CPC Games Reviews.... Thumbs down :(

[TFM]

The reviews in CPC Games Review are IMHO not an review, at least not in the sense I understand that word as a scientist. In a review (in science) you need to give a citation (or data) for any statement you provide.
I guess I may do a "Serious Review of CPC Games" site in which games are judged by clear criteria and facts. So the contrast to CPC Reviews, which are mainly based on personal likes or emotions.
On the other hand I have no time to waste for review, I prefer to do original work.

[TotO]

CPC Games Reviews is a great website with experimented peoples playing to all CPC games to give a feedback about "how they liked games". It allow everyone to find a CPC game simply by looking a screenshot and reading a short review of each of them. A link to download it quickly or to go to cpc-power and get more informations.
That represent a big work and I'm proud to see that the 2013 16K ROM Contest games are now on it.

You can disagree with some scores... Why Cybernoid get only 6, for me it's a great game... And, why Overkoban get 9 and not win the contest? Hey!!! It's just the reviewer feedback. You have better to play to the game yourself.

I love this website (but R-Type only get 10... It deserve more XD) and I'm each time impatient to read the next reviews, because that make me dream like in the paper magazines in the 80s.

[ralferoo]

Hahahahahahahaha. So I guess TFM has never read a games magazine in the last 30 years... Here's a hint: a game review is one person's subjective opinion, not a scientific report.

[TotO]

Hahahahahahahaha. So I guess TFM has never read a games magazine in the last 30 years... Here's a hint: a game review is one person's subjective opinion, not a scientific report.

I speak to everyone when I said "you".
I'm sure that TFM love his game and that he worked hard on it. So I can understand his disappointment.
Sadly, the work done is not proportional to the end user feedback...
For example, with my brothers, we spend more time to play to a simple BASIC Tron game than all other games on CPC. There is no justice in this world.

[AMSDOS]

CPC Games Reviews is a great website with experimented peoples playing to all CPC games to give a feedback about "how they liked games". It allow everyone to find a CPC game simply by looking a screenshot and reading a short review of each of them. A link to download it quickly or to go to cpc-power and get more informations.
That represent a big work and I'm proud to see that the 2013 16K ROM Contest games are now on it.

You can disagree with some scores... Why Cybernoid get only 6, for me it's a great game... And, why Overkoban get 9 and not win the contest? Hey!!! It's just the reviewer feedback. You have better to play to the game yourself.

I love this website (but R-Type only get 10... It deserve more XD) and I'm each time impatient to read the next reviews, because that make me dream like in the paper magazines in the 80s.

Would it be ideal if there was a Journal area where members can start their own threads and just write about Games they enjoy playing?

[TotO]

You can already do it on cpc-power, after clicking on the related link of each cpc games review .

[Gryzor]

Oh yeah, let's have a scientific site where reviews get peer-reviewed and come complete with bibliography and source data Also, the maintainer could charge for review submissions. I wonder if published reviews could count towards professorship or something

[TFM]

No professorships. You must be someone before you are allowed to review. Sadly than you have a lot of reviews to do. I don't like to do that kind of work. But journals approach me all the time.

[fano]

My first approach was to ignore this thread but is this serious ? Seriously , is this serious ? 
Review is something very subjective so as long the reviewer doesn't disrespect the author and his work, i do not see the problem here but maybe i missed some subtilities of the Shakespeare language... ...I understand you found it unfair because it is your work but i think if you have an idea about how your work is good you so can accept a review that does not show your work in only a favorable point of view (as long it is respectfull) , if not you have a serious lack of self confidence.
Reviewing is something else than scientific approach, that reflects reviewer opininon , that's all.If you want to see the technical side , it is so a technical studie and this is something that does only takes technicals facts, but in games , technical side is not the only one.
And speaking about allowed people to do reviews, i am afraid with this idea, why not allowing only some people to post on forum too (i should not as my engrish is very very... ...engrish !)


PS: you're right , the review of this site aren't that good , R-Type got 10 ! How will he do to give a score to our next prods, creating a higher range ?

[TFM]

I just dislike sloppy "reviews"... He wasn't even able to press key "2" to switch the title music on. The sloppiness of this page is not a new impression to me. For me a review should be based on facts.

[Devilmarkus]

Come on guys... Who cares about reviews?

I mean: Really, a game review is written by a single person.
Everyone can have his own opinion about a game and thats it.

Also:
No game can be so perfect and get 20 of 10 points, than this CPC masterpiece

[Missas]

Dear TFM
I am the user who wrote the reviews about the cpc wiki games. Regarding your game, Cyber Hunn, would it be fair to rate it over 6 since it is a 16kb game?I was reluctant to rate it with only 6 because I greatly appreciate people like you who keep our CPC alive! But what about other bigger games that receive 6 or 7?If I rate your game higher what should I do with the other new games? I am sure that Gerelakos for example will receive 9 or 10 but I am not sure that I can rate over 6 Cyber Hunn.
With great Respect
Missas

[Misel982001]

Dear TFM.

