UP torpedoes NWN2 - 5/10

[serch]

Review is out of existence at the moment.

 

[suibhne]

Some really good posts over at QT3, in fact - really good posts about why that review was complete, unmitigated crap.

 

[elander_]

Since Oblivion that reviews are beating moronic records on the internet both positive and negative ones. I wouldn't give NWN2 more than 7 and thats just because of the characters but the dumbfucked rt with pause combat system is a crime against D&D character system.

 

[Nael]

This all just goes to show that number ratings for reviews are pointless and arbitrary. If there were no numbers given people would've read it, digested it, and moved on. But because the game was given the numerical value of 5 out of a possible 10 a great rumbling insues and the monkey-horde begins to beat their chests over a stupid fucking number.

This also goes to show that most humans are nothing more than dumb animals.

 

[Bradylama]

Well, ratings systems based on the value of 10 makes people think of the grading scale for school, so it's only natural that they'll think a 5 is a failure score. It certainly implies that the game isn't worth your money, even if it's supposed to be "average."

I remember PC Gamer had games in the 40-50 range as "merely ok," but I wouldn't touch any of those games with Volourn's dick.

 

[Elwro]

Well, ratings systems based on the value of 10 makes people think of the grading scale for school

... in certain countries, perhaps.

I always thought about the "x out of 10" ratings as similar to a percentage of... well, I'm not sure what, but as a percentage anyway :D

 

[OccupatedVoid]

Obsidian: Uh, sorry guys, here's your payment.
1UP: For what?
Obsidian: NWN2, of course!
1UP: Well, we didn't get it fast enough so we gave it a 5/10.
Obsidian: What??! A 5/10!! We wanted a 10/10!!
1UP: Like we said, you never gave us our money, and our reviewer just got back from Marijuanaville.
Obsidian: Can't you take it off? We have our money.
1UP: Well, there's one way. Lots of developers use this method. *zip*

 

[Bradylama]

... in certain countries, perhaps.

Heh. I meant multiples of 10. Like 1-10, 1-100, 1000, whatnot.

Unless you get Elvis Stickers in Poland.

 

[Kraszu]

... in certain countries, perhaps.

Heh. I meant multiples of 10. Like 1-10, 1-100, 1000, whatnot.

Unless you get Elvis Stickers in Poland.

We have 1-5 + 6 scale 6 is for someting special like wining math contest or someting.

 

[DemonKing]

Well he does say at the bottom of the review that if you are a D&D fanboi the game is an 8-9/10 in line with most other reviewers, but let's face it - that *is* the core audience for this game. It's not like Counter Strike junkies who've been playing that exclusively for 5 years are going to be interested in NWN2 in the first place.

Seems to me the reviewer is just courting controversy for it's on sake - and not very well at that.

 

[Zomg]

I never got a chance to read the original review, but from the flap it seems like they accidentally used a G4 duderz reviewer when they needed an effete hype-internalizer like Desslock.

Edit - Er, actually not. Reading the excerpts VD has it seems like he's more against spreadsheet gameplay, which is fine by me. Lots of autistics love D20 though, and I think reviewing is a lot different than criticism, so maybe the pull is still valid.

 

[HanoverF]

You shouldn't ask people who don't like salads to review a salad shooter and you shouldn't ask people who don't like using their brains to review games that aren't Oblivion.

Don't get me wrong the number seems acceptable, I doubt the sequal could surpass the original and the original was a reeking pile of shit. However that review reads like someone who doesn't fully understand what words mean and/or who thinks 'everything should be chocolate, why the hell does there have to be vanilla?'

 

[galsiah]

...it seems like he's more against spreadsheet gameplay, which is fine by me...

Sure, I'd agree. However, there's a big difference between being against the spreadsheet presentation, and being against the rules themselves.

I'm behind throwing out as many stats as possible (where appropriate), but against removing good rules. The player just needs to be presented the rules differently. There's no reason things can't be complex, deep, and stat light (while behind-the-scenes stat heavy, naturally).
You'd need a truck-load of well thought through feedback mechanisms to get things working well, of course - but that's not impossible.

From what I can tell (didn't see the review), the reviewer seems to advocate a baby-out-with-the-bathwater approach. He doesn't like the presentation of the rules, so he wants the rules thrown out.

