Preview Mount & Blade Preview at Game Banshee

[Walkin' Dude]

I agree with Brother None here. Game reviews should be done of the game, out of the box. If someone wants to do a review of a user mod, that is fine, but it should not be considered a review of the game itself.

 

[Krancor]

Another issue is that if no one ever mentions mods, fewer people will be interested in them.

Even a oneliner 'this game is very modable has some good mods worth trying out, but they lag behind the main game version.' might pique people's interest. Even game these days has mods, but to what level? Most of them are along the lines of texture packs...who cares? If a game has good, playable mods it's something that should be mentioned.

 

[dagorkan]

Another issue is that if no one ever mentions mods, fewer people will be interested in them.

Even a oneliner 'this game is very modable has some good mods worth trying out, but they lag behind the main game version.' might pique people's interest. Even game these days has mods, but to what level? Most of them are along the lines of texture packs...who cares? If a game has good, playable mods it's something that should be mentioned.

Yes that's what I would have expected and if BN had included something like that I wouldn't have a problem with the article. Ignoring mods completely apart from "mods exist" (every game ever made probably has some kind of mod, how many have as many mods and TC's as M&B?) is what I thought was misleading.

 

[Brother None]

Another issue is that if no one ever mentions mods, fewer people will be interested in them.

Even a oneliner 'this game is very modable has some good mods worth trying out, but they lag behind the main game version.' might pique people's interest. Even game these days has mods, but to what level? Most of them are along the lines of texture packs...who cares? If a game has good, playable mods it's something that should be mentioned.

Yes that's what I would have expected and if BN had included something like that I wouldn't have a problem with the article. Ignoring mods completely apart from "mods exist" (every game ever made probably has some kind of mod, how many have as many mods and TC's as M&B?) is what I thought was misleading.

Well, ok, reluctant as it may be, I will admit it might have been a good idea to mention the variety of already existing mods that run for the beta, especially since there are quite a few bigger and smaller total conversion mods (even an American Civil War one, no? Didn't try it). That was my bad.

 

[Fez]

I've seen plenty professional gaming magazines mention mods for games in their articles. Nothing wrong with that. When Half Life was in its various packages and incarnations the modding scene would often be mentioned in the reviews. No harm in keeping the reader informed, especially when in the case of HL or M&B the reader or buyer may get more and longer lasting fun or value out of the mods than the original game.

Deliberately avoiding all mention of them seems to be unhelpful and may even misrepresent the current value of it. I say go for it next time. I know I would be grateful for someone mentioning it if I was the reader or potential buyer of a game.

 

[Shannow]

I completely disagree with BN. A game should be judged as it is without any patches. Period.

But more seriously, a review should review the game itself as BN says but major mods and a good patching policy should be mentioned (without influencing the score).

 

[Brother None]

Deliberately avoiding all mention of them seems to be unhelpful and may even misrepresent the current value of it. I say go for it next time. I know I would be grateful for someone mentioning it if I was the reader or potential buyer of a game.

Mentioning was never the problem. But I do say M&B has a "surprisingly active modding community already working on adaptations and additions for the game" and "since Mount & Blade is almost more of an effective combat simulator than it is an effective game, there is a lot of potential for adding to this solid groundwork". Not exactly drowning the reader in details, but not ignoring it either.

But say I also gave M&B a spin with a few of its better mods (I didn't, like I said, don't use mods during (p)reviews, even for features that bugged me (like battle sizes being too small)), and then spent a full page (page 5) blustering about how awesomzors these mods are.

There's a place to do that for sure, and perhaps GB should have mod reviews too - though I don't think we have the time for that to be honest - but in either case a preview just isn't the place for that.

On deliberately avoiding I agree, it's stupid to deliberality avoid mentioning mods at all. But that's not what I did. And I can agree with Krancor that providing more details on the scope of mods would have made sense. But I'm not really going to change my stance vis-a-vis using mods in any way for (p)reviews.

Like I said, I don't even try them, because I'm just human, and playing with mods poisons my perceptive. Say I'm reviewing Oblivion, try it for 50 hours, then install OOO and play it for 10 hours more. Those 10 hours, the most recent ones, will be freshest in my memory, and will influence my stance. That's bad, too.

 

[Fez]

Fair enough. I can see your point of view there.

 

[Krancor]

Ok, I take back some of the things I said.

I don't think anyone wants reviewers to go off into reviewing the actual mods in detail, but mentioning there is a good mod system and active community makes a lot of sense.

 

[HardCode]

2. Again, one of the biggest bones of contention about Oblivion here or otherwhere is that while it has a lot of good mods fixing up the game the game itself isn't that good. If I say "so reviewers should judge it bare-bones" about Oblivion, people holler and cheer, but if I say it about M&B, people whine. That's nothing short of hypocrisy.

I think one of the big differences here is that the mods for M&B aren't intended to fix the game, rather than to enhance it and expand it. With Oblivion, I hear (PC gaming) people say it's unplayable without mods. I think that is a significant difference. However, contrary to my own point, M&B 1.0 isn't out yet, so no one can tell if mods will be needed to fix anything or not. But with the history of Armagan listening to the players, I find it unlikely mods will be required to fix M&B.

I also don't agree that omitting mods and/or modability from a (p)review is justified. Originally, I bought Half-Life off the shelf and only played CS for years. But this point has been discussed.

As for the rest of the 99% of the preview, I think it was fair & balanced.

 

[Zomg]

It's better not to mention mods in reviews if only because it's usually gonna disfavor smaller games. Oblivion had x tens of millions in marketing budget that said 16 year old aspies would make mods for it. M&B is just an exception because it's so fucking good.