I've sent you a reply. I am the person who wrote the review.

[EgoTrip]

Don't let TFM make you feel guilty or backtrack just because your opinion, which you are fully entitled to, is different to his. He is a drama queen with a bruised ego, and a bad loser. Although nobody really lost in the competition. There can only be one first place.

[AMSDOS]

I occasionally write the odd review when it comes to some music or an album (obviously not for Rolling Stone Magazine), and I haven't had people tell me I have no authority to write reviews. It maybe true, though I've had people say I write good reviews because I try and justify what I like and dislike about something, instead of saying it's good or it's crap, without any explanation, which is important.

Music in a way can be reviewed in a similar manner to games, though obviously there is Music which isn't to ones tastes and I think the game to apply with games, though games can obviously be done badly - which everyone will generally agree it will be rubbish, music only sounds bad when the sound engineers was away on holiday or something - unless you've got the ears of Cliff Richard which can advise where The Beatles had their instruments out of tune, still it didn't stop their success. 

Come on guys... Who cares about reviews?

I like to read what everyone has to say about whatever game/program they want to write about. Obviously it would be better to read about why the program is good/bad, instead of the usual it's crap, cause it's better to see where the reviewer is coming from. 

PS: you're right , the review of this site aren't that good , R-Type got 10 !

Thought it might of been a typo. I played the R-Type Remake a couple of times, but found it very frustrating. I never played the original version with the Spectrum graphics, though I dare say it's similar. Might be better played with a Joystick.

[ralferoo]

OK, I'm going to get totally villified by TFM now, but to be honest I frankly don't care any more.

If I was reviewing the game it'd definitely have scored less than than 6. Even though I'm a CPC user with a good technical background, the number of sprites didn't especially stand out in the game. In fact, arguably the big regular clusters of chickens was a negative point. It'd have been better to have really had to hunt for them. The game for me started with just a couple of chickens and no indication you had to move the screen to find more. The gameplay wasn't especially engaging beyond the first play through as there was no variation. More significantly there was no satisying result from shooting a chicken and I was bored well before the time ran out. The collision detection was ropey - quite often I'd score a hit even though the missile had missed the chicken by about 4 or 5 pixels, other times I was closer than that and not score a hit. So, it was an entertaining diversion but there's nothing there that'd make me come back as I'd seen everything the game had to offer in 30 seconds.

So, contrasting that with the others:

Relentless - obviously very good, but didn't the smooth scrolling didn't work well on my LCD monitor, so I had to make more of an effort to run it on a real machine and monitor. As a CPC purist, that's fair enough, but may limit the appeal in the CPC demographic we have nowadays where there are many more CPCs without monitors. I'm not a massive fun of shoot-em-ups, but I still enjoyed it and there was variation so actually I did play it a few subsequent times. The graphics design was a bit minimalist, but I really like vector style graphics, so it worked for me.

Overkoban - nice and colourful, and fun - and let's face it, who doesn't like Sokoban! I replayed the first level many times with friends and showed to lots of people at various times. I really liked the presentation, but for me the difficulty of level 2 was so much higher than level 1 that it took me by surprise. As a result, whenever I showed the game to others, I left it on level 1 so they could actually solve it! Graphically this was probably the nicest demonstration of the CPC.

Subtero Puzlo - again a nice colourful puzzler. I liked the art style but can't help wonder if it'd have been better as a mode 0 game. I really enjoyed the puzzles on this and played quite a few levels and enjoyed all the ones I played. I'll definitely be coming back to this one again when I have more time.

So, in terms of these games - the last 3 would all have made good magazine covertape games, possibly even a reasonable budget price game as they keep you coming back for more. If I'd got CH on a covertape, I'd probably have not loaded it a second time as there was nothing more to see, as a ROM game I'd already done the work to load it to flash, so loading a second time was quick and hassle-free but there still wasn't anything to bring me back a third time.

You'll notice I've not mentioned the music, in part because the music in all the games was good, but mostly because music is a sweetner that makes a great game into an awesome game. If I don't enjoy the game, it doesn't matter how great the music is, I still won't want to play it. That said, all the music was excellent, personally I preferred the music in CH the most.

[EDIT: Just realised, on re-reading my comments about CH, they're a bit more negative than I intented. The game was fun to play initially, it just needed more variation to keep me interested and make me want to come back. Without that variation, for me it was just something to experience once.]