If that is his attitude, it's stupid.
If the presentation sucks (in his opinion) it makes sense to favour a change in presentation. If the rules themselves suck, he should be arguing on the basis of the implications of the rules - not the fact that they're handled using numbers.


That said, I'm against using p&p rule systems in the first place - unless merely as a starting point for design.
If you're making a D&D game, perhaps it makes sense to have all the stats in the player's face. I just wish people would stop making D&D games. (in terms of mechanics anyway - I've no particular objection to D&D settings, creatures etc.)

 

[DemonKing]

Ha - 1Up have officially retracted the review for not meeting their standards.

Maybe the editor should have gone over it properly before publishing it in the first place.

 

[Kraszu]

If he wants to give the game a poor rating then thats ok. The problem with gaming industry journalism is that it has to apparently act as a whole and agree. Does every film critic like the same movies? No, and neither do all gamers. This reviewer didn't particularly like the RPG genre and that's actually a great perspective to write a review from. This displays to non-RPG fans that the game is not for them.

What a great idea, why not go further give games to review to somebody that doesn't like games, and see if games are for people that don't like games.

 

[Bradylama]

And now... Andy Rooney.

"I don't understand this 'electronic gaming' business. I remember back in my day, a gamer was somebody who blew their whole week's salary at the blackjack table."

 

[Zomg]

@galsiah: Well, as I said, I wasn't able to read it. But surely, the stereotype of some guy going on for three paragraphs about setting up a monkey gripping six sneak attacks of opportunity per round half-ogre metamagic prestige class, deduced by upending a rulebook into his brain and then simmering it over ever minute his mind has to wander has some validity. I think D20 was knowingly designed to be rule pornography in that way, the same way TSR knowingly encouraged it with splatbooks.

There is a difference between that and a system like GURPS, which is very rule topheavy, but ultimately about creating characters and inserting rules to provide character-gameworld feedback and gameplay in pretty much anything you can think of doing. It's also very deconstructable in terms of power gaming, but that's a problem to be fixed, not a goal.

 

[EEVIAC]

Ha - 1Up have officially retracted the review for not meeting their standards.

Maybe the editor should have gone over it properly before publishing it in the first place.

Here's a link to the apology. He seems to be missing the point that the reviewer can't write. If you have to do that much editing, you may as well write the review yourself.

 

[Bradylama]

Anyways, I'm behind the mag's move at this point, but I unfortunately missed the original review. Would it be possible to perhaps explain what, exactly, was unfair?

Why do these guys even bother? Do they think 1UP is somehow vindicated because they approve an action they have no familiarity with?

 

[Direwolf]

Here's the original review

Quote: By Matt Peckham
This review appears in the January issue of Games For Windows: The Official Magazine.

----

As everything-the-original-did -- and more -- follow-ups go, Neverwinter Nights 2 deserves a banner&something like "mission accomplished." Think the sequel to Jurassic Park, where Spielberg's all "You want more dinosaurs? I'll show you more dinosaurs..." As a contemporary CRPG, on the other hand, NWN2 leaves a lot to be desired, and that's too bad, because these are the guys who brought us Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale 2...and therefore they are the guys I'm least inclined to take issue with.

But issues exist, and defining them is really no more complex than saying, "Hello D&D superchrome, buh-bye storytelling and character development (you know, those things you're supposed to "immerse" yourself in)." The idea seems to be that we're meant to rah-rah about a superabundance of feats, spells, races, prestige (advanced) classes, and math-equation tickers full of the usual "I attack you with a +4 sword of --" booooooring. Fine, sure, dandy...but when is a "role" not a "role"? Simple: when it's a rule to a fault.

Ever loyal bites
I'm cruising for a bruising (don't I know it), but NWN2 is a splash of cold water to the face: A revelatory, polarizing experience that -- in the wake of newer, better alternatives -- makes you question the very notion of "RPG by numbers." It foists Wizards of the Coast's latest v3.5 D&D system (a molehill that's become a mountain at this point) onto your hard drive with stunning fidelity, then tacks on dozens of artificial-looking areas vaguely linked by forget-table plot points you check off like grocery to-do's.

