A review of Gratuitous Space Battles has been posted at Out of Eight PC Game Reviews:
outofeight.info/2009/11/grat … eview.html
Enjoy!
Reading this review was a crucial part of my deciding to buy GSB. I would encourage Cliff to try to get out-of-eight to review more of his games. Give them free copies, whatever. There is so much buggy crap out there I am reluctant to buy a PC game without seeing a review from a major game reviewer. And I refuse to go the “pirate before you buy” route.
Excellent suggestion! Im sure Cliffski will start work on it right away! How come no one thought of this feature! etc etc
yes but thats assuming you can trust a major game reviewer … which, lets face it, nowadays has the same ‘trust’ level as a Labour politician
they’re far too close to publishers and devs as they cosy up to get ‘scoops’ and stay on the good side.
I’ve lost count of the number of times that games were poorly reviewed and obviously based on ‘reviewer code’
I stopped buying mags years ago.
Not a bad review at all. I agree with Damage_13 to a point; I don’t take much that reviewers say at face value. Mostly I read reviews to get a description of how the game functions/is played - the “I loved this/hated that” stuff just gives me an idea of what kind of games the reviewer likes, which puts perspective on the game description. I’ve bought games based on half a dozen reviews taken in aggregate, and I’ve avoided games based on the same thing.
Basically, while you should never trust a review, a group of reviews can be quite illuminating.
Some reviewers are easily swayed by bug publishers budgets etc, but some are not. Some of the Uk ones are pretty good. I know one UK journliast who lives not that far from me, who I’ve chatted to loads of times on msn, and yet when he reviewed a game of mine, gave it quite an average review. Although I like good reviews, I also like to know that reviews are honest.
The only times I worry about reviews is when I see huge flashing animated ads and video ads plastered all over a page when the site gives it 95%. I do wonder how much they spend, and how much it means to that website that the game gets good coverage.
There is no way to know, which is why a free demo is essential for PC games.
Whats the name of those people that end with shak?
Id trust them, they were th only people who refused to review modern warfare 2 under the conditions acivision set
All other guys went along with it, though some complained about it after word got out about it.
Shak guys did call it coverage, but it wasnt an offical review, which is refreshing.
And dissapointing for all the other media outlets that didnt stand up for some ethical journalism.
There’s different kind s of gamers, and we all have expectations, a lot of people want to have fun compressed into time they can manage.
There are generally these types of gamers:
-Active gamer (like myself)
-Passive gamer
-Likes both (like myself)
Most gamers lean towards active or passive even when they like both, like myself asking if you’d put a little space cannon in to keep my attention from wandering watching the same battle the umpteenth time. The truth is though that if you’re making a game you should make it as fun as you can get for a wide variety of types without breaking the design. That’s why I suggested an offscreen weapon to play with to help ships instead of “making it an rts”, I heard you were originally thinking about making it an RTS at the beginning, that’s probably why I get that “twitchy” feeling, like the game should have more of an RTS element to it.