[redbox]

Subtero Puzlo - again a nice colourful puzzler. I liked the art style but can't help wonder if it'd have been better as a mode 0 game. I really enjoyed the puzzles on this and played quite a few levels and enjoyed all the ones I played. I'll definitely be coming back to this one again when I have more time.

Thanks for your opinions ralferoo, it's appreciated.

I really like Subtera Puzlo (and I say that because I didn't design the actual game, just coded it - EgoTrip did all the rest) and enjoyed playing it myself.  But TBH, if people had said it was a big pile of poo I wouldn't have really cared because the real enjoyment for me was writing something from scratch on the CPC and proving to myself that I could do it (albeit 25 odd years later!).  If people enjoy what I coded then to me that really is just the icing on the cake.

Of course it was a competition and we wanted to compete, and to gain recognition for your work is always nice.  But it is in no way my raison d'etre.  If you complete Subtera Puzlo, the end screen will tell you how I feel about it anyway 

[ivarf]

So, in terms of these games - the last 3 would all have made good magazine covertape games, possibly even a reasonable budget price game as they keep you coming back for more. If I'd got CH on a covertape, I'd probably have not loaded it a second time as there was nothing more to see, as a ROM game I'd already done the work to load it to flash, so loading a second time was quick and hassle-free but there still wasn't anything to bring me back a third time.

If they are not more than reasonable budgetgames, then the scores of 6 and 8 is way to high in my opinion. I haven't done any reviewing as such, but has given ratings at imdb.com to movies I have seen. The ratings are from 1-10, and after 600+ movies I have a good feel for where to place the given movie. Often I feel such a scale isn't big enough, wanting the 1-20 like Amstrad User used. I guess its a lot easer to score a movie than a game. With a movie you have a fixed period of time before you give your score. For a game, you may wan't to quit after 5 minutes, and do not discover the gameplay that lays hidden in there somewhere, or maybe it isn't in there after all.
Anyhow, it would be nice to have something like the imdb-voting for CPC games too.

[Devilmarkus]

A score < 6 should be a motivation to do a better game

I really don't understand why here's now such a whirlwind about a user review?

There are many games for the CPC which I would score with 5 or less but other people like playing them much... E.G. "Fruity Frank" is a game, I would score with 3, because it's a game what absolutely dismatches my interest list.

[MaV]

*shrug* All of those games are good and way above most Amsoft and Codemasters games.

And Fruity Frank is a solid 10 on my list!

[ivarf]

I loved many of the Amsoft games! 

[ralferoo]

Also that same site lists Roland in the Caves as a 1. Yes, it's damn hard and I struggle to get anywhere, but after a lot of trying it's remarkably rewarding when you manage to not get caught for a while. And it's such a beautiful looking game it's hard to imagine it was released right at the beginning of the CPC's life.

This all just goes to show that different people like different things...

[TotO]

I played the R-Type Remake a couple of times, but found it very frustrating. I never played the original version with the Spectrum graphics, though I dare say it's similar. Might be better played with a Joystick.

R-Type is know to be a very difficult game. So, try the CASUAL mode first!
You can re-spawn where you die and keep weapons to not stop your progress and enjoy it better if you are a beginner.
(that help to learn patterns and safe points for playing in ARCADE, then MASTER mode)

When you see peoples like Xyphoe or Metr, finishing the full game it less than 1 hour, you can understand that it's a skill problem. (me the first )

[ivarf]

Also that same site lists Roland in the Caves as a 1. Yes, it's damn hard and I struggle to get anywhere, but after a lot of trying it's remarkably rewarding when you manage to not get caught for a while. And it's such a beautiful looking game it's hard to imagine it was released right at the beginning of the CPC's life.

This all just goes to show that different people like different things...

Roland in the Caves: I am no expert player, but still managed to jump out of the caves for a couple of times in one game. I guess that means I reached level 3.
Spannerman: Have anyone managed to get to the second level of that game? Is it possible?

[Misel982001]

Hello. I am the guy who wrote the review. In great surprise, I am reading everything that you write. Someone said that I am on crack, some other gave a thumbs down for the great CPC game reviews site. Has everyone realised that the review is subjective?and that Cyber Hunn is just a 16k game? TFM, I am really disapointed about your comment regarding crack. I would expect from you to be a better person and to be able to receive a lightly negative critic. I dont think it is such a big deal to receive a 6 for a game like Hunn. To your knowledge, because I had great respect for you before reading your stupid comments about me smoking crack , I was ready to ask the Reviews site to remove my review. I want you to know that the 6 is not by me; I talked to other guys and Cyber Hunn is not so popular. It seems that you are not getting well with criticism. Sorry mate, it is just the way it goes. I am sorry if I said something bad because I feel that I owe to you, a guy who keeps our memories alive and who has created so many miracles on CPC. If there is anything you feel you should tell me, and any other guy who is attacking me I will answer to all posts.