Sure, the interface is sleeker with context-sensitive menus and a smart little bar that lets you more intuitively toggle modes like "power attack" and "stealth," but with all the added rule-shuffling, NWN2 seems like it's working twice as hard to accomplish half as much. Worse -- and blame this on games like Oblivion -- NWN2's levels feel pint-sized: Peewee zones inhabited by pull-string NPCs with no existence to speak of beyond their little playpens. Wander and you'll wonder why the forests, towns, and dungeons are like movie lots with lay-about monsters waiting patiently for you to trip their arbitrary triggers. As if the pencil and paper "module" approach were a virtue that computers -- by now demonstrably capable of simulating entire worlds with considerably more depth -- should emulate. It's like we're supposed to park half our brain in feature mania and the rest in nostalgic slush, and somehow call bingo.

The dungeons feel especially stale, so linear and inorganic they might as well be graph-paper lifts filled with room after room of pop-up bogeymen (Doom put them in closets; NWN2 just makes the closets bigger). Maybe you'd rather chat with the dumb NPCs that speak and sound like extras in a bad Saturday morning cartoon? Oh, boy -- there's the portrait "plus" sign! Time to shuffle another party member (improved to four simultaneous) through the level-up grinder, which you can click "recommend" to zip past...but then, what's the point?

Rule-playing game
In all fairness, it's not entirely developer Obsidian's fault. D&D certainly puts the "rule" in role-playing, and a madcap base of D&D aficionados is no doubt ready to string me up for suggesting that faithful is here tantamount to folly (to these people, I say: "Go for it, NWN2's all you've ever wanted and more"). Call me crazy -- I guess I'm just finally weary of being led around on a pencil-and-paper leash and batting numbers around a glorified three-dimensional spreadsheet in a computer translation that should have synthesized, not forklifted.

That five-of-10 is actually a hedge, by the way. For D&D fans who want to play an amazingly thorough PC translation of the system they're carting around in book form, it's proba-bly closer an eight or nine. But if, like me, you want less "rules for rule's sake" and more depth and beauty to your simulated game worlds, you can certainly find more exciting prospects. Part of the reason we call them "the good old days" and think fondly of games past is that it's always easier to love what we don't have to play anymore.

 

[aboyd]

Here's a link to the apology. He seems to be missing the point that the reviewer can't write.

From the comments, the editor added this clarification:

It was our own sense that it could be perceived as an unfair review because of the many criticisms he made of D&D itself. I don't even necessarily think his opinion was "wrong"---I just feel it should have gone through another round of editing/rewriting so that it wouldn't be perceived that we had someone review the game who would have been inherently predisposed to NOT like it from the start.

The editor may not quite be getting the point that you're making, EEVIAC. But he did get the other point that people made. The original article was basically "I hate D&D, and oh yeah, I think I was supposed to review a game or something." To a certain degree, the editor did well to recognize that such a review is not truly a review of the game.

I think a bigger test will be to see the new review that goes up next week. Do they just pander to the audience and gush about the game? Do they leave the crappy review almost untouched, with just the "I hate D&D" parts muted? Either way would be a ripoff in my opinion. They need a review which points out the good & bad of this particular game -- not generalities about D&D itself.

 

[psycojester]

Hang on.... That was a genuine review? I thought it was one of those retarded reader reviews. The hackneyed writing style and general lack of direction throughout definately made it seem like one.

 

[Claw]

this was not a fair review--or at least, it can be perceived as not a fair review

Say what? So the review isn't really unfair, it just seems unfair?

 

[Elwro]

The "I stand by my author" comment by the editor (?) at QT3 is funny. It's as if a concerned mother came to a math teacher and said "Well, I know that my kid didn't do his homework, but I fully support him!"

 

[Jason]

On a side note, Eurogamer posted their review (8/10) by Kieron "I love the sound of my own voice" Gillen.

There's a nagging sense that - perhaps - we're reaching the end of the road of the Black-Isle/Bioware model western-style role-playing game. Jade Empire reviewed well, but disappeared almost immediately from public discourse, dismissed as a Knights of the Old Republic in wushu clothing. Yeah, it was good, but it was good in the same old way. Whatever Bioware do with Dragon Age will be very interesting. In that way, while hugely improved over the original Neverwinter Nights' campaign, this is essentially Baldur's Gate. Shouldn't we be looking for...

Rewind that. This is essentially Baldur's Gate.