Review VideoGamesLife complains about TOEE

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Temple of Elemental Evil

<a href=http://www.videogameslife.com>VideoGames Life</a> posted a <a href=http://www.videogameslife.com/pages/article/rvw/429.htm>review</a> of <a href=http://www.troikagames.com/toee.htm>ToEE </a> and gave it <b>57%</b>. The funny thing is they gave it 84 for graphics, 72 for sound, 68 for gameplay, and 65 for lifespan. Now, watch me applying my mad math skillz, so we have 84+72+68+65=289/4=72.25 instead of 57 overall. Mystary!
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<blockquote> The real problem with TOEE is the multitude of bugs that currently festoon the product. Several side-quests are broken, returning after triumphantly slaying that troublesome beast or recovering that precious artefact only to be greeted by complete apathy because the coding hasn't been correctly implemented is hugely irritating. Path-finding by your team is a joke – they wander off aimlessly for no apparent reason when directed to a specific area with no obstacles in their path, thus sometimes activating a combat scenario against a group of foes you would've rather avoided. When resting, it's clearly stated that when the relevant button on the interface is green, the art of sleeping and remembering those much needed offensive spells is achieved with no chance of being disturbed. So why were we being constantly attacked in these green sectors? As for the enemies themselves, they may look good but some have a bizarre need to meld with a wall in a hugely frustrating manner. <u>Those of you who remember the initial release of Fallout 2 may also concede that these problems are again, nothing to be surprised about given the track record of the developer.</u></blockquote>
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Yep, Tim Cain really dropped the ball on FO2, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as his failure with Torn. I wasn’t really impressed with his work on PoR2 either.
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Fucking morons!
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.gengamers.com">GenGamers</A>

 

[Volourn]

HAHAHA! Math skillz rule! 57% is way too harsh in my opinion. Oh well...

 

[triCritical]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

What this rag needs is an editor! And some one who knows Arithmetic! And someone who can install a patch! Not to mention someone who is not color-blind.

 

[Sol Invictus]

And a member of the staff that doesn't look like any one of these guys:

or these guys

or even these

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

:shock: Those pictures are like the gayest thing i've ever seen.




This year.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Someone needs to slap these mothers around some and show em whaz up

 

[Sol Invictus]

The sad thing is that all of them are Swedes. Do Swedish men have a genetic defect in their Y Chromosome or something?

Here's a couple more:

and

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Oh god, it's scary.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Holy shit! Even I'm better looking then the men in those photos. That IS scary. LOL

 

[Seven]

But aren't all the women in Sweden supposed to be gorgeous?

 

[Sol Invictus]

These aren't women.

 

[Whipporowill]

These people are all known as "dansband" in swedish... basically a hideous tradition of swedish folk pop bands with absolutly no idea of fashion. A few well-know ones are: Sten & Stanley, Sven-Ingvars & Lasse Stefanz... and they are all an affront to good taste. We should take them out behind the shed and have them shot I'd say!

B t w... these pics are from the 70's when basically everyone in the whole godfarking world looked like a doofus.

 

[Seven]

These aren't women.

Jeeez, I wonder what gave you that impression, are you sure?

My logic being, if the women are hot then shouldn't the guys at least look average?

 

[Rosh]

Holy shit...someone challenges the cluelessness of GameBanshee.

 

[Nomad]

Who said the overall value is the result of a simple average? Other reviews that I've read (not just for games) use a weighted average system to determine overall product value.

For the uninitiated, a simple (or unweighted) average gives each component the same value while a weighted average will assign some components more significance than others. This allows the reviewer to put more emphasis on the qualities of the product that he or she thinks are more important. The result, in this case, would be something like:

(G1*W) + (S*X) + (G2*Y) + (L*Z) = O

where

G1 = Graphics
S = Sound
G2 = Gameplay
L = Lifespan
O = Overall
and

W, X, Y, Z are each a constant between 0 and 1 whose sum is 1.

(A simple average here, is a special case where W, X, Y, and Z would all have a value of 0.25.)

That being said, I can't think of a meaningful weighting system that would result in an overall score of 57 given those component values.

Therefore, I'm inclined to believe that the overall score is not _any_ form of average but is somehow computed differently. Either that or there are other components not listed in the review but used in the weighing. I've seen reviews that do that, too. It's not wrong, but it'd be nice to know _how_ the reviewer arrived at this value.


N.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Yeah, all the individual scores are much higher than the overall, so I really have no idea how the hell they came to the conclusion that the thing deserves a 57% when everything else is so much higher.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I agree that weighted system is better suited to reflect the actual value of a game as gameplay for example is much more important then sound, but this is clearly not the case here.

Here is a good line to illustrate stupidity:

The main problem with The Temple Of Elemental Evil is the feeling it's out of its time. TOEE has the feel of the RPGs created by SSI during the late 1980s, some of which were also licensed Dungeon & Dragons games. Had this been released before Neverwinter Nights, we may have been more tolerant concerning the bugs because gameplay is quite solid and entertaining in short bursts

First of all, there were no game stopping bugs? Second, NWN had a lot of bugs that took years to get rid of, third, the reviewer is a moron which is not surprising as it's a gaming media standard these days.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

If it had been released before the result would be the same. People would still complain about bugs. In fact, the general comments would quite likely be "Bioware surprises us again with a top quality, bug-free title, unlike ToEE".

 

[Volourn]

Compared to what the games offered; NWN was easily less buggy than TOEE; and its bugs overall outside of Securom were minor comparitively speaking.

 

[triCritical]

Compared to what the games offered; NWN was easily less buggy than TOEE; and its bugs overall outside of Securom were minor comparitively speaking.

OK Mr. I am talking out of my ass. Give me the bug count to features ratio...

Why is it that on the internet people love putting up facts, when actually taking themselves seriously, when they have absolutely no idea if they are in fact true?

 

[Volourn]

Pot. Kettle. Black.

 

[Rosh]

Compared to what the games offered; NWN was easily less buggy than TOEE; and its bugs overall outside of Securom were minor comparitively speaking.

This is quite funny.

You might not notice many bugs when playing it, but when using the SDK...uh...yeah, the SDK...then the bugs come out in storm and bring friends. Some of the more competent coders (apparently more competent than BioWare) were able to work around them to some extent.

 

[Volourn]

SDK? I'd reply further; but I'll admit instead I don't know what SDK stands for. That said, I can presume it has somethuing to do with the actual game code? Maybe not. Who knows. I know I've used the toolkit (still learning how tos cript since I suck at it); and I haven't found too many bugs so the onlt thing I haven't touched is the actual game code... Hmm..

 

[deadlus]

Software Development Kit, I think

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Software Development Kit.