Hah, if that's true it'd be hilarious, given he was playing the 360 version, which it seems no-one criticising him as actually played.Originally Posted by Wolfenswan
Hah, if that's true it'd be hilarious, given he was playing the 360 version, which it seems no-one criticising him as actually played.
?Hah, if that's true it'd be hilarious, given he was playing the 360 version, which it seems no-one criticising him as actually played.
The PC version supports the 360 controller natively and many people (me included) prefer to use it for combat as it feels much more fluent and responsive.
Play Arma2:CO with us. (It isn't nearly as difficult as you might think.)
It's okay to not like things.
Perhaps if folks had spent more time playing the game they would've realised that Bisell's criticism was well-founded.
If I played DAO for only six hours, I'd likely not even make it to the point where I could pick a destination on the big map.
I imagine he'd have ragequit DA:O on PC-difficulty long before six hours :-P
Irrelevant on further examination of the rest of the thread.
Not really. His criticism pretty much boils down to "the game required I learned how to play it. I couldn't be arsed", which might be a good foundation for criticising Tom Bissell but not for criticising the game. I can't be arsed learning to play Dwarf Fortress, I wouldn't say it's a bad game though because I'm sensible enough to realise I have no idea what the game is like, on account of not being able to play it.
You could possibly say the game doesn't provide sufficient motivation to bother to learn it of course, but as criticism it's irrelevant - what you're basically saying there is the game doesn't appeal to you in the first place.
I don't know if they're well-founded, but they are relevant to him at least.
I don't think it takes 6 hours to get to that point unless you're taking your time... could be wrong, I don't really remember, but in any event most people would say that 6 hours is ample time to learn the interface, and to decide whether or not you like a game. Hell, 6 hours for most games is about 3/4 the way through the total playtime!
But a valid criticism of Dwarf Fortress isn't that it's hard to learn, but rather the interface is abysmal, which is a valid criticism. The barrier with DF lies almost entirely in the interface. If you can't be arsed learning DF because of the interface, it's a valid argument and one I wholeheartedly endorse. No doubt plenty of others feel the same way!
It's a review. I say again: it's a review. It's an opinion piece, not a journal article on the efficacy of non-pharmacological pain management in a cancer unit. If the game isn't motivating you to learn it because it hasn't sucked you in, I highly doubt any of you would praise it to hell and back. I highly doubt you'll go "Well, it's really boring, but... 10/10."
But it's not like the Dragon Age experience fundamentally changes once you unlock the map is it? It's still conversations and fights.
And this isn't that kind of game! Hell, I didn't realize that Call of Duty set the upper limit on game length!
Right. And we can ascertain everything we need to know from a book by its prologue. In fact, that's what books are: 10% prologue, 90% epilogue.
Y'know what, I should make a blog: Book reviews where I read only the first two chapters. Think of how quickly I could pump those suckers out!
This notion that one must experience a work in its entirety before being entitled and able to comment intelligently upon it is entirely unsupportable. Consider its application to the following scenarios:
- World of Warcraft
- A game in something other than its fully patched and DLC'ed form.
- Discworld
- Any of those stupidly long films e.g. The Longest Most Meaningless Movie In The World
- Works whose authors died before completing them, e.g. The Salmon of Doubt
- Games the content of which cannot be entirely experienced in a single play-through, e.g. any game with a dialogue tree.
- A currently airing television series
Last edited by Rii; 08-05-2012 at 02:24 AM.
I don't understand why one size has to fit all. In different situations, different things are going to apply, it's just about using common sense and applying what seems most sensible at the time. It's not always going to work, but you'll have more luck than applying a single standard to every medium.
How many times do we have to go over this? You don't need to play a game in its entirety before deciding whether or not you enjoy it. The man posted his opinion based on 6 hours of gameplay and he didn't enjoy those 6 hours, so he didn't finish the game. If I eat 2 bites into a pie made of shit, I don't need to finish the pie to know I don't like it. If I read the first 2 chapters of a book and I don't enjoy it, then I don't need to finish the rest of it before deciding I don't like it.
He posted his opinion on the game, which he didn't like after 6 hours of play. Some of you sound like rabid fanboys angrily defending their precious game because someone else doesn't like it. He's entitled to not only not like the game, but to post his opinion on why he doesn't like it. His "review" isn't titled as such; it's more of a Wot He Thinks. If we're going to start deciding that everything that doesn't agree with your opinion on a game is wrong, then you're all wrong because I don't find The Witch particularly engaging.
Since Rii and soldant made very good points, here's something else:
I do judge books after two chapters, and I'd be willing to bet most other people do, as well. I often recommend books which I have not finished, and of all the books I have read in the past year, my opinion after two chapters has changed in exactly two cases (one of them being Jane Eyre, because the beginning is really dreary).
You'll know within 10% of the book if you get on with the author's writing style though. Although books make it a lot easier to skip ahead and check it doesn't change dramatically.
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