Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW -- July 25-31 -- Sure it's late, but it's here and we should focus on the positives!

Okay, I was a little bit late this time due to a combination of drunkenness early in the week and a ton of work waiting to pounce on me later on. But I still got it done within one calendar week of when it was supposed to be done, so it wasn’t that bad, was it?

Good, now that that’s settled, let’s get with the judging. Looks like Joe had one last week when he was judging, so because I’m observant and notice things like this, he gets added to this week.

I should start by commenting a bit on MegaManTrigger’s review of Mighty No. 9, as it was one of the more interesting reviews I’ve read. On one hand, it was a great takedown of how this game was a complete failure as a Mega Man-esque title. As a pretty big fan of the series, I completely dug what you were saying about how they eschewed platforming challenges in order to focus on speed running and point-scoring. And the part about how a smaller company not only created their Kickstarted game far more quickly, but also did so far more accurately to what Mega Man players were looking for also was really good. On the other hand, that professional and insightful stuff got marred a bit by the “angry fan with an axe to grind” part, where your review lost focus in order to deliver a multi-paragraph takedown of someone who doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the game itself. Don’t get me wrong — I can see your frustration at having the game’s community being put in the hands of someone who seems to be the “great” combination of clueless, thin-skinned and vindictive. I just don’t see what that has to do with the actual game. Don’t get me wrong — sometimes there are “outside of the game” factors that do need noted, but even if this counts, I don’t think it warrants nearly as many words as your takedown of the game’s mechanics. It’s the sort of thing that took me out of the flow of things and led to me being ultimately conflicted about the review in general. But the parts that were good were really good, so there’s that! And I have a hankering to bust out my PS2 Mega Man Collection at the moment, also, so there’s also that!

THIRD PLACE

SHOGUNnYAMATO's Xenonauts (PC)

This was an interesting review of a clone of an older game, done in the style of said older game, as opposed to more modern takes such as XCOM. As you point out, this game does some things better than others, with ground combat seemingly a lot more fun than air combat. This is the sort of review it’s hard to say too much about. You do a good job of hitting on the various aspects of it, which isn’t always easy to do when you’re talking about a strategy game with so many different facets such as this one. And you do so in a way that never gets tough to read. I enjoyed it!

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SECOND PLACE

EmP’s Golf Magazine: 36 Great Holes Starring Fred Couples (Sega 32X)

Huh. And I’m reading about a golf game this week. That doesn’t happen all the time. Anyway, this is a good review that explains the basics (always a good thing when talking about a sort of game that doesn’t get much written about on a site like this) and offers some good insight. I especially liked how you brought focus to the simple fact this game is essentially a collection of classic holes from all sorts of course and how they can be listed by Fred’s preference. When I started this review, I was expecting another hilarious takedown of something horrible. Instead, I found out this is a pretty solid, if somewhat limited, golf game.

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REVIEW OF THE WEEK (aka: Overdrive Place)

JoeTheDestroyer’s WWF Wrestlemania (NES)

And the old carry-over review wins! This brought back memories of the bad ol’ days when I’d occasionally get the itch to rent a NES wrestling title and ALWAYS came away underwhelmed and disappointed that my weekend project turned into 25 minutes of angry playing followed by me taking it out and beating Faxanadu again. Well, not disappointed I was playing Faxy again, just disappointed at the crap game I wasted money to not play.

And this one really seems to be a collection of all the things a person could hate. Only six wrestlers, only two modes of play, horrible controls, very limited movesets and so on. I could feel your frustration with trying to get through this one. Oh yeah, speaking of that, also the way the difficulty always goes up as you progress. That always got me with these games. I’d be playing the Tecmo wrestling game and would just lose interest after a little while because after beating a couple guys, it just got too frustrating to try to compete with opponents now that everything that worked before just would get me smashed. I felt your pain.

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And now cue the obligatory jokes about how this was done so late that it’s now about time for me to do my next one. Ha ha, guys. Ha ha.

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

I felt the same about that Mighty No. 9 review. It started out super-strong, and I loved the early analysis.

However, the second half fell apart for me. Going after the community manager person just seemed mean (despite what seems to have been a lot of restraint on the writer's part) and didn't seem to serve any purpose relevant to the review.

Also, the mention for 20XX got me to look it up on Steam. That game is now on my wish list, but the gushing also made me wonder if the review's author is friends with someone on that other game's development team, or perhaps even part of it.

So the review had a lot of baggage with it, despite coming from someone who is clearly a strong writer and capable of providing great analysis. I would love to see such analysis applied to other games in the future, without time spent diving into all of the side stuff.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

I agree with what's being said about the Mighty No. 9 review. I think what was said about the community manager could have been reworked into a companion piece in blog form about general expectations for the game and frustrations felt by the backers. I often read reviews on HG that were published many years ago, and I kept thinking that someone reading that review much later would have little interest in that aspect of its development.

Finally! A signature!

Thank you, OD, for writing this topic and for giving me the V. It's always nice to know my suffering through bad wrestling games isn't in vain. Congrats to the placers, too.

The only thing my milkshake brings to the yard is a subpoena.

I've not been around a lot this week. Is it because I've drunk myself into a coma and have shunned the outside world because I did not win this thing with a golf review? No, it's much more mundane than that. Regardless, sorry I took so long to drop a reply, and thanks for the comments.

Well played, Joe.

I kind of followed the whole MN8 MN9 debacle from a distance (didn't care about the game, was never going to buy it, but the messes they kept making for themselves was amusing to me) and while I agree that too much has been allocated to the production drama, it's incredibly more reserved then some of the reactions out there. Sheesh.

Still, that game's bombed. And there's the ultimate price you pay for poor management on every level.

For us. For them. For you.

I wound up with two copies of Mighty No. 9, in case anyone is curious. One is the PS4 download version that I got as a backer of the Kickstarter project, and one is the Wii U physical version that I preordered ages ago.

From what I can tell without actually playing the game, the reaction to the reaction it has received is horrifically overblown. A lot of those people complaining the most loudly haven't even played it. Also, a lot of that reaction was intentionally fed by the press, which tends to portray any Japanese developers that aren't Kojima or Miyamoto as grossly incompetent, or by people with other agendas. Rarely do you find someone like pickhut who was willing to tear apart the game based on its actual merits, or lack thereof.

The review mentioned in this topic points to a legitimate reason to be upset: the game is apparently a speed run/score attack game, rather than a purely conventional platformer like backers (myself included) expected. That's quite disappointing. However, the main reasons a lot of gamers cite for the game being trash are: there was a female community manager who argued that the hero should be a female (present and accounted for in the review), the lead developer also worked on other projects and seems to expect to make money working in the industry, the North American trailer for the game mocked a few gamer stereotypes (including people who like anime, as I do), and a translator in an interview said as an aside that "At least it's better than nothing," which was falsely attributed to the game's developers.

None of those things have anything to do with the actual game's quality, of course, but they have a lot of "fans" determined to hate the game. I still plan to play the game myself at some point (I guess I'd better, since circumstances conspired to ensure that I have two copies), but I'm no longer excited for what I might experience like I was when I originally backed it on Kickstarter. Hating the game has become the popular, trendy thing to do.

So yeah, there's a lot of hate swirling around the game, and I really have no idea how much I'll like it until I play it. I know some people who gave it a shot and found it quite enjoyable. My guess? Once I play it, I'll find it to be thoroughly average: certainly not great, but nowhere near the garbage pile that a lot of people who haven't even touched it seem dedicated to making us believe it is. And that's a shame. I really did want to love it.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

20XX controls competently enough, but I didn't like it because the "rogue-like" nature works against the genre's premise. Part of the point behind MegaMan-esque platformers is to die on a tough stage and keep trying to beat it. When you die on 20XX, you go back to home base -- and since the levels are procedurally generated, you won't get to retry the stage that killed you before.

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Eww, it's a rogue-like. Consider me officially less interested now. I may still go for it, but... yeah, less interested.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

I like roguelikes personally, but the idea of a roguelike Mega Man clone seems kinda gross.

The only thing my milkshake brings to the yard is a subpoena.