Forums > Submission Feedback > Beepy's Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat review

Really Venter?

IF YOU WANT MORE BEATS FOR YOUR BUCK THERE'S NO LUCK.

In honor of this review, here is mine of Black Ops.

Without playing multiplayer or zombie mode or anything but the single-player campaign, I have to say that Vietnam stuff is cool. You have CCR rockin' tunes while you blast the Cong. Russian Roulette plays a role and there's all sorts of crazy stuff with people randomly yelling at you during scenes between missions. I killed Russians, Germans, Brits and Vietnamese and it was fun. It was really great how every manufactured stealth knife kill looked different. It made me think that my dudes were really creative guys who never wanted to repeat the same gruesome, bloody kill of those dumb saps.

Sometimes shooting enemies blasted off parts of their bodies. That was sweet! Also sweet was blasting some dumb Cuban chick and getting an upskirt moment with her corpse. It wasn't sweet to **SPOILER ALERT** find you that you didn't actually kill Fidel Castro. I mean, yeah, I never killed him IRL, but it would have been sweet to say I did and have people believe me.

After that, it was cool how, in the Russian prison, they forced prisoners to have their own little Fight Club. It was 50 percent of the Fight Club references in the game. But then you leave the prison and it takes a long time to get back to Fight Club 1960s Version. That stinks. Except for the Vietnam CCR interludes. Because badasses leaving helicopters while Fortunate Son plays never can go wrong. And I think the Stones were playing somewhere around that point, too. Or at least they were during the commercial with Kobe Bryant.

Anyway, you shoot a lot of stuff while numbers randomly flash on the screen and the game ends. And then you wonder at what cost your victory came at. But since thinking gives headaches, you just play it again so you can hear CCR play while a badass exits a helicopter.

Pros:
*CCR!!!
*Killing!!!
*Fight Club!!!

Cons:
*Numbers...
*How Weaver immediately recovers from having an eye gouged out to help you shoot your way through a level. WTF?!?!
*The Vietnam areas really weren't as realistic as those portrayed in the NES' Platoon.
*It would have been far more cool if the zombie game was integrated into the actual game.

I'm not afraid to die because I am invincible
Viva la muerte, that's my goddamn principle

Yeah, while I like the implication that right-wingers are assholes, I can't really get behind this review.

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."

Me, actually. I approved it so that I might leave constructive feedback (rather than, you know, being an arse) but then Marc took all my time with his pyschotic need for more screens coded into the body of his review.

For us. For them. For you.

Yeah, just so Beepy knows: this review will be deleted pretty soon. Watch this space for Emp's feedback until then.

//Zig

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Emp, where the hell are you?

I don't have to prove I'm refined - that's what makes me refined!

Well, that puts it in a whole new light. I thought maybe it was a troll that sneaked in on a wave of other reviews or something. Or else Bluberry messing around again. I'll leave some constructive criticism once I have a spare moment.

EDIT: Or should we just open a new thread for the feedback so that we don't have to guess when Beepy's actually seen it? Is Beepy even going to acknowledge feedback?

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."

The problem is not that it comes from a new writer or anything. The issue I have is the review is well below the site's standards. My Metroid and Mega Man Soccer reviews were rejected from this site (just resubmitted the former and fixed 1 or 2 grammar mistakes in the latter) and are a million times better than this one.

I'm all for giving feedback and constructive criticism, but you can do that without ever putting the review on the site in the first place.

IF YOU WANT MORE BEATS FOR YOUR BUCK THERE'S NO LUCK.

Sportsman,

Please be self-aware enough to understand that when long-time contributors don't write very often, say one review in the past two calendar years, staff may have to try more unorthodox methods to try to increase retention of new contributors in the absence of those long-time contributors submitting.

The intention was always to give feedback and remove the review if it wasn't altered to meet site standard, with the thought that seeing a review on the site and a feedback thread might be enough to grab the attention of the author and get to know him and show our community actively seeks and encourages contributors. That doesn't appear to have happened, unfortunately.

But I'm not going to get mad at someone for giving it a shot, at least not the first time, and especially not to the point where I'm grasping for reviews "a million times better" that were rejected minimum over three years ago (and I suspect partly rejected because they were re-subs from GameFAQs, and the rejecting staff member wanted to challenge you to meet the higher standard you already set for yourself).

Beepy, here's some constructive feedback. I really hope you're more than a one-shot reviewer and will come around to see this. And, also, that you'll make it far enough down the page to see it.

Here's the good thing. You obviously feel strongly about your stance on disliking this game. That's great. Any time we can avoid the scenario wherein we feel "meh" or "iffy" about a game, we're going to have an easier time writing about it.

The other good thing is that you have picked out some points to focus on, such as camping and the difficulty in telling who is shooting you. I even like your style of dealing with these things. I like this line in particular:

"Insurgency is based on camping. It can have it's exciting moments, but this is usually when people are very drunk late at night and don't have the patience to wait in their corners for 30 minutes at a time as usual. "

Unfortunately, by the time I get there, you've lost all credibility for me. Why? Partially because you let your invective get in the way of your statements.

For instance, I dig the sentiment of "While you'll mostly find 40 year old far-right republicans playing this game to feel like they're actually killing terrorists in Arabcountryistan, it falls short on many levels" but it's actually a terrible statement to make. For one, it's hardly supportable. I think most 40 year old far-right republicans are too busy banning video games to actually play them. Also, you've lost your point in this sentence. If you're trying to make a statement about the wrongs of declaring war on the middle east, that's something that you have to carry throughout your review. Your review then has to be about why you can't support the message of Modern Infantry... much like Zigfried's Rapelay review basically says he can't get behind rape.

But in fact, your review ends up being more about game issues, like how it plays and how people use it online. So that sentiment doesn't belong here.

The other problem you have is that you lack focus. You have thrust a few ideas out there but make no distinction between them. Like this sentence:

"It's very hard to see anyone, especially if they aren't moving, and more often than not games start with the two teams skirmishing, one team winning the initial skirmish, and then subsequently killing the other team repeatedly in their spawn by 1-shot-kill bullets, leaving the other team no time to respond."

Here you carry on from the last sentence, criticizing the visuals of the game and how they detract from ease of play. But you launch almost immediately into multiplayer (which you haven't even discussed before this) and before I can get my head around that you've mentioned two other things: skirmishing and one hit kills. The period at the end of this sentence is laughable, because nothing has been concluded.

Finally, just listing a pros and cons section doesn't help your review, unless you actually cover all of those points. You haven't covered most of those points. Take care of that and I think you'll have something more to work with that will be much closer to a true review.

Maybe all of this is too much information, in which case I would give you the short critique: develop your ideas further.

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."

staff may have to try more unorthodox methods to try to increase retention of new contributors in the absence of those long-time contributors submitting.

I'm not very active around here anymore and perhaps the standards did change, but judging by Venter's site suggestions topic a month or two ago I was under the impression that he's still trying to hold reviews to a generally high standard. Perhaps there was a reason for accepting this (as EmP stated) but perhaps an admin fell asleep on the job and hit accept by mistake. Regardless of the reason I just wanted to bring it to everyone's attention.

And for the record the Mega Man Soccer review that was rejected was a rewrite of the older review from GameFAQs, rewritten around 2004/5 (opposed to 2002 for the GameFAQs version). So it is not the one shown in the link but the exact same on currently on the site except with 1 or 2 fewer typos.

tl;dr Thought the review was below the site's standards and wanted to make sure the admins were aware.

IF YOU WANT MORE BEATS FOR YOUR BUCK THERE'S NO LUCK.

Whatever you want to believe. If you're going to suggest we fell asleep at the wheel after three staff members addressed that we didn't, clearly there is no swaying you.

Apologies that the same exact standards of five years ago under a different staff structure with different site needs/goals do not exactly mirror policy in 2010.

EmP told me he may have accidentally hit the wrong button, but he often likes to lie to change his stories with me. =P

[Eating EmP's brain] probably isn't a good idea. I mean... He's British, which means his brain's wired for PAL and your eyes are NTSC. - Will

Quit yer whining, WQ. =D

I don't have to prove I'm refined - that's what makes me refined!

If you're going to suggest we fell asleep at the wheel after three staff members addressed that we didn't, clearly there is no swaying you.


Now I know the reason why but when making the topic I didn't. There have been instances of reviews being accepted like this in the past with similar topics being created (not often, but it HAS happened). The usual response from the admins is something along the lines of my bad, it must've slipped past me. So I don't see how being open to the idea that this happened again is something outrageous. People make mistakes, and it's ok. It doesn't mean the site is turning into crap or the admins are incompetent or anything.

Point is I wasn't trying to be a douche but rather understand why the review was posted. The review's quality is not something that I believe to be up to par with the site's standards and as a result it being posted was a little odd to me.

IF YOU WANT MORE BEATS FOR YOUR BUCK THERE'S NO LUCK.

This is often how I see things play out at HG.

1) Site member makes some overly strong and irate comment
2) Staff member makes a similarly strong and irate retort
3) Site member defends their position
4) Staff member attacks their position
5) Site member explains their position
6) Staff member continues to attack their position
7) Site member apologizes
8) Staff member ignores them
9) Someone makes a joke about Zigfried

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."

So what you're saying is that staffers are assholes? ^_^

I don't have to prove I'm refined - that's what makes me refined!

I don't think Beepy gives two shits about anything in this topic. Why are we wasting our time on this?

I don't have to boost my review resume because I have a real resume.

If someone wants to explain what I should apologize for here I will...

Who is asking for an apology?

I don't have to prove I'm refined - that's what makes me refined!

7) Site member apologizes
8) Staff member ignores them

I agree with Felix. Are you guys aware that there is football today?

_

There's a good enough amount of feedback here now. I'm going to go ahead and take the review down. It should still be accessible by clicking the link at the top of the topic.

This was my call and mine alone. It's not the first time I've accepted a review that was perhaps below the site's standards with a view to leave feedback and it won't be the last. We all, to a man, wrote shit reviews when we started out What we probably didn't get is a website we tried to write for then universally belittling those efforts.

Maybe this would have been avoided had I done so in a timely manner, but I've had other things on. I'm unapologetic about this. In future, let's try not to behave as giant arsehats in these situations and maybe -- maybe -- we'll start to overturn the fact that we've not got new people falling over themselves to be active on this site.

For us. For them. For you.

You know what else is a good idea, Gary? You could just reject the review then send a follow-up HG mail explaining why it was rejected and what to do about it to get approved. That way, this whole mess could've been avoided even more surely than if you'd been on time. =P

[Eating EmP's brain] probably isn't a good idea. I mean... He's British, which means his brain's wired for PAL and your eyes are NTSC. - Will

Done that in the past, and it's not be as widely noticed as when I've done things this way. Maybe things would be different now the front page has an HGMail marker, but this is not only easier to find but allows others to chime in with advise. Or, if they so choose like this example, to showcase why this is such a closed in community.

For us. For them. For you.