Review ToEE lapped up by Gamer's Hell

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Temple of Elemental Evil

<a href="http://www.gamershell.com/">Gamer's Hell</a> serves up another <A href="http://www.gamershell.com/reviews_GreyhawkTheTempleofEleme.shtml">professional review</A> for us poor slobs, giving the game a <b>7.5</b> out of 10. Here's a taste of the thing:
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<blockquote>With the numerous abilities, spells, skills and actions possible you will spend a large amount of time browsing through the menus. A classic "ring" interface splits the many actions into clearly laid out groups and e.g. in this case the turn based combat is a real blessing if you are looking for a special ability or spell. Although never neglect tactics while in combat - always keep an eye on whose turn it is next, since if you don?t take care it could easily happen that you end your turn, and after several enemies one after another had their turns the situation could develop in a very bad way for your group.</blockquote>
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I believe that's that they refer to as a <b><i>radial</i> menu</b>, but I don't have professional editors getting paid to check these things for me like you guys have.
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Spotted this on <A href="http://www.bluesnews.com">Blue's News</a>

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Since when is the "ring" menu classic? :wink:

 

[Psilon]

Since people decided ordinary submenus were so 1995, I guess.

Personally, I like the standard Windows interface and wish more of its behaviors would make it into games. Full-featured text editing, for one. I don't need drag-and-drop, but give me the use of Home, End, Ctrl+Arrow, and text selections. Let me hit ESC to close a window without popping up the Save/Load/Quit menu. (That means you, Morrowind.) The mousewheel should always be available for scrolling text if it's not bound to a weapon switch. (Spiderweb? Please?)

Today's RPG interfaces are like VisiCalc married to DirectX.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Yeah, but he was stating that the radial menu was classic. Ummm........ since when? o.O Not too many games use that type of interface, and definitely not something pre-2000. He needs to look up the meaning of the word classic I guess.

 

[Psilon]

No, it's a different type of "classic."

 

[Dhruin]

One of the things about ToEE is when a review gives a detailed account of the opening it's a dead giveaway that the author only played through once. And that means they don't appreciate the different dialogue and gameplay.

You'd think they'd read the back of the box and find out about these features, though.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

That wouldn't shock me much, considering their review of Lionheart basically talked about how great Barcelona was, and there should have been more combat areas.

 

[voodoo1man]

Easy as pie! Err, pie, pie menus!

I think I pointed this out on some other front-page meta-review of TOEE, but they're really called <i>cascading pull-out pie menus</i>. The term radial refers to a more general organization (for example the menus in the Sims might rightly be called radial and not pie). They do count as classics, having probably been invented at PARC in the late 1970s/early 1980s (at least Smalltalk circa that date was the first place I saw them used). For one reason or another (most likely that Windows 3.11 wasn't very good at drawing things other than boxes) they didn't become popular. It's nice to see them having a mini-revival in games.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Re: Easy as pie! Err, pie, pie menus!

I think I pointed this out on some other front-page meta-review of TOEE, but they're really called <i>cascading pull-out pie menus</i>. The term radial refers to a more general organization (for example the menus in the Sims might rightly be called radial and not pie). They do count as classics, having probably been invented at PARC in the late 1970s/early 1980s (at least Smalltalk circa that date was the first place I saw them used). For one reason or another (most likely that Windows 3.11 wasn't very good at drawing things other than boxes) they didn't become popular. It's nice to see them having a mini-revival in games.

Interesting bit of trivia there. Thanks for the heads up!

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I think radial menu works better and is a pretty accurate description of what they are, versus cascading pull out pie menu, which is fairly annoying to type out. That and radial menu is what everyone else refers to them these days, as opposed to "ring" menu.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

But i like pie!

 

[Psilon]

I like how basically everything came out of Xerox PARC. Seriously, those guys could have taken over the world if they had any support from Xerox HQ.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

But i like pie!

I like 'ring'! It has a nice....... ring to it. :